Filed under: Switchers, Features
My Dad, the Switcher: Day 139
Last October, Robert's dad -- a hard-core Windows developer -- bought himself a Mac mini to see what the fuss was all about. The first two installments of the series are available here. Now, we find out what's happened since.
Mom sent me an email about two weeks ago now, irritated. She said that Dad's old PC was making loud, awful noises, and it probably needed to be replaced. She said that he had been looking at new Macs all morning, after they talked about it over breakfast. She had given him the blessing of the purse-strings -- always a scary thing to give Dad -- and I gave him a call to see what he had in mind.
The fan, apparently, in Dad's old PC power supply was wearing out, and the bearings were squealing. I had an old Power Mac G4 at work that had this happen, and replacing the power supply was something I could do. I offered to do that, but Dad was already miles ahead of me, looking at the newly-released Mac Pros.
"Isn't that a little, uh, more than you need?" I asked, tentatively.
"It's not a question of need," he said jokingly, noting that his financial ship had come in with the payment of a long-overdue check from a completed project.
Dad was most interested in combining his Mac and his PC. Ever since he and I started working on the same project (which has expanded to projects, plural) he's finding that he uses the Mac more than the PC. The PC, he says, became just for email and Microsoft Office. Then, the perennial switcher question: "Do they make Office for Mac?" Yes, I said with a smile.
We discussed how we would set this up. He wanted plenty of storage, and the Mac Pro's four hard drive bays would come in handy. On the Apple Store website, he configured a computer with three 750GB hard disks: One for Mac OS X, one for Time Machine, and one for Windows. We also added Parallels to allow him to run both Windows and Mac apps at the same time.
I mentioned that there would be a performance loss if he chose to do that (versus, say, booting the computer into Windows with Boot Camp). However, we both realized that since the Mac Pro was about two years newer than his old dual-core PC, the raw horsepower afforded by the new hardware might overcome the loss associated with operating system virtualization.
He was sold. Having both in one place would solve a lot of problems for him -- mostly related to obviating the need for a KVM switch between his Mac and PC. Now, with Parallels, he could have the one thing he desperately wanted: a shared clipboard.
As you might expect, Dad was a little concerned about the price. The extra disks, memory, software, and processor options he chose pushed the grand total above $6,500. He wanted to find a way to come in under $5,000. He found a refurbished 8-core 3.2GHz model for just over $4,000, which solved a lot of that trouble. Being the owner of two refurb Macs myself, I suggested AppleCare for reasons I wrote about late last year.
A few clicks of the mouse, and the computer would be here Tuesday.
I suggested he buy the memory and two extra hard disks from a local component retailer. They were just down the street, so no shipping charges, either. And, most certainly, they were much less expensive than buying the same components from Apple. He picked up those parts on Monday, and was ready to go.
Yesterday, I went over to help him set the beast up. I migrated his files from the old Mac mini (which will become my new media center! Hooray!) and installed the software he bought along with the computer: Final Cut Express, Microsoft Office, and the new version of iLife (which was dropped in the box). Everything moved as smooth as silk.
We got to the point where we were ready to install Windows -- and that's where we ran into trouble.
Tomorrow: The thrilling conclusion.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Joseph Crawford said 2:09PM on 3-12-2009
I was a switcher once too and have never looked back congrats on the new machine I wish I could get the new one :)
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Chris Ryland said 2:51PM on 3-12-2009
Parallels? Ack, get him Fusion stat.
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Aman Patel said 3:23PM on 3-12-2009
Seriously...I paid for licenses to both Fusion and Parallels and I really dislike Parallels. I continue to pay for upgrades to see if it improves, but slapping on new features doesn't help the overall stability and speed.
Unless, Parallels make some real changes to the core system, I can't imagine ever recommending it to anyone.
Ariel said 2:34AM on 3-13-2009
I've tried Fusion and Parallels. There were things I liked and disliked about both. Back in the Parallels 2.x and even the early 3.x days I preferred Fusion 2. But now I prefer Parallels 4 -- it's faster and has better features.
Anderson said 3:05AM on 3-13-2009
I use Parallels on my machine but Fusion on my Server.
I like how Parallels' Coherence integrates with my Mac better than Unity. Right at logon, Coherence kicks in. I never have to see the Windows desktop at all if I don't want to. Fusion's Unity does not kick in until a couple seconds after you login using the desktop. Coherence just seems more fluid and non-abrasive to the aesthetics of my OS X desktop. Though it does seem to have problems with upgrading VMs correctly when new versions come out.
I use Fusion on my server because it runs the VM and the window server as separate processes enabling me to easily have it run a VM as an auto-started service without having to login at all.
@Aman Patel: Parallels seems to be doing quite well when compared to Fusion: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/05/shootout_parallels_outperforms_vmware_fusion_in_many_tests.html
LD said 2:28PM on 3-12-2009
I wish I could get my dad onto a Mac. Unfortunately he is relegated to XP because of highly specialized software that only works on Windows. And I think trying to explain how to use Parallels/Fusion in combination with the custom USB attached hardware might prove quite challenging.
Perhaps when I have kids I'll buy him a Mac or give him an old MacBook so we can use the video chat.
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Precision said 2:29PM on 3-12-2009
i can't believe you didn't warn him how "shite" Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is compared to its Windows counterpart!!
one of my biggest regrets over switching to a Mac was the bloody MS Office 2008. trying to write research papers on that was/is a nightmare. program window jumping from one space to the next every other minute can Expose not spreading the windows properly and Referencing program RefWorks' write-n-cite keeps crashing. all that happening when you have a deadline.
P.S. to anyone replying, don't mention iWorks
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IoXXoI said 2:36PM on 3-12-2009
openoffice?
codedigital said 6:21PM on 3-12-2009
Very interesting....my copy of Office 2008 for Mac's doesn't have any of those issues. Nor do anyone that I support in my office. Sounds to me like user issues.
MB said 6:35PM on 3-12-2009
Can't help but suggest to use LaTeX for almost any type of research paper. It's free, easy to install, and you can find nice templates (many publishing institutions have theirs). Granted it's not the best solution for a paper to be submitted tomorrow but maybe next time ...
Jacob Johnson said 4:22PM on 3-12-2009
xHTML and CSS?
Precision said 4:37PM on 3-12-2009
@codedigital
its a well documented issue.
1) http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2008/10/23/risks-and-rewards/
2) http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1555070
3) http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?%20t=425321
it would do you well to actually bother and research a matter -or at least google it- before implying that its a single incidence.
some of these links contain comments from Schwieb, a Software Design Lead at Microsoft in the Macintosh Business Unit detailing the issue and what they've attempted, along with apple, to try and fix the issue but failed miserably.
Patriks7 said 4:47PM on 3-12-2009
How about giving iWork a try? I used Office for Mac when I switched for almost half a year, then my friend made me switch at the beginning of this school year and I have not looked back since.
Hawkman said 4:54PM on 3-12-2009
Gotta agree. Office for Mac has sadly been a piece of **** for many years now. 2004 was okay on a PPC, but the cracks were already showing.
Pages isn't a great word processor, of course (fantastic DTP tool though). But I do find it relatively usable - I'd much rather face Pages' limitations than Word's ugly, bug-ridden insanity. And at least it has good support for Word documents.
Using Word for Windows isn't a bad option, either in Parallels/Fusion or using Crossover.
Ariel said 2:31AM on 3-13-2009
Okay, I won't mention iWorks. But how about iWork? I've found it to surpass Office 2007 (for Windows) and Office 2008 (for Mac) in just about every way, from features to usability to speed. I don't know if you already know about iWork, or if you're just closed minded and don't want to know about it so you know so little you call it iWorks.
Rhys said 7:57AM on 3-13-2009
Yeah I gotta say, iWork is brilliant. On my old iMac G5 is it a bit sluggish which is a pain in the ass. But it just so much easier to create great looking assignments and papers in Pages. There are always marks for presentation, and Pages definitely adds to that. There have been very few features in MS Word that I actually miss in Pages.
Haven't used or seen Refworks so I can't comment on it.
hl2run said 2:42PM on 3-12-2009
Great :) My father uses mid 2008 MBP and he is happy as hell
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nate said 2:55PM on 3-12-2009
I was a switcher once upon a time. I switched from linux to os x for my desk top of choice. I just got tired of maintaining slackware or gentoo as a desk top. Hell for years I just dealt with a command line interface and screen as my "window manager" :p
Glad I made that switch ages ago when OS X first came out. Definitely less head aches at home and allowed me to write music.
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Quine said 3:06PM on 3-12-2009
I was going to get a dell laptop and dell desktop about 2.5 years ago for college. I was getting into electronica music and laptop djing so I decided to get a macbook since I always heard macs were better for music, and I figured as a software engineer I should know both windows and mac. I thought I'd boot into mac for music and stay in windows for everything else.
One week later, my hatred of windows was already building, OS X was so easy to use I was already power-using it after a week, and a few weeks later I removed my windows partition and ordered a brand new core 2 iMac the moment it came out.
OS X == Win.
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Jason said 3:15PM on 3-12-2009
Tell him to buy iRam for the memory upgrade, they test every stinkin module in an actual Mac Pro and it's super cheap.
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