[gaweidert]

Praying all goes well for your daughter in law and the twins. Grandkids are the best invention ever. 2016 has been pretty tough on us too. But the future always offer hope and we need to remember the good times too.

[reeftool]

My budget this year has been going towards upgrading and replacing computers rather than any camera or lens purchases. Most recent has been a Mac Mini with a 2.6 Ghz i5, 8GB ram, 1TB Hard drive.While not a high end spec, it's many times faster than the Windows tower it's replacing for now. I've wanted to get my feet wet with a Mac for a while and this was a relatively inexpensive way to do it.

I'm quite impressed with the way this little box performs.It's noticeably faster than my Windows tower running Lightroom, despite the fact that my library is on an external drive. While MacOS is somewhat different, there isn't too much I haven't been able to figure out and adjust to. Some things I like better, others I'm undecided at the moment and I'll have a better opinion after using it for a few months.

[monochrome]

Oh my. Very best of luck... hope all goes well

TYVM

Praying all goes well for your daughter in law and the twins. Grandkids are the best invention ever. 2016 has been pretty tough on us too. But the future always offer hope and we need to remember the good times too.

THANK YOU.

We and they are fortunates to live in a city with superb medical care. As a precaution they transported her to a Hospital with an entire wing of neonatal ICU care and micro-premie specialists; but they'll try to 'slow things down', and they hope for at least three more weeks - better 5.

K-1 and 28~105 will be on loan to them to document the happy occasion.

[Canada_Rockies]

My budget this year has been going towards upgrading and replacing computers rather than any camera or lens purchases. Most recent has been a Mac Mini with a 2.6 Ghz i5, 8GB ram, 1TB Hard drive.While not a high end spec, it's many times faster than the Windows tower it's replacing for now. I've wanted to get my feet wet with a Mac for a while and this was a relatively inexpensive way to do it.

I'm quite impressed with the way this little box performs.It's noticeably faster than my Windows tower running Lightroom, despite the fact that my library is on an external drive. While MacOS is somewhat different, there isn't too much I haven't been able to figure out and adjust to. Some things I like better, others I'm undecided at the moment and I'll have a better opinion after using it for a few months.

I'm a couple of weeks into the learning curve, having replaced an i7/8Gb/1Tb 5400 rpm laptop with a MacBook Air i5/8Gb/512Gb SSD. The reason for this change for me (M$ since 1982) is Windows 10 Upgrade/Update that trashed the aforementioned laptop. Every Monday, for months, I had to revert the laptop to a restore point because the update failed. The last time they tried the message I got was "No operating system found" which was "interesting" to say the least.

My son the geek and I both thought the drive had failed. I gave him the laptop as is and ordered the MacBook. He dropped in for dinner with some friends of his last Saturday and took it home with him. Sunday AM he asked for the password for the BIOS (that I forgot to give him) and three hours later I got a double message from him after he had reformatted the drive to Unix and installed one of the Unix systems and finally (his words) got the Wi-Fi working.

1. This box is wicked fast
2. Microsoft shouldn't have had any problems: it's current but not bleeding edge

I hadn't had any troubles with the laptop until Windows forcibly upgraded Win 10 to build 1511 about a year ago. Since then it was a nightmare. My wife who has put up with me for over 51 years now was ready to go out and buy a gun. I don't blame her.

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Last edited by MarkJerling; 12-09-2016 at 12:07 PM. Reason: Masked profanity removed.

[reeftool]

I'm a couple of weeks into the learning curve, having replaced an i7/8Gb/1Tb 5400 rpm laptop with a MacBook Air i5/8Gb/512Gb SSD. The reason for this change for me (M$ since 1982) is Windows 10 Upgrade/Update that trashed the aforementioned laptop. Every Monday, for months, I had to revert the laptop to a restore point because the update failed. The last time they tried the message I got was "No operating system found" which was "interesting" to say the least.

My son the geek and I both thought the drive had failed. I gave him the laptop as is and ordered the MacBook. He dropped in for dinner with some friends of his last Saturday and took it home with him. Sunday AM he asked for the password for the BIOS (that I forgot to give him) and three hours later I got a double message from him after he had reformatted the drive to Unix and installed one of the Unix systems and finally (his words) got the Wi-Fi working.

1. This box is wicked fast
2. Microsoft shouldn't have had any problems: it's current but not bleeding edge

I hadn't had any troubles with the laptop until Windows forcibly upgraded Win 10 to build 1511 about a year ago. Since then it was a nightmare. My wife who has put up with me for over 51 years now was ready to go out and buy a gun. I don't blame her.

I decided to go with a Mac based on a lot of the Windows 10 complaints I was reading. I already have an iPad which I travel with and it has been a constant companion for the past 4 years. I chose the Mini mostly based on price. I already have a good LG IPS monitor. The difference between the 2.6 Ghz Mini and the 2.8Ghz 21" non Retina iMac is minimal. I spent an afternoon traveling to Albany and visited the Apple store. They had the 1080p iMac and the 4K side by side and my eyes couldn't really see much difference. My Mini is essentially a Haswell iMac without the monitor. All my photos are on my external drives so I didn't really see much point in going with a fusion drive right now.

I'll also admit that I've kicked this around for quite a while. I'm retired now and my budget is tighter and the $599 special that B&H had on Black Friday/Cyber Monday was also an incentive.

[Canada_Rockies]

I decided to go with a Mac based on a lot of the Windows 10 complaints I was reading. I already have an iPad which I travel with and it has been a constant companion for the past 4 years. I chose the Mini mostly based on price. I already have a good LG IPS monitor. The difference between the 2.6 Ghz Mini and the 2.8Ghz 21" non Retina iMac is minimal. I spent an afternoon traveling to Albany and visited the Apple store. They had the 1080p iMac and the 4K side by side and my eyes couldn't really see much difference. My Mini is essentially a Haswell iMac without the monitor. All my photos are on my external drives so I didn't really see much point in going with a fusion drive right now.

I'll also admit that I've kicked this around for quite a while. I'm retired now and my budget is tighter and the $599 special that B&H had on Black Friday/Cyber Monday was also an incentive.

Well, in my case it was that Win 10 is a disaster. My wife is running a Dell with Win 10 home and doesn't do anything more exotic than Lightroom, Facebook, Web and eMail. Last Monday she couldn't print a recipe on the wi-fi shared printer. (The parish bookkeeper had the same problem with the same update.) I had to lug the printer up to Claire's workroom with the USB cable and DVD to reinstall the printer.

Compare that to me (a non-Mac person since forever) doing a Command P and having my new MacBook Air politely ask me if I wanted to use the Brother printer at such and such an address and did I want to print two-sided? About the time it asked me that I remembered that I hadn't installed the drivers.

[MarkJerling]

Well, in my case it was that Win 10 is a disaster. My wife is running a Dell with Win 10 home and doesn't do anything more exotic than Lightroom, Facebook, Web and eMail. Last Monday she couldn't print a recipe on the wi-fi shared printer. (The parish bookkeeper had the same problem with the same update.) I had to lug the printer up to Claire's workroom with the USB cable and DVD to reinstall the printer.

Compare that to me (a non-Mac person since forever) doing a Command P and having my new MacBook Air politely ask me if I wanted to use the Brother printer at such and such an address and did I want to print two-sided? About the time it asked me that I remembered that I hadn't installed the drivers.

I've upgraded to Windows 10 on multiple machines. All did the switch faultlessly and have found the correct drivers for almost all peripherals, no problem. On the one machine I had to manually install a driver for the built-in webcam and, likewise, at work, for a 10 year old A3 printer. And I had a bit of an issue with the fingerprint reader on my work laptop, but once I found the correct HP driver, it was plain sailing. Problem was there were 3 versions of the driver and no indication from HP which version was the correct one so it was trial and error. Would have been nice if they had simply said - Use this one for Windows 10.

[BigMackCam]

Same here, Mark... I've upgraded my laptop and tablet, and my Dad's laptop, all without significant problems. One or two minor issues with drivers (as I recall, I had the fingerprint reader issue too), but quite easily resolved.

That said, of late I've been considering a move to Linux. If I can find a good 64-bit distribution that supports all of my hardware, I may install it on a partition and see if I can find equivalent software for most of what I do...

[goatsNdonkey]

Kerrowdown, just think of all the time you would have had to spend in a row boat to get that first shot with the 50mm!

[Arjay Bee]

I repaired a out of warranty acer laptop ultrabook (dead battery) then downloaded a version of Ubantu called 'creative' that had a range of drawing and photographic apps included in the image. Created a usb boot stick and loaded it on the Acer. i am enjoying the exploration of the interface and apps. like others i have several devices running windows 10 with no major issues. one device developed known issues with edge so i had to install some bug fix which solved it.

[wolfiegirl]

I use a mac for work, and have found it logical enough to keep using it for everything else (it's a laptop). Compared to my cheapy win 7 laptop it's faster and has less issues despite having no dvd drive and having slightly less features in some programs like word. Wolfieboy is due to get a new computer soonm he is eyeing a ssd one with win 10 installed, so I'll be interested in seeing how he goes. But he has never been a mac person. I always thought i was the same, but so far the smooth integration between adobe and mac has made me reconsider.

That said, I'll stick to my samsung phone. The lack of a back button on the iPhones drive me crazy

[Kerrowdown]

Kerrowdown, just think of all the time you would have had to spend in a row boat to get that first shot with the 50mm!

Aye, but as Captain of said vessel, my task would be the drinking of the whisky... while the crew rowed for all they're worth.

[MarkJerling]

Same here, Mark... I've upgraded my laptop and tablet, and my Dad's laptop, all without significant problems. One or two minor issues with drivers (as I recall, I had the fingerprint reader issue too), but quite easily resolved.

That said, of late I've been considering a move to Linux. If I can find a good 64-bit distribution that supports all of my hardware, I may install it on a partition and see if I can find equivalent software for most of what I do...

The main software I use for my work only works on Windows machines, and only works well with particular chipsets and video cards. As example, when I bought the last one, there was only one HP laptop that ticked all the boxes.

[GolNat]

The lack of a back button on the iPhones drive me crazy

Back buttons are in the apps. There is not a dedicated one on the phone but every app you open gives you a back button on the screen.

Vista ruined it for me. Had Vista in college and it was horrible. Got a Mac Book and never looked back.

[wolfiegirl]

Back buttons are in the apps. There is not a dedicated one on the phone but every app you open gives you a back button on the screen.

Vista ruined it for me. Had Vista in college and it was horrible. Got a Mac Book and never looked back.

Hrm. Didn't know that. Either way, I'm pretty happy with my samsung s5 and its dedicated back button i also love that it's integrated with google so i have access all my stuff no matter the android phone.