Tourney3p0:

Software selection is a vague term. True, wintel has more software, but who cares when it is little piddly apps and other useless/badly written crap. I'll make an exception for a few games. Analogy: I have more oranges but half are rotten. The software argument is kinda weak.

Availability. I don't have a problem finding a mac to buy.

The price is greater. However, I'm willing to pay more for something which depreciates slower.

What's it running?


As you can see, it's not a Mac and it's not Windows. It is Apache (most stable web server software that has ever existed), and it is running on a Linux box (freakin' unbelievably stable).


The host is a company in Switzerland, and that's where the problem probably lies.


I use Mac OS X, on my 1Ghz TiBook, and i'm practically the envy of the rest of my TechSupport group (who all use Dells with 2K/XP). Mac OS 9 was great, as long as it didn't crash. But Mac OS X is unbelievable! My uptime (not counting restarts for installations) is easily months.


Oh, I've got a PC with XP, but why bother? I only need one PC app (Remedy for our help desk ticketing system), and I use Remote Desktop from my Mac so i don't even have to touch the PC. But if I was really peeved at the PC I'd just use the web interface.


As for games? Bah. That's what I've got a PS2 for. ;-) More and more games are coming out for consoles first, and then personal computers.


Now, can we get back to the Farkin' B00BIES!!!!


Geeze... OS flame wars, who needs 'em... :-p

Farked. Probably running Windows IIS that caught a virus - SAWS (Sudden Acute Windows Syndrome).

Don't know where some of you are getting your misinformation, but processors are not installed in Mac motherboards. They're ZIFs (zero insertion force) and can be easily removed and replaced with faster CPUs. MACs don't become obsolete in a couple of years like PCs do

If you think that Windows XP is so great, I hope you realise that not only are you sharing everything on your computer with Microsoft, which has always been the case with Windows, but now also with the government.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/3/11/124732/806

Billy_D_Goat:

"I'll make an exception for a few games."
Exactly. Update your analogy.
"PC: I have a thousand oranges but a few are rotten.
Apple: Would you like to see my orange?"

As for availability.. I meant availability in the public.

How do you figure it depreciates more slowly?

Tourney, do you have any Mac experience at all?

SherKhan:

Yep, I sure do. The iMac is the most worthless piece of "advanced machinery" I've ever used. I've also used a G4 dual gigahertz that we were testing for use in a digital video lab. I don't know if it was the video card or the monitor (probably the LCD) but DVD's were blotchy and the text would stick around for half a second after it left the screen.

When I called Tara, our Apple rep, she told me this was normal for the LCD and if I wanted video editing quality machines, I'd have to add an extra 500 for a monitor upgrade to a 19 inch CRT. This raised the price to $4500 for hardware and software. So instead of spending $90,000 on Apples, we spent $28,800 on Dells and the teacher couldn't be happier. This also had the added benefit of giving us an extra $60,000 to spend on other things. We allocated 5 grand of that for future upgrades to make sure it lasts the next 10 years.

Tourney3p0:

Games are not the only software which exists.
Apple has more than one app which runs on the platform.
I still fail to see the availability argument. If you want a Mac look in the phone book or the internet and you are bound to find a few places to buy one.
Macs have slower depreciation when one examines the average replacement time. wintel-2yrs. mac-3yrs. I still use my 25mhz quadra as a web server...works like a charm and it is 10yrs old.

While we're on that subject by the way, I'm sure you know there are no eject buttons on those DVD writer combo drives they ship. Clicking the eject button in iMovie (or was it iTunes?) and some other media program I've forgotten the name of did absolutely nothing. The only program I could find to open it was Final Cut Pro. An eject button sure would have been awesome.

Look on the keyboard.

Billy_D_Goat:

"I still fail to see the availability argument. If you want a Mac look in the phone book or the internet and you are bound to find a few places to buy one."

Where do you get your average replacement time, by the way? Apple's pride and joy is the education market, and anyone in education knows there's no budget to replace computers every 2 years. The national mandate right now is that it has to be on a 5 year roll out plan (According to the upcoming No Child Left Behind plan, or whatever it's called).

And I fail to see how your quadra matters. If someone were so inclined, they could set up Personal Web Server on an old 486 running Windows 95. It couldn't take a lot of abuse, but neither could your Quadra.

The keyboard had no eject button, volume buttons, etc. It was a standard black keyboard.

As for availability.. when I said public, I meant finding them out in the wild, in use.

Interesting. I've heard that LCDs suck for video and that is a significant price difference.. As far as that "worthless" comment goes, I'll have to disagree. I do plenty on mine, from editing video (consumer level of course) to standard rip/mix/burn to downloading and burning .exes for friends with dial-up and just today I was playing a little Warcraft III. As I posted earlier, I just had my first kernel panic after 16 months. Check re-sale prices on used Macs to see the depreciation factor.

I'm looking at my keyboard and over the number pad there is:
lower volume
raise volume
mute
eject

I wonder how long it will take M$ to make a cheaper, nastier version of iLife and .Mac.

Yes, I have to pay $100 anually for .Mac but considering what it comes with it is well worth it.

Tourney3p0: I know you're going to think this sounds dumb, but the way you eject discs is by dragging their icon into the Trash.

BTW, if anyone can help me with this -- everytime I put a CD into the G4 I edit with at work it automatically starts playing. I have to open iTunes to get to a "Stop" button. Is there a setting or extension to disable for preventing this?

B0rg9: In OS X System preferences/CDs DVDs/ poke around.

B0rg9: Yes, go to System Preferences/CDs DVDs/ and where it says "When I insert an Audio CD:" set it to Ignore (in the drop down menu).

In OS 9 (if I remember correctly, it's been a while) it's in a control panel. Disable autoplay.

Er, make that "When I insert a Music CD".

Tourney3p0

Yes, as SherKhan said check the resale value on macs. Ebay is a nice place to start. As for using a third party keyboard, there are many utilities available to turn say the f12 key (if you are in os x) into the eject key.

Availability as you have described it-I still don't see how this makes a wintel machine "better."

By the way, my bratwurst were delicious. Sauerkraut and mustard, yummmm.

Thanks Wubbya and SherKhan. It's OS 9.1 that I'm running.

Sher, were they Johnsonville brats? Those are the only kind I get anymore.

Brett Larson: TechTV's Flaming Mac Guru

Microsoft's Sweating PC Guru

More reasons?

That would suggest that there were reasons in the first place.

BOrg9 -
Go to the iTunes Preferences (not System Preferences), and in the General tab, set it to Show Songs on insertion of a CD. Sounds like it's set to Begin Playing on insertion of a CD instead.

I hope you realise that not only are you sharing everything on your computer with Microsoft, which has always been the case with Windows, but now also with the government.

Normal users don't give two healthy shiats.

A Johnsonville brat for Memphomaniac! Good call.

Well, I've got a twelve pack that ain't gonna drink itself. Bon noir.

I can't believe how many idiots thought OSX only supported mice with one button.

Cool, thanks Memphomaniac. 99.9% of the time I'm putting audio CDs in the drive it's because I'm importing audio in another program and not because I need to listen to it with the iTunes player.

Oh, and this thread's gone on entirely too long without a boobies link (nsfw). Yea, I know it's just a links page but they're decent links and there's little to no pop-ups.

I clicked on this thread looking for chicks, and all I found was a nerdy flamewar.

farking nerds...

Cool B0rg9! I liked Kitana and Gauge best. Yum!

*hears beer calling*

Yes Dear, I'll be right there...

Tourney3p0

You will lose more money than you saved in lower productivity and downtime.

TOO.MANY.FANBOYS

really people, c'mon!

I use the PC for gaming, Mac for everything else, and dont say im stupid for getting a Mac cuz its pricy because i bought it for $350.

PERSON 1: I HAVE BETTER STUFF
PERSON 2: NO, I HAVE BETTER STUFF!
PERSON 1: NO, YOUR STUFF SUCKS!
PERSON 2: SCREW YOU, YOUR STUFF SUCKS MORE!
PERSON 1: YOU SUCK
PERSON 2: SCREW YOU!
PERSON 1: MY DICK IS BIGGER THAN YOURS!
PERSON 2: NO, MY DICK IS BIGGER THAN YOURS!
etc.

If I buy a Mac, people will come and steal all my shirts?

very nice

I had to use OS 9 during high school. The only PCs we had were pentium II 400 mHz. I've heard good things about X, but haven't tried it yet. The problems i've always had with macs were few, but still annoying.

1. That little round mouse. The hand uses a twisting motion when you're browsing with your arm stable. A round mouse rotates with your hand, whereas an elongated mouse gets brought around in an arc and actually moves the cursor.

2. The one button thing. Click and hold, yeah, but i'd rather just have another button to bring up a menu than wait a whole second, especially when menus need to come up a lot. This one isn't a biggy, since it can be fixed easily, like the other mouse problem, but I farkin hate it.

3. Crashes. Blah blah stability, whatever. XP and OS 9 crash like 30 year old helicopters. But at least XP tells me details, like gibberish and the file involved. The I have a clue what's happening. OS 9 and previous, and maybe even X since I haven't used it, are frustrating as all hell. "Woops, some sort of error has occured." No shiat, genius! With XP sometimes I can put it off and hide the window while I finish some of the shiat I'm doing, like if IE crashes my computer while I'm typing a paper. Mac is just boom and restart. No options, you can only restart the computer, or click on that button which sometimes does nothing. Crash, "Woops, etc. (OK)." Click on ok, the button highlights for a second, and that's it. Thank you, I'll take my bullshiat with a lump of sugar if you please.

4. Keyboard sound control. You're listening to something, the computer freezes for a sec, and the sound stutters. It's happened to everyone; it blows. This one is actually not platform specific, I just farking hate it. When your computer's frozen, how the fark do you turn down the sound with the computer? It's not like laptops (both) or Macs have detatchable speakers you can just unplug.

Having used both platforms from scratch (no prior experience, or teaching), I've found Windows is just more intuitive. By just searching around for shiat I want to adjust, like display-wise or something, I've found a big issue. Windows puts it's shiat where you can get it if you look, and is labelled appropriately. Macs, from my experience, put it in the most arbitrary places. I had to search for 10 minutes to try and find how to switch the background on a mac once. I felt pretty stupid afterwards, but the "display" portion of the mac's stuff had brightness and contrast in it, and I think that was about it. Like someone said, Macs have good video/graphics power, but I've just never been able to make it do what I want.

And aside, you know it's really funny when people call Windows "Windoze" like it's some sort of effective insult. Just go take a nap, Groucho, all that expenditure of wit must've left you exhausted.

"And aside, you know it's really funny when people call Windows "Windoze" like it's some sort of effective insult."

I'm just glad we made it this far without seeing "Micro$oft".

Sputnik456:4. Keyboard sound control. You're listening to something, the computer freezes for a sec, and the sound stutters. It's happened to everyone; it blows. This one is actually not platform specific, I just farking hate it. When your computer's frozen, how the fark do you turn down the sound with the computer? It's not like laptops (both) or Macs have detatchable speakers you can just unplug.

Actually, my Mac has detachable speakers. And even if you have a Mac that doesn't, a PowerMate can act as a Volume wheel. Or you could buy other speakers that have volume wheels. It's easy, really.

DBeniston

ya really

Sputnik456

i can eliminate #1 & #2 easily tho: 1) gotta agree with ya on that one, the little round mouse sux, but you can always buy a cheap standard one, or you can do what i have, a Microsoft (can ya believe it?!?) mouse i took off of a dead pc of mine.

2) see #1

3) Ive never had a problem with any mac that had been built since 1998 and used at least mac os 9. If a program crashed, then it crashed, returning you to the desktop. Same could be said for Windows pc's, everybody has had unstability problems until maybe NT 4 or XP came out, but really.

Otherwise, Mac OS X is a charm and ive never had any problems with it since day 1, same with XP (tho i did crash it once, somehow).

So...who gives 2 flying shiats?

Zaphod42:

How do you figure money will be lost because of "lower productivity and downtime"? First of all, all these people are on salary. If something goes down, the technician gets up out of his chair and goes from making money sitting around to making money doing something useful. Whether the school's computers are all down or all working flawlessly, the technicians get paid all the same.

As for lower productivity.. it's a SCHOOL LAB. This isn't Taiwan. The children don't have to spend their days making money for the govermnet (yet). There's not one shiny red cent of profit or loss, even if we bought Commodore 64's.

But, for the sake of argument, even the teacher (who has used Macs for the last 20 years) agreed that the $1400 Dell with a single P4 was twice the machine as the $4500 Mac with dual gigahertz. Truthfully I was afraid she'd be afraid of dropping Final Cut Pro cold turkey and going to Premiere, but she didn't mind at all once she saw how much better the machine performed in general.

I wish to offer only this: I'm keeping an eye out in case of a future laptop purchase. Now granted, those Centrino systems are pretty scorching (though I'd much rather see nVidia do a Mobile nForce with the same features), but they're also the high end of the laptop market. I need cheap.

I also need video editing capability. I can get a barebones iBook for $1000 (though I'd personally go a couple hundred extra for a CD burner), or I can get a cheap HP for a little more. But I get Firewire built in on the iBook, and have to go buy a card for the HP (not to mention Linux distro and trying to get Kino or Cinelerra running -- no way in hell I'm running Windows on my hardware).

No, not conclusive. But competitive.

<b> 04-05-03 06:39:13 PM SherKhan
If I got my current Graphite iMac 600/256 for just under a grand, how did I spend thousands too much?</B>

Haha. The fact you don't know why that statement is funny speaks volumes.

Dual 1.42GHz PowerPC is only $2699.00, you can substitute the other components for more affordable ones.

unless you have them already.