Switching Platforms... or not?

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What should I do?

Poll ended at Tue Jun 15, 2004 5:47 pm

Stay with the PC, you've spent enough already.
0
No votes
Move to the Mac, what's a little more cash?
0
No votes
The virtual machine is the answer.
0
No votes
Dude, you're screwed.
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 0

HaraldHeim
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Post by HaraldHeim »

You should inquire at the plugin companies if you can exchange your Windows license to a Mac license for free or if that costs something. As far as I know you have no luck with Adobe, so you will have to buy all your Adobe applications again. And as you mentioned, several plugins are only available for Windows.

Using Virtual PC on the Mac probably means less performance, so your plugins will run slower there. But it is a solution for occasional usage.

Switching to the Mac with all the tools you already have for Windows certainly means a very expensive decision. If you don't like WindowsXP, you could get Windows 2000 (which I still use myself) which works very smoothly. I have less problems with it than with OSX. But at some point in the future you will be forced to upgrade again to XP or its successor. XP works much more stable on newer PCs. Old ones as your 800 MHz one are not the best machines to run XP.

Some hardware and software costs roughly double as much for the Mac as for a Windows machine, so switching from Windows to a Mac should be considered very well.

TARL_FURY
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Post by TARL_FURY »

Herald makes some good points, and IMHO, it all depends upon what YOU personally require for your own happiness/satisfaction.

I still use my old 200 MHz Win98 machine for a lot of my graphics work, simply because it's so quick & easy, no fuss, no mess....I can be entirely done & logged-off with a project using it, before the newest of my other 3 computers would even finish booting up.
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repeat after me : "I will not hype craptacular software."

earnyla
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Making a platform switch

Post by earnyla »

Well, it's already been said... cold reality platform switch is more costly in software than hardware. However, I was sitting there on your side of the fence some years back. I got so tired of Windoze problems, that I make the commitment and switched to a Mac. I am also one who feels like I should own a piece of Adobe, I have paid so much over the years to keep up with the upgrades!

That being said, I have really loved the Mac platform, and certainly never seriously considered going and buying a newer Wintel system etc, until I purchased a very expensive piece of software that was Windows only, and had a stupid hardware security dongle which required a parallel port. The software would install on the Mac with the Virtual PC (and now that Gates and Co. owns that piece of software, I'd no longer trust it to work as flawlessly as it did before, albeit a bit slowly).

Insofar as Adobe is concerned, you're screwed on trying to get them to give you a license for another platform without buying the new version. BUT, you only have to do that once. Lots of the plug-ins work either way, I think... at any rate, you should expect maybe more accomodation from those folks.

I'll point out that if you are a teacher, or student, even part time, you can qualify for the education version of the Adobe CS Suite, and it is a substantial discount. However, the price of this "sweet deal" is that it is not upgradable. Considering the price you'll pay for it, and buying a new version when it comes out, is substantially better than the other route.

I say. b;uy the software for the Mac, and go forward from there.

Best wishes to you!
--earnyla

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Post by mitchman »

Actually, if you buy the educational versions (and there are comrercial restrictions, technically—so don't tell) even twice, you have still saved half of the cost of a full version. In otherwords, you pay about half, then instead of an upgrade price you get the new educational version (again) which is about the same price as an upgrade anyway. You are still ahead.

As for plugins, even though some come as either/or Win/Mac it is actually two versions on the same disk. Some will take the same code, some will require a platform specific code.

Personally, we have both platforms here and I prefer Mac. I am occasionally wishfull for a plugin not offered for Mac, but those are few and I can almost always find one from a different outlet that performs the same function.

As has been said, it depends on your preferences, what you are willing to sacrifice and in what areas.

I would vote for making the switch... I am always glad to get back to my Mac!

Mitch

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