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The Kernel wrote:And I don't use Office on a Mac because it's ass slow due to the fact that there isn't a native binary (you need to run it through an emulator). It's also unstable as all hell on an Intel Mac. This should be fixed come winter, but for now Office 2004 on an Intel Mac doesn't add much value.

Really? Everyone I know who uses Macs for work has Office, and it seems to work fine for them? I'd be getting phonecalls all the time if it was crashing and losing work.

While I hear that Dell laptops are much better than Dell desktops, they can still fuck off. UNLESS YOU INSTALL LINUX ON IT LOL?

Stark wrote:

The Kernel wrote:And I don't use Office on a Mac because it's ass slow due to the fact that there isn't a native binary (you need to run it through an emulator). It's also unstable as all hell on an Intel Mac. This should be fixed come winter, but for now Office 2004 on an Intel Mac doesn't add much value.

Really? Everyone I know who uses Macs for work has Office, and it seems to work fine for them? I'd be getting phonecalls all the time if it was crashing and losing work.

While I hear that Dell laptops are much better than Dell desktops, they can still fuck off. UNLESS YOU INSTALL LINUX ON IT LOL?

Dell laptops are much worse. I've had to use both at work (unfortunately), and the laptop's keyboard was uncomfortable and nasty feeling. The whole machine felt cheaply made.

Praxis wrote: Huh, I've never tried connecting to the Exchange server from my Mac; I just used Web Access out of laziness.

Microsoft claims otherwise, though. They say Entourage 2004 supports Exchange email, shared calendaring, delegation, and directory access.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/support.aspx?pid=exchange

Oh it supports connecting to an Exchange server alright...about as well as a RAV4 supports offroading. I've gotten in to technically work with my corporate exchange server (with a bunch of little tweaks by IT that went with going over pages of Microsoft documentation) but even after all that work, the level of usability is crap. Most major features are horribly supported and some stuff is just plain broken.

Stark wrote: Really? Everyone I know who uses Macs for work has Office, and it seems to work fine for them? I'd be getting phonecalls all the time if it was crashing and losing work.

It depends on what they use it for I guess. I use a heavy amount of pixel and vector graphics in my design documents and PRDs, as well as tracking changes among revisions and these are the two areas I've seen the most file compatibility issues with.

Also advanced formatting features just plain break sometimes in the transition.

Stark wrote:

The Kernel wrote:And I don't use Office on a Mac because it's ass slow due to the fact that there isn't a native binary (you need to run it through an emulator). It's also unstable as all hell on an Intel Mac. This should be fixed come winter, but for now Office 2004 on an Intel Mac doesn't add much value.

Really? Everyone I know who uses Macs for work has Office, and it seems to work fine for them? I'd be getting phonecalls all the time if it was crashing and losing work.

While I hear that Dell laptops are much better than Dell desktops, they can still fuck off. UNLESS YOU INSTALL LINUX ON IT LOL?

Honestly I haven't had any compatibility problems, ever. But Office DOES run under emulation because it is PowerPC compiled. Most people have no idea, because the emulator is behind the scenes.

But it can take 15-30 seconds to open Word initially. On a Core Duo.

For what it's worth, I've used NeoOffice for the past two years for word processing, spreadsheets, and a presentation or two. I've not once heard of compatibility issues, and I find it more enjoyable to use than MS Word or Excel. Well, and it's free, but hey.

I've got a Mac Mini, I'm pretty happy with it. As has already been said, it's nigh impossible to break, does have a certain degree of compatibility, and I would have though the baseline model would have more than enough in it to satisfy a 9-yr old. Biggest boon - either use your existing screens and keyboards, or get new ones, which gives you the option of upgrading to a better computer (Mac or PC) later.

General Zod wrote:Dell laptops are much worse. I've had to use both at work (unfortunately), and the laptop's keyboard was uncomfortable and nasty feeling. The whole machine felt cheaply made.

I'll second this - as an example the power connector on the 51X0 series was attached only by the soldering to the motherboard - and it was right next to the CPU, which caused many, many failures (I suffered 4 of them).

One Dell Inspiron series had an issue where a major stress point was right over a surface-mount resistor - I knew quite a few people who ended up having to resolder the damned thing

I think you'll like the Parental Controls feature in Leopard. But that's not coming around until October.

Either way, I would recommend against a Windows machine just because of all the bullshit malware. If you really don't like Macs for some reason, install Ubuntu Linux; it's apparently a far easier version of Linux to use, but I have no experience with it.

But I'm betting that you'll like the MacBook.

The Kernel wrote:It depends on what they use it for I guess. I use a heavy amount of pixel and vector graphics in my design documents and PRDs, as well as tracking changes among revisions and these are the two areas I've seen the most file compatibility issues with.

Also advanced formatting features just plain break sometimes in the transition.

That'd be it - they'd be using almost exclusively formatted text and spreadsheets, nothing more.

Praxis wrote:But it can take 15-30 seconds to open Word initially. On a Core Duo.

Which setup? my macbook (C2D 2.0Ghz 2gb ram) takes 7 seconds to open word to a new document including waiting for me to hit open. Other applications running - safari, apple mail, xchat aqua and adium. Or is that to load in a particular document?

Lisa wrote:

Praxis wrote:But it can take 15-30 seconds to open Word initially. On a Core Duo.

Which setup? my macbook (C2D 2.0Ghz 2gb ram) takes 7 seconds to open word to a new document including waiting for me to hit open. Other applications running - safari, apple mail, xchat aqua and adium. Or is that to load in a particular document?

It took me 30 seconds on a CD with 2 GB of RAM, but I had Parallels running in the background idling which probably hurt it.

As a funny/wierd note to this discussion:

I had to return my 13" MacBook last weekend for warranty repair, as it was turning off 2-3 seconds after it was powered on.
Then today I got a letter from the Mac store saying "It's been almost a year since you purchased your Mac, we trust it has been serving you well...", then goes on to try and sell an extended warranty.

I had to laugh at the irony of getting that while it's still in being fixed.