I just wanted to give my 2 cents worth...

I find the Mac OS *much* easier to work with. Here's a few examples:

If I want to switch between apps on the Mac, I can use the Application menu. If I use the Taskbar on Windows 2000 (which I use everyday at work as a software tester), it keeps flashing at me. I don't mean occasionally - I mean nearly every time I click a different app. It get's *very* annoying. This reduces my workflow a great deal, as I'm switching between apps for most of testing.

I do a lot of installation testing for our products, and this often requires a clean install of a system. On the Mac, I can simply trash the application's folder and preference files, and any extensions etc. that it has added. On Win2k, I *have* to ghost a clean install image from a different partition back over the original to ensure that the registry is clean. I have found no other way - hacking about in a Win2K registry is not an option. Again, this interrupts my workflow by at _least_ ten minutes each time.

The Mac OS does *NOT* crash all the time. The only time my G4/400 384MB RAM crashes is when I run IE5. It just locks up at the most annoying times - and often for no reason. I'm using OmniWeb 4 on OS X and it's fast, crystal clear and has a lot more features than IE does. My Win2K machine crashes more often. I've only managed to get the BSoD once, but apps crash all the time. And yes, it has been installed correctly. It's just that adding and removing apps on your Windows machine can de-stabilise it.

I've had to reinstall it five times now in just 15 months. My Mac has not yet been reinstalled since I got it in March 2000. If I find any problems, I can sort them out myself. In contrast, the support required for a Windows machine is massive.

Changing an IP address in the Mac OS is simple and doesn't require a reboot. Windows needs to be rebooted. More and more of my testing work is involving Internet and networking technologies, and this has a serious detrimental effect on it.

I think the cold boot times are the same for both machines, but shutting down on the Mac is a lot faster. Sleep mode is fast, especially on Mac OS X.

I don't believe anyone should be bothered with the time taken to load an app. As many of you have said already, it's dependent on the speed of your hard drive, controller, fragmentation etc. And the time taken is usually only a few seconds anyway. I don;t mind waiting that long.

Just my 2 cents worth... Thanks.

ok heres one thing.
.i send a file[video,photo, audio] to my pc friends
you have to watch what you type[ie. no ///,&&&,and
don`t ever get that file name wrong.
...you could send me a file and type
"rumplestiltskin/////%%%%" on it [for a file ending]
and the mac would still know what it was....
dna

[the_____oracle]

CritterDoc,

Just a quick note, I work for Big Blue, I'm a bonifide Blue 8 Bar Guy, But @ home Mac OS is the default.

Go right ahead, Build your dream wintel box, spend thousands, invest hours, read Mb's of readme's. Enjoy because if you don't enjoy it you will go absolutely flucking MAD before it's over.

My advice ? Get an IBM Think Pad, opt for win2k and check out the Linux future.

Just hang on to ONE of those flakey old Macs, in 18 mths when your wintel box shows BSoD you will want to jump on that old mac and get some work done

[b8rtm8nn]

I work on both (not an AMD 1.3 specifically, but close enough), and the PC is faster(actually a lot faster for the price). I think it helps to have both, though, especially if you are going to build your own PC. I have an iMac that I use at home, but cannot tinker with the guts (fortunately for my wife), but a homebuilt PC that is super stable, until something changes, like installing a new program. Since a PC problem can take a while to diagnose in Windows land, a backup machine is nice to have. A backup Mac is even better, since you tend to gain a repulsion for the Windows interface while troubleshooting.

If you have an old Mac, keep it and build your own PC. Then try to network the two and learn all kinds of cool and frustrating things.

Since most speed issues with launching etc are more HD based then Mhz based or PC/Mac based, you can make your Mac a lot faster with a new IBM HD.

When choosing Mac versus PC it really comes down to the SW. What software do you need or want to run. Games=PC. Photoshpo=Mac. There are many other SW choices out there. I use Macs and PCs and Linux and FreeBSD etc. I prefer Mac for most uses though my main machine right now is a homebuilt (rock solid) dual 540 celeron with 256mb RAM and TNT2 and W2K. W2K is the best Windows out there but it doesn't compare to Mac OS 9/X in terms of ease of use and comfortableness. IE 5 on W2K is always having a window "time out" and causing me to have to force kill IE. It really gets on my nerves. IE on Windows is fast but it sucks stability wise. (My machine is wicked stable, up for days or even weeks some times but IE has to be force quit at least once a day). When I get a faster Mac than my UMAX J700/G3-315 or 9600-G3-396 then they will become my main macgines for use. Now I do things on the Macs but my general surfing and email is on Windows. And things like MS Office, when I am required to use it by a customer, since I own a copy for Windows and don't want to give S more money for a Mac version, since I hate office anyway. All my busines bookkeeping and most word processing and all that is on my Macs (MYOB/Appleworks). OS X rocks, even on my 9600-G3-296 after I put in a Sonnect IDE controller and fast IBM HD. OS X is where I do most of my work and proramming and SSH-ing into my servers from etc.

It all comes down to the SW you want to run. Sure I'll build a Tbird 1.3 or something when I get some cash, but I will also get a dual 533 G4. The G4 will be the main machine. The Tbird the machine for games and when I need to run Windows for something.

I bought a Gateway 1200Mhz Win2K PC because I had to do some tasks that were highly processor intensive.

One of these tasks is Postscripting using Adobe's PS driver from a Filemaker Pro layout. The other is importing and sorting a 2.4 million record database into Filemaker.

I use a dual G4/450 (OS 9) as my main workstation. I'm a 10-year Mac veteran and I know how to optimize a system. Both Machines have 30GB drives and 256MB RAM.

A direct comparison of these 2 tasks shows how Processor and I/O intensive tasks are much faster on a PC. I need to postscript 5000 pages out of Filemaker. On my Dual G4/450 (OS 9) this takes approx. 5 hours. On the Athlon, this takes less than 1 hour. (And yes, the Postscript code is fine--its Adobe code). Since I need to do this every 2 weeks, its better to do it on a machine where I don't have to let the thing run overnight. If I make a mistake, it only takes another half hour to correct it.

Importing the 2.5 million records into the Filemaker DB (which is done monthly) takes hours on my G4, and about a half hour on the PC.

I still use my Mac as my primary box, largely because I've offloaded these processor intensive tasks to the PC, and I prefer the Mac for usability.

But if you run jobs that take hours on a Mac, and they're not optimized for Dual Processors or Altivec (most things, Filemaker included, aren't), you'll do them faster on a PC with a higher clock speed.

Subjectively, I have to say my Mac "feels" faster at opening windows, launching apps and such. Certainly, I prefer doing the actual Filemaker programming on my Mac--it's horrible and clunky on Windows. And I wouldn't go near Dreamweaver or text editing or Imageready on the PC.

That said, Mhz does count for some things. Look before you leap, but leap if you must leap. Remember: these are computers. They're tools. Don't sacrifice your valuable time to a plastic box with transistors because you like one company's logo more than another's. Use the best tool for the job. What's the best tool? That depends on what you do.

Originally posted by My 2 cents:
Duplicate a CD: PC (the PC can dup PC, MAC, Linux, Unix and mixed CDs with no trouble and they run on their platform just like the originals. I haven't found anything for the MAC that can do that. Neither had the guys at the Apple Data Center when I worked there one year.)

Just my 2 cents...

Me Tarzan, you wrong.

I'm not sure if you made a typo here or not but Macs can copy and burn PC, Linux, Unix, Hybrid CD's, ISOs, etc. I've been buring all of the aforementioned for at least the past two years as my PC doesn't have a burner, but my Mac does.

There's an app called Toast that will handle all of these file formats and Toast comes with just about every Mac CD-R out now and you should know about Toast if you've ever burnt a CD on a Mac.

I don't know what you or the guys at Apple Data Center were smoking when you tried to burn the above formats on a Mac - but you were smoking something. If anything, the PC supports LESS image formats than the Mac. PC's can't read a Mac CD, where as Macs can read PC CD's.

Your CD info is just a 100% inaccurate FUD-spewing bit.

I got me a an imac dv special edition 400mhz 128megs ram and a 40gig 5400 rpm hd, a power mac 8500 with g3 366 upgraded processor 192 megs ram and a 9 gig ultra 2 scsi 10,000rpm hd, a free amd atholon 900mhz 256 megs ram ata 66 5400 20 gig drive. Now let me tell you I also maintain the computers for my local university, they have both macs and pc's. I not only maintain the computers for the faculty and staff of the college of arts and science, I also maintain every lab for this college. The majority of my service calls are to fix pcs. Some pc labs that are only a year old are already falling apart, they blow parts left and right, windos nt4 gets corrupted all the time. I just put together a new lab using 900mhz atholons, using 128 megs of ram and 20 gig hds. They already exibit crashing and freezing, sometimes just on boot up. I think its probably a cooling issue, even though it has 3 fans running, not including the power supply fan. All I can say is I already know the headaches are gonna be pretty bad. Fresh out of the box, I had one processor die, one dead video card, one dead powersupple, one dead ethernet card, 3 screwed up mouse, had to reinstall the OS, and have had 3 computers fail to network. This is on day one. One week after I've had to deal with crashing, freezing and network problems.
As far as the problems I have with macs, most of them are just user error, some of the macs here are about 15 years old. still running. The worst problem I have had with a mac is the new indigo imac. It crashes all the time, I suspect it has to do with the imation usb floppy drive/drivers. For the most part that is all the problems I have had with macs here.
I had a customer, I sometimes do side jobs, she bought the first imacs, rev A, all i can say is that thing feels a lot faster than the imac special edition dv I have. I think it has to do with the type of HD used. I swapped out my 10 gig hd for a 40gig hd and i could feel the difference, if speed was what I wanted over capcity, I would have tried an ata 66 with 7200rpm mechanism. I think apple put slower hd's to cut costs. I still feel my 8500 is faster than both my imac dv special edition and my amd atholon. Now when i upgraded my processor, I could feel the power from the get go, the os was faster, apps loaded and ran faster. I'm hard pressed to see the differnce between my 900mhz amd and the pentium II 333mhz that I upgraded from. In fact the 333mhz pII is my gf's, she still doesnt thing the pc is fast, oh it even has an ati radeon card. Thing feels as slow as a dog to me. maybe its fast on games, but I dont really care for too many games on pc. Only first person shooters. I've tried playing some other games on computers and just hate it when your on level 200 or something and the damn computer locks up and crashes, and you have to start all over again. I preffer consols for most of my gaming. Computers still rock when it comes to network or online gamine. And until they figure out better control schemes for fps on consoles I wont play them on those machines.
If you really want that g4 wait till next year february. I think the schedule is for the new quad 1ghz processor, maye they will be running ddr ram and ata 100 hds. If you want your current G4's to fly, put ata 66 7200 hds, in or put the new ultra2 scsi 320 card, if its out, and a hd thats ultra2scsi 320, 15000 rpm, and you will never look at another pc. I feel that you should see the processor speed on the desktop as well as in the apps. What I see on my 900mhz computer no speed difference on the desktop and on apps, maybe only slightly on games. damn thing still crashes a lot. But on my macs, I can see the difference on the desktop and every app, not just games. I run a hotline server on my mac and one on my pc, I only restart my mac once every 2 weeks. mostly just for precautions. The pc has to be rebooted every 4 to 6 hours when running hotline.
My girlfriend was an avid pc user, now she loves my macs. The only reason i have the 900mhz pc is that it was cheap and why waste a perfectly good mac for server purposes when i can run a cheap pc, wont miss it. probably only will only use it as a server or to play certain fps games.

Best upgrade is to get really really wicked fast hds and tons of RAM.

Oh like I've said before, 128bit altivec processing vs, wintel MS 32bit processing, its a no brainer, 128bit is 4x faster than 32bit. Windows 2k, ME, 98 are all 32 bit OS. They do not take advantage of the 64bit processors they run on. If you run cars on two lanes at high speed, vs running cars on an 8 lane highway, I tell you I can push more cars through 8 lane at slower speeds than I can on the fast 2 lane highway. Dont believe me, think about me when your stuck in bumper to bumper traffic after work. You'll wish you had more lanes. Have fun, this isnt based on any bench marks but on real world use. Use the knowledge and you be the judge. All I can say is if you build your own pc and make a copy of win 98 from a friend, your not giving market share to MS lol. ciao

People are so worked up on this MHz thing and never graduate from "Geeking tool" mentality....

No wonder computer never becomes user-centric.

critterdoc wrote:

Anyway, FWIW, the following actions on my quickest mac [266 rev.c iMac] time out as follows:
Cold boot: 65 secs
Shut down: 10 secs
Load Excel and 7000 byte file: 4 secs
Load Excel and 900,000 byte Excel file: 5 secs (?repeated several times?)
Load Word and 23,000 byte Word doc 5 secs
Load Communicator: 8 secs
Duplicate 76,000,000 byte 440 item folder: 25 secs.

Another poster wrote:

If you want a comparison on a G4/466MHz standard issue:

Starting Word and opening a 70K document: <2 seconds
Starting Word and opening 10 30K-70K documents: 3 seconds
Starting Excel and opening a 252K template: 3 seconds
Copying a 94MB .mp3 file: 13 seconds

and a PeeCee guy wrote:

Here are some times from my 1GHz Tbird, 256MB RAM, win2k [note I'm running winamp, AIM, MSN Messenger, and UD.exe (uses every spare cpu cycle to analyze molecules for cancer cure)]

cold boot 89s (22s of which is within BIOS)
shutdown 19s
Word 23KB file open 4.17s
Excel 70K file open 2.03s
Excel 14K file open 0.89s
Duplicate 74.2MB folder containing 352 files,19 subdirectories 13.74s

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have a G4/400 AGP. This is the low-end tower, 2 series back (and 2 series slower!). On this machine I got the following times:

Cold start: 65 secs
Shutdown: 6 secs
Load Excel and 10k byte file: 2 secs
Load Excel and 925k byte Excel file: 3 secs
Load Word and 25k byte Word doc: 3 secs
Load Communicator: 2 secs
Duplicate 76 MB 444 item folder (4 subfolders): 18 secs.

IOW, the 1 GHz Thunderbird is
- slower booting
- slower shutting down
- similar in Excel
- similar in Word
- similar in file duplication speed (he only dup'd 352 files)

I find it fascinating that it takes a PC with a clock rate 250% higher than my G4 to even come close to the speed I'm getting (at least on these measures) with my old G4.

So, thanks for asking, critterdoc. This just reinforces my low opinion of PCs and my high opinion of Macs.

The people who say the Athlon is faster than a similiar priced G4 are correct. And there is no way you can beat the price if you build your own PC box. You just can't. With that said, base your decision on which applications you use.

Games, get a PC, hands down, no contest.

Typical tasks like web browsing, MS Office, etc. You saw the results, nothing to write home about between the differences. It's just your choice of OS there. Reason it takes so long for Word, Excel, and IE to initally start up on the Mac is because it has to load the libraries, which are already in memory when Windows boots. After launching IE for Mac, quit, and launch it again. Huge speed difference, eh?

But something does need to be said about total cost of ownership and efficiency. I use Digital Performer for audio and my video setup is geared around Final Cut Pro. Neither exists for the PC. I used to use Premiere, which is on the PC as well, but it is a dog compared to FCP. It takes minutes to get things done in FCP that would take hours in Premiere, due to workflow (and some rendering).

So in this particular case (and I know everyones' differs), it wouldn't matter to me if I had a 1.2GHz Athlon, or a 2.4GHz Athlon or whatever. I could still get things done more efficiently on a Mac when it comes to actually getting something done. Last time I had a client looking over my shoulder when working on an video project, I was thanking whatever higher power exists that I was using FCP instead of Premiere, just because of how easy it is to show the result almost instantly. That was more impressive than any speed difference could have mustered. (Dual G4 450, BTW. $2k, refurb then. Now only $1600@Apple. What, buy new?)


[This message has been edited by HigginsDragon (edited 04-26-2001).]

[Frogger]

I attempted to build an AMD Athlon system... check this thread out for what I was in for:
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenT...4&m=3130992341

[iPad]

pele:

The Tyan board you are referring to is currently ONLY in Japan, you can buy it from there if you want to, but the AMD 760MP has STILL not been released in the US.

And your price comparison is still invalid, even if the mobo DID cost $1000, the PC would STILL have better specs:
(prices include shipping)

The Mac: (from AppleStore, or any other dealer etc)
Dual 533MHz
PowerPC G4
1MB L2 cache
128MB SDRAM memory
40GB Ultra ATA
hard drive
CD-RW Drive
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX
Gigabit Ethernet
56K internal modem
Mac OS 9.1
Total cost: About $2500-2600

The PC:
Case with PSU: $150
2 x 1.33Ghz Thunderbird Processors: $460
Tyan AMD760MP based mobo: $1000
256MB PC2100 DDR RAM from Crucial: $114
SoundBlaster Live! Value OEM: $40
Altec/Lansing Speakers (5 way) - $50
Maxtor DiamondMax 40GB 7200RPM: $150
Plextor Plexwriter 12x/10x/32x = $170
ELSA Geforce 2 MX 32MB - $80
Generic 10/100 Ethernet card: $30
CPU Cooler (Thermaltake, Thermosonic, GlobalWin, your pick) - $30
Total cost: $2494

Now, i know what to expect from both sides:
Mac User: Apple will have much faster dual processors by the time this mobo comes out for a cheaper price, it'll blow EVERYTHING away. Apple has a warrenty too. Not to mention Mac OS X. And the Geforce 3 MX is expected to hit the shelves later, but it'll be for the mac first. (this is a false statement by the way, but many people on the these boards seem to be obessed with the geforce 3 coming to mac first, which by the way, is not true either)

PC User: AMD 760MP mobos will be MUCH cheaper than the Tyan board by the time US board vendors adopt it. 1.53Ghz Palominos are coming out this quarter as well. And we can overclock those Palominos to always be faster. Face it, the mac sucks, Mac OS X runs like a ****ing dog.

So, please don't add any comments like this, it's already been covered.




------------------
NO SIG YO

Originally posted by spb:
Re: self made pc vs apple made macs - who do you think has the best chance of building an extremely reliable , top quality , stunningly designed controlled computer with an os the envy of everyone - a) joe ordinary with a micron of ability but tons of gung-ho spirit..or b) a brilliant computer company that is lead by the most charismatic & visionary ceo of any company in the known universe & has been at the forefront of technology for over 20 years ?

You gets what you pays for in life.. soap box derby ( PC)
or Mercedes S-class (Mac) - your choice....

God ur dumb....

Here's Apple Computers:
Someone draws a picture of a girly looking box
Someone rips it out of the coloring book
Someone takes it over to engineering
The engineers shove parts into a box to make it look like the purty picture.

Here's the PC world:
We make parts
If the parts arent good enough, competition makes us make it better


Very unlike the MacWorld...where if it's crap, its an industry standard!

[pele]

Originally posted by iPad:
pele:


The PC:
Case with PSU: $150
2 x 1.33Ghz Thunderbird Processors: $460
Tyan AMD760MP based mobo: $1000
256MB PC2100 DDR RAM from Crucial: $114
SoundBlaster Live! Value OEM: $40
Altec/Lansing Speakers (5 way) - $50
Maxtor DiamondMax 40GB 7200RPM: $150
Plextor Plexwriter 12x/10x/32x = $170
ELSA Geforce 2 MX 32MB - $80
Generic 10/100 Ethernet card: $30
CPU Cooler (Thermaltake, Thermosonic, GlobalWin, your pick) - $30
Total cost: $2494

Oh my, the $1500 Dual Athlon just got a little more expensive didn't it. Hmm, and you're gonna run those dual athlons with a $150 power supply+case?? Well, AMD says they recommend at least a 430 W power supply for the dual Athlon, not to mention that requirement is the only configuration they'll officially support, "Palomino" Athlons, not the 1.33 Ghz Thunderbirds you're planning on sticking in there. And Palominos are supposed to run cooler, so....

I could take your price list apart, but I'm not gonna, it's not worth it.

AMD is a great company and Athlons are great processors, that's not who I have a problem with. And yeah, Athlons are faster than current G4s, everybody knows that. But I would never put that noisy, ugly box you're gonna build in my home. If a decent OEM like IBM or HP comes with a well designed dual Athlon workstation, I'll buy it. I have no problem paying twice the amount of what it would cost for me to build it, if it's gonna be certified to run the 3D apps I want reliably. Have a good design to keep the noise down, and be overall decent to look at.

[Eskimo]

I find it fascinating that it takes a PC with a clock rate 250% higher than my G4 to even come close to the speed I'm getting (at least on these measures) with my old G4.

I find it fascinating that you would think that a faster CPU would have much effect on any of those tasks. Could I speed up my boot/shutdown times, sure, I just need to not be running 12 programs when i click shutdown, nor do I need so many of my programs to be in my startup folder. But I don't mind the small difference in time. Is there a difference between 3 seconds to open a file and 4 seconds, not to me. If all you do is do small office tasks, surf the net, and read email you don't need an Athlon or a PowerMac. That is what budget PCs and the iMac are for. Spend the extra money on DSL or a cable modem. If you want to do actual CPU intensive work then get a faster computer.

RE: Dual processor Athlons
The Tyan motherboard you are speaking of is not out in Japan nor anywhere else in the world. Those were pictures off a japanese website of a prerelease version of the Tyan 760MP motherboard which is primarily intended to fulfill a server role. Much more consumer oriented 760MP and 760MPX based solutions will be eventually announced by AMD's partners in approximately the June timeframe. I have been able to see a dual Palomino 760MP system run and its performance is quite impressive.

[iPad]

pele: The system WILL be less than $1500 if the motherboard didn't account for nearly 40 percent of the cost. Perhaps if we didn't use 1.33Ghz Thunderbirds, and cut down to 1.1-1.2. But the fact is, this system is non-existent. The mac IS, and for the mean time, you can get a MUCH better system, although not dual CPU. AMD is expected to announce pricecuts on the 30th, so processor prices should drop a bit.

AMD recommends a at least a 460W PSU, but they also recommend having a HSF combo under 300 grams, that DID not stop anyone. The fact is, you can run the system on quite a bit less. Each 1.33Ghz Thunderbird dissipates around 73-74W, therefore, 2 would use about 146W (1.75V x 42 amps). That still leaves you with 200W using an Enermax 350W PSU (just to be safe) and unless you are using peltiers etc, you will have enough power. If i cannot win that argument, by simply spending a few more bucks, you can get a higher wattage PSU.

------------------
NO SIG YO

man, some of you mac users are REALLY st00pid

as for those of you that are educated, you may be excused

but as the guardian of all knowledge, let me say this

a mac is good for photoshop

sgi is good for graphic-intensive stuff

a pc is good for anything else

i DARE you to prove me wrong...why?

because you can't

[scottells]

Hello MR. iPad. I'm back. I did not mean to make you mad. I did not say you or anyone else was stupid. I said "THATS THE STUPIDEST THING I EVER HEARD". But you did call me an Idiot. That I am not. Like I said before. I work at the Los Angeles Air Force Base Space and Missile Systems Center. I am A Graphic Designer/3D Animator/Website Designer. I create 3D Animations for Satellites Missiles and Top Secret Aircraft�s and Space Based Lasers. They give me specs and blueprints. I build them in 3D. Then they build the real thing from my models. I do this all ON MACS NOT PCs. I have seen top secret technology that will scare the crap out of you and make you scream and run like a little b**ch. such as organic processors and micro robotic technology to name just a couple. I play a roll in helping create GPS satilites, to aid with sell phone technology, car navigation systems and space based laser satellites that will protect your ass from enemy missile attacks. These all aid in you and everybody else�s life in the US and some in other allied countries in the world. What the hell do you do for a living?!!!

I just wanted to know what the big deal was about buying personal computers mostly for games when you can buy a cheap game console that you can really have fun with. Like playing Final Fantasy (yes, I know they have it for the PC thats good), Gran Turismo, Shenmue, Metal Gear Solid 2, Onimusha, Resident Evil, ATV Off Road Fury, SSX just to name a few of the best games ever made in gaming history. Have you ever heard of any of these games? I play them on my 64" Philips Digital High Definition Rear Projection Television with built in high definition not just HDTV Ready. Check it out at http://www.philipsusa.com/cgi-bin/pu...elevision/Digi tal+and+HD+TV&msection=Television&msectLinks=produ cts/tv_main With my surround sound Yamaha sound system with Dolby Digital DTS ES, along with analog shock vibration controllers. Thats a real gaming experience. I know a whole lot of people that have PCs and Macs that play games on them they always talk about the most popular games Diablo, Starcraft, Mist and Quake. These games are weak and shallow compared to the console games. The characters are ugly and extremely blocky no matter how good the video cards are. WHY!!! Texture mapping is OK (just OK) . They all love these puzzle, Chess type games and first person shooters like thats all they know. WHY!!! So I invited them over for a video game party to play my console game systems. (I have almost every console game system ever known to man and the biggest videogame library anyone has ever seen) They could not believe their eyes and just stared with their mouths open when they saw the power of Dreamcast and especially PS2. THEY HAD NO IDEA WHAT THEY WERE MISSING. Now most of them have Dreamcasts and or PS2s. THEY SAW THE LIGHT!!!

you wrote:

"I beg to differ. The only advantage consoles have is basically price, which is basically why console games usually sell so many units. However, the PC has what the consoles cannot provide, and that right now is network play. PS2 will soon have this, but you WILL have to pay a monthly fee which makes it suck."

I really don't care how many units they sell. Dreamcast, Playstation2, Nintendo Game Cube and Microsoft XBox (sounds like its trying to copy the Game Cubes name, go figure) will all have some kind of network play. Paying a fee does suck. But I don't really care about network play most people don't. I think thats for people who don't have any friends to play with at home. But I do see how it can be cool to play with someone in Japan or some other country. Maybe I will try that some day. But I still don't really care. But if you do thats cool.

The Nintendo GameCube will NOT BE using any type of variation of the G4 processor. IT will use a 405Mhz PowerPC based processor, this is NOT G4, there are MANY PowerPC processors out there, Apple only accounts for a small marketshare. And what exactly makes a console have firewire automatically make it good? Firewire will basically be useless in a console. IT WILL NOT USE A VARIATION OF THE ATI RADEON GRAPHICS PROCESSOR EITHER. It will have a specially designed processor, i'm unaware of the specs, but it is NOT a variation of the Radeon. Where the hell do you get this crap?

I really don't care if they use the G4 technology or not. But if not why the hell does the Game Cube make 13 GFlops. The only thing that I know of that has anything to do with a Power PC Processor that makes GFlops Like that is a G4 that simulates the computer design of a Cray Super Computer. Check out the specs on the Nintendo game cube on their web site. http://www.nintendo.com/gcn/specs.html and if fire wire is not useful then they wouldn't have added it to the Game Cube.

ATI IS MAKING THE GRAPHICS CARD FOR THE NINTINDO GAME CUBE ITS ON THEIR WEB SITE!!! http://www.ati.com/na/pages/corporat...2000/4313.html EXCUSE ME IT DOES NOT SPECIFICALLY SAY THAT ITS A RADEON VARIATION. BUT WHAT THE HELL ELSE WHOULD IT BE? THEIR OBVIOSELLY GOING TO PUT THEIR BEST GRAPHICS TECHNOLOGY IN THE GAME CUBE.(sounds like G4 cube).

If the nVidia Card is not coming to the Mac first thats cool I believe you. I gust got that from the apple web site. If they are wrong thats OK.

I get my stuff from Real Life experiances with Supper Fast Macs, EGM, PSM, XPert Gamer Game magizines and the websites I gave you the URLs to, Mr Senior Member iPad.

Originally posted by Cubee:
I recognize the ubiquity and price/power advantages of PC's, especially if you want to play games, but I totally fail to understand their appeal, once you've gotten used to using the mac OS.
I was at my PC using friends house yesterday. He was trying to burn a CD. The interface was so bizarre and obscure, neither of us could figure out how to select the data we were choosing to burn. The same thing occurred when we merely tried to listen to a music CD. It took about 5-6 steps and dialogs before we could finally choose the CD we wanted, and then only one track was recognized.
What a nightmare!
I'm sure this isn't always the case, but really, why should using one's computer be so challenging? Isn't computing supposed to be a means to an end?

how god damn stupid are you? Burning a cd is too hard for you?!?!?! do you have trouble dressing yourself and tying your shoes too? how hard is it to open up something like nero, select create new cd, drag and drop what u want on the cd, then tell it to burn?

Hi.
No need for everyone to get so angry. They are, after all, only computers.
But maybe you would like to hear my experiences with Macs and PC's.
I am a professional artist. i have animated for Simpsons, King of the Hill, Dilbert, etc. i have done ready for print artwork, web graphics, set design for people like barbara walters, various musicians for videos.

my first computer was an ibm 8086. there was no GUI for this computer.

my first experience with a computer with a GUI was an apple mac. i used those quite a bit for awhile. then for awhile i did very little with computers. when i got into the commercial art world, as you can imagine, most of my work was on macs. then i went to prison for a year, for a traffic violation (who knew 130 on surface streets was a felony?) Anyway, while in prison, i was made the "computer guy" at prison, and started learning PC's. After getting out of prison and resuming my career, i worked on many platforms, and after working on all these platforms, i bought myself.....
thats right, a PC. not because it was cheaper (i made anywhere from 30 to 300 an hour at the time, depending on the job, so that didnt really matter.)

then i started doing alot more freelance at home. i decided to buy a more powerful PC, an athlon classic 600. got it when they first came out. i then took a job at a firm in santa monica, which does graphics and gets things print ready for companies like mattel, and all they had was g3's and g4's. and i couldnt stand it. and i know how all of you are saying "my mac feels faster", i know exactly what you mean, but it only feels faster becasue you are more comfortable with the mac interface. but i couldnt wait to get home to get off the macs that werent very good at multi tasking, took forever to load documents, and crashed often, and on my very fast, very stable PC. I hardly ever play games.
I now have a tbird 750 that i run at 950. its faster than any mac ive been on, for anything, except one thing, and that is recording programs, and i dont mean your mp3 player, but studio multitracking. thats it. thats the only thing its better at, in my opinion.
and this is from a proffesional artist that has had to use both platforms extensivly.

[Nimisys]

first off whay are you so concerned with boot, shutdown times. it's not like a car, it doesn't need to go from on to off in a blink of an eye.

as for times, my 2 K6-2 comps (comp1: 400@500 & comp2: 550@560 (5x112)) both got 256mb pc100, run 7200rpm drives at ATA33 and run WinME with uptimes (times between reboots, forced or otherwise) of around 2 weeks.

comp1|Comp2:
boot: 35|30 secs
Shutdown: 15|30seconds
Word start: less than 1 second
Excel start: less than 1 second
Transfer (30mb 3dm file between ATA33 drives): 10 seconds (physical change)|5 seconds(partion change only)
Word Open (4kb file w/images): less than a second
Excel open (19kb w/ graphs): 2 seconds

note all tests were taken with programs running in the background and without reboots first, as it would be in normal usage. both machines had 180MB ram free at start of the tests.

comp1: / Comp2:
IE-MacNN froums / Explorer
IE-[H]ard|Forum / Winmgnt
Explorer / point32
Winmgnt / Powertweak
point32 / systray
Systray /dkservice
DKservice / mdm
Mdm / ramidle & winmodem

What does this mean, that even a lowly K6-2 can still run what you were asking of a 1.33 AXIA t-Bird at damn fast speeds, faster than your cube you were sighting. sure i am running ME, but for me it runs stabler than any MacOS install i have seen, and many 2k boxes. yes Office gets parts of it loaded into memory when the OS loads, but why should this be called a bad thing. your Mac programs are optimized for ALteVEC and the OS too.

hope this helps your decision

nimisys sez:

"as for times, my 2 K6-2 comps (comp1: 400@500 & comp2: 550@560 (5x112)) both got 256mb pc100, run 7200rpm drives at ATA33 and run WinME with uptimes (times between reboots, forced or otherwise) of around 2 weeks.

comp1|Comp2:
boot: 35|30 secs
Shutdown: 15|30seconds
Word start: less than 1 second
Excel start: less than 1 second
Transfer (30mb 3dm file between ATA33 drives): 10 seconds (physical change)|5 seconds(partion change only)
Word Open (4kb file w/images): less than a second
Excel open (19kb w/ graphs): 2 seconds

note all tests were taken with programs running in the background and without reboots first, as it would be in normal usage. both machines had 180MB ram free at start of the tests."

---------------------------------------------

and yet another PC guy with a 1 GHz Tbird sez:


"Here are some times from my 1GHz Tbird, 256MB RAM, win2k [note I'm running winamp, AIM, MSN Messenger, and UD.exe (uses every spare cpu cycle to analyze molecules for cancer cure)]

cold boot 89s (22s of which is within BIOS)
shutdown 19s
Word 23KB file open 4.17s
Excel 70K file open 2.03s
Excel 14K file open 0.89s
Duplicate 74.2MB folder containing 352 files,19 subdirectories 13.74s"

---------------------------------------------

So, let me get this straight: your 400 to 560 MHz AMD-based PCs are

- about 3 times faster booting up
- about the same to 50% slower shutting down
- about 4 times faster launching Word
- about the same launching Excel

than a 1 GHz AMD-based PC!? What up with that?? Everyone here wants to know the secret of your magical PCs...

As to the effect of your post on my decision, my confusion (as you can see) has just been increased.

[Eskimo]

So, let me get this straight: your 400 to 560 MHz AMD-based PCs are

- about 3 times faster booting up
- about the same to 50% slower shutting down
- about 4 times faster launching Word
- about the same launching Excel

than a 1 GHz AMD-based PC!? What up with that?? Everyone here wants to know the secret of your magical PCs...

As to the effect of your post on my decision, my confusion (as you can see) has just been increased.

He's running WinME, I'm running Win2k. Windows ME boots up considerably faster than Windows 2000. Just like Windows 98 will boot much quicker than NT4. As for the program launching maybe it is because as I stated 100% of my processor was already in use, so to free up any amount of processor to launch the apps it had to wait for the system to release it from UD.exe.

"He's running WinME, I'm running Win2k. Windows ME boots up considerably faster than Windows 2000. Just like Windows 98 will boot much quicker than NT4. As for the program launching maybe it is because as I stated 100% of my processor was already in use, so to free up any amount of processor to launch the apps it had to wait for the system to release it from UD.exe."

----------------------------------------------------------

It's hard to believe that even all that would explain a performance delta of 600 - 800% (i.e. 1/2 the clock rate with up to 3 to 4 times the performance). Is there really that much variability in PC performance?

Nimisys, are you there? Your "arch" needs to know...

[pele]

Everything under 1 second??

Sorry, my dual PIII with Ultra 160 SCSI HD running W2K doesn't even launch "Microsoft Word Viewer" that fast!! I takes something like 1.5 seconds the first time you launch it, and then it's almost instantaneous if you close it and run it again anytime until you reboot. But... read well, this is Word Viewer and not Word itself. It's a very small application...

[Asimuth]

I built my own Athalon 900/128/40Gb ATA-100 Win2k and I can definitely say it is faster than my 266/G3 (no big surprise there). But even though I bought good components and had experts assembly help it still took almost two weeks and several reinstalls to get the thing working well. In just three onths of PC ownership I have had more down-time than 12 years of continuous Mac ownership. Maybe I was just unlucky but I can tell you it was a very frustrating experience when you expect perfection straight out of the box. I don't know how many seconds there are in two weeks but I'm thinking it will be some time in real life use before the Athalon can make up the gap.

[Nimisys]

re-read my post again carefully, the answers you seek are in there.

heres the 3 causes.
1) cpu
2) High uptimes
3) no reboot

now try to put it together....

1) CPU- the K6-2 and higher (2+,3,3+) cpu's have REALLY small pipelines (2 stage i believe), which means they will be faster than anything else at there speed (g4=4stage, k7=12, p3=14?, g4+=more than g4), so of cource it will load office apps fast. it is also why it never went faster than 550, it didn't have a deep enough pipeline. this why the original G4's will be faster at a given speed when loading an office app than their g4+ brothers, and why it stopped at 500mhz. not enopugh stages. so i got a good cpui for office apps, compbine this with...

2)high uptimes - my WinME boxes are stable enough that i can leave them on for a week or two and they will be fine. first off it shows that DOS can be stable and still run a decent OS (no comments about windows vs macOS, decent being better than o/s 2 warp). second it means that i don't have to reboot often....

3) no reboot- i didn't reboot my machines(why should i have, it was running fine)so the office 200 core libraries (files used by all apps)still reside in the memory. which means the programs load insanely fast.

no you are saying well that isn't fair, but i say it is. who is going to reboot their machine before running word? unless the machine is running dog slow, then nobody. that means, 90% of the time you load the app it will already be the memory and ready to go. whats the problem with this? right after a reboot i get a load time of about 4 seconds with word. so i have to spend an extra 4 sec every 2 weeks to open the app, but the rest of the time it is up in under a second, wheres the problem.

as for your confusion this should help. a decent PC with ME or 2k will have 2 week uptimes, so that means your program load times that you are wondering about are going to be hella quick. you might call it an unfair comaprison, i call it a real world comaprison. having programs hold info in the memory so program run and load faster is just an inherant advantage in the platform, just as AlteVEC inhancements are for the MAC.

answer your questions?

[pele]

Originally posted by Nimisys:

2)high uptimes - my WinME boxes are stable enough that i can leave them on for a week or two and they will be fine. first off it shows that DOS can be stable and still run a decent OS (no comments about windows vs macOS, decent being better than o/s 2 warp). second it means that i don't have to reboot often....

Kudos! You may have broken the world record for WinMe uptimes. If only you advertised your achievement in other places than this forum, you could well make some big bucks as an IT consultant. Think about it, in these difficult economic times, all these IT networks could just run WinME and save so much money. No need for Win2K, not even Unix, no 'cause now we have WinME and the one guy who knows how to make it run without crashing. An industrial strength operating system for under $100, it's almost a dream come true. Oh, I think you should inform Microsoft of your achievement as well, 'cause they've been going around telling everyone how unstable Win 98 and WinMe are lately, and how all their instability problems will come to a screeching halt once they upgrade to WinXP..

[ambiguicom]

Originally posted by pele:

Kudos! You may have broken the world record for WinMe uptimes. If only you advertised your achievement in other places than this forum, you could well make some big bucks as an IT consultant. Think about it, in these difficult economic times, all these IT networks could just run WinME and save so much money. No need for Win2K, not even Unix, no 'cause now we have WinME and the one guy who knows how to make it run without crashing. An industrial strength operating system for under $100, it's almost a dream come true. Oh, I think you should inform Microsoft of your achievement as well, 'cause they've been going around telling everyone how unstable Win 98 and WinMe are lately, and how all their instability problems will come to a screeching halt once they upgrade to WinXP..

do i detect sarcasm there?
ive been running my overclocked athlon on 98 se, its been up since i started folding at home. 22 days. thats full cpu load, 24/7. i also regularly run, open at the same time, flash 5.0, photoshop 5.0 IE explorer, adobe imageready, audio galaxy, icq, and winamp. i have turned it off twice in this time to install new programs. twice in 22 days, and for no other reason than to install new programs. which is in stark contrst to the g3's i ran at places like hamagami carol, which froze up about every hour, trying to run photoshop, illustrator and one or two other apps.
read my post above for my credentials working on both platforms.

"1) CPU- the K6-2 and higher (2+,3,3+) cpu's have REALLY small pipelines (2 stage i believe), which means they will be faster than anything else at there speed (g4=4stage, k7=12, p3=14?, g4+=more than g4), so of cource it will load office apps fast.
[...]
right after a reboot i get a load time of about 4 seconds with word."


-------------------------------------------


So, a slower AMD is faster than a faster AMD? I think I have it now... Or, are you saying that clock rate isn't everything? That clock rate is not synonymous with performance? Omigod -- that's heresy!

And thank you for clearing up the *real* launch time for Word. Four seconds makes sense. It also makes your machine *slower* than my 2-series-back G4/400.

My confusion is beginning to clear up.

Critterdoc, where are you? You started this -- what's your take on this now?

"in stark contrst to the g3's i ran at places like hamagami carol, which froze up about every hour, trying to run photoshop, illustrator and one or two other apps.
read my post above for my credentials working on both platforms."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Pal, if you can't setup the G3s to be *at least* as stable as a PC running Win 98se, you have *no* Mac credentials...

Hamagami Carol needs to have someone with Mac expertise set up their machines.

[pele]

As an other artist who has used, and continues to use both platforms extensively, I think you're full of crap. I would totally agree with you if you said Win2K was much more stable than the classic Mac OS. My Windows 2000 machine is extremely stable much more so than the G4 running Mac OS 9. But for a lot of work I still prefer the G4, just 'cause I like it overall, and I like the interface. Still, the lack of multitasking is a bummer and very annoying at times and if OS X wasn't on the horizon I'd be pretty pissed at Apple. I refuse to install OS X until it comes pre-installed on Mac hardware. That being said, based on my experience with Unix on SGI hardware, and the visual beauty of OS X overall I have absolutely no doubt that it will kick the living crap out of Win2K in every aspect for my preferred productivity platform once it gets its rough edges smoothened a bit...

Getting back to where I started, Win9*? Stable? Please....

[ambiguicom]

guicom [quote]Originally posted by arch nimisys:
"in stark contrst to the g3's i ran at places like hamagami carol, which froze up about every hour, trying to run photoshop, illustrator and one or two other apps.
read my post above for my credentials working on both platforms."

Pal, if you can't setup the G3s to be *at least* as stable as a PC running Win 98se, you have *no* Mac credentials...

Hamagami Carol needs to have someone with Mac expertise set up their machines.

[QUOTE]

and the same can be said conversely. if you cant make your win9x machine stable, its user error. perhaps if i had been allowed to screw around with the g3's, i could have made them easier to work with.

you, on the other hand, have not worked on windows very much at all, as far as i can tell, so your opinion on windows is, pretty much, worthless. and for all of those people that say "i like mac os better, becasue of the way it looks" or whatever reason you have, well, thats your right. you can like plastic looking eye candy. no skin off my back. personally i run my machine with no background, no pretty little buttons, only custom icons that i made. if i want toys, i go play with toys. when i want to work, i get on my computer. by the way, im up for 23 days now. at the moment i have 3 IE windows open, winamp, icq, im uploading 2 mp3's and downloading 2, i have photoshop open, and am running the folding@home client, with 10 files open in photoshop, on a computer overclocked by about 22%

my point being, ive worked on both. if you set up win 9x correctly, you are fine. im sure if the "mac techs" at hamagami carol knew anything about the macs they were supposed to be working on, it would have been fine. of course, if it was on a platform and operating system that was easily configured (namely wintel) i could have fixed it myself in about 4 minutes.

now, im not really defending win 9x, cause it really is a sort of stupid OS, and if all Macromedia and Adobe apps ran on Linux, i would be there in a second.

the fact that you have no idea what effects a shorter pipeline have on applications confirms that you are a mac user, as most mac users have about enough technical knowledge to know which button turns their apple on, and that it must be plugged into a wall socket in order to work.

now, i've already made it clear that my win 9x system is stable. and although you may try, you cant refute FACT. its been at full load for 23 days.

now what else do you want to know?

[This message has been edited by ambiguicom (edited 04-28-2001).]

[This message has been edited by ambiguicom (edited 04-28-2001).]

[iPad]

Originally posted by arch nimisys:
"1) CPU- the K6-2 and higher (2+,3,3+) cpu's have REALLY small pipelines (2 stage i believe), which means they will be faster than anything else at there speed (g4=4stage, k7=12, p3=14?, g4+=more than g4), so of cource it will load office apps fast.
[...]
right after a reboot i get a load time of about 4 seconds with word."

Thta is not neccessarily true, basically because when you have a larger pipeline, the processor is USUALLY allowed to be clocked faster, which means the info will be pumped through the pipeline faster. The only disadvantage would be that it would process less information per clock per cycle, to a CERTAIN extent (like, in this case, the G4 vs 1.33Ghz Thunderbird, the Thunderbird will be able to process information much faster, but the G4 will be more efficient). Therefore, in a fight with a similar clocked G4 and Thunderbird, the G4 will win. I have run Cinema 4D on my dad's dual G4/500 and compared it to my friends Athlon/600. In the single processor stress test (rendering the logo), they score almost the exact same scores. (forgot the exact CB points they each scored)

Also, another note, if you have a larger pipeline, you need to beef up your brance prediction unit, otherwise info will have to be sent through the pipeline more and more. The more stages - greater odds of wasting cycles.

Now, in Intel's case, their Pentium 4 has a 20 stage pipeline, which is pretty high, this is the reason why their processor is slower than a lowerly clocked thunderbird (1.0Ghz +), except in certain tasks which involve SSE2 optimizations. (this list includes mainly digital video editing for the time being, however, photoshop has recently implemented this as well).

scottells:

And, by the way, DUDE, you have no idea what you're talking about with the ATI/GameCube issue. The G4 does NOT do 13 gigaflops. The estimate is the theoretical processing power of the GameCube UNIT itself including the graphics chipset, and notice how it is theoretical. The GameCube will NOT be the fastest console on the earth as you predict. This is NOT the G4, it is a PowerPC based RISC processor. The graphics are not based on the Radeon, they are based off the ArtX core which ATI is designing. END of STORY.

Apple only claims that the G4 can do 7 or whatever, this is not true, the highest i have seen is 3245Mflops on Altivec Fractal Carbon, but that application is optimized for Altivec and SMP. Yet, there are basically almost to none applications that take advantage of this.



------------------
NO SIG YO

"you, on the other hand, have not worked on windows very much at all, as far as i can tell, so your opinion on windows is, pretty much, worthless"

--------------------------------------------------

Thanks, ambiguicom. FWIW, I have been working with PCs since their introduction in 1981. I first used a Mac in 1991.

Cheers, pal.

[ambiguicom]

archnimysis, not to be rude or anything, but what the hell is wrong with you? you havent said anything, made one point, added one bit of useful information.

let me try this again...

FACT: MY WIN 9X RUNNING ON AN ATHLON IS STABLE.

FACT: A 1.33 GIG ATHLON WILL TROUNCE ALL OVER A MAC IN ALMOST ANY APPLICATION

now what part of these facts are so difficult for you to understand? all you write is negatave, and dare i say, useless posts.

if there is something you want to know, that one of us dumb ass PC users can tell you, well, ask us. or ask me. i wont get mad at you. i wont say things like "mac = sux0rs" or other crap that kids write.

but you sound like a religious zealot, only its applies to 30 pounds of plastic and metal. so what do you want to know?

your attitude reminds me of the intel/amd wars on teh PC side of things. Intel users want to justify their overly expensive/ subpar performing chips, and get very very defensive, combative, and generally unpleasant, becasue they haev to convince themselves that their extra expense was justifies, when form a technical standpoint, it isnt. the funny thing is, if the damn thing is worth what you paid it TO YOU, then what need is there to justify it to anyone else? and if they really were secure in their decision, they sure as hell wouldnt get as upset as they do.

and please stop calling me "Pal." its mildly rude, and somewhat annoying.

[Nimisys]

Originally posted by arch nimisys:
So, a slower AMD is faster than a faster AMD? I think I have it now... Or, are you saying that clock rate isn't everything? That clock rate is not synonymous with performance? Omigod -- that's heresy!

And thank you for clearing up the *real* launch time for Word. Four seconds makes sense. It also makes your machine *slower* than my 2-series-back G4/400.

My confusion is beginning to clear up.

ugg so you really can't understand can you?

yes clock rate isn't the only comparison for comparing CPU's, i know that and i defend it. thats why the P4 is pure and utter crap, becuase it was aimed at the idiots that believe clock is everything. if the Athlon didn't have to convert the CISC commands the software sends at it to the RISC that the core uses, i would bet the K7 (T-Bird) would chew up and spit out a G4, clock for clock. it has the execution units, front end, regristry loaders to do so. ecven so it is only about 5% slower per clock than the G4. with the exception of FPU and vector calculations, i would also wager a K6-X (x being 2 and above) could also go toe-to-toe with a G4 at clock, due to its small pipeline.

as for the start time that was on my 500@400 (5x100) machine, and was guessed at using the one alligator, 2 alligator method, not a stop watch. reality is that it could be a 3.67 load time for the first load. but like i said, after the first load it is under one second, because the core libraries are in memory ready to go. so if you want to take pride in the fact that your "2 series old G4 400 Tower" loads are under 4 seconds EVERY time you start the app, then please do. But i will be happy with the fact that my machine will load office apps damn near instantly, 90% of the time, with the other 10% being a VERY reasonable 4 seconds.

see thats what you need to realize, the first load might be a fraction slower, but all other loads after it are much, much faster. after all you are wondering about day-to-day usage for normal apps, with this being your purpose, then you ought to look at app load times (which is when under a few seconds, is kinda of a pointless tool for comparison) during the point in which you will use them. in this case it is most likely not the only thing you will use, so chances are the libraries will be loaded into memory when you goto use it. after all your not going to reboot the machine first so you can run word, so it's 4 second load time will be slower than your mac's. or is that your point...?

could it be that this entire thread is just here so you can rationalize the continuing to use of your MAC inlight of a faster/cheaper PC solution? because thats the way it is starting too look from here. if you want to use a PC then just do it, but don't try and rationalize how it's an infieror platform in front of all of your forum buddies, even though you are tempted by its speed, potential and cost.

pc gawd said some mind-numbingly "st00pid" things him/herself:
"man, some of you mac users are REALLY st00pid"

Well, thanks for the generalisation. Okay, some of you PC users are stupid. And considering the ratios of Macs to PCs, there are far more stupid PC users in the world.

"as for those of you that are educated, you may be excused"

I'm educated, but I'm a Mac (home) and PC (work) user. Does that excuse me or not?

"but as the guardian of all knowledge, let me say this"

Oh, my apologies. For you are the one true God. I must whip myself to banish the bad thoughts I had about you. Get real.

"a mac is good for photoshop"

True.

"sgi is good for graphic-intensive stuff"

Again, true. But please clarify which "graphic-intensive" operations are you talking about?

"a pc is good for anything else
i DARE you to prove me wrong...why?
because you can't"

Yes I can. I'm running a PowerMac G4/400 that's just encoded into MP3, a 72 minute CD in 12 mins. It's being done with iTunes 1.1 on Mac OS 9.1 and averaged 5.9x speed. My brother's Athlon PC is running at 1.2GHz on Windows 2000, and encoded the same CD an hour ago at 5.2x speed, using Xing Audio Catalyst. So, the same CD on a CPU 3x the MHz was slower. But remember, MHZ is not a good representation of processor speed *across processor architectures*.
So you have to go on the real-world results you get (like the ones above).

Another example? Okay. I just changed my Mac's IP address and didn't reboot. I just changed my brother's PC IP address and had to reboot.

Another? Right. I just viewed a web page on my Mac that has seven nested tables. I just viewed it on the PC. IE screwed up the nesting, therefore the page didn't look correct. So, that's no good.

How about this. I can use all but one character in my filenames (":"). Okay, Windows has longer filenames than the Mac, actually the Finder (the HFS+ filesystem can handle longer filenames than the Finder is currently written for), but OS X handles longer filenames. So, if we're comparing the most recently-released OS from each company, Apple wins because the Windows implementation is a patch to DOS (you can't have path and filenames longer than 255 chars in DOS AFAIK).

Both operating systems have multi-tasking and protected memory. OS X is very stable. Windows 2000 crashes far too often.

I know this is off-topic, but pc gawd's comments must not go un-noticed...

pc gawd said some mind-numbingly "st00pid" things him/herself:
"man, some of you mac users are REALLY st00pid"

Well, thanks for the generalisation. Okay, some of you PC users are stupid. And considering the ratios of Macs to PCs, there are far more stupid PC users in the world.

"as for those of you that are educated, you may be excused"

I'm educated, but I'm a Mac (home) and PC (work) user. Does that excuse me or not?

"but as the guardian of all knowledge, let me say this"

Oh, my apologies. For you are the one true God. I must whip myself to banish the bad thoughts I had about you. Get real.

"a mac is good for photoshop"

True.

"sgi is good for graphic-intensive stuff"

Again, true. But please clarify which "graphic-intensive" operations are you talking about?

"a pc is good for anything else
i DARE you to prove me wrong...why?
because you can't"

Yes I can. I'm running a PowerMac G4/400 that's just encoded into MP3, a 72 minute CD in 12 mins. It's being done with iTunes 1.1 on Mac OS 9.1 and averaged 5.9x speed. My brother's Athlon PC is running at 1.2GHz on Windows 2000, and encoded the same CD an hour ago at 5.2x speed, using Xing Audio Catalyst. So, the same CD on a CPU 3x the MHz was slower. But remember, MHZ is not a good representation of processor speed *across processor architectures*.
So you have to go on the real-world results you get (like the ones above).

Another example? Okay. I just changed my Mac's IP address and didn't reboot. I just changed my brother's PC IP address and had to reboot.

Another? Right. I just viewed a web page on my Mac that has seven nested tables. I just viewed it on the PC. IE screwed up the nesting, therefore the page didn't look correct. So, that's no good.

How about this. I can use all but one character in my filenames (":"). Okay, Windows has longer filenames than the Mac, actually the Finder (the HFS+ filesystem can handle longer filenames than the Finder is currently written for), but OS X handles longer filenames. So, if we're comparing the most recently-released OS from each company, Apple wins because the Windows implementation is a patch to DOS (you can't have path and filenames longer than 255 chars in DOS AFAIK).

Both operating systems have multi-tasking and protected memory. OS X is very stable. Windows 2000 crashes far too often.

I know this is off-topic, but pc gawd's comments must not go un-noticed...

[ambiguicom]

yeah, i think pc gawd is one of the less helpfull people over at the forums im usually at, just under a different name. i wouldnt take anything he says seriously. but id happily pit my athlon at 950 against ANY mac in any application. i would lose in a couple things, im sure, but not many.

[Christopher Tew]

iPad: While the systems that you're configuring at PriceWatch are interesting, you're forgetting to include two major things: The OS and labor. If you're using the PC for gaming, which is just about the only reason why you'd be getting a 1.3 Athlon, and for normal tasks, it'd be a good idea to plop Windows98SE and Win2K into the system. That will add a great deal to the overall cost of the system.

Labor is another hidden cost. When you buy a prefab PC, it has been configured and tested by skilled migrant workers in Taiwan. Mixing your own PC from PriceWatch requires intensive research for parts compatibility, and, once all of the parts arrive, days of assembly, troubleshooting, and so on. The vast bulk of people do not have the time or wherewithal to do all of that crap, so they pay a nice big premium for the Taiwanese workers.

So, comparing a prefab and a DIY machine is dishonest, as the majority of people are not going to want to bother with DIY, and those who do will tend to have entire weekends sucked up with the process. Also, one can't DIY a laptop, eh?

I think that it'd be somewhat more honest of you to configure a system at Alienware, GamePC, or Falcon NW. I would do so myself, but I figure that you probably know more about that kind of thing than me.

_______

To the Guy with the big database: There are some very good reasons why the G4 eats the dust of the Athlon here. One, the Athlon has 256K of on-die L2 cache, whereas the G4 466 (or whatever it was. Me Tired) has 1MB of off-die L2 cache. The Athlon's cache runs at 1.3GHz, whereas the old G4's runs at, what, 100MHz? I forget, mea culpa. Anyhoo, the far greater cache speed of the Athlon (not to mention the massive increase in bus speed) makes it *much* bloody faster than the G4 in database processing.

Now, the newer G4s have on-die L2 and faster busses, which would make the a good deal faster than the older ones for heavy database crunching. They wouldn't catch up to the Athlon, though. However, if you're processing massive databases on a very regular basis, you should probably be doing it on a Sun with Oracle, or at least something that doesn't involve girly-man 32 bit processors and low-end databases. ;-)

_________

Personally, I think that the G4 is a bit of a farce. It's a evolved G3 with a fairly useless vector processor. CPU iterations should improve speed globally (in the computer, of course...the world runs quite fast enough for my liking), not just speed in a handful of applications. Note that this also applies to the Pentium 4.

The only reasons why I use a Mac at all are OS X, and because the G3 PowerBook absolutely blew away all comers when I got it a year ago, and it still surpasses everything aside from the G4 PB. I've been wanting a UNIX variant that my right brain can handle for quite some time now, and OS X suits me quite well. Hoorj.

[iPad]

Christopher Tew: You're right about the OS situation, i didn't include it in (but if we did, it would be around +250, or in my case, +0 since i already have a copy of Win2K at my house), but my point basically was the fact that you can get a better spec PC (in some cases, a MUCH BETTER PC) than for a mac at the same price. What do you sacrifice? Basically, the Mac OS, but the fact is, Windows is not bad as most people here claim it to be. I enjoy using both the Mac OS and Windows, but i'd also prefer to have a faster OS (in this case, 2K vs OS X), and preferably something that is cheaper, especially if i wanted to say..get my mom a comp just for internet browsing. If Apple can get back in shape, particulary with pricing and somewhat in performance (any 500Mhz+ G4 based comp would be fine enough for me), i will gladly put aside money that i save into buying a new mac.

The Tyan board however, is not availible for purchase as Eskimo has said. The REAL AMD 760MP boards will start arriving on shelves later this quarter, and will be MUCH cheaper (probably around 200-300). I dunno, i believe there were some rumors floating around that the boards would start at around 400, but yet again, these are RUMORS.

Labor is an issue, but it is incredibly fun to put together a PC as well, so labor vs fun, i dunno, some may call it labor, i simply call it entertainment.

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NO SIG YO

[Christopher Tew]

iPad: Get your mom an iMac. See, my mother was using a PC for her casual Internet stuff, and when I got sick of having to troubleshoot Windows95 every day, I told her to get an iMac. My life suddenly became much easier when she did, especially now that it has OS X on it.

I'm pretty platform agnostic (I have to be, considering that I'm an IT dork), but I think that Windows in all of its current iterations is not terribly usable by the casual user. Windows2K is the best of the bunch due to its stability and speed, but it doesn't have certain things that are available at installation or for easy download. Something as simple as archive compression and decompression should be supported by any OS upon installation, for example, but it isn't in 2K. While it is in ME and XP, those two OSes have issues that 2K doesn't.

It really bugs the hell out of me that Microsoft is getting all of the issues that plagued their consumer OS sorted out with XP, but at the price of vastly increased system reqs and a stupid copy protection scheme and EULA. I was pretty excited by XP and .NET when I first started to read about it, but MS had to go and screw it up. Arrgh.

Anyway, I agree that a DIY PC is a much better value than any Mac can hope to be if labor, OS preference, and other such things are not factored into the equation. Apple survives by selling their equipment at high margins. Unlike PC clone manufacturers, Apple has a high R&D bill, and they have to do all of their own advertising, so they can't get away with 5% margins.

I'm not looking for Apple to lower prices, really, since I think that their quality is worth it. However, I *would* like for them to adopt new tech faster. The pudgy buses and the lack of DDR SDRAM is really annoying, as was the balking on adopting 4x AGP. Apple adopts highly visible tech such as IEEE1394, gigabit EtherNet, and 802.11b faster than everybody else, but when it comes to the motherboard, they're a damn frustrating company to watch.

[iPad]

Well, i was basically just using the "mom" example for pricing purposes, because to put it simply, she's cheap.

My point was, there are some people who simply just use computers for one purpose, which is word processing and internet. And most people won't spend the 700+ dollars simply to buy an iMac, for them, the solution is an eMachine unfortuently...you wouldn't believe how many "e" logos i have seen, and yet, no one i've heard from has complained about the quality, simply because you get what you pay for. Low quality parts, half assed customer support, and annoying cd buzzing effects. I don't believe that Apple will reach this point of lowness, basically, i think Apple should mainly just concentrate on ONE focus, because right now, they're basically doing crappy trying to go low end with an underpowered machine, high professional with an overpriced machine, and midhome with an 8 inch cube.



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NO SIG YO

[iPad]

Perhaps what i SHOULD say, is work on ONE focus at a time..as from the marketing standpoint, its' not very profitable to simply aim at the high end market (SGI in this case, not making much money...), or cheap crap (eMachines, lol).

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NO SIG YO

[nana2]

Originally posted by Christopher Tew:
Mixing your own PC from PriceWatch requires intensive research for parts compatibility, and, once all of the parts arrive, days of assembly, troubleshooting, and so on. The vast bulk of people do not have the time or wherewithal to do all of that crap, so they pay a nice big premium for the Taiwanese workers.

......

Also, one can't DIY a laptop, eh?

.....

However, if you're processing massive databases on a very regular basis, you should probably be doing it on a Sun with Oracle, or at least something that doesn't involve girly-man 32 bit processors and low-end databases. ;-)

If it take you "several days" to put a computer together then you don't know what you are doing, and certainly should have bought a pre-fab one.

No you can't build your own laptop, that is why prices are rather high compared to a desktop.

So the T-bird destroys the G4 in Postscript and databases and your defense is that he should be using a Sun machine? LOL

[pele]

DIY PC with Priceline components : $1500

IBM Intellistation : $3500

Apple PowerMac G4 : $3500

Knowing Maya and Softimage are supported on my computer: PRICELESS

Originally posted by pele:
[b]Knowing Maya and Softimage are supported on my computer: PRICELESS

Hmmm... Maya runs just fine even on my Dual Celeron 400 workstation (which, BTW, I built myself...) I let a friend of mine run it on my rig while hers was down, and it ran just fine. Even though it's painted burgundy and black and is overclocked. Go figure.

But back to the original topic: Performance on a PC vs Mac.

As far as 'dubious' stability, my 750mhz blue-core Athlon T-bird runs @ 1GHz 24/7 - and that's running Windows XP beta 2. Once the OS is installed and appropriately tweaked, it never crashes. Ever. Single programs do occasionally crash, but since my 1GHz box is largely my gaming toy, that's to be expected - Serious Sam blows up consistently after about two hours, but I can kill its process and keep moving with no major problems (in most cases I can even start the game back up and play some more.)

Startup times depend on what software you install. From my experience, way back when, a straight Mac OS install was faster than a straight Windows 9x install. However, installing software slows both OS's down to a dramatic degree (my dual celeron, with all my work software installed, boots 2-3 times slower than a straight Win2k install on the same machine.) My big question is, who restarts anymore? My work box runs 24/7, for weeks at a time, and never restarts, save out-of-town journeys, power outages or electrical storms.

I would also suggest to everyone that on comparable machines, the one you're familiar with will seem faster, because you know how to get things done. I do like Mac OS's ease of use, but I'm quite familiar with the eccentricities of Windows (and it's many flavors) and as such, I'm more efficient by an order of magnitude even on a slow Windows box than I am on a fast Macintosh workstation.

Assuming that you are Joe Office User, and have no special reason to lean towards one platform or the other, the real question becomes do I buy:
(a) a faster, cheaper machine that's equally as capable at doing what my job requires, but take a productivity hit while I re-learn my software; or
(b) a more expensive, somewhat slower machine that I already know how to use?

At this point it's a toss-up, and you get to pick. Do me ONE favor, though; if you DO decide to get a PC, don't even consider anything 9x-flavored. Go directly to Windows 2000, and don't look back.

Originally posted by nooneishere:
I use a 233G3, 64Mb Ram Powerbook, and a compaq 500Mhz Celeron with 64Mb ram. My family uses the compaq, which has needed to be formatted twice, and we bought it in October 2000. My father uses it to play solitare and get on the internet, he has never used a computer before, and has a very hard time figuring it out.

I have to admit there are many many programs for windows, but many of them suck, and how many of them cause the system to blue screen?

I have a question.... What is the reliable lifetime of a windows box? How soon will you need to get a newer computer to keep up with the latest and greatest apps?
On my g3 powerbook I can run os x, and it works fine(except when Classic environment starts =X ). startup times are about the same on my computer, except for the finder, which should be worked on to get to work better... all my apps in os X seem to work better in X than when booted into classic (things like bbedit, codewarrior, carbonized apps)...
My parents compaq takes just about as long to start up in Windows98 as os X takes to start up with Finder on my paltry 233/64mb powerbook. I guess it all depends on what you know... If I knew Windows98 real well, I could strip down the registry, delete unwanted things from systems tray, overcolock the cpu, etc.
But of course my parents, dont care anything about that, they just want it to work , many times they are doing something wrong, or windows doesnt let them do it, like moving an .exe from the desktop to another folder.... or they wonder what icon they have to click to get Burning Monkey Solitaire to launch. Many times they wonder how to navigate around this new program that they just bought, or how to fix the colors on the screen after it has crashed. Why after you trash a file/folder it still appears in the start menu.... I could go on and on.
I also like the mac community, which is going to make some of us, indirectly *nix users.

Anyway Ive said all this, just to let you know that i use a mac, and will continue to be a mac user till the apple fades away =P

that's because you used a Compaq... trust me from experience