I bought a 13” MacBook Pro in the Apple Store in Miami Beach last September for $1,200 including 7% Florida sales tax, and I’m very happy with it. It’s super-fast compared with Windows.
Four years ago I bought a Gateway with Windows Vista, which was so bad that I uninstalled it after a day and substituted Windows XP. The versions that I had of lot of third-party software, such as Norton Utilities and Nero, wouldn’t work in Vista. Also, I couldn’t copy my files, which I had backed up on CDs, onto the Gateway. Vista wouldn’t copy a folder within a folder, and I had a lot of folders nested within folders several levels deep. With the Mac I had no problem copying them.
The Gateway with Windows Vista was the worst computer that I’d ever had, and I bought my first computer back in the 1980s.
But even with XP installed the Gateway gave me problems which I hadn’t had previously using XP on other computers, and I had to reinstall the system about once a year, plus all the other programs I was using. This takes at least a day.
The Gateway computer with Vista cost me about $900 and was shoddily made. The left-hand mouse button broke after about a year and I had to fix it with Scotch tape.
Macs are much more solidly built and the staff in Apple stores and specialist retailers selling Macs are generally knowledgeable and helpful. They seem to consider it their job to help you sort out problems even after you’ve bought the computer, unlike the employees in a lot of stores selling PCs with Windows installed, who are only interested in making a sale, and don’t know much about the computers that they’re selling.
A big advantage of Mac OS X is that it comes with virtually all the software you’re likely to need, so you save money and time.
The main additional programs that you’re likely to want to download from the Internet are OpenOffice, which is a good free substitute for Microsoft Office, and the Gimp, also free, which does most things that Photoshop will.
I’ve now installed Ubuntu Linux on the Gateway laptop which I bought with Vista installed and it’s working far better with Linux than it ever did with Windows. Of course Linux is completely free and comes with most apps bundled with the system, including OpenOffice and the Gimp. Any extra ones you can download for free.
After my experience with Vista I’ve said goodbye to Windows forever.