Dilemma: PC or Mac?

Q: I was referred to your site by a friend who has some concerns about me purchasing a notebook.  You see, he is a staunch Mac supporter, and felt that you might be able to explain why Macs are better than PC's.  So, the fateful question:  I am considering a PowerBook or the iBook (either, not sure yet) against a Dell Inspiron.  I would be using the notebook for: university word-processing, notes, downloading MP3's (and burning them to CDs), and surfing the net.  Perhaps playing a couple games, but that is not really the focus.  Which would you recommend?  One one hand, the Dell is less expensive, has a larger screen, and seems to be a faster computer...  On the other hand, I have been told Macs are "much better" but I have not been given reasons, really.  Could you possibly provide some advice?

A: In short, both platforms are able to handle these tasks with aplomb. I will try to present the pros and cons fairly, but you'll have to keep score yourself as to which way you lean. Bear in mind, as well, that Macs are more of a "religion" than PCs. Consequently, just because I might give you three good reasons why a PC is "better," you might still prefer a Mac, because of its style, aesthetics or similar intangibles that are hard to quantify. In either case, you'll have to weigh your support options. If your Mac friend is a buddy you plan to to call on for computer help, then get the Mac. If, on the other hand, you have close buddies who are PC users, they might be good resources if you get a PC. So, score one point for your "gut feel" in terms of "religion" (or if you prefer, think of Mac as "right brain" and the PC as "left brain" -- both are gross oversimplifications, but serve to demonstrate the philosophical differences between Mac users and PC users)... and score one point for your bet bet for computer help.

Next, let's look at the PowerBook vs iBook. Both models have changed substantially over the years, so I will assume we are talking about the most recent models. The new iBook supports VGA video out, but doesn't support "shared desktop" video displays, as does the PowerBook. I think that is a minor limitation, but it might be important Mac advantage to you. Then there's the iBook's not-too-impressive maximum resolution versus the PowerBook's much larger screen, or the Dell's higher resolution. Power users may find this a severe limitation. On the other hand, some users find the 1600x1200-pixel resolution of some high-end PC portables too  high -- it's a strain on middle-aged eyes.

The most important difference is the processor. The iBook is the last remaining member of Apple's product family to use a G3 processor, the PowerBook uses the faster and more powerful G4, making it much better suited to the CPU-hungry Mac OS X operating system that is now the default OS on Apple computers. I also consider the iBook's lack of PCMCIA (card slot) expansion options to be unnecessarily limiting. You may not worry about these issues, or the Macs' lack of a floppy drive (except as a high-priced external option). So, if we're talking Macs, score a point for your preference: expandability and better performance (PowerBook) or lower cost (iBook).

Then, if the PC is still in the race, compare to the Dell, or to a similar high-quality PC-compatible machine from Toshiba, Sony or other leading notebook manufacturer. I think the Dell's software choices are better than those natively available for the Mac (especially if you want to use the Microsoft Access database or FrontPage, neither of which are available for the Mac at all). With that said, Office for Mac is a good product, too. I just think it's not as advanced as Office for Windows in Internet integration and related functionality. (And I don't think Office v.X for Mac OS X, changes the equation much, either.) And it can be argued that, with powerful databases available for the Mac such as the free MySQL, and high-quality Web design tools such as GoLive 6.0 running native on Mac OS X, who needs Access or FrontPage, anyway?

The Dell has more hardware expansion options, too, thanks to its PC Card slots and industry standard architecture. The Windows version of Internet Explorer is definitely better -- vastly superior to any Mac browser, in my opinion -- and the performance of a 1.6 GHz or better Intel-compatible CPU is comparable in overall performance to that of the fastest Mac portable -- faster at some tasks (probably the word processing ones you will use a lot), and slower at some others (the Mac will probably outperform the PC in compressing MP3s, for example, thanks to its fast floating point math functions. So, I'd score two points for the PC in software suitability and declare the latest PC portables as a bit ahead in relative CPU performance.

The Mac deserves a point or two in its favour if you hate the idea of fiddling around with computers. If you don't want to learn about computers, get the Mac. Windows demands a bit more from you in the first six months or so, but some people (myself included) find that the PC environment is so much more flexible and extensible than the Mac, that the extra effort is well worth it. This is probably less true on a portable than a desktop computer, and even less true if you never plan on plugging peripherals (scanners, printers, cameras, MP3 players, etc.) into it. And, this is not to say that Windows XP is hard to learn. In fact, there are probably people out there who might find it easier to learn and use than Mac OS X. So, the PC scores a point (or not) for a larger selection of options and, as a result, lower prices for just about anything you can plug into one. Score one point for the PC if you think that it's great that it has, for example, third-party mice available for $5. (Try and find a $5 mouse for a Mac.) Score a point for the Mac if you believe that only an idiot would buy a crappy $5 mouse or a $12 keyboard.  Score a point for the PC if you think that a second mouse button might come in handy once in a while (it does.)

As far as CD burning goes, your choices are quite limited on the Mac: Toast, Discribe, NeroMax or Apple's ultra-based built-in Disc Burner software are basically your data-burning choices, and there aren't more than a handful of music-burning apps, either. (Adaptec "Jam" is probably the best music CD burning tool. although Apple's iTunes is more than enough for most casual users.) The PC has literally dozens of CD burning programs to choose from. This, of course, doesn't really matter, because you'll only use one, two or -- maybe -- three (for various specialized purposes) at most. I've burned discs on both platforms and honestly, I used to prefer Toast. A couple of years ago, it was better than anything on the PC. I believe the reverse is true now. The latest PC disc burning apps are ahead of anything I've seen on -- or coming to -- the Mac. Check out the sorry state of "CD Plus" (music CDs that play the audio in a standard CD player *and* add extra multimedia content when played on a computer) on the Mac, for example. I'd rate that as a point for the PC.

So, rather than go on and on, making one point here and a counterpoint there (which, really, gets us nothing but an insight into the mindset of the person citing the examples), I'll focus on the tasks you say are important to you. Here is my summary, which, although it looks PC biased, I believe to be fair.

University word-processing - either, but you'll probably like the Dell's keyboard the best for typing. A Dell running Windows XP would be substantially more stable than any Mac running Mac OS 9, in this task. Mac OS X, which offers similar reliability and memory protection to the Mac, is somewhat more complicated than Windows XP in some regards, and quite a bit slower in its responsiveness on all but the fastest machines.

Notes - either. I always liked a little Mac program called QuickDex for keeping quick notes. You can pick up a good program called Lotus Organizer for the PC for about $5 (at Multimedia Technologies on Broadway) that's quite full-featured, though.

Downloading MP3's - There are far more "file swapping" programs for the PC (about 80 of them in fact) than there are for the Mac (LimeWire is the preferred choice of many Mac users). While I'm not condoning theft, it may be a consideration. There is more of everything for the PC. A lot more, in this case. (Of course, that means more viruses, too.)

Burning them to CDs - As noted above, there are many more CD burning programs for the PC, but in this case, I don't think it matters. What probably DOES matter is the fact that USB 1.1 as a method of connection a CD burner is inferior to the typical SCSI card that a portable PC burner such as the HP 820E uses. In short, on the Mac you either use USB 1.1 (which is slow) or spend a lot more for a "FireWire" CD burner. You can't add USB 2.0 to an iBook. You'll have to spend more for the PowerBook and a third-party USB 2.0 card or choose a PC and a similar add-on if you want that. The PC wins this one, too, I think.

...and surfing the net. Both platforms are good at this. However, there are a substantial number of web pages that look worse on a Mac than they do on a PC (and very few for which the opposite is true.) There are numerous reasons for this:

1. Microsoft dominates the browser market.
2. Internet Explorer is more advanced and more widely compatible on the PC. The version of IE shipped with Mac OS X doesn't work correctly with widely used URLs containing capital letters, such as CNN.com.
3. Some web sites use PC-specific features or provide PC-specific options. (Take a look at the packaging of almost any DVD disk, for example. "The Matrix" movie has a PC specific web link that says "May not work on a Macintosh.")

You also say you might be playing a couple games - Macs have some good games; so do PCs.

As noted earlier, these points are all "rational" reasons why the Dell may be a better choice (Dell is higher rated than Apple in service and reliability, too, by the way). However, don't discount the "religion" factor. If you get a Mac, I'll bet you you'll "love it" more than if you get the PC. This is, I suspect, what's behind you're friend's recommendation, more than its particular suitability to the tasks at hand.

More on the Mac vs. PC debate:  PC Magazine is stirring up the ire of some Mac fans with a recent set of cross-platform benchmark tests, pitting a dual-CPU 500 MHz PowerMac G4 against a single- CPU 1GHz Pentium III. The PC beat the Mac in seven out of eight tests when the software (including Adobe Illustrator, Metacreations Bryce, Canoma, Deneba Canvas and an MPEG encoder from Heuris) was not optimized to use the Mac's second processor. In dual-processor tests of Adobe Photoshop, the Mac fared better, although the PC still beat it in two of eight tests and tied in two others. (The Mac's price as tested was about C$5,200. A 1GHz PC with 256MB of RAM and a 40GB Maxtor drive can be obtained locally for about C$2400. Add a couple of hundred bucks if you want a Gigabit Ethernet card, or about $18 for a basic 10/100baseT model.)

Then, in March 2002, the respected German tech mag C't put the latest dual G4s through the industry standard SPEC CPU2000 processor benchmark, and the results make dismal reading for hardcore Apple loyalists. C't found that "today's PCs are four times as fast as Apple's professional line in some situations." In the floating point tests, it was being bested by an eighteen month old Pentium III-based machine.

In August 2002, Bare Feats published an update to its Mac vs. PC benchmarks tests that unequivocally demonstrate that an Athlon MP system outperforms Apple's fastest dual-processor Mac in virtually every category. Read "How Does The Pentium 4 and Athlon XP Running Windows XP Compare To The G4 Power Macintosh Running OS X?" at Bare Feats.