PC or Mac

[Anonymous]

My office is about to buy new computers. I am looking for input as to which computers to buy. Is it worth buying a new G5 or should we buy new PC's? Is the 32 bit hype worth the money? Does Archicad run better on PC or Mac?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Oh good! I've never actually been able to enter into a Mac vs PC battle at the very start before - thanks for the opportunity Rob

Points which are always worth considering;
- how is the office network set up?
- what other programs will you need to run on these machines?
- what are the current users accustomed to?
- archicad currently runs better on PCs, but people generally run better on a Mac
- PC's will probably give you more bang for your buck overall
- hype is never worth money. 32 bit software is probably not going to mature significantly over the next 18 months (?)
- will clients be seeing the machines?
- what printers do you have?
- what software do you have?

... Stuart

- we use PC's 'coz there's more to life than Archicad -

[Anonymous]

I work in a mac office and have found the mac easy to set up networks and solve related problems.

I recently upgraded to AC8 at home and purchased a PC to run it, but also have a mac that was used to run AC7.

At work we just purchased a 1.8 GHZ G5 and I would say my PC 2.8 P4 at home at this stage seems a bit faster, but I haven't compared the same projects.

I haven't had to do anything with networks on a PC so I don't know how easy or hard that set up is.

For my budget at the time a PC was the best option for me, however I do wish it was a Dual G5, but sometimes you can't have everything.

[Anonymous]

This guy asked the same question.

[Anonymous]

StuartJames wrote:
- will clients be seeing the machines?

good point here !

[__archiben]

rob

do you have any kind of in-house IT support?

mac users will generally be able to solve problems that arise on their own, whereas you may find (depending on company size, and, as stuart says, what the users are used to) that the PC's will require some additional support resources . . .

archiCAD 8 is slower on a mac, and with all of the problems that came up using the very fragile earlier versions of 8.0, we were debating whether to gradually change from a mac based office to PCs. support and maintenance was the biggest issue after cost that put us off.

and thankfully 8.0v3 and 8.1 came along . . .

~/archiben

[Anonymous]

Macs are consistly less expensive to own and maintain. There have been numerous studies which confirm this and my own experience as a consultant bears it out. I have been working with both platforms since Windows NT (the first version of Windows that was worth anything) and my clients have been split about 50/50 over the years.

The firms using Windows typically spend more time and require more outside support than the Mac using companies and the Mac users are typically more productive on a wider variety of software. There are, of course, many Windows users (particularly in this forum, myself included) who are very productive in a broad array of tasks and a wide variety of software software, but most firms have only one or two such people (if they are lucky, some have none, or they come and go leaving a variety of standards in their wake).

I have especially seen a difference in the principals. In the Windows based firms I have known, they typically use their computer for e-mail, maybe some word processing, and the occasional spreadsheet. In the Mac based companies I have worked with the principals are generally much more conversant with and more productive on their computers (many even using ArchiCAD occasionally).

The diffference was much less pronounced when the comparison was between Windows 2000 and Mac OS9. I found much to like in both and often preferred to use Win2K for its relative stabilty (and the greater speed of my ThinkPad). Mac OS X is so dramatically improved over OS9 that this is no longer true. (I find Windows XP to be only a minor upgrade to 2000.) Now that the G5s have largely erased the performance gap, I think anyone who has the choice should go for the Mac. In actual practice they typically do more and cost less.

This is just my experience and not a statistical study, but it has been consistent for almost 10 years.

PS: I've been using ArchiCAD 8.1 on Mac OS 10.3 and it is FAST. Libraries load quickly and we are even considering using teamwork on ALL projects for added consistency and security since the delays are have but vanished. Send and Receive, Sign In/Out, etc. are as fast as Save which now happens so fast you have to pay attention or you'll miss it (network or local).

[KenMcN]

Matthew wrote:
Macs are consistly less expensive to own and maintain... The firms using Windows typically spend more time and require more outside support than the Mac using companies...

Couldn't agree more Matthew When I was an Architect/IT bod for a firm with 12 Win 95 PCs and a Win NT server I spent around 50% of my time fixing the machines (running AutoCAD). Now I am in an office with up to 27 Macs and 2 of us spend only a fraction of our time maintaing the system and machines. I've read that once you get to 25 PCs you need a full time IT Manager - this is simply not the case with Macs, although I guess the Win systems have improved greatly since Win 95/NT.

[Anonymous]

KenMcN wrote:
...I've read that once you get to 25 PCs you need a full time IT Manager...

This is why IT people generally prefer PCs. Using Macs would reduce their staff and budget.

[Anonymous]

Rob
If you are contemplating buying a mac.
You are a lucky man, Apple have hust introduced a dual 1.8Ghz G5 and reduced the price of the single 1.6Ghz versions. At the moment I dont think that AC takes advantage of multiple processors, so maybe the Dualies would only be better if you do a lot of background renderings.

I wonder if anyone at GS could let us know whether or not they are making AC9 multi processor aware, that way we can make more informed buying descisions.

Anyone with insider info?