Making Windows 8 less crappy

[DHC6twinotter]

I don't find Macs to be too much different than a Windows PC. Most of the folder arrangements are pretty similar. I think the biggest difference is the lack of a "start" button. The commonly used applications (web browser, Word, Excel, etc) are displayed on the dock. You also have access to your documents folder from the doc. The doc is customizable too, so you add/remove items from it. Everything else (folders, other programs, etc) can be found by opening the "finder" application, which is located about where the "start" button is (although, come to think of it, I may have put the finder icon there…don't remember if it was there originally.).

Overall, I think I prefer OSX over Windows. The GUI certainly looks better on OSX.

iPhoto is terrible for organizing photos. Don't use it, except for editing. You're better off just putting your photos in the "pictures" folder, which is found in "finder". You can then organize it like you would on a Windows PC.

I find OSX is a bit more picky when it comes to renaming files. It seems like it only lets you rename a file if you open it in "finder".

iMovie is actually a pretty good video editing software. It is much better than Windows Movie Maker, and is much easier to use than Adobe Premier Elements. iMovie is my preferred editing software for the simple stuff that I do.

My parents have MS Office on their iMac. It works pretty well and no real complaints from me. Every now and then it freezes up though…lol.

The Magic Mouse is awesome too! It likes batteries though.

Back at my old job, we used Mac Minis for our digital signage stuff. They worked well for that. New ones don't have an optical drive, but that's the case with all of Apple's new products.

[Good Times]

Yup the mac mini is pretty amazing. Used one of their original ones before retiring it as an entertainment system for the TV.

Dan pretty much covered everything here.

Difficult is really relative. Some people just struggle transitioning from Windows because they're used to the Start button / menu structure where everything is organized in a "tree" fashion. OSX follows more of a docking system where the application icons are just a quick click away. Others feel the OSX docking menu is much easier to work with so it's really a preference on what you think is easier to work with.

The biggest change really is the quick keyboard controls such as the copy/paste/move button. OSX uses the "command / apple" button which is slightly offset from to the right of the "control" button. The problem with that is your fingers are accustomed to the quick control-c / control - v etc so initially you'll be like **@&#($*@#&$(*#& it's not working! But over time your fingers will adjust to the different quick keyboard controls. Just remember everything "control" is now "command" based.

iPhoto and iMovie are great tools for easy photo/video applications! I personally don't use either one (go figure) but have in the past with great success. I use either Lightroom / Aperature / Photoshop or Capture NX 2 for editing my photos. A bit more sophisticated software compared to the iPhoto but good enough to get you started in your photo collection stream.

I wouldn't recommend the OSX Office suite. I have it and it's a step above their old version but still not that great compared to the PC version. If you really need the full featured set of the latest Office suite then I would recommend that you pick up vmware and install winxp and install the win version of Office. If you need doc/excel for basic stuff check out google docs. They've got a great online version that's pretty cool. I've slowly transitioned everything to google docs since it's easier for me to get to my files remotely without having to lug my laptop everywhere.

I've more recently been slowly transitioning myself to using an iPad more exclusively so this might be something you guys might end up doing long term. The ability to remotely connect to your desktop/laptop via iPad is really a nice touch. Plus the internet surfing / emailing you can do on the iPad is really cool! Portable, light and the ability to also play games is really a great touch!

But talking about tablets will be a different thread... lol never ending!

[YotaFun]

That is really weird that it was taking forever to download updates.
Chris's laptop didn't take to long to do his windows updates (didn't need many really) and even did windows 8.1 install fairly quick.
I wonder it that has something to do with the PC brand and the hardware it has over windows itself?

I agree with you Dan, but with people being creatures of habit its still hard for a lot of PC users out there to switch over to the dark side of Mac.

Lance, I thought about reverting Chris's laptop to Windows 7, but I am not up and up on the technology world as I use to be back in my high school and college days, from what I read with the new hardware technology out there, downgrading to windows 7 was going of a hassle then it would have been worth.
It is interesting that PCs really don't last, I have has similar luck as you Lance except for one, and its the one I am using now.

My Lenovo was a 2007 PC, its now 6 years old but still going strong, I even have the original hard drive in good condition (took it out to test out a Hybrid HDD to see if it was worth the hype ::its not: All I have done is put some more memory in, got an extended battery (the original on finally died) and upgraded from XP to 7 (not really necessary but I figured why not) and its great.

Its time for a new laptop and now it looks I am really gonna have to research and play around to see what will be the best purchase. Might be worth ordering one with windows 7 if I stick with a pc based laptop.

[Good Times]

If you're gonna do a downgrade to win7 I would wipe the drive clean and then do a fresh win7 install. I"m not sure how successful you'll be in downgrading win8 to win7. I haven't heard too much about people doing a good job about it.

It's really a big bummer cuz win8 had so much potential but the finished product was less than desirable.

The only reason why I believe macs are much better is because of the control they have on the hardware to work with their os. Since they know what hardware they're up against it's easier to manage the compatibility of the hardware to software whereas windows really makes it an attempt at universal compatibility with all hardware which makes it more problematic.

Either way there are still a few diamond in the rough windows machine that works like a charm (mostly server level stuff) so it's really finding that needle in the haystack in terms of reliability.

At the end of the day both windows and mac hardware are really all the same stuff (memory, cpu, hard drive, screen, keyboard etc). It's just how different each brand controls compatibility and tighter control on the finished product.

[DHC6twinotter]

Lance, when you say OSX Office, are you talking about Numbers and Pages, or Microsoft Office for Mac? My parents have Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac, and I haven't noticed much difference between it and the Windows version. Granted, I'm not a heavy user, and all I use is Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

Couple other things to add:

Older versions of OSX don't support AVCHD video formats natively. I find this very irritating, especially since Macs are supposed to be the go to machines for video editing. iMovie does support AVCHD, but from what I've read, it's kinda iffy if shooting in 50/60p mode. I have edited HD movies shot with my Canon T2i and have had no issues editing them on iMovie. Mountain Lion is supposed to natively support AVCHD (through Quicktime), but I've yet to try it. I would just like to see thumbnails of my movies in the file folders.

Also, I prefer the wired Apple keyboard over the wireless one. The biggest advantage is you have two USB ports on the keyboard, which keep you from having to reach around to the stupidly placed USB ports on the back of the iMac and Mac Mini. You also gain a numeric keypad.

The Windows 7 software on my Dell laptop has been pretty much trouble free. My only problems were when I was trying to get my Delorme software to work with my GPS receiver. The PC kept giving me blue screen errors over that. Otherwise, Windows 7 has been super stable. The hardware has been total crap though. I've had the laptop for about 1.5 years, and it's already on it's 2nd screen and 2nd HDD.

[paddlenbike]

Thank you guys for the informative posts. I do have a couple of basic questions about a Mac. First off, I like to control where my photos are located and I have folders such as "2013-12 - Ultimateyota Jamboree," then file explorer automatically brings the newest photo folders to the top and it's easy to find and navigate my own photos. On a Mac, is there a file explorer equivalent that allows me to create and organize folders without limitations?

Lance, you mentioned that you don't recommend OSX Office. Are you referring to the Mac version of the Office suite or something else? I am curious if the Mac version of Word and Excel work/look the same as on a Windoze machine.

Do we also need a virus scanner for Mac?

[DHC6twinotter]

When I moved the documents over from the Windows PC to Mac, I copied the entire documents folder onto an external HD. From the external HD, I moved the entire documents folder to the OSX document folder. Everything copied fine, and OSX kept the same folder hierarchy that I had on Windows XP.

I have not tried to do that with the pictures. I was new to OSX and made the dumb mistake of dumping all the pictures into iPhoto. I spent several hours organizing it there. Then I discovered the pictures folder on OSX. Derrr. But, that being said, I'm fairly certain you could just copy the entire 'my pictures' folder from your Windows PC and move them to your 'pictures' folder on your Mac. I have not tried it, but if it works for documents, I don't see why it wouldn't work for pictures.

And if you want to add more folders or move them around, you can do so exactly like you would on a Windows PC. Best to do all of that from the "finder" application. "Finder" is basically the OSX equivalent to "My Computer" or file explore on a PC. However, sometimes OSX can be kinda picky when moving files from a camera. Recently, I was trying to move files from my camera to my desktop, and it wouldn't let me. I had to save them to the hard drive before moving them to the desktop. Every now and then you run across something funky like that, but overall, everything is very similar to Windows.

Honestly, there are a lot of similarities between Windows and OSX. "System Preferences" on OSX is pretty much equivalent to "Control Panel" on a Windows machine. There is also a "Utilities" section on OSX that has a few things you would normally find in "Control Panel on a Windows machine.

"LaunchPad" (looks like a rocket) is another item in your dock that allows you to view all your programs with one click. This is actually closer to a "start" button on a PC than the "finder" application I mentioned in one of my previous posts.

If you do end up buying a Mac, the first thing I would do is enable right click on your mouse. Unless things have changed, default settings do not have right click enabled. Also, if you open, say, the "documents" folder, the default settings have all your file types (pdf, jpg, els, mp3, folders, etc) mixed together. If you play around with the organize buttons in the window, you can organize it by file type, etc, just like on a Windows PC. Not sure why default setting is set to unorganized.

There are some differences when it comes to installing programs. It's not super different though, and you should have no problems figuring it out.

One other slight difference is the layout of the windows. OSX has a close, minimize, and expand buttons just like a Windows machine, however, they are in the opposite corner. All that is in the upper left corner. Also, the "file", "edit", etc drop down menus are located in a bar that runs across the top of the screen, and not in whatever active window you have open. The menus in that bar change depending on what program you are currently using. This was probably one of the biggest difference to me, but it's no big deal once you get used to it.

We did have some setup to do when we unpacked the Mac. It has you setup various passwords and asks a bunch of questions too. It also checks for updates. It might take an hour or so to get it setup.

I have not noticed any difference between Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac and Office 2010 for Windows. That being said though, I'm not a heavy user of either program. They both use the dysfunctional ribbon layout.

We don't have virus protection on our Mac, although I'm not sure that is really recommended…lol. So far so good though.

Sorry about the long post.

[paddlenbike]

Sorry about the long post.

No, that was perfect, thanks for taking the time to respond! If it were my computer, I would go ahead and make the switch to Mac, but I will wait and see what she wants to do.

Thanks all!

[Good Times]

Dan pretty much covered everything here!

If you're not a power user of Office (Word/Excel primarily) then you probably won't notice any differences between the two version (2011 mac vs 2010 win). As a power user of excel (especially) then there are some slight differences that may annoy you.

I haven't used it too much more recently but I know my guys have always complained how using 2011 mac for excel was not great compared to using 2010 win.

For savvy users I think transition between Win -> OSX will be pretty easy. Even the anti OSX users felt that it was easy to use OSX surprisingly. Very user friendly so it'll be pretty fun learning new stuff!

[paddlenbike]

It has been 7 months since I started this thread and since that time we have returned one Windows 8 computer because the OS sucked more than anything has ever sucked before, and Windows XP that is installed on both of our computers (downgraded from Windows Vista because it sucked so bad) has expired and is no longer supported. There is no Windows 8 successor and we've messed with some Macs and just aren't sure.

As more and more people have become frustrated by the crap Microsoft puts out there, I keep reading more and more about how good Ubuntu is. I have watched a few tutorials to see it's speedy, relatively simple, I can still run Microsoft Office (Word and Excel). Aside from web surfing, that may be all I need. Well, with one exception, and that's the ability to very occasionally run the URD "R4" software for tuning my supercharged engine. (Dual boot for this purpose?)

So, has anyone tried Ubuntu lately, since the big version 12 layout changes? Wife and I need something that works, and doesn't update for 30 minutes every time we boot our PC.