anyone switched?

[Joseph Miller]

I'm sooooo thinking seriously about scrapping my Dell Dimension for an Apple notebook (after I had to upgrade my BIOS to get USB to work on Windows 2000, stopped trying to use multiple USB hubs chained together, switched out my FireWire card *twice*, returned my CD-RW drive when it wouldn't recognize CD-RW or CD-R disks and then mysteriously wouldn't open the tray, and on, and on, and on...)
Is anyone else so TIRED of this stuff not working?! To me, solving these problems (drivers, hardware, etc.) is NOT fun, and NOT interesting - it's a big waste of time. Is Apple the answer?

[Jason Menard]

Dude, you shouldn't have gotten a Dell.

[Barry Gaunt]

My son keeps nagging at me to get a new computer and keeps changing the browser startpage to Dell's homepage. So what's the bad news about Dell (big boxes, not laptops)? Horror stories?

[Jason Menard]

I've only used them at work. I've never been overly impressed and felt they were average at best.
Regarding your son, he might consider changing the homepage to here or here. I mean hell, if you're going to try and squeeze money out of the old man, you might as well not hold back.

[Chris Mathews]

Originally posted by Jason Menard:
Regarding your son, he might consider changing the homepage to here or here. I mean hell, if you're going to try and squeeze money out of the old man, you might as well not hold back.

I have an Alienware and it is great! They are a bit pricey but very impressive to the guests... gotta love the paint jobs.

[Mark Spritzler]

I had switched in 1994 from Macintosh to PC.
Mark

[Joseph Miller]

Originally posted by Barry Gaunt:
My son keeps nagging at me to get a new computer and keeps changing the browser startpage to Dell's homepage. So what's the bad news about Dell (big boxes, not laptops)? Horror stories?

I don't have an issue with their customer support - their reps are pretty good and I can usually find answers to problems on their website. It's that I've had to use it too many times... And windows 2000 is somewhat of a culprit (use it at work so got it for homework). I've heard windows xp works better with compatibility and media but I've only seen it run dog slow.

[Ashok Mash]

I use Windows XP Home edition on my personal Dell laptop. Keeping its configuration in mind (640MB RAM etc), I would say XP is a bit slow indeed.
But its plug&play features are brilliant. Like, yesterday I plugged in a new PCIMCIA firewire card and a JVC mini DV cam, it didnt even think for a second to come up with a list of 'new' devices. And it automatically installed all the drivers for it and I was recording in less that a minute.
Meanwhile, I am quite happy with my Dell as well. I would say its perfect if you are looking for a laptop more like an entertainment box. That is, 64MB Nvidia GeForce 440 display card etc with 15-inch UXGA ASV (better viewing angle and image crispness), it?s a pleasure to watch DVDs, or to play games in it.

[Barry Gaunt]

Thanks for the info and links.
-Barry

[Bert Bates]

Joseph -
I switched about 9 months ago... I was tired of my so called 'operating system' (Windows 98) not actually 'operating'. It was to the point of freezing up a couple of times a day. I got a titanium, I have absolutely pounded on it seven days a week, hours and hours a day (OS X), and the thing NEVER crashes, NEVER freezes.
For a long time I would 'baby' Windows 98, only keeping a few windows open at a time, and minimizing my 'multi-tasking'. So when I first got OS X, I kind of babied it - not now, I often have 10 - 15 windows up, I'm hooked up to all sorts of USB devices... it's just rock solid.
There are a few shortcomings in OS X, minor bugs, I haven't put jaguar on yet - before jaguar the 'finder' was pretty weak.
Sometimes one or two apps. will crash, guess which ones?... Word and Explorer... but, when they crash, they don't crash anything else!!
So for my money - if you need reliable - it's a no-brainer (plus the titanium is just way cool )
-Bert
-p.s. # 1 - O'Reilly's top selling books are their OS X books!
p.s. Sun is in the process of licensing some of Apple's JVM technology - Apple's implementation is better and faster !
p.p.s. Many, many of Sun's engineer's are switching because they really want a good solid FAST unix notebook, so they can have portable servers !
[ February 26, 2003: Message edited by: Bert Bates ]