I'm a pc gamer that is considering to upgrade to mac but there's still a lot of questions
Alex
I am a pc user that is considering to say goodbye to Bill Gates and
buy a mac. I am totally new to mac. A few friends of mine say that
it's very good in terms of reliability, stability and security, BUT
they are not gamers like me. I spent the last 3 days reading on
apple.com and other sites to learn about mac but the disadvantage of
these sites is they are never going to say "if you play lots of pc
games, we do not recommend that you buy a mac since you can get a pc
with the same performance for half the price, plus the pc game market
is much larger". What they will say is that most pc applications (game
or not) are supported and for the ones that aren't you can reboot into
xp with Boot Camp and run the application as if you were working with
a pc. But I don't see the point in investing into a mac which is twice
the price of the pc I have now when I know I'm going to boot into xp
half of the time to make my programs work. That's why I'm posting this
message here because I would like to hear feedback from the users that
have a mac and that like to play games.
1) First of, if I would buy a mac, it should be at least equal to my
current system performance and preferably higher. My current system
is:
- Pentium D 2.8GHz
- 2GB RAM
- Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS 640MB PCIexpress
- DirectX 9.0c
- Windows XP home SP3
I find this config fair enough for most games although in the near
future I would like to upgrade and I don't know yet if it's going to
be pc or mac.
2) Second, what will happen with all the pc games that I currently
have? Will they work on the mac or will they become totally useless?
Here's my personal list of the most important games I play from time
to time:
- Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004
- Open Falcon 4.7, a new community mod on the older Falcon 4.0 game
- Battlefield 2 + Project Realism mod
- Call of Duty (all versions)
- Crysis + crysis warhead
- SWAT4+Stetchkov syndicate exp
- Delta Force games
- Age of Empires
- Splinter Cell series
3) What about if an application is not compatible, will startup in xp
via bootcamp always solve this or is it not as easy as that?
4) Will I need to forget everything I learned until now about pc's
because mac software is totally different? For example, in ms flight
simulator 2004 I know how to install scenery addons, aircraft, etc.
And not to forget all the mods that games have. Will this be a
problem?
5) Are office applications interchangeable between mac and pc? emails,
word, excel, powerpoint, access etc. I read mac has iWork and Office
2008 Mac.
6) I currently use firefox with foxmarks to synchronise my bookmarks
and logins and passwords with the foxmarks server so that I can keep
firefox settings on multiple machines. Will I be able to transfer this
to mac?
7) Can I continue to use Nero burning software or does mac have better
burning software? Will there be no compatibility issues? I remember in
the beginning I had lots of problems finding the correct combination
of software+settings, stand-alone dvd player for my tv, recordable
media formats and brands because a lot of discs I burned lagged or
hanged in my stand-alone dvd player.
8) Does mac support bittorrents and Vuze (formerly called Azureus)?
I know it's a lot of questions but it's a lot of money too! I really
appreciate your help and who knows I'll leave the windows rubbish
behind and I'll be a mac fan in no time. Please also mention the mac
system you work with so that I can compare (if you don't mind of
course). CPU, RAM and graphics card is most important I guess.
RP
news:5852be31-eb31-4f33...@o11g2000yql.googlegroups.com...
Which Mac are you thinking of going for?
In general the following applies:
1. PC games will not run under OSX period. You will have to use bootcamp to
run them.
2. Bootcamp is essentially a dual boot between OSX and the Windows OS of
your choice. As such all your PC software will work - in bootcamp.
3. Macs can read Windows file partitions (but not write) in OSX. This makes
transferring data a breeze. I believe there is a firefox version for OSX,
but I prefer Safari.
4. I've got an 09 Mac Pro (the 2.66Ghz Quad core with 3Gb RAM and ATI 4850
with 512Mb RAM) and it blitzes all my PC games and leaves my old PC in the
dust. That said, I have found OSX to be so good that I rarely venture into
my Windows install as I find it infuriating. Once you learn OSX you will see
what I mean.
5. Some PC games like World of Warcraft and X-Plane come with media that
have both Mac and PC versions so with these games you can get the option to
install them natively.
6. MS Office is available on the Mac, but why bother? Download Open Office
3.0. Its better than MS Office, Compatible with MS Office and unlike MS
Office its free...
Hope this helps. Only had my Mac a few months and my only regret is that I
had not moved earlier...
RobP
Vaughn Williams
1. After being a PC user for years and finally converting to Mac, I
would strongly suggest Mac if you can afford it. Best decision and
investment I ever made (6 months in and no regrets)
For most PC tasks you can either use bootcamp, or more preferably:
virtual machines like (VMWare - Paid SW, Parallels - Paid SW, or
alternatively Virtualbox - OpenSource)
Most of my windows applications including games run perfectly under a
virtual machines without any need to dual boot.
2. See comment in point 1, you will not miss anything going to a Mac,
but trust me + the others on this forum you will gain so much more.
3. See point 1, all windows apps will run in a virtual machine or if
you like bootcamp
4. No you will quickly discover Mac are easy to use, and nothing will
be lost with SW mentioned in point 1.
5. As mentioned by RP, MS Office 2008 is native on the Mac, but you can
also choose to use Mac's alternative: iWork (Numbers, Pages, KeyNote),
or OpenOffice, etc...
6. Firefox is available (so no problems there), so is Opera + a few
others. Must say my personal choices at the moment are Safari + Firefox
7. Mac natively supports CD burning software, or see point 1, you can
continue to use Nero for your windows requirements.
8. Yes Vuze is supported and runs smoothly on the Mac, so is many others.
Hope this helps, must agree with RP, wish the decision to move had been
made a lot sooner, would have save myself a lot of frustration with
Vista.