NVMDSTEvil said:Cant stand "recommend me xxxx" threads. They always get filled with this crap
Hey! Don't blame me for starting the thread!
At the risk of aggravating some, I'll say I've decided to get an IBM X31. Nothing against Apple. I used Macs at home and at work for 10 years.
Unfortunately for Apple sales, their offerings at the time I purchased my last two computers just didn't fit.
ren@darkertek said:
I understand your point, believe me. I'm a Mac user though - I'm comfortable on that side of the fence. I'd like to advise you to add more memory to your GF's Mac! There's lots of debatable issues with Macs, but here's one that's just *fact*: Apple sells their computers with criminally little RAM in them. 1GB is mandatory IMO - even for casual use, and more is usually worth the money, at least up to 2GB.
As per laptop recommendations, I suggest a recent vintage Mac. They can run OS X, which I myself like a lot. The single-button pad is a disadvantage, but there are utilities available that 'fake' a second button and a scroll-wheel by making parts of the touchpad behave as buttons. That way, you have a nice machine that can do anything - OS X, Windows and Linux, with only a slight mousing handicap.
There's some very nice speaker DIY software available for OS X, such as FuzzMeasure Pro, and lots of audio-editing software, too.
kristleifur said:
In the end arguing hardware is a bit pointless, they tend to be close (& constantly leapfrogging each other).
In the end it comes down to the engineering elegance & consistency of the OS. And there OS X is way ahead of Windows or Linux, Not only does it have a very stable, long serving open source core -- BSD -- but the most consistent, and well developed GUI -- a GUI that has the hybrid vigor of NeXT OS + Classic Mac OS. Not perfect by a long ways (i still see the spinning beach-ball too often in the Finder), it is sooo much slicker & efficient than Windoz (which has always been a 3rd rate copy), and Linux GUIs are AWOL (the one linux geek i know, had no hesistation at all switching his day-to-day internet & productivity tasks to an ancient 300 MHz Smurf from a 800+ MHz PC when presented with said Mac). And if he misses it, he can always go into Terminal & do the command line thing.
Where the elegance really comes in, is that it lets one get work done without getting in the way (much). By this spring Apple will have shipped its 5th major update of OS X since its original release in 2000 (?), and each is better than the last, and (with the exception of RAM requirements) lets your old Mac run faster. Vista (a shadow of Longhorn) was originally supposed to ship in 2002. What does that track record presage for the future?
OS X only works on Macs -- and is tightly integrated with the hardware (something not possible in the Windows world) -- both an advantage & a disadvantage. And thou Apple could ship an OS X for any decent PC, as long as their market share keeps growing don't expect to see anything soon.
dave
planet10 said:
totally subjective =)
win2k, winXP are totally stable if you run them light, and they arent bugged by adware and virus. linux is much the same. both have ridiculous default setups in most cases. both can be made to run very light, fast, stable. its a matter of user setup and use habits.
bsd runs on a pc. its a very good desktop/server thing. VERY good documentation on the BSD side of things. its not exclusive to OSX, in fact it can be had in more pure form on a pc.
again, subjective.
id prefer xfce4, blackbox, openbox, fluxbox over ANY other wm. aces in effeciency, resource use, and staying the F@#$ outta your way.
for lighter installations, ratpoison, evilwm, ion are very ninja in the caspabilities, tho not easy to use.
if you need ridiculous bloat, kde and gnome easily are up there with explorer and aqua.
all of these run on bsd as well as linux, as far as i know (ive tested my favorites).
and terminal is nothing to brag about on a *nix system. thats like bragging windows has notepad.
thats funny i feel like its always in the way, lacking in features, totally dumbed down. again this assumes for some reason you have problems getting work done in a windows or open environment. i tend to think theyre more useful, with a much broader range of application than a mac system.
you can say itunes stays out of your way compared to windows media players with a straight face?
windows sucks. its also a much more complex project that bsd hacking for a handful of hardware platforms. anyway, osx isnt any better, its just more big company code shoved down your throat. btw do you have to pay $$$ for those major updates?
like, you might think your apple crap smells prettier than my windows crap, but like big corp crap is big corp crap.
at least with windows and a pc, you have practically all the hardware and most the software in the world at your disposal.
pretty much the ONLY thing you dont have is OSX. and like, if you aint into aqua, that isnt really a loss.
ren@darkertek said:
Not completely... there are some real-world studies that back my statement up.
Quantity doesn't mean quality... the software i use on a daily basis to get work done, is either NA on Windows, or the versions that are, are a shadow of themselves because of having to work inside Windows.
dave
Ren, my computer is a tool, not a toy. I don't have time to sit playing with hundreds of different operating systems or configurations. I just want a computer that works when it is turned on, doesn't crash all the time, and runs the software I use on a day to day basis well. My Mac does exactly that.
planet10 said:
so link to them. at least mention the sources of said studies, and which real-world to which you are referring.
apple sucks because (fresh news, yum!)...
Apple censors people from talking about NVidia bugs
http://chipzilla.com/default.aspx?article=36964
"The funny thing is that rather than getting much in the way of support from Slashdot readers, Drago is being hounded by Apple Fanboys who believe that Apple has the right to censor its forums as it likes. They do not seem to understand why anyone would take a screen shot of a post as proof that it had been taken down."
(classic, ha)
Apple/NVidia Driver Bug — Question Deleted
http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/01/14/211242.shtml
the post, removed by apple forum administration.
http://img02.picoodle.com/img/img02/7/1/14/f_removedi_bc07m_453e6642.jpg
backup, cuz other img got /.ed
http://www.darkertechnologies.com/image/f_removedi_bc07m_453e6642.jpg
just like dell, before they removed the forum entirely because of bad press.
bad corp sourced OS is bad corp sourced OS. some peoples dont like aqua or trust apple anymore than microsoft or pc vendors.
ren@darkertek said:
I don't have the time to be bothered chasing it down -- you do it as an excercise. The study was on some 2500 large media production companies. The big conclusion was that so much more billable work was accomplished (something like 50% more) using Macintosh over Windows PCs that the study could be used to sue any director of such a company for ignoring fiduciary interests, if they tried to move the company from Macs to PCs.
dave
pinkmouse said:
30min researching decent current chipsets. if you cant justify 30min of research for a purchase this big, then we live in completely different worlds. OEM manufacturers are known for cutting major costs on this core part, more essential than even a cpu and ram for performance.
$300-$10,000 on a built white box pc, or build it yourself, newegg.
$90 for xp home, $150 for xp pro, $140 for xp pro w/ vista upgrade coupon. oem packaging, also at newegg.
whitebox pc (non-sony, -dell, -hp, -acer, -etc) running vanilla windows installs dont suffer from the million processes out of the box related problems that OEM manufacturers are known for having. xp with a responsible amount of load runs stable. ive never blue screened it.
grisoft avgfree = free, constantly updated antivirus
lavasoft adaware = free, constantly update antiadware
one operating system, one configuration, no brainer.
btw my "toy" pc can run loads of engineering apps for CAD, CAM, PCB editing, electronics sim, microcontroller programming environments, as well as ports for most my favorite *nix gpl apps. i have a dedicated 200MHz "toy" that runs a CNC mill in realtime. lets see osx do these things.
alternatives that run for osx are slim picking, if they even exist.
planet10 said:
you assume this is because workers cant get things done with windows PCs, and that the lack of work output is the fault of the operating system. very likely this could be caused by employees finding it easier to use windows PCs to do what they want them to, including activities that distract from actual work.
also, a study like that youd have to compare the types of companies that buy macs, the types that buy windows, and what else thats similar between those groups that could be causing the difference in work output. usually studies like this need an entity with money and an agenda to get started. and the whole world doesnt use their computer like a media company employee, nor can they afford 'good' mac software that these companies use. whole world isnt music and movies.
i wonder how its divided up in more engineering/manufacturing/industrial based markets.
im off this thread for the day, its been fun =)
ren@darkertek said:
bloatware, unnecessary in OS x
Engineering tools are the one niche where aps are scarce on the ground... but with an Intel Mac you can run them anyway.
In Architectural CAD the Mac is not a 2nd class citizen giving smart architects a decided economic advantage (where i live 75% of architects are on Macs)
The real big, real serious tools will quite likely jump over windows because they alreay rn on UNIX and the GUI development tools on the Mac make it WAY easier to do a port. For instance, the time to finish the initial human genome project took 1/2 the estimated time largely because of the port to OS X -- there are whole fields where it is crazy not to be running Macs.
PM & i work primamily in one of those. Media production. A PC is a dead weight when it comes to making pictures, movies, magazines, etc.
dave
planet10 said:
the whole wm is bloatware!
by installing windows on it? does that work? surely you dont mean in windows emulation of some sort, heh...
apple is a marketting company. they deal in hype. microsoft + snap together overpriced hardware + oem pc manufacturer behaviour patterns. ill pass, thanks. maybe when they stop trying to take over the world with renamed standard protocols, hacked up base layouts, and silly iStuff.
done fureal now, laters.
One thing you do it your selvers might like to know is that ALL had drive manufacturers grade their hard drives after manufacture. I learned this recently at a seminar for Dolby Digital Cinema Servers. Dolby explained that large computer manufacturers get the A and B grade drives and the C and D grade are sold to chain stores and do it your self computer parts places. Humm... I thought it funny they brought it up as over the last 12 years I have lost close to a dozen IDE type hard drives... and of all makes, about 1 per year. After the last IDE failure I switched to SCSI drives as I got a good deal from a local guy that had unused Seagate Baracuda pulls from Dell servers that were never put into service... thank you U.S. Govt.! These drives are now close to three years old and neary a blip out of any of em. I think what Dolby's tech guys told me is indeed very true!
Mark
Mark
ren@darkertek said:
An intel mac can boot into XP, or you can run any number of OS natively (& simultaneously) in a virtual machine environment.
Ha, ha, ha... the kind of engineering required to design an iPod, or and iPhone or an iMac is way beyond a marketing company. They definitely have a strong brand, but it is earned because they bring inovative engineering solutions to market.
dave
Mark A. Gulbrandsen said:
This is true.
At work we have heard it from several factory reps including Soundtracks/Digico and Digidesign. There are these "Audio Grade" drives that most hard disk based audio manufacturers sell as upgrades/replacements. I think the name actually came from external drive makers that use the name to sell thier products as I've not seen any reputable digital audio company slap that term on thier storage drives.
We use the higher grade drives in anything that will have audio stored on it like our hard disk recorders and SFX machines- even LCS. (anyone remember LCS?)
planet10 said:
Uh, none of those are innovative... just a rehashed product redone slightly better or with features the other competitors neglected to use or think of.
They're also getting sued for using the iPhone name which was already trademarked.
edit. And of course your cant customize, improve, modify or change most Apple products really. Sure you can get a few upgrades here or there, but very limited. Thats what I dont like.
NVMDSTEvil said:
You are only thinking about hardware.
What Apple did that was innovative. is that they paid attention to how people interact with tech hardware, and came up with a better UI (ie software). That is why, for instance, the iPod owns 75% of the market. And much of that innovation is covered by patents.
What sets the Macintosh apart from Windows is the elegance of the software. And you see this every day in the field when you take an older computer neophyte & you see what hapens when you put them in front of a Mac vrs a Windows PC
No big deal... it gets both Apple & Cisco in the news -- it may even be part of the deal they have been working on for weeks before the iPhone announcement
Have a read on this guys take on this
http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/mar...32081.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA
BTW, there are 4 or 5 devices called iPhones.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.