Computer Problems and\or Advice 2008 to 2011

[Carol Shaw]

I had a desktop computer for years - would not go back to if you paid me in gold... With my laptop I can work anywhere there is network availability - so when I am sat in the hairdressers for two hours I just carry on working as usual. Off down to Dunblane for Early Bulbs - the laptops goes with my and I can do whatever is needed... I could go on but wont! On the subject of a laptop effectively only having one hard disk, yes this is true but I back up daily when at home to an external hard drive and when my hard drive died in December this saved my bacon! It really depends what you need to be able to do with the beast - mine is vital for my work so I want something that I know can do what I need. David is very happy with his Acer laptop too.

[maggiepie]

I have to jump in again, with regard to moving from a windows based PC to an AppleMac.
Apart from relearning things, if you have spent $$$ ( sorry don't seem to have a pound sign handy) on software such as Photoshop and filters etc, you will have to go and buy Mac versions.

[Carol Shaw]

I agree switching from PC to Mac is a huge step and not one to be undertaken lightly. I'm just happy it is all I've ever had - I remember the little original Mac that did not even have a hard drive, you booted up from a floppy disk! Our son built his own Sinclair computer back in the early 80s probably worth something now as a museum piece if it were still around.

[ranunculus]

Switching to a Mac IS a learning curve, but certainly not an insurmountable one (an old person here in Whitworth has nearly succeeded) - and the benefits (in my humble opinion) far outweigh the potential risks inherent in a Windows/Internet Explorer based environment.
I was very dubious about changing the habits of a lifetime, but wouldn't switch back for the world - but each to his own, surely a purchaser's prerogative. 

[maggiepie]

 but each to his own, surely a purchaser's prerogative. 

I agree, I was just pointing out that when you change from a Windows PC to a  Mac you can't take your windows software with you .
Depending on what programs you are used to, eg, Ms Office, Adobe Photoshop etc, you could run into a huge amount of money to replace those programs.

[gote]

You do not NEED to buy a mac in order to get away from Windows etc.
Linux is an alternative and there are a number of complete linux packages that include all "normal" software such as word processors, spredsheets etc.
These are very cheap and sometimes free. However, if you do not already know this you may be reluctant to tinker with your machine.
If you value mobility higher than flexibility your choice will be a laptop mac or PC
If you value the possibility of letting the machine grow with your needs and future hardware development your choice is a PC.
The amount of additional hardware for PC-s is much larger and usually cheaper than for Macs.
Göte

[Anthony Darby]

I still can't download flashplayer and I've removed older versions. Apparently this is a problem with Firefox. When I used IE updates loaded by stealth.

[gote]

Anthony,
Have you tried the downloading from the following site??
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:7
Göte

[Diane Whitehead]

 I was just pointing out that when you change from a Windows PC to a  Mac you can't take your windows software with you .
Depending on what programs you are used to, eg, Ms Office, Adobe Photoshop etc, you could run into a huge amount of money to replace those programs.

You can run all your Windows programs on a Mac.
You have to install Boot Camp and then install Windows... and then
your Mac can run Windows programs.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html

[johnw]

Helen / Diane

I bought Microsoft Office 2004 with Word, Excel and Powerpoint for the iMac. About $150 and no need for bootcamp or partitioning.  It all runs very soothly.

johnw

[jomowi]

You can also run windows programmes on a Mac using "Parallels" or "VM ware Fusion", I use the latter with "Windows  XP"and find it very good.  "Parallels"is also reported to be good.  Both can be run from within the Mac OS X and items can even be dragged from one to the PC to the open Mac desktop.  I haven't felt the need to load up "Boot Camp" which involves booting an "Intel Mac"  as a windows machine and using it as such.

Brian Wilson
a long time Mac user
Aberdeen

[Carol Shaw]

I too use VM ware fusion on my Mac to run a pr interactive database... works fine.

[Darren]

Thank you all again for your advice!

I guess I knew that different people would have different views on this. I am very tempted by the mac option, though somewhat taken-aback by the price difference. Either way - the 'free laptop' (actually a small netbook in most cases it appears) deals seem a non-starter for me. Still no firm decision though.

Cheers,

D.

[Anthony Darby]

Anthony,
Have you tried the downloading from the following site??
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:7
Göte

Still get the same silly messages: "close Firefox" or "you need at least 5000kb of memory". Gosh, that much!?

[gote]

Anthony,
I hope you are joking??
Or do you really think 5 meg being biggish?
What OP are you using?
It can well be that you should close down Firefox but leave the downloading window open. That is quite customary when dealing with upgrades.

Diane,
I thought that the idea of using a Mac was to get away from Microsoft software.
Today you can use an intermediate layer in order to run Microsoft software on Macs but is that not creating another layer of software in between?? Such layers notoriously decrease processing speed and available memory. Also: Windows may be full of holes but at least Microsoft are working on addressing them. Would a third party supplier of software be able to handle these issues better?

Göte

PS
   In principle PC- (and Mac-) programming is based on snippets of code that is hardwared into the machine (BIOS) The BIOs works by sending sequenses of instructionss to the CPU which only understands a very limited number of these. The BIOS provides handles to these sequenses called interrupts. The OP then contains larger snippets at a higher level which call the BIOS-snippets and adds some of its own. DOS is an example.
The OP is then often layered. Windows 3.X, 95 and 97 were OP´s  that used the handles provided by DOS. Programs running under Windows 97 use the handles provided by Windows97 which uses the handles provided by DOS which uses the handles used by the BIOS. Some programs bypass the OP and BIOS by commanding the CPU directly (usually because some of the lower level functions are slow). Here conflicts may arise and we get crashes.
Windows versions later than 97 are not layered on DOS instead they so to say create virtual machines on which the programs rums. Thus if a program misbehaves it can (usually) only lock or crash the virtual machine. The reat of the computer is still working. The drawback is that the need for memory increases and the speed goes down.
A program written for Windows will need to have the handles in Windws available. The original Macs had Motorola processors which have a different set of instructions from the Intel CPUs used in PC-s so the Windows handles are not originally available. There must be a kind of interpreter in between.