Read 'Til You Drop

well, apples can pretty much do anything that pcs can do. I'm a big big fan of MAC. However if you want to stay with PCs I highly recommend IBMs. They are total work horses, my friend has had her IBM lappy for 6 years, she bought it used and shes run it over with her car (don't ask me how) twice and its still alive and kicking.

I've heard awesome things about Fujitsu systems - a couple friends have some of their tabletPCs, and adore them. One has had his for several years and it's been great to him.

I'm a big fan of Linux, but it's not for everyone. Though these days it's about the same as windows with the current releases. And something like OpenOffice should be able to read WordPerfect fine.

Company-wise, not sure I have much else to add.

I found it kind of irritating to shift image processing paradigms when I went from Windows to Mac. But that's because I don't have time to explore new ways of doing computer tasks in a leisurely manner. In every other respect, I love my Mac as much as I loved my Windows machine.

My son is making the move from PC to Mac. I'm more scared for him (for no rational reason) than he is for himself.

Likewise I've heard good things about Fujitsu.

I am told constantly to buy the business line but what I find in a lot of them is that they have a couple of extra buttons behind the spacebar and it drives me CRAZY.

I have a HP now - not a fan.

I'm a die-hard Mac user - since 1990 and I own my, err, seventh one, so I'm very much in favour of them.

Pretty much anything you can get for Windows you can get for Macs, with the exception of masses of rubbish games. You can always install Windows in a seperate partition if you absolutely must.

If you can, make backup copies of all your WP files in RTF format, which is pretty much universal. It's a good idea anyway. Word - at least the Mac version - will recover text from any file, which means that - if you don't mind an awful lot of eye-rolling and cursing - you can still get your treasures back, but it's easier to do while you still have the machine set up. (Open Office and Neo Office are valid alternatives to M$)

I personally find the Mac interface irritating and nonintuitive in the extreme (we're a Windows family, but our first laptop was, for reasons that do not need exploring at this juncture, an iBook); that said, if you do end up making the switch, Nisus Writer Express for the Mac is a reasonably priced word processor that can read WordPerfect files.

Apple is great for graphics, and they do have office...just not the microsoft kind! The problem, however, is that 1) everything is very expensive and 2) lately their products have been...well...shoddy.

I just bought a Sony Vaio laptop and I swear it is the best thing ever for the price. For 2k I got it completely customised for a graphics intensive powerhouse (I'm an animator-in-training) and for a laptop, it's pretty top of the line.

Dell has been declining for some years now; I used to have one. Coming from a Dell to a Vaio was akin to a revelation. I love it! I am a compute nerd and hard on my systems, and this machine is living up to my standards. Except, however, for Vista. But so far those bugs have been easy to fix.

I've been told Alienware builds a damn good machine, but I don't know anything about them personally.

And, yea, as much as I WANT a laptop to make life easier, I also dread having to decide what to get when I can get a laptop.

*sighs*

You can import your wordperfect files on a Mac. Microsoft Office or NeoOffice will allow you to open them and resave them in other formats. I doubt you'd want to use them long-term and keep them in that format, but you could certainly convert them to something else without a ton of difficulty. (Alternately, you could convert them on your current PC before switching over.)

HP's stink! I've come 1 tantrum too close to tossing mine out the window on a number of occasions.

On the other hand I LOVE my Toshiba laptop and my Vaio desktop. My husband has the Vaio laptop and he loves it just as much. The Vista system that comes with most new PC's now isn't as bad as when it first came out. You'll of course have to do a few patches to begin with, but it's much easier to learn Vista than to switch totally to the new format Mac has. But everyone has their own personal preference.

For an easier transition I'd stick with the Windows system and just learn Vista. Unless you have the time, initiative and know-how to switch to Mac. (I'm a mix of too lazy, too poor and too busy to do it myself.)

You could always talk to some local computer people when you go looking for one. They should be able to tell you which would be more ideal for what you are looking for in a computer.

However my husband is leaning over my shoulder now and saying "get a Mac!" =) He does love his Vaio, but the school he did student-teaching at had an awesome setup with the Mac system.

Either way, go with what you are more comfortable with. The best computer in the world is worthless to the person operating it if they don't like the system or setup.

I jumped ships in May of this year, leaving a Dell PC laptop with WinXP for a MacBook. I don't regret the change. There's a few things to get used to, but the adaptation was fast. There is a MacWord version compatible with Microsoft Word files, and I believe it will import WordPerfect, but don't take my word for it, since I haven't used WordPerfect in years. I did try opening some very old WordPerfect files that I have, and they did open fine, but I wouldn't know about the newer versions.

Someone said something about the cost of Mac programs. What cost? Virtually all programs I have are downloaded off the web and are open source and free. The other software that I have that came as a cost is actually comparable in price to similar programs for the PC.

Sure, buying a Mac is expensive, but I haven't had one single crash yet. The portability is very nice, too. It's lighter than my Dell used to be, and I thought I'd picked the lightest Dell there was.

I usually build my own computers and put linux on them, but I'm pretty geeky.

No matter what you get, you won't die. Computers are pretty much non-lethal.

Pay attention to the support, though. You'll want tech support that isn't asshattish. Most people want something that won't break and that won't be horrible to repair if it does.

I'll align myself on the Mac side of the debate. I love mine, and I've used Windoze machines for years (and still do, at work and at home, in the desktop stakes). It took a little getting used to, and even though WardPerfect may be incompatible, you must be able to save the files in a generic format that can be read and converted by another word processing program. Your Mac will come loaded with one (which I've not used but I've heard is acceptable), or you can download one (NeoOffice doesn't require you to pay, though of course it's recommended), or you can make the full leap to MS Office and Word. (Tip: The student & teacher edition is less expensive, and you may not have to prove your academic connection; I didn't).

Mac + Scrivener for writing = heaven.

I use Macs and can't imagine going back now. I haven't had a system crash or needed to check for viruses in 3+ years now, which is pretty sweet. After losing a couple of chapters of work on my old Windows system I made the switch.

I don't recommend Nisus Writer. I've got it, but I don't use it. It's not bad, but Word is better. Oh, and Word for the Mac is better than Word for Windows. Yes, I know it makes no sense, but it's true.

Scrivener and SuperNoteCard are both excellent writing programs on the Mac.

I much prefer Xandros Linux, myself; I'm replying from my Windows box only because the harddrive in my Xandrosified HP Kayak died. The user interfaces in Xandros' KDE window manager greatly resemble Windows. OpenOffice should open all your Wordperfect files and save them as Word docs, or OpenDocument files(which are smaller than .doc for the same amount of formatting information.)
See reviews at http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1996410,00.asp
and
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2501946250.html

And have fun shopping. Mind you my lady runs an old eMac with OS X 3.9 and is very happy with it.

Edited at 2007-12-16 10:25 pm (UTC)

I am forever attached to Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2003. I'd switch to a Mac if I had motivation to do it, but all the computers at both of the libraries I work at use only Windows so to me, it would be too much effort to switch. I just don't have time to learn another system, my life is crazy enough as it is.

On the other hand, I refuse to touch Vista until I hear that it's greatly improved. Plus, I've heard from insiders that the system AFTER Vista is supposed to be much better. So if you do go for a new PC, get Windows XP.

As soon as I've moved, I'm going to use left over moving money (yes, there better be some) to buy the Mac system of my dreams. I never want to spend another penny on Dell or Windows again. They are designed to break down so you have to keep replacing them, and they have zero customer service.

Mac/Apple now has a Word Perfect converter, so you can go back and forth between the files.

I'm not sure if you have any Apple Cafes, or whatever they're called, but there are Apple tech stations where Mac pros hang out and interact and they can answer your questions and show you things. It's not a showroom, so they won't be trying to shove a purchase down your throat.

I've bought Dells the past few times because my computer always breathed its last in the middle of a deadline and I had 24 hours to get another system. I'm tired of using a bandaid on an amputation, and I want a computer system that meets my needs.

It looks to me like Mac will do that -- AND the Applecare program is supposed to be excellent.

It can't be worse than Dell, who refuses to send technicians even when I pay for the send-the-tech-to-your-home service contract and tells me I have to take apart the computer over the phone, or outsources me to a third world country where I'm told, "In my country, women do not make demands".

Dell and Microsoft just want to keep taking money out of your pocket, in my opinion. Get away from them if you can. The outlay for Apple will be more, but the longterm benefits greater.

My opinion.

Devon
Ink in My Coffee
http://devonellington.wordpress.com

Since you can run any windows programs on your mac that you want with Bootcamp (or you can use Parallels to run your windows programs right next to your mac programs) even if you find switching hard, you can always just run Windows on your Mac.

A die-hard WordPerfect lover, I switched from PC to Mac in 2005. I made a short, abortive attempt to get WP to work on the Mac; finally gave up and went to Nisus (mentioned above), which is acceptable (I don't use Word although I have it on my iMac in order to read files other people send me). I also have Scrivener, which I like although haven't used enough to have a huge opinion on yet.

I wrote on WordPerfect for, oh, 20 years, and consider it the best word processing program for me ever. But I love my Mac more. I wouldn't go back now even to use WordPerfect.

Apple doesn't speak WordPerfect, but you can also set up a separate partition, install BootCamp, load Windows XP and boot it to as a PC if you find that you need to use the PC side for something.

I have a MacBookPro, and I totally love it. I can run all the same programs for a PC on it that I could on a newer model PC. Really, it is a nice, convenient way to have two computers in one. You can even set your partition so that you can drag and drop things from your Mac to your PC and they'll be on the PC (it doesn't work the other way around though).

But, that's just one very happy user's opinion of her nifty computer. :)

Just a shot in the dark here, but if you install the free OpenOffice suite on a mac, won't that read in your wordperfect files?