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No More Windows Here

Mickey Richaud

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No, not Linux. After much deliberation and gnashing of teeth, I've made the move to Apple. I've had several PCs fail on me, and our son has been after me to go with Apple for quite some time. So my first purchase was the MacBook Air I'm typing on now. And last night UPS delivered an iMac 21.5" all-in-one desktop to replace a Lenovo that's been nothing but a slug since shortly after I got it. It got to be so bad that I hardly ever fired it up; always used a laptop, and went through three of them over the last several years - the last one dying after only a couple of years' service.

So far, I'm getting along with the learning curve, but it's hard to break old habits, and it's gonna take some time to get used to the different ways of navigating through. First thing I need to do is copy documents and pictures from the Lenovo and install them on the iMac. The laptop won't even start now, so whatever is on there (not much, really) is most likely going to wherever old computers go when they die...

And if first impressions are anything, the packaging alone that Apple products come in is beyond first-rate!
 
Well done, Bro! You'll have a lot less 'babysitting' with the iMac. And with that O/S you really are about half-way to a Linux system, y'know... 😉
 
Well done, Bro! You'll have a lot less 'babysitting' with the iMac. And with that O/S you really are about half-way to a Linux system, y'know... 😉
HA! Ya just couldn't resist, could ya? 😄
 
I never got the appeal of Apple products. I would recommend getting a 5 button mouse for the iMac. I have mine programed so the thumb button works as a "go back" for the web browsers (and other programs). No moving the mouse or track pad up to the back arrow. I've watched people over the years and thought "what a waste of time". In fairness, the magic mouse 2 seems to have addressed most of these issues. Here is a comparison video with magic mouse 2 vs. Logitech.
 
I have never regretted getting my MacBook. You will like it.
 
My wife has an iPad with a keyboard and loves it! I have tried to use it and give up! I'm on Mint 21 now and have zero problems, heck I did have a computer back in the 90s, but cell phones, 5 years ago at best, and still use the cells just to talk to someone, if I want to, I don't text! :argue: :devilgrin:
 
Congratulations for coming over to the dark side. I made the switch somewhere around 2011 after being a PC guy since PCs first hit the market. I was reluctant to switch for a long time, but in 2008 I bought my wife an iMac because it was supposed to be "more intuitive" and I felt it would e a good fit. Then I started playing around with it and discovered I really liked the interface and the more I messed with her's the more I liked it.

One place I highly recommend you join is Mac Rumors - probably one of the best Apple-related forums out there.

Also, you might want to subscribe to this guy: Mac Most Video
 
Congratulations for coming over to the dark side. I made the switch somewhere around 2011 after being a PC guy since PCs first hit the market. I was reluctant to switch for a long time, but in 2008 I bought my wife an iMac because it was supposed to be "more intuitive" and I felt it would e a good fit. Then I started playing around with it and discovered I really liked the interface and the more I messed with her's the more I liked it.

One place I highly recommend you join is Mac Rumors - probably one of the best Apple-related forums out there.

Also, you might want to subscribe to this guy: Mac Most Video
Thanks - will check those out.
 
The single most impresive improvement to any PC was the SSD hard drive
I have an old toshiba satelite P20, great old laptop designed for XP. with an adaptor case and an SSD,
Even though it still runs through the ide controller, it still boots twice as fast as the original IDE drive.
running windows 7.
Only did it just to see if i could.
Not a laptop to carry around, you could break your foot if dropped
 
Mezy - I found something similar when I switched to SSD: much faster boot up from "off". But after the boot process, there was no speed change. Apps and data loaded same speed as before. So I figured that unless you boot or reboot frequently, the SSD didn't have an advantage over a HD. I think the jury is still out on reliability and life of SSD vs HD.
Tom M.
 
Nutmeg, I have always found a speed improvement in all cases, the figures show speed improvement.
HDDs can copy 30 to 150 MB per second (MB/s), while standard SSDs perform the same action at speeds of 500 MB/s. Newer NVME SSDs can even show speeds of up to an astounding 3,000 to 3,500 MB/s. With an SSD, you can copy a 20 GB movie in less than 10 seconds, while a hard disk would take at least two minutes.
I know this cannot be the case with all PC's it depends on the buss speeds, obviously newer motherboards and ram help a lot with data transfer.

This is may latest build, not quite finnshed yet, Waiting to paint the panther, then i will paint this the same colour,
IMG_20210507_150824_982.jpg

20210222_174737.jpg
 
Mezy - that's quite a laptop you have there. Four wheels guarantee mobility! :smile:

I realize the SSD hardware advantage in pure speed - but in everyday use (writing, downloading, household spreadsheets and databases, browsing, etc.) many people (like me!) wouldn't notice an improvement. At least that's been my experience.

Anyway, the great Windows vs Mac vs Linux vs cp/m (!) vs DOS continues!
 
I realize the SSD hardware advantage in pure speed - but in everyday use (writing, downloading, household spreadsheets and databases, browsing, etc.) many people (like me!) wouldn't notice an improvement. At least that's been my experience.
For mundane tasks that don't tax the read/write functions you are correct, you wouldn't notice much practical difference (There probably is a difference but since what you're doing is not read/write intensive the difference would be negligible and probably not noticeable). Booting the computer up is one place a user like you would probably see a difference. When I changed the mechanical HD in my old MacBook laptop from mechanical to SSD, the improvement in boot up time was very noticeable.

This wouldn't apply to you, but where I see a huge difference is in things like rendering video, or exporting video or very large numbers of large photos.
 
This where i see a difference. I have and old canon XL2, a fantastic camera, but SD, and using cyberlink power director for editing and upscaling,
it is sooooooo much quicker than a disc HDD.

 
It also can depend on how much the OS itself depends on internal caches and such. I see much more improvement with an SSD in an older Mac than in a same-vintage PC running Windows or Linux and I beleive that is because the Mac OS itself depends a lot more on interim read/writes as its running (for example, the pull down menus at the top of the screen seem to be loaded from disc on-the-fly), so the whole machine feels more responsive even though the internal controllers only run a 3 gig/sec (while most SATA SSDs are rated for 6 gig/sec). I've switched all my SATA HD Macs to SSDs (both at work at home) and it has made a big difference. I do see faster boot times with the SSD equipped Linux and Windows machines also, but don't notice as much of a responsiveness difference once running.

In audio work the difference is very obvious - scrubbing though a 500MB raw WAV file searching for pops and clicks in a vinyl transcription is much more smooth and fluid, and when you start getting into 8 and 12 channel record/edit sessions the SSD equipped machine really starts to shine.

I could really use a half-dozen or so of those IDE to SSD adaptor cases mentioned above - where did you even FIND such things????
 
It was listed on Ebay here in the UK,
ide to ssd.PNG

ide to ssd 1.PNG

They take an Msata, ebay number 165140466349, Found it on the US ebay site 115593954530
 
Someone posted on a Photog forum I frequent that they had found a "deal" for an 8TB SSD drive for $50!

My reply to him:

"Run Forrest!!"

run.jpeg
 
Monty Python's Holy Grail - "Run away, run away!" might be more appropriate.
 
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