AnyDVD for Mac?

[markcu]

It is with some interest that I see again a Mac vs PC debate.

Having got a foot firmly based in each camp I think I'm fairly well placed to make some 'real world' comments based on experience of both platforms.

Background.

So a while back I was looking after an office full of PC's. These failed. a lot. either hardware failures, or windows would crash, often windows would recover. But it wasn't that rare for it not to come back or to trash some application in the process.

Indeed having built many pcs myself including 8 and 12 core water cooled beasts I also found myself running in to the same problems. To be fair, users that just ran office type apps never had a major problem, but power users that would push the pc to it's limits for extended periods suffered.

Options.

We could stick with PCs or try something else. Despite 7 coming out and being better it was still a long way from perfect so didn't seem a good choice. Linux although growing didn't quite give the impression of being 'finished yet' So we got a mac mini and gave that a try.

Getting that little box up and running with everything installed was a joy, and it just seemed to work. We ran the same 'power user' apps and suffered none of the stability issues we saw on windows boxes even with fresh installs. (yes, on a mac mini they were not that 'power' but still a reasonable performance)

So we then decided to move our power users over on to MAC.

Price.

So for our power users (and me) a high spec machine is required. 12 cores, 4 x 1TB drives. The price from Dell as a quick comparison is about 4K (GBP) the price for a similar Mac is about 4.5K (again GBP)

(these prices are for as similar spec machines as I could get so it's an oranges for oranges comparison)

So yes, the apple 'appears' more expensive but the following factors need to be considered.

Residual value:- a Mac at the end of it's 3 year life will be worth considerably more than a PC that cold easily drop by 50-60% in a year. This more than makes up for the additional price.

The comments along the line of 'give me a thousand bucks and I'll make a pc to knock the socks of a mac' (Ok that's a paraphrase not a quote) are interesting because they don't really say how it will be better...better means different thing to different people...

Better fram rate for games?
Better stability?
Less noise?
Faster boot?
More storage?
look better?
Better OS?

The list could go on and on, but I think you get my point.

Support costs.

I now spend only 30% of the time supporting those power users than I used to. again a significant saving.

And at home, I now spend a lot less time 'fiddling' with the mac to get it to do what I want. And to keep it running....

It's also very very quiet. This may not be a big deal to some, but previously I've had to water cool big pcs to keep them quiet. The cost of water cooling a 12 core machine to try to get it as quiet as a Mac pro is very very expensive.....(you could easily add 1K-1.5K) to a system to do that.


Stuff Just works....

As an example. at home my PC had two graphics card each with 2 HDMI outputs. I used two outputs to go to a pair of monitors and 1 to go to a home cinema amp to bitstream digital audio. This took no end of time to set up as the PC didn't like the amp not having a monitor (it took me a couple of days to get it going) it took me 5 mins on the Mac......

So Mac all sounds lovely....right?????

To a point it is, but.....

Gaming.
If you game then there may not be the range of titles for you to choose from. So this may be an issue.

Hardware drivers....
If you have some out of the ordinary hardware then there may not be the drivers for it. Or they may have reduced functionality.

Blu-ray playback.
As of yet there is no blu-ray playback software....maybe that will change, and maybe slyplayer, clone BD may help with this, but it's a big pain right now for me.

Other Apps.
Other apps you may rely on might not be available, there may be options to substitute, or maybe not....The slysoft products don't run on mac. (i wish they did)

Having said all of that you can still boot in to windows if you like and many (if not all) of those issues go away. You can also use VMware or Parallels, although not all software runs in that environment.


So hopefully I haven't come across as some Mac loving fanboy. I think there is more than enough room for both platforms and each has it's own strengths. (and of course weaknesses)

I just thought it might be worth giving a few lines to what I have experienced using both platforms..

I'm sure the debate will continue on and on... :-)

[Clams]

Interesting read.
The good news is that "the endless debate" is moot here. The Slysoft Suite is for PC's only. (or an emulator under a Mac)

-W

[markcu]

Originally Posted by Clams

Interesting read.
The good news is that "the endless debate" is moot here. The Slysoft Suite is for PC's only. (or an emulator under a Mac)

-W

Yeah, the debate will rage on in many areas on this topic, and I think be moot wherever...

People often get entrenched in one camp or the other, and thats a shame as it prevents them from taking a balanced view.

[xCharvelx416]

A good friend of mine, just installed a triple boot.... Linux, Windows 7 and Mac OSX on his MacBook.

Now he has all three full OSes on one machine. Unfortunately, it's a pain in the butt to do that on a general PC.

While using a Mac, you can have the full version of Windows installed, you don't need an emulator. So if you need AnyDVD, simply run it there.

Having done many multi-boot systems myself, using a boot loader isn't rocket science. Boot Camp for the Mac might be the best way to run Windows instead of a virtual machine.