The Great Mac vs. Windows Debate

[pgoat]

Overthinking it.

who, ME?

You may be right about the old PC - but I do use certain things on there quite frequently which are not on the Mac so we shall see....once we get the internet access on the mac I am sure some dust will begin to settle on the old gal.....when the cobwebs appear it will be a sure sign for its retirement!

 

[pgoat]

I would think the TC will just treat the PC as part of its network, and not even notice if you back up the PC to a separate drive. I hadn't even thought about where you'd place your printer, but attaching that to the TC makes perfect sense.



Personally, I'd like the fastest connection possible between my computer and my backup drive. The wireless connection is a very nice use of the technology, but it transfers at less than a third of the speed of gigabit Ethernet so in your situation, with the iMac and the TC next to each other, I'd definitely put up with an extra cable. You can get a 12 inch Cat 6 patch cable for a couple of dollars.



The 10baseT cable may already be capable of handling 100baseT. If it's Cat 5 there's no need to replace it. If it's Cat 3 or 4 then, yes, you will see an improvement by replacing it with Cat 5.



It's very likely that your Ethernet card will support 100baseT - according to the wiki article for Fast Ethernet the 100baseT standard was introduced in 1995, with gigabit Ethernet coming along 3 years later, so it's even possible that your card will support 1000baseT. You could connect the TC and PC with a Cat 5e or Cat 6 cable anyway - if the card can cope you'll get gigabit Ethernet to the PC; if the card can't cope you'll just have some redundant data capacity in the cable.

Thanks again, Salv - I couldn't have hoped for a more thorough reply.

You guys have all been a tremendous help! :eusa_clap

 

[pgoat]

Just for the record I took another peek and it is a Cat 5e cable running from modem to our PC...though I am pretty sure I saw it labeled 10baseT the last time I looked......I am not sure if there is an older, lower cat. cable running before the modem however - I need to do more crawling and snaking behind the walls/tv area....but at least I don't have to re-route that long cable that is already tacked down to the baseboards!:eusa_doh:

Thanks again for all your (collective) help

 

[pgoat]

egad!

we ordered that durn Time Capsule and it is taking its sweet time getting here (apparently Feb. 29 is the new launch date....)

Got two new Cat 6 cables sitting here waiting for the hook up....also sprung for some new mammoth surge protectors (might as well....)

 

[pgoat]

Time Capsule finally arrived.....yay!
We'll see what it looks like when we get home tonight.

 

[scotrace]

Treat it like a new hat. Pics and a review please!

 

[pgoat]

You know it! I will be sure to snap a pic and post tonight.

It actually looked very impressive when we were done last night - I was checking out the display before going to bed (with the room lights off - kinda like a Xmas tree!). The Time Capsule looks much prettier when the "green" (all systems go) light is on, as opposed to the blinking amber ("WARNING!!! Danger, Will Robinson!!"). The PC tower on the other side of our desk - and its external HD - have indigo blue lights.....very groovy.

We managed to get internet access and shared printing accomplished in less than 90 mins - not bad for us, though there was some head scratching and shrugging going on at times. We read the manuals and all, but often as not, just unplugging and re-booting did the trick.

Naturally I have at least one doofus question:

This is our first wireless experience. When we open the Airport icon (top right on menu bar), we are seeing a short list of a half-dozen or so names ("Pam", user name type things like "GS399", etc.)....we have no clue where these came from....could they other wireless users in our apartment bldg? We live in one of about 60 units in our building; multiply that by about 10 if you count adjacent buildings, of which there are many....My wife recognized "Pam" as our next door neighbor's name....

Is there some step(s) we should take to be more secure on the wireless? We did get steered through a menu on the iMac to update certain features - the prompts indicated that these steps would increase wireless security.

Just to be clear, we have a cable running from our cable modem into the Time Capsule, and two short Ethernet cables running out to each computer (new iMac and old PC). So while the iMac is wireless capable, we still have it hardwired .... unless it just bypasses that automatically??[huh]

 

[Nathan Flowers]

You're fine. You can turn Airport off if you want. Yes, those are your neighbors' wireless connections you're seeing in the Airport menu. There's no way they can make your computer unsecure unless you connect to them. I would just turn the Airport off and not worry about it.

 

[pgoat]

Thanks Zohar; I will turn it off tonight....I assume this means we don't need Airport, as we are hardwired, yes?

I am just trying to get my head on straight with this - if I have airport on, do my neighbors see my name? If I turn it off, does my name disappear from their screens?

and (the $64,000 question), if our names are visible, can we each see what the others are doing?

I told my wife no passwords, financial banking sites till we know for sure....tho I suspect the mac is already more secure than the old PC we've been banking on for years....tho I did switch from IE to Firefox recently....

 

[scotrace]

Thanks Zohar; I will turn it off tonight....I assume this means we don't need Airport, as we are hardwired, yes?

Right.

I am just trying to get my head on straight with this - if I have airport on, do my neighbors see my name? If I turn it off, does my name disappear from their screens?

Right. Actually they see the name of your Airport wireless network, whatever that might be.

and (the $64,000 question), if our names are visible, can we each see what the others are doing?

Nope, with a caveat: If they have iTunes open, and have enabled music sharing (to share the music on one computer with another one in the same house), then you would be able to see their playlists in your own copy of iTunes on your computer. Otherwise, no one can see anything going on on another computer.

I told my wife no passwords, financial banking sites till we know for sure....tho I suspect the mac is already more secure than the old PC we've been banking on for years....tho I did switch from IE to Firefox recently....

Make sure the firewall is enabled in System Preferences --> Security and you're good to go. Enable "Stealth" mode and your machine becomes invisible on the internet.

Use a site like shieldsup to test it.

 

[pgoat]

Beautiful! thank you, sir!

I am excited to go play in our new office now. I will check all that out tonight.

btw - no surprise - I went for the 1TB Time capsule. First backup only took a few hours last night. But my wife already has 55 GB of video on there, and she is not as good as me about taking old stuff off the machine (I delete/backup to disc regularly). So I'm kinda glad, even though it was more dough to lay out.

 

[Retro Rob]

Working with photographs all the time there's only one choice, It's Mac all the way !

 

[pgoat]

btw, after only a few weeks, my wife is fast becoming a convert.....

 

[pgoat]

Sorry - I took pics, still haven't had time to post...should get to it tonight.

 

[pgoat]

voila!

here's our modest version of mission control Note the gaping space on the left lower shelf - that's where I'd have stuck the Mac Pro Tower, had we gone with that instead if the iMac.

The Time capsule is on the middle shelf on the left (green light); the blue lights on the right are the iOmega external which backs up 'old paint', and the power supply lights on the old girl herself (a recent upgrade the last time she went up in flames!). The printer is shared for both computers via the TC.

The two red lights at right are the PC's optical mouse and a crappy 4-port USB hub - pharmaceutical co. swag for my wife who is in the medical field. It's pretty new - but turns out it's only a 1.1...cheap swag!!

 

[pgoat]

Btw the old PC came in handy already - took some pics with our older digital camera, and the software is not supported on the Mac (too old), Good to have, since you sometimes need a back up camera, though the newer one we have is way better overall.

 

[scotrace]

So you have an unused Apple keyboard there I see....


(nice setup!)

 

[pgoat]

lol No, the wee Apple wireless keyboard gets used - Glad we got that wireless (mouse, too) for now, as it is a little crowded. The wireless Apple keyboard is so small and light you can easily perch it on your lap or atop the wrist rest pad. Actually, the big PC keyboard is usually resting out of the way on the big ol' CRT monitor, but I had just been using the old machine when these photos were taken.

But as you've mentioned, the PC will no doubt be ditched soon, which will give us more room.

In my ideal set up we'll eventually find one of those large old wooden things people used to use....umm....oh, yeah! I think they called it a 'DESK'!

 

[scotrace]

Sorry. One has to vulture up goodies when one can.

As an aside, I upgraded my own iMac G5 (20") to the maxed out 2gigs of RAM last night. Leopard dragged it down to almost unusable at 512M, but now it smokes.

 

[pgoat]

cool!

I need to list my old memory sticks on ebay. They're not fetching much at present (maybe $25), but then I guess nothing is, what with fiscal doom 'n' gloom in the papers every other day.