Making the switch from PC to iMac

[cjtinkle]

I switched a little over a week ago to an iMac. I absolutely love it! It's so fast, and sleep and wake-up is instant, and works!

I installed VMware Fusion in pure virtual mode as well, and it works quite well. I have some high end sewing & embroidery software (my sewing machines don't function with out it) that is Windows only, so a necessary step for me.

I did put 4 gigs of ram in my iMac, and allotted 2 of those to Vista, and also gave priority to Vista while running, but I shut it down as soon as I'm finished using the programs.

I set up an external hard drive, shared it then mapped it to Vista, and I write all my files to it.

Works great!

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Mainly because you can't with an iMac. False comparison I think.

Well, that's fair... obviously the iMac is minimally upgradable, even if you are willing to open it up as I did to upgrade the hard drive, that's about as far as it goes. Even beyond the iMac, these days it's a bit tough to justify a $400 video card to run the handful of games out there when an entire PS3 cost $400 bucks. I would definitely say that was another reason for my move to the Mac permanently.

But beyond all that... I couldn't be happier. And there is a serious trend going on... people are taking the platform seriously and making the switch. The market share is growing which is a great thing for Apple and hopefully for the user community as well.

 

[mightymac]

well...

Mainly because you can't with an iMac. False comparison I think.

actually one of the new imacs can go for over a year or so w/ the hardware provided (keeping up to dat). mean while you'll upgrade your video cards and processors and all the stuff you can possibly do with pcs which i've done. by the time next year comes you've spent prob more than what a brand new imac is worth. instead you can just get a new one and everything is apple compatible/tested/guaranteed where as with parts from who knows where the compatibility and instability problems come along. have you ever had to reinstall windows? ... i wonder why that could be. but thats just my opinion.

 

[mightymac]

couldnt agree more with tom.

 

[rayward]

I am a brand new switcher as well.

I refuse to put Windows on my iMac.

I don't wanna jinks it! LOL

It's probably all psychological, but XP seems to run better in Parallels than it ever did on my Dell. Maybe it's simply the speed upgrade so that, even though it's running on a virtual machine, it's still faster than the old PC. It certainly boots up quicker.

 

[$ailor]

It's probably all psychological, but XP seems to run better in Parallels than it ever did on my Dell. Maybe it's simply the speed upgrade so that, even though it's running on a virtual machine, it's still faster than the old PC. It certainly boots up quicker.

I have noticed that too! The few programs that I have to run in Windows boot up quick and processing time is lighting fast. I love the iMac platform and to be honest I would be tickled pink to just run all my programs in VMware Fusion if I were forced to. However since I am not forced to do that I now have the best of both worlds. I am getting used to finding my way around the iMac and Windows does not compare to what iMac has to offer. DOS to 3.1 to 95 to 98 to XP and I never knew what I was missing. So glad to come over to the dark side.

 

[Haggers]

IMac convert

I lashed out and bought the 24 Inch Imac with the Time Machine and it is a very nice system. Classy in fact. Like driving a BMW M3 compared with a Corvette.

Two problems so far:

1. Files produced by a Mathematica based program called Publicon won't work properly on the Mac version of Publicon . Got the team at wolfram looking and that because a document produced on the Windows version should work. Mathematica 6 works fine and so it should given its price.

2. The tentacles of Bill GATES. His wizened hand reaches out of the crypt and squirrel grips you every time. I can't electronically lodge a tax return with the Australian Tax Office until I get the Windows thing happening on the IMac. I understand that you can't just put an OEM version of XP on and try to run Parallels. You have to get XP with SP2 is what I have gleaned. More $ but that is the nature of the beast.

Haggers

 

[joel1978]

Another new convert

I made the switch to last weekend. I've purchased a silver iMac from the previous series. For 100 euro's more then the low-end new model I got a better video card, bigger hard drive, free upgrade to 2GB RAM with matched pairs and over 50% off on AppleCare.

I've been using windows and Linux and I'm loving Max OS-X! It is very simple to use. What takes getting used to are the keyboard shortcuts

There are only a few annoying thing that I've found so far. e.g. the inability to share the iPhoto library among users on a single machine in a straigtforward manner.
Another problem is that iLife is too good. My wife has occupied the iMac and is organizing her photo's, creating albums and DVD projects, etc.

 

[$ailor]

I lashed out and bought the 24 Inch Imac with the Time Machine and it is a very nice system. Classy in fact. Like driving a BMW M3 compared with a Corvette.

Two problems so far:

1. Files produced by a Mathematica based program called Publicon won't work properly on the Mac version of Publicon . Got the team at wolfram looking and that because a document produced on the Windows version should work. Mathematica 6 works fine and so it should given its price.

2. The tentacles of Bill GATES. His wizened hand reaches out of the crypt and squirrel grips you every time. I can't electronically lodge a tax return with the Australian Tax Office until I get the Windows thing happening on the IMac. I understand that you can't just put an OEM version of XP on and try to run Parallels. You have to get XP with SP2 is what I have gleaned. More $ but that is the nature of the beast.

Haggers

Can't you just install the version of windows that you had on your PC? I took my install disk that came with my Dell which was xp and installed it into VMware Fusion on the iMac and it install perfectly. It then updated and installed SP3. During the update from MS it went through the verification stage and passed so I figure there is no conflict. I don't use the PC anymore to connect to the internet and have transferred all my files to the iMac. I will keep the PC for emergency use should the iMac go down. I figure I paid for the XP software once and I will not pay twice for it.

 

[rayward]

I understand that you can't just put an OEM version of XP on and try to run Parallels. You have to get XP with SP2 is what I have gleaned. More $ but that is the nature of the beast.

I "cloned" my old PC onto my iMac with Parallels. That way I used the OEM version of Windows on my PC and, as a bonus, could drag and drop all the documents, music, photos and videos from my virtual PC to my actual Mac. You don't get to run XP natively under Bootcamp, but unless you're really going to be challenging the system (filing taxes doesn't sound like it would) then you'll be fine.

The only wrinkle is that, when XP wakes up in a new world, it asks for a new validation key. It'll give you a number for an automated Microsoft helpline which will give you a new key if you confirm that you need it because of "significant hardware updates". What's more significant than upgrading from a PC to a Mac?

 

[Haggers]

Can't you just install the version of windows that you had on your PC? I took my install disk that came with my Dell which was xp and installed it into VMware Fusion on the iMac and it install perfectly. It then updated and installed SP3. During the update from MS it went through the verification stage and passed so I figure there is no conflict. I don't use the PC anymore to connect to the internet and have transferred all my files to the iMac. I will keep the PC for emergency use should the iMac go down. I figure I paid for the XP software once and I will not pay twice for it.

I thought you could do that too but I read elsewhere on this forum that you needed the bundled version. The Parallels guide says you can't use the OEM cd (which I have) . I could give it a go and see what happens.

Haggers

 

[Dpalo123]

I made the switch over the weekend from WinXP on a Dell that I had for the last 10 years to the 24" iMac after I started getting the blue screen of death at windows start up. So far the Mac is great and still getting used to the little and big differences. Like others I have some programs that only run in Windows and have done much research on vmFusion, bootcamp, etc, but have a question. Can I install the Win 98 OEM disc that came with my Dell in vmfusion and then upgrade using the XP upgrade that I later installed on the Dell? My guess is that something would go wrong, but before I spend another $100-$200 on a new full version of XP, I had to ask.