How to Choose a Business Computer

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Douglas Willot on behalf of the Expert Village and today we're going to talk about how to decide between purchasing a PC or Mac. We're going back to the question now, what it is you need your computer for. We're going to talk about whether you need it for business or for casual use. Which one's going to be a better choice for you? We're not going to worry about budget for a bit. Let's assume that you can afford whatever computer it is that's going to work best for you. And right now you just want to look at features. When it comes to PC and Mac, a lot of them have the exact same programs, very popular programs, running on both systems. What you want to do is, you want to see what it is software wise that you're going to be using for work or for your casual time, etc, and see if it's going to be only compatible with one or the other. Most programs are compatible with Windows. Windows has a lot more programs that can run on it than Macs do. Mac has a lot more specialized programs depending on what your business is. As far as stuff like Excel and Word, well, that's available on both. And like we said earlier, you can transfer a file that you've typed in Excel on a Mac onto Excel in a PC and vice versa. Let's talk about how much space you're going to need for a second. Let's say your business use or your casual use you need a lot more hard drive space than is available on a given machine. It's easier to upgrade a PC than it is a Mac as far as installing a bigger hard drive. You can upgrade your Mac's hard drive but you often have to take it into a Mac shop and let them do it themselves as opposed to getting in there with the equipment which you buy on your own. It's actually difficult to buy Mac hard drives on their own, but it can be done. There is another solution for this, though, that kind of makes it a mute point. And that is the external hard drive. This is a hard drive that's able to be formatted for both Macs and PCs. It's a 320 gigabyte hard drive and that's a lot of memory. I use it on a Mac, meaning that I don't have to worry about upgrading the hard drive. However, it would work for a PC just as well. Regardless, in this day and age, memory space in that capacity is becoming a non-issue in the debate between PCs and Macs. Generally, just look at what program is it that you're going to use specifically and which is it more compatible for. Additionally, if you're using your computer for business or casual use, there's a good chance you're going to be using the Internet a lot. This is where the Mac has a major benefit over the PC, largely due to the operating system. If you're running the Mac OS, or OSX right now, that's what I'm running, you have some natural security measures against viruses. And there are far less viruses that are going to hit your Macintosh. As a matter of fact the only viruses that a Macintosh can be very susceptible to are viruses that will pop up as you're surfing and will say that your computer is susceptible to viruses, purchase this software that's going to protect it. And generally, that's just a popup ad; it?s not tons of actual viruses. It's just something that's going to popup unexpectedly. Whereas, the Windows viruses that are out there can be a lot more dangerous to your hard drive and your computer. There are a lot more security measures you need to put in place in addition to what comes with the computer when you initially purchase it. Things such as a firewall. Things such as spyware or malware protectors that are included in the Macintosh when you buy it. When it comes to just internet surfing or if your business uses a lot of internet, I have to prefer the Mac at that point."