I just got offered a Mac. It is missing the RAM and the HDD. How different is a Mac HDD and Mac RAM compared to a PC? Anybody know of a price guide for this as well?

....Just don't get it from apple. Since Apples use Intel chipsets now you can get almost any kind of RAM. Same HDD, SATA or IDE.

Macs USED to be completely different electronically from PCs. They used to use different types of RAM and different types of hard drives (SCSI for Macs vs. IDE for PCs).

Since the newer Macs use Intel chipsets and CPUs, I would tend to think they'll use the same interchangeable components. I wouldn't know however, since I'm not a Mac guy.

Go to this site it should help

http://www.everymac.com/

Even before, when they had Motorola processors and chipsets.. Mac has been using EIDE drives and PC ram (PC compatible) for quite some time.

Giving us an idea of what model we are talking about would be a good start.

in laymans terms, a mac does everything 4 u and gives u far less control and responsibility than a pc, on which u control everything, does

^^^^Huh?^^^^

I suppose you can look at it that way.

I love the fact that all this control we have makes my PC business pretty stable.

If I tried to survive as a technician for Mac's exclusively? My business would have died before it got started.

And you have obviously been smoking something

Actually i do like pcs better cause of that control, i meant that statemeant 2 come out sounding "anti-macintosh"

I'm pretty sure we all got that.

That sense of control you are feeling? That's all it is.. A sense. A false one at that.

The only real advantages to PC's?

Price point. It is possible to buy a really cheap, current model, low functioning PC. Buying a cheap, current model, low functioning Mac? Good luck with that.

Available software packages.
Much more is written for PC's. Unfortunately? Much of it..including the operating systems, are written very badly.

Employment.
Without PC's? There would be much fewer people out there with poor technical skills calling themselves techs. When a PC breaks down.. it could be a range of things gone wrong... Many of which can be cured by losing all of the clients data and formating the drive, and charging him or her almost the worth of the machine to do it. The good ones know where to look and what to look for, and actually repair the issue and save the data, charge the client accordingly and save them money. Both in the short and long run.

On the rare occasion a Mac breaks.. It is broken. Generally speaking...Only a skilled technician will make it run again.

oh boy! sidetracked i see

Macs actually have newer technology, inwhich they are running now with Disk-less hardrives GASP! yeah i dont think you got this type but they are starting to come out with such, give us a serial number or a model number since with windows pcs, Ram has OLD RAM (lol), SD-Ram, DDR, DDR2 for its choices depending on the year it was made, Next we have IDE,Sata,Sata2 so lets us know the model

That is not at all uncommon...even in the world of PC's. Not something the average person sees everyday.. but I've got a few specialized systems that I've designed to run in places that most computers will not. On power sources you would not think a full capacity system will run on... Hard drives are something I cannot afford due to size, access speed, power consumption, thermal issues and reliability.

i was refering to specifically =) the hardrive in the macbook air, but yes i agree

I've got a few Samsung solid state drives they sent me to play with a while back.
Really great product.

They are available in a few Dell, Sony and some specialized sub notebooks now.

the gap between the mac and the pc is very thin, mac os is based on linux anyways pcs can run linux so that gap is shorter now, its really the quality of components you buy, if its a desktop then the control you have is the highest no matter what as you can just shove anything compatible in there. laptops depends on your price range. but hardware wise the playing surface is pretty equal

Saying the Mac OS is Linux based is a very loose definition at best. The kernal is actually a BSD derivative. Both Linux and BSD are Unix based. Just engineered from two very different points.

The first Mac OS was released in 1984. Linuz did not see any sign of life til 1991.

yes , its a freebsd kernel derivative.
to bad everything for the mac is insanely priced (software & hardware).
there are very user friendly linux desktop-oss (e.g. ubuntu) which you can modify completely to look like osx :)
i don't see point buying a new mac (with intel proc!) other then the 'stylish' design, or some specific piece of apple-software/functionality.

on topic:
what type of Mac ?

This board makes me sad. He ended up giving it away to somebody else who did not have a computer. Which OK was nice and all but I really wanted a Mac

And it was a Mac G4

That is too bad. That is a nice machine.

There are plenty of resellers out there who deal in used Macs though.. Not to mention Ebay.