Mac Hardware

I know several firms that use Macs. They just aren't for everyone. I paid $800 to have a pc built for my needs. Can you get me a Mac that does the same thing for the same amount? It came with an LCD 17" flat screen monitor, 3.0 Ghz dual core processor, 1 gig RAM, CD/RW/DVD/RW burner/reader, ATI Fire/GL video card and of course the hard drive.

Many people here seem to think it's too slow. Knowing nothing about Mac hardware, I'm not inclined to purchase one when I have a PC that works wonderfully. And even more, I don't see what advantage it would be to buy a computer not specifically built to run an application that is vital to my business. Having to install Virtual PC on a computer when I could just buy a PC - It just doesn't make sense.

 

y2b's link was actually about using a mac and using mac software, not using a mac as a pc or emulting a pc.

dunno anything about "vectorworks" but the company suggested it was the mac alternative to autocad. dunno much about it, but the mac has a tendency to have alternative solutions that are somewhat 2nd tier compared to the "real" products -- aside from adobe, anyway.

your link, tho, is about virtual pc -- which is a pure emulation of windows on a ppc mac. the new macs are intel so the emulation layer is out the window -- which means you'll get native speed of code execution. the lacking part right now is the driver support which means the graphics card might not be fully supported at the moment, so you'll get software rendering speeds on the display. if you want to run autocad from mac os x, that is. if you want to boot directly to windows, then i think the experience would be pretty much like any other pc.

 

I've used Vectorworks in college. Unless they have made serious leaps forward, it is incredibly cumbersome. It's a vector based program that functions a lot like Adobe Illustrator. It wasn't very precise and grabbing one point could move things below it without even knowing it. Personal preference, I chose Autocad even over other PC based cad programs.