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 Co'tor Shas wrote:
As long as you aren't doing visual design, get a PC. You get better stuff for the same cost, and if you build your own, you can get a great PC relatively cheaply.

If you're doing visual design, get a PC.

 Fafnir wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
As long as you aren't doing visual design, get a PC. You get better stuff for the same cost, and if you build your own, you can get a great PC relatively cheaply.

If you're doing visual design, get a PC.

You're probably right. I know nothing about macs, I've just heard they are better than PCs for visual design.

That might have been true around 15 years ago, and only is a notion that continues to exist thanks to clever marketing on Apple's part.

Apple is the king of marketing and turd polishing

Yeah part of the reason I wanted to switch is all my design apps are just as good on either OS, and a Mac is just a PC with a different OS anyway. I do love their stuff, but I just can't afford em. Back in the 90's or so you really needed a Mac for design cuz that's what the whole industry used.. it doesn't really matter nowadays.

 Fafnir wrote:
That might have been true around 15 years ago, and only is a notion that continues to exist thanks to clever marketing on Apple's part.

It doesn't matter whether you use a Mac or a PC for design. Nearly everything you would need is available on both platforms. There are a few programs that are only available on one of the other, such as SoftImage XSi (PC) or Final Cut Pro (OSX), but crucial things like Adobe Production Studio are available on both.

Personally I have gone off Macs because when Windows 7 came out, the usability of the OSX interface went down due to constant "improvements", and I came to prefer Win 7. However I hear that Windows 8 is a pile of crap that everyone hates, so I don't know where I will go the next time I need to buy a computer.

My current MacBook has lasted me six years and is still going strong, and my daughters iMac is fine, so I don't need to worry yet anyway.

So, about the HDMI connections.. my monitor has a port for that, and also a headphone jack .. so if I use hdmi, will I be able to plug my speakers into the monitor rather than into the back of my PC? Like will the hdmi cable transfer audlo like a home theater kind of setup, if it's plugged into my video card?

Yep, it should work just fine.

You will need to either disable the onboard sound in the bios, or make sure you set the video card audio as default in windows, though. The former is probably preferable to the latter because reasons but either will work and take less than a minute.

So video cards have built in sound cards now too? Or is it just using the sound stuff that's in the motherboard and just passing it through?

Back in my day I had a sound blaster, a video card, a voodoo graphics 3D card and a modem all taking up space.. and I needed a separate dos boot disk to get every game to work right.