Quote Originally Posted by Mark Elberson
I have to ask about your 4 year old MacBook...have you upgraded it in the past 4 years (RAM, etc)? How much do versions of the OS cost (or are they free)?

No hardware upgrades - the only thing I've bought for it since I've owned it is spare battery (bought recently because I wanted continuous power if needed to help entertainour 2 year oldon our first cross-country plane trip with her - turned out books worked just fine, though).


The most recent OS upgrade (10.6) was $29 (I actually spent $49 for the 'family pack' version so I could use it on my wife's MacBook as well - honestly, that is - with Apple the family pack is on the 'honor system' since the single-user license discs can be used on an unlimited number of machines).


I agree that there's no 'right' answer here - personally, I prefer Macs because they tend to be more stable (I can't remember the last time mine 'crashed' and I only reboot when forced to by a software update),and for the design/ergonomics. They are alsoinnately more secure from a virus/spyware standpoint (because the OS is based on a Unix kernal) - but of course nothing is invulnerable. Good AV software is a must on a PC, not so for a Mac. Then, there was some recent unpleasantness at work when a broken McAfee antivirus update pushed out to corporate America resulted in lots of PCs unstoppably rebooting every 60 seconds...but, I digress.


You have some great points about the ever-increasing need for RAM and storage. I will say that the MacOS is very efficient at RAM allocation, though, and it alsoautomaticallyperforms file defragmentation, cache cleanup, etc., on the fly and in the background. I guess my point is that a 'similarly spec'd' Mac will likely perform faster than it's Windows counterpart because the same vendor has control over both the hardware and the OS, so they are more tightly integrated. But, if I was doing much in the way of video editing, I know that I'd quickly be constrained by the size of my largest-available-in-2006 internal HDD. The only time I ever feel that I'm running short of RAM or CPU power is when I am running Windows in a virtual machine (an image of my work laptop) and need to allocate half of my RAM and one of my CPU cores to the VM. But I prefer that handicap to carrying two laptops!! In fact, when Apple switched to Intel CPUs in 2006 I think that eliminated much of the 'fear of change' issue - it added the ability to run Windows natively or efficiently via virtualization (i.e. only softwarevirtualizationneeded, not hardware) . If I really wanted to (not that I would), I could boot my Mac laptop in Windows and it would be a PC (albeit a prettier and more expensive one []).


The other thing I really appreciate is the 'plug-and-play' convenience. Case in point, the instructions for the SIIG High-Speed ExpressCard CF reader/writer I got when I got my 7D:


Windows Vista:
  1. Insert a memory card into the adapter.
  2. Insert the adapter into the computer.
  3. Insert the driver CD.
  4. Click Start.
  5. Click Search.
  6. Type "D:\setup.exe".
  7. Click Enter.
  8. Click Continue.
  9. Click Next.
  10. Click Install.
  11. Click Finish.
  12. Right-click Computer.
  13. Click Manage.
  14. Click Continue.
  15. Click Device Manager.
  16. Double-click Memory Technology Driver.
  17. Confirm that the ExpressCard CF Adapter is listed.






Mac OS X:
  1. Mac OS X will automatically detect theExpressCard CF Adapter, no driver installation is needed.






I can't speak for all those Windows users out there, but I know which set of instructions I'd prefer to follow. [:P]


--John