It was 7 years between 2003 and 2010, you had time to learn. And if you want to keep the 2003 interface, don't upgrade. Its just not that different. Btw, most excel users are between me and you somewhere on the scale, using it for work which means they are likely still on 2003. When the day comes that they have to upgrade they will find it is a much better program now and the time they spend learning those new changes will more than be made up for with the efficientcy gains they get with it. Incremental changes are a good thing.
And I can build a system to accomplish whatever work I need to have done. You see, I'm an engineer, which means I solve problems. Not problems like, what is beauty - that would fall under your conundrums of philosophy. Me, I solve practical problems. [/quote] Such as building a computer? Because unless that's what you're getting paid to do (and who wouldn't want that job?) building your computer is man-hours getting sucked out of time you could be putting to productive use. Your time to spend, of course, just sayin'. Your experience with Macs is apparently quite limited, as far as "everything else" is concerned. The only thing Skin's aware of that Macs don't offer a wide variety of is hardcore gaming. For that, Skin would opt for another small-form-factor computer, the Alienware X51. For everything Skin uses a computer for, however, (primarily screenwriting, long-form fiction and academic writing) there's Final Draft, Scrivener and Pages. If Skin needs a presentation or spreadsheet (rare, but very occasionally called for) there are Keynote and Numbers. For casual gaming, just about every iOS game out there has a desktop version for the Mac. For music there's iTunes, for movies and television there's Hulu, Netflix and VLC Player. If absolutely necessary, Skin could install Windows 7 on the Mac via BootCamp partition, and by all accounts, Windows 7 runs better on Apple hardware than it does on any other OEM rig. As far as DIY, well there again, Skin can't spend the time on it.
All this talk about Apple products being better than Microsoft products has finally convinced me. I started out on computers with an Apple II, so I've decided to come home. It was time. Apple is the way to go after all. I'm so proud!
But not the need to learn. For most people, the '03 version does exactly what they need, so why plunk down the money to upgrade? Unless, of course, your employer decides to upgrade everyone, or you have a client which uses the latest version and the file format happens to be incompatible with the version you're using, or you switch employers and they're using the new system, or you finally kick your old PC to the curb and buy a new one. Actually, that ribbon interface in Word is a helluvalot different than previous versions. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know what the breakdown on how folks use Excel is. I have had jobs where all people did was just punch numbers into standardized templates, and I've had jobs where folks were having to do complex tasks with Excel. It depends upon what you're changing and why you're changing it.
Pfft! It took me all of 45 minutes to build my computer - all you have to do is plug all the parts together. You seem to be forgetting that used to be a Mac person and that my dad still is one. Ah, so you admit that you'd go PC for gaming. Actually that particular one is roughly equivalent to my homebuilt, except of course that by building it myself I got off cheaper. Eh, industry standard for presentations and spreadsheets are PowerPoint and Excel, respectively. It's cute to know that Apple has its own versions, though. Dad just goes with the Mac version of Office, though he does still have Appleworks. Sounds made up to me. It doesn't take long if you know how to do it.
Captain X, many of these thoughts you're having are quite original. Your graphics, for example, are unique among graphics. Since you have all these original thoughts that no one else has ever addressed (or even had) you should start a website against Apple. Perhaps you can be the person to stop their stock from capping $1,000.
I didn't find it all that difficult upgrading from office 2003 to office 2007 and 2010. Yes, the interface is different, but I doubt I spent more than 10 or 15 minutes figuring out where everything was again. I will probably stick with Windows 7 and skip Windows 8 as I see no compelling reason to upgrade as there was from XP to 7. And with respect to touchscreens, while I can see why some people like them, they scare me a bit because they are completely inaccessible to me because of my disability.
And that's when you spend the small amount of time it takes to learn the new system. Once you figure out where things are you'll like it better (in the case of Office, not all software of course). I think you would be pretty hard pressed to find many people that like 2003 more than 2007 or 2010 if they use it regularly. They made it better, it works better, faster, saves files in a more compressed format and has a ton of features that daily users can take advantage of if they take the time to bother learning the software. Frankly that's whom these upgrades are targeted towards, not the people that don't care.
Maybe, maybe not. It all depends upon one's usage patterns. I don't consider the changes to Office to be as bad as some programs, but the changes do nothing for me. None of the previously "hidden" features which the Ribbon has exposed were ones I ever used. For some people, I'm sure they find it to be a huge boon, but I've heard that the stats for people using newly exposed features in the Ribbon are pretty low. Thanks to the internet, one can always find people to support a position, so its hard to come up with a meaningful metric on opinion based matters. And again, it all depends upon what one's use case scenario is to how great the improvements in Office are. For example, I can't see the smaller file size being a huge advantage, what with storage being so cheap these days (1TB drives are like $99). Its a far cry from the Win 3.11 days when you had to save things to a small floppy. I've heard folks who're keen on technology gush over Office when the Ribbon was introduced, only to change their opinion to a "meh" a few years later. As I said, Office isn't horribly bad, and at least when you upgrade, you know you're doing it, and that you're in for some UI changes. Picasa, OTOH, updates itself in the background (fine for security fixes), and when you launch it, you can suddenly discover that not only does it no longer look and feel like it used to, but it operates in a totally non-standard manner when compared to other file management programs. (It scans your harddrive for pictures, then creates a folder tree that only it sees/uses, which groups the photos by date and not what folder they're actually in. Not handy when you've got different events listed under the same date, and you're trying to find a specific image.)
I don't think that the touchscreen is ever going to be a necessity with any computer OS. They're fine for some things, but no matter how high the resolution of the touch surface (and believe me, you can notice a huge difference between resolution levels), there are times when a fat finger is vastly inferior to a pointing device like a mouse or a pen. Not to mention the arm strain to reach up and touch the screen. Apple supposedly did studies and found that it didn't take long for people using a Mac with a touchscreen and no mouse to suffer severe arm fatigue.
Generally the only time I have problems with Windows is when there is a hardware issue. Otherwise Windows 7 is rock solid.
Such as building a computer? Because unless that's what you're getting paid to do (and who wouldn't want that job?) building your computer is man-hours getting sucked out of time you could be putting to productive use. Your time to spend, of course, just sayin'. Your experience with Macs is apparently quite limited, as far as "everything else" is concerned. The only thing Skin's aware of that Macs don't offer a wide variety of is hardcore gaming. For that, Skin would opt for another small-form-factor computer, the Alienware X51. For everything Skin uses a computer for, however, (primarily screenwriting, long-form fiction and academic writing) there's Final Draft, Scrivener and Pages. If Skin needs a presentation or spreadsheet (rare, but very occasionally called for) there are Keynote and Numbers. For casual gaming, just about every iOS game out there has a desktop version for the Mac. For music there's iTunes, for movies and television there's Hulu, Netflix and VLC Player. If absolutely necessary, Skin could install Windows 7 on the Mac via BootCamp partition, and by all accounts, Windows 7 runs better on Apple hardware than it does on any other OEM rig. As far as DIY, well there again, Skin can't spend the time on it.[/QUOTE] I sincerely doubt that you make so much money per hour that it would cost you more in opportunity costs to spend 3-4 hours building a PC than to spend the 100% markup on an Apple computer.
I think your need for one ecosystem is stemming from the onerous restrictions placed upon you by Apple. That is to say, Apple is the one that doesn't play well with others. In our apartment we have a mix of Android, Linux, and Windows devices, and everything works together fine. At the very worst we'll occasionally have to download some package to get things to talk to each other, but it's usually a quick deal and only happens when I'm taking the network to the next level (like adding a domain controller or a web server). As far as iTunes match goes, ever since getting Spotify and Google Music I pretty much only use iTunes as a player/podcast manager and nothing else. As far as the iCloud stuff goes, you can do some of the same stuff in Android pretty easily, I've just never bothered. Basically, you can get Apple products to work together seamlessly, provided you're willing to do some transcoding of your video, and you can get everything else to work together apart from Apple products, provided you're willing to do a little initial configuration. Either way you'll have some upfront work, and some upfront money to pay, the question is in how much money you'll have to pay down the line and to what extent you're willing to accept Apple's control over your devices.
This isn't about saving space on the hard drive or server, it's about your computer not running balls slow when an Excel file get up to about 20mb.
I sincerely doubt that you make so much money per hour that it would cost you more in opportunity costs to spend 3-4 hours building a PC than to spend the 100% markup on an Apple computer.[/QUOTE] Your doubt is perfectly acceptable.
Honestly, between building it and opening it once later on to add a better cooler, the time I spent on it probably adds up to an hour, including all the software setup after I had it together. It's not like it takes a huge amount of time to do or anything, so that line of argument is frankly one of the silliest things that I've heard. Weak troll is weak. The main advantage I've seen in upgrading to 7, aside from being able to use more recent applications, is that I'm now running a 64 bit OS and not a 32 bit OS, so I can use more than 2.99 GB of memory. XP did have a 64 bit version, but it wasn't terribly common. I do miss some things about XP, but honestly the biggest on is that on XP the picture viewer animated gifs and since Vista the picture viewer will only show the first frame of a gif. Otherwise I'm generally happy with 7, especially after having been forced to use Vista for a while thanks to my desire to play Halo 2. I think the only real gripe I have aside from the picture viewer thing is that the default look is way too close to Mac OSX, especially since the default is to have all the goofy little desktop gadgets on. As for Office, I guess initially I was resistant, and to be honest on my main home computer I still use 2003, but since 2010 improved some things about 2007 I didn't like, I've warmed it bit more to it. It helps that they added some functionality to Excel in way of statistical tools, though to be frank Minitab does all that a lot easier.
Your doubt is perfectly acceptable. [/QUOTE] And more than reasonable, a baseline iMac costs $1200, with almost the same parts it would cost about $800 to build a similar Windows PC. Which means that you'd have to make about $100 an hour, or roughly $208,000 a year. And that's assuming only baseline iMacs and Windows PCs, higher-end Apple products have an even larger markup. Which raises the question, if you get paid so much, why are you wasting your time talking to us?
Can you reasonably build an Imac style PC? Putting stuff in a tower is one thing, that's simple but I wouldnt even know where to start looking to find the monitor/case to put the parts in for an iMac style machine.
Build one in that style? Most people couldn't, but you can certainly buy one in that style. HP sells one with similar specs for $700.
And more than reasonable, a baseline iMac costs $1200, with almost the same parts it would cost about $800 to build a similar Windows PC.[/quote] Patently false. For one thing, it's nearly impossible to build an all-in-one, and the desktop footprint does matter. For another, the reliability of OSX is unparalleled. As of today, April 10th, that's roughly half of Skin's yearly income as of 2012. As do higher-end Windows PCs, which are still crippled by running Windows. Because 5 minutes spent playing here for every 2 hours is not equal to 4 hours building a PC plus 5 minutes for every 2 hours.
Which is fantastic -- but related to productivity, a loss. The only reason to buy a Windows PC is for gaming, and if you're buying a Windows all-in-one, you're not saving $500, you're wasting $700.
Does the HP have the resolution of the iMac because I would argue that is worth the premium. Edit: never mind, the $1200 iMac is 1920x1080. You have to go to the entry level 27" and spend $1700 to get the 2560x1440 resolution. Although I imagine in the next wave of iMacs that will change.
The real differences are in how Apple designed the OS. Every "icon" on Apple's desktop is really a folder that contains the entire program. No need for Add/Remove etc. I can't tell you how many hours are spent at work due to missing .dll files and other background files that disappear and cause huge grief in Windows. Doesn't happen on OSX. That's but one example of the yawning chasm between Apple's OS's and Microsoft's.
I think Ramen made a post the other year on just that. Using the same components he was able to build it for a lot cheaper.
Then MS shouldn't have made the OS load up the RAM. Seriously, MS thought that it would be a good idea to "pre-cache" files and parts of the OS, with the idea that they could dump the RAM if a program or file needed more space. Its one of those ideas which work great in theory (since by pre-caching the stuff, things seem to load faster), but in practice don't work out so well (the OS doesn't always get it right when it guesses as to what should be pre-cached and should be dumped). I think that they're shifting away from this with Win8. There's a lot of case mod forums out there, and you can find all kinds of ways of doing that (and if you really wanted to get fancy, you could make it a Hackintosh, so it'd actually run OSX).
