XP Insane slowdowns - Any ideas?

[motorollin]

Get a Mac and say goodbye to slowdowns, OS reinstalls, virus scanners and spyware. If you really insist on running Windows, then use Boot Camp to dual boot. Better yet, run it in Parallels. That way you can have a hardfile for a clean base system burned to a DVD, and if you need to "reinstall" Windows then all you need to do is copy the hardfile from the DVD.

Of course, once you start working in OS X, you'll never go back to Windows ;-)

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moto

[motorollin]

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
A: A Mac is way too expensive to buy

On the Apple Store Mac Minis start at £399, or £375 if you're a student. I don't think that's a huge amount more than you would pay for any other computer.

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
B: A Mac is way too expensive to have, because for every little program you have to pay

That's not entirely true. Yes there is quite a bit of shareware and commercial software, but also a LOT of freeware if you know where to look. Lots of BSD software will compile directly on the Mac, and lots of open source Linux software has been ported. The only non-free software I have on my Mac are Photoshop, Acrobat Pro, iWork, Logic, Reason, Recycle and Parallels. I chose to use these commercial apps not because free alternatives were not available (GIMP, OpenOffice, Garageband, Audacity...) but because these are the best options IMO. That certainly doesn't mean that there are no cheaper or free alternatives. I have a lot of free software on my Mac.

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
C: Linux may be a pain in the arse from time to time, but if you use well supported hardware it won't be much of a fuss.

Yes Linux is becoming a much more viable option. If the software I use regularly (Reason and Recycle mainly) were available for Linux I may not have migrated to the Mac. But I'm glad I did :-)

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I like Apple's efforts to make a decent OS. Though I really can't pay it. :-(

Use and abuse your student discount ;-)

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moto

[motorollin]

@bloodline
100% agree with everything you said, except maybe...

bloodline wrote:
PPC was such a poo CPU...

Oh I don't know about that. I used to rewire Reason to Tracktion on my G4 iBook and it ran really well. Perhaps for a pro studio setup it wouldn't have cut it, but for home users I think the G4 was, at the time, more than adequate.

I switched to an Intel Mac when I started getting shouted at by Reason because my computer was, in its own words, "too slow to play the song". Apple really made a good move switching to Intel.

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moto

[motorollin]

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
I have a currently working laptop and really can't pay something like 375 pounds... But, I'm almost finished with my study, so, maybe then, some macbook air will be nice :-D
But atm, even an EEE pc is way too expensive :lol:

I feel your pain. My MacBook is quite tatty now, case cracked in a couple of places and looking a bit battered.

When I was talking about the cost of Macs I was really comparing it to the cost of comparable computers. That doesn't make it affordable if you can't afford a computer at all, but my point was that Macs are not really any more expensive than other computers

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moto