[- - e r i k - -]

I absolutely hated the 6100. Next to my Quadra 700 it felt slow slow slow.

[C.A.T.S. CEO]

Dude, the Mac Mini is a entry level Mac, it's slow. If you need speed get a high-end iMac or a low-end Mac Pro. If you want a laptop get a mid-range MacBook Pro. I have a high-end BlackBook 1GB RAM/2 GHz/80 GB HD and it suits me fine.

[24klogos]

you dont have a clue about what you're saying. not only you buy the crappiest PPC mac, but you have no idea what you're talking about. if you had ONE extra neuron, you would have waited, and for the same money you could have bought an intel mini, and run BOTH os's. windows for that matter is your pick, hence your level of intelligence and the root of your entire post. go back and buy a pc, the mac community will be better without baboons like yourself. may god bless your ignorance.

[WOPR]

Really helpful and mature post there. Well done!

o_O

[Jonathan-Tanya]

I've decided to go back to Windows too...darn it, I'm going to have to reboot the machine. I'll never get that time back.

OK, I've decided to give the Mac another try...shoot, another reboot.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally Posted by 24klogos

you dont have a clue about what you're saying. not only you buy the crappiest PPC mac, but you have no idea what you're talking about. if you had ONE extra neuron, you would have waited, and for the same money you could have bought an intel mini, and run BOTH os's. windows for that matter is your pick, hence your level of intelligence and the root of your entire post. go back and buy a pc, the mac community will be better without baboons like yourself. may god bless your ignorance.

Being blindly Pro-Mac is as bad as being blindly Pro-Windows.

The original poster had some legitimate issues... I'm not saying some of them couldn't have been fixed, but saying "Oh, you should have just waited" just isn't a good response.

[Zeeb]

I understand your issues completely. I went out and bought a G4 powerbook before Apple switched to intel and it was slower than the 3 year mediocre PC laptop it replaced. I loved OSX so much though that when intel Macbook Pro's came out I sold PB and bought one. Now the MBP I have is faster than any PC I've ever owned and I'm happy.

Before intel, Apple had a great OS, and beautifully designed machines that actually ran horribly. Now, with competitive hardware and a better OS, they are coming out ahead again.

[Jonathan-Tanya]

Zeeb...

let me say I agree with you. I have a G4 1.5ghz Sawtooth (upgraded to 1.5ghz of course)...it has an upgraded hard drive, and a raid card...and its still slow.

But now, we have intel mac's...and that is the part about the original poster that didn't make sense to me. If he wants to go out and buy a new machine...buy one. Make it a mac, it will run windows and mac os x, and you've got everything.

as you said, the new mac's aren't slow. amazon.com has a $1099 (after 100 discount and 100 rebate). ....core 2 duo machine. Now that is not a slow machine, the new core 2 duo architecture is mighty fast.

[nickw311]

I went from a 1.25 mini to a Dual 2.0 MacBook and it is like night and day. I also am an everyday reader of ESPN and I use MLB.TV and with flip4Mac on an Intel, it runs very well IMO.

[rdf8585]

Just because I want a better Mac doesn't mean I can go out and get one. I don't have the financial wiggle room to do so, in small part due to the 600+ wasted on the Mini a year ago. My college tuition will probably go up 100% when I transfer to a four year too.

OSX has its merits, but Apple's laptop line leaves a lot to be desired. For a shade over 900, I could get this from Dell: 15.4 WS, CoreDuo 1.73, 80 GB HD, 1 GB RAM, 256 MB Radeon x1400 and Soundblaster Audigy audio. That price drops to a shade under 800 if I go with the GMA 950 over the x1400 and go with integrated audio over the SB.

I'd have to drop 1200+ on a MacBook to get a GB of RAM and even more to go from a 60 to a 80 GB HD. And that still leaves me with a GMA 950 and a smaller screen. I'm not sure I could work with anything below 14 inches, and a Macbook Pro is definitely out of range.

Apple's laptops weren't competetive with PC laptops prices a year ago and are worse now and what I show above proves it. I'm not trying to "troll," but I think I have a good point here. They really need a 699 or 799 laptop somehow... everyone else has one that isn't a piece of crap (those are the 499 laptops).

[analogika]

Actually, while the laptops aren't as competitive as they were when they came out in May, they're still a pretty damn good deal and do not do badly at all in hardware comparison EVEN IF you neglect the Mac OS, which IMO outweighs every other factor.

Once you add all the included features, the price difference becomes almost negligible, and if you actually compare Apple machines to similarly designed and engineered (weight/size) laptops, the Apple stuff actually comes out cheaper in many situations. Of course you can still get a cheaper Dell. Duh.

Why don't I see people complaining about how Lenovo's Thinkpads are crap laptops or "leave a lot to be desired" just because Dell's are cheaper?

This is straying off-topic, though, and has been beaten to death in the appropriate laptop forums on this board.

[rdf8585]

IMO you have to really, really like OSX or really really hate XP to pay so much more for a MacBook. And while OSX is nice, I have no problems with XP.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by rdf8585

I haven't seen the BSOD since Windows ME.

I haven't seen a BSOD since Windows Vista.

[dimmer]

I absolutely hated the 6100. Next to my Quadra 700 it felt slow slow slow.

Yeah, moving from an '040 to an emulated '020 wasn't fun. But then we got "Native" PPC code, and things rocked. The Q 700 was the high end xMac it seems everyone here wants: and now it's just a slow slow slow doorstop. Think Apple doesn't learn? Think again.

[Strupat]

I am a little bit curious, though, as to your motivation for posting this thread: Is it a "nyah-nyah" thing, just a vent, or are you looking for good arguments for staying on the Mac platform?

Dude, obviously don't post on MacNN forums unless you are praising anything Apple.

[24klogos]

i was adding some spice buddy, sorry if i insulted anybody. jesus loves you

[cgc]

Originally Posted by rdf8585

...
Reasons I'm switching back -

1) I can't get past the slowness of the Mini compared to my PC. The PC has a 3 ghz Pentium 4 with Hyper-threading, 1 GB RAM, 7200 RPM HD, and 96 MB of integrated VRAM. I didn't expect the Mini to be as fast, but it's not even close. My Dell laptop, which was bought over two years prior to the Mini, is as quick. That is not progress. Even with a GB RAM, a G4 with limited video memory is really starting to choke with things like internet video...

I think the thing that makes the Mini so special and does show "progress" is the form factor. It's ridiculous how tiny the Mini is which is part of it's selling point. I bet you'd be much happier with an Intel Mini since it's a lot faster but then you'd still ahve to deal with the parts of OS X you dislike.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by rdf8585

IMO you have to really, really like OSX or really really hate XP to pay so much more for a MacBook. And while OSX is nice, I have no problems with XP.

Simply disliking Dell/other cheapo manufacturers/FAN NOISE already tips the scales EXTREMELY in favor of the MacBook, IMHO.

But then, I consider OS X the single major selling point for 90% of computer users.

[alphasubzero949]

Some comments from what I have been reading in this thread:

1. I thought the PowerPC was superior. And now that Steve goes Intel, everyone is suddenly praising it while harping on people complaining about PPC performance? Gotta love the RDF.

2. I don't give a rats arse how much you claim you are secure with XP. It's still a single user OS where permissions don't mean a thing. As long as you keep about 5 different anti-virus, anti-adware, anti-spyware, and firewall programs running you're sort of OK. And then you'll still need Firefox and Thunderbird. If you run as a limited user, good luck. Oh, and don't forget the need to clean up your registry, your extra temp files, and whatever other extra crud has ended up in your FS. Almost forgot about the defragging part there. Damn. Wait...did I forget anything else? Oh yeah. The recommended sixth month reinstall.

And speaking of reinstalls, if you ever need to, you better hope that your PC came with recovery and driver CDs in the first place. Oh that's right. They don't anymore. And if you do have a WinXP CD, you'll need to slipstream SP2 otherwise you're just asking for it if you need to go online and use Windows Update. After all, that network standalone updater isn't 'recommended' by the mothership, right?

I just got through reinstalling Windows XP from scratch for a friend. It gets tiring fixing broken Windows installs after a while. Definitely not a simple walk in the park.

Enjoy.

[indigoimac]

I'm about as unbiased as they come, I wish you luck, really I do, but really you cannot compare a mini to a P4, my 2.4GHz P4 PC (homebuilt) is a great machine, arguably my favorite, however I have just purchased a C2D iMac and it kills this thing in just about every way, to understand OSX you must understand that it is much more demanding than XP and mostly don't compare incomperable computers.

[frdmfghtr]

Originally Posted by rdf8585

I'm 21 and was a lifetime Windows user, but wanted to delve into the world of OSX. I bought a 1.33 PPC Mini last December and maxed out the RAM to 1 GB. Now less than a year later, the Mini is probably going to back into its box and sit on some shelf.

While I certainly don't encourage you to let it sit on a shelf unused (I'm sure you can find somebody who would put it to good use), you use what works for you. For me, it's a iBook G4 with the occasional need for my HP Pavilion (or a Win2K installation under Virtual PC). For you, it's all Windows.

My philosophy is this: you use what works for you, and never mind what works for anybody else.

[mac128k-1984]

Originally Posted by rdf8585

IMO you have to really, really like OSX or really really hate XP to pay so much more for a MacBook. And while OSX is nice, I have no problems with XP.

Not necessarly.

I think OSX is superior to XP, I also thing the design of the MacBooks are superior to most of what is out there in the PC world. Could I buy a cheaper computer sure, will it be defect free, odds say yes (regardless if its dell/hp/or someone else). But would it be a better designed easier to use computer that would include more features? No not a chance.

The GMA950 is a short coming for the MacBook, but other then that, its a fine machine that does everything I need it to and the form factor is great.

I bought a dell laptop for my step son. it was a middle of the road model, not the cheapest or most expensive model. It cost me more money then the Macbook but its specs were inline with the MB other then the GPU and the display size but I still paid more money for it. As for what was included not much less then what I get with the MB (or MBP). It also didn't feel as sturdy as the MB and it was significantly heavier then the MB (and the MBP).

You get what you pay for and if you want a bargain basement computer that's fine just don't expect it to perform as a high end model. Look at your mini as a prime example.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by dimmer

But it became clear to IBM that the POWER line was a better as an embedded CPU, not a general purpose CPU. And it wasn't low POWER. Kinda a bad joke.

Those two statements are contradictory if you're talking about the same processor family - if they're good for embedded uses, they're going to be low power. But we're not talking about the POWER line anyway; we're talking about the PowerPC. The PowerPC alliance broke down because the parties no longer held the same vision of where the line was going, and without strong processor roadmaps going forward Apple decided it was a better idea to throw in the towel and join the rest of the crowd.

[dimmer]

Those two statements are contradictory if you're talking about the same processor family - if they're good for embedded uses, they're going to be low power.

Actually, no. The POWER family has always had reasonable power management, but not so hot on the "Portable" power management front: that's why the 603e is everywhere, and there's not a single in-line device (a router, say) with a G5. The difference between being power happy in a data center (power is always there, just don't suck it down till you need it) and being power happy in a mobile environment (power is NOT there, don't even ask). The huge changes Apple and Motorola made to get a PowerPC into a laptop; that IBM could never make a PowerPC that could run in a portable: these are your clues.

An embedded CPU has no need to care about power is it's entombed in a half ton of steel and four PSU's that all take straight DC power. It's not that you are wrong, but...

[dimmer]

1. I thought the PowerPC was superior. And now that Steve goes Intel, everyone is suddenly praising it while harping on people complaining about PPC performance? Gotta love the RDF.

The key word here is "was". The AIM setup were all set to eat Intel's lunch. RISC, 15 years ago, was better than CISC. The original Power Macintosh systems could -emulate- the old '040 architecture so fast you didn't really notice. That's -remarkable-, and a trick that Apple never pulled off again (Classic on OS X? Rosetta?). The RISC designs IBM made with the POWER cvhip-set did prove to be just wonderful: every web server you hit these days runs RISC. The Core design is an awful "RISC on the corner" architecture, but you know what, it works.

AIM broke down for political, not technical, rational. The POWER design abides: it's in your xBox 360, the PS3, the wii, the PSP, the next Gameboy. The Foundry routers you get to the internet through? PowerPC 603e. The filtering devices AT&T used to monitor what you do when you get online? 604 CPU's. But it became clear to IBM that the POWER line was a better as an embedded CPU, not a general purpose CPU. And it wasn't low POWER. Kinda a bad joke. They wouldn't deliver a mobile CPU to Apple without a huge price, and meanwhile Apple was all "You know, our OS has no processor dependence..."

The G5 love-fest was kinda sad. But it's not like you could expect anyone to get up and say "Dying gasps of a relationship gone wrong! Buy more now!".

[goMac]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - -

I absolutely hated the 6100. Next to my Quadra 700 it felt slow slow slow.

The 6100 blew my Quadra 605 out of the water when running PowerPC native stuff.

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by goMac

The 6100 blew my Quadra 605 out of the water when running PowerPC native stuff.

The Quadra 605 was my first Mac. That was a great machine. I even eventually upgraded to a whopping 12MB of RAM and 320MB of hard drive space!!

[brokenjago]

Incredible!

Reminds me of my blazingly fast 12 Mhz (20 on turbo!!) computer with One megabyte of RAM!!!!! 2600 baud modem! Ultra fast parallel interface! 100 MB hard drive!

[badsey]

sell your Mac Mini in the marketplace on this forum.

I use Mac and PC. I have an easier time finding files on the PC. I use the PC for my digital camera and burning CD/DVDs and any programs that will not work on OSX. I like the Mac for the internet/iTunes/Widgets (I'm a big Widget fan !!) I like the Mac better, but my Windows computer has a Mac Portrait 20" that actually looks better than my 20" iMac Core Duo.

Mac OSX is much more stable than Windows. Windows Vista is gonna be a big change and all the older programs may not work on it. I run WinXP and WinVista RC1 as a dual boot. Windows Vista also seems slow on multi-core systems where OSX is not = The fastest systems will be OSX like a Mac Pro (2 x 2 cores). Windows Vista has very nice graphics.

My iMac does not have a serial port that sometimes I need. Sometimes the Mac (Safari) doesn't work well with internet video files and forms (Ebay).

The new Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme chips are fast and can overclock. Everyone on NewEgg is raving about them. A 3Ghz P4 is fairly slow compared to a Core 2 Duo. If I could go with one of these systems and run OSX that would be the way to go + VM Windows. I may go Mac Pro in another year or two = right now it's expensive and not good enough performance wise. When you start talking 2/4 6? or 8?cores it's Mac OSX all the way.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor - Retail at Newegg.com

[mduell]

Originally Posted by dimmer

The key word here is "was". The AIM setup were all set to eat Intel's lunch. RISC, 15 years ago, was better than CISC. <snip> The RISC designs IBM made with the POWER [chip]-set did prove to be just wonderful: every web server you hit these days runs RISC. The Core design is an awful "RISC on the corner" architecture, but you know what, it works.

I'd guess that over 90% of web servers are running x86 chips.

Neither Power(PC) nor x86(-64) can really be catagorized as "RISC" or "CISC" these days. Both have very complex instruction sets on the front end (more complex than CISC was back in the day) with very simple instruction sets on the back end (more reduced than RISC was back in the day).

[gentryfunk]

In terms of CPU speed, your Mini allows for an easy speed boost....using a soldering iron, wipe out all the resistors that limit CPU Ghz....guides to doing this are all over the internet....I did it on my Mini 1.25 Ghz and boosted to 1.5....a modest increase but noticable....I also upgraded the drive to a 7200 RPM drive....the Mini is downright respectable!

[EFFENDI]

Originally Posted by badsey

I may go Mac Pro in another year or two = right now it's expensive and not good enough performance wise. When you start talking 2/4 6? or 8?cores it's Mac OSX all the way.

Not good enough? Are you insane? Unless you use one on a daily basis (like I do) you really have no clue as to what you are talking about. The Mac Pro is the fastest, best performing Mac right now, and they are NOT expensive when compared to their PC counterparts. Check the facts before you make blanket statements like that. Multi-core processors (those with 4+) will be VERY expensive when they are released. So if you are waiting for a cheap, multi-core workstation, plan to wait a long time.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Cadaver

The Quadra 605 was my first Mac. That was a great machine. I even eventually upgraded to a whopping 12MB of RAM and 320MB of hard drive space!!

I put a Quantum Fireball 1 gig drive in my Quadra 605 and I think I had 20 megs of RAM in it. Also an external cd drive for Myst.

The 605 was a really nice Mac, but it showed up just at the beginning of the CD-ROM era, and the lack of CD-ROM really hurt it imo. It's the only thing that kept it from being a better experience than my Powermac 7300.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by EFFENDI

Not good enough? Are you insane? Unless you use one on a daily basis (like I do) you really have no clue as to what you are talking about. The Mac Pro is the fastest, best performing Mac right now, and they are NOT expensive when compared to their PC counterparts.

There is, at current, no comparable non-Mac. The 3GHz quad Mac Pro is the fastest desktop PC available. Not by Apple's marketing, btw.

[dmetzcher]

Originally Posted by 24klogos

you dont have a clue about what you're saying. not only you buy the crappiest PPC mac, but you have no idea what you're talking about. if you had ONE extra neuron, you would have waited, and for the same money you could have bought an intel mini, and run BOTH os's. windows for that matter is your pick, hence your level of intelligence and the root of your entire post. go back and buy a pc, the mac community will be better without baboons like yourself. may god bless your ignorance.

Excellent post. I'm sure that you (1) really put him in his place, and (2) really made the rest of the Mac users on this forum look less like a bunch of nuts. You, sir, have really raised the level of this forum. We should all be proud of you. You should be proud of yourself.

People like you are worse than the Windows fanboys. If you are going to spend your time insulting people, try digg.com. You'll be happy there.

[xe0]

Originally Posted by rdf8585

Reasons I'm switching back -

1) slowness of the Mini compared to my 3 ghz Pentium 4 with Hyper-threading, 1 GB RAM, 7200 RPM HDPC.



2) WMP on the Mac is a mess, even with F4M.

3) Innertube [..] plays smooth as ice on my [3 ghz Pentium 4] PC with Real Player.

4) Video playback on ESPN.com (flash format) is awful.

5) Windows explorer beats anything on OSX, i.e finder/spotlight.

6) I like the start menu setup better than a dock.

lol!... Good night, and Goodluck

[dmetzcher]

Originally Posted by rdf8585

Apple's laptops weren't competetive with PC laptops prices a year ago and are worse now and what I show above proves it. I'm not trying to "troll," but I think I have a good point here. They really need a 699 or 799 laptop somehow... everyone else has one that isn't a piece of crap (those are the 499 laptops).

Agree with it or not, but you are not Apple's main market. The bargain PCs you talk about exist because all the Windows PC manufacturers compete on pricing, rather than features and design. Apple takes a different approach, and rakes in large profits from their hardware sales. That's what keeps the company healthy. The cheaper Macs serve one purpose, and that is to get people to buy the more expensive ones later. They bet heavily on the Mac OS being a major force behind keeping users who will them upgrade to a better machine in the future. Once Apple starts competing on price, the company is doomed. Other PC manufacturers are seeing profits decline for this reason, and Apple simply cannot afford it. Profit margins will become thinner, and that's not something that Apple, with a rather small market share, can gamble with right now, especially when they appear to be gaining a larger share of the market.

If we see the Mac OS take a larger piece of the OS share, say 10% or more, we may see them dropping prices a bit. The Mac Pro, when compared with comparable Dell machines, is cheaper, but that's just a bullet point in a list of features and benefits. It allows them to give the impression that they are competing on price, when they really aren't, and it's a great move on the company's part.

For me, it's all about the OS. Yes, I can get a killer Dell machine for less than the cost of a new MacBook Pro, but I don't want one. Dell can't give me the Mac OS. Dell can't give me the same look and feel of the Apple hardware. Frankly, I think the latest Dell laptops look tacky. That may not matter to many, and that's totally fine, but I'm Apple's market. I'm the one they are appealing to when they have a special event and announce a new model.

Others have suggested that you get mid-range iMac or Mac Pro, and run Windows, in addition to the Mac OS. I can certainly understand your financial situation. If you cannot afford it, you simply cannot afford it. The fact is, if Apple isn't offering you exactly what you want, and you are OK with using Windows, I say go and get exactly what you want from someone else. That's the way the market works. If you come back to Apple later in life, great. Good luck either way.

[dmetzcher]

Originally Posted by goMac

I haven't seen a BSOD since Windows Vista.

You probably never saw one in Windows XP, either, unless you turned it on. XP stopped displaying the BSOD, with Microsoft opting instead to just reboot the machine. You have to tell XP to show you blue screens now. The same should be true for Vista. It was a brilliant way to turn the BSOD into a thing of the past. If you can't solve all the problems, just make the symptom go away, and people will say they are no longer experiencing it.

[ghporter]

Not quite, dmetzcher. BSODs are much less common under XP, but they can still happen. It frequently takes some serious gooberage on the user's part (experience talking here), but it's still possible. And the information in a BSOD dump is still VERY useful in figuring out what went wrong.

[rdf8585]

Then what is Apple's "target market" ?

OSX isn't bad, like I said, but it's just not good enough to make me pay so much more for a laptop that runs it. Let it also be said, XP isn't great enough that I would pay a lot more to buy a machine with that on it, if OSX laptops were cheaper.

This weekend, for $599, Best Buy had a Gateway laptop with a Turion 64 MK-36, 1 GB PC4200 RAM, 100 GB HD and a Vista Premium-caliber graphics card.

[voo]

Originally Posted by ghporter

Not quite, dmetzcher. BSODs are much less common under XP, but they can still happen. It frequently takes some serious gooberage on the user's part (experience talking here), but it's still possible. And the information in a BSOD dump is still VERY useful in figuring out what went wrong.

Indeed, in most cases its usually bad or beta drivers or even poorly coded software. XP can just be as stable as OS X if properly configured (BIOS and software settings, overclocking is another ball game that really risks stability).
Lets face it though any machine can be as good but it depends on who the user is and what they do with it.

I've only been a OS X user a year past June. I still use my XP box but I only ever use it for gaming. OS X for everything else. I find OS X so pleasing and a joy to work with day to day. I find its UI laid out nicely for me as if it was finely crafted for me personally. Everything is sleek the UI is productive for my work as where XP just feels like addon after addon for years and years and just feels cluttered to my eyes, and not only that the colour management I find so much better on OS X than windows for design.

Originally Posted by rdf8585

5) Windows explorer beats anything on OSX, i.e finder/spotlight.

6) I like the start menu setup better than a dock.

Thats two things I do not miss. Explorer comes back to me as so cluttered and messy. But yet thats a personal preference and some will not agree. Finder I like its simple but still gets the job done. Quicksilver takes care of spotlight for me, I'd never go without that app. occasionally use spotlight at times.

The start menu, it feels so old and outdated. I really cannot stand it. Cluttered to my eyes yet again shortcuts everywhere, can't stand messing with shortcut files all the time.
Personal preference yet again, the dock is a joy to work with. Not only does it hold shortcuts so to speak but they can turn into the app launcher as well as the apps thats running. I love how it all ties into each other unlike windows where everything is seperate.

Originally Posted by rdf8585

Then what is Apple's "target market" ?

OSX isn't bad, like I said, but it's just not good enough to make me pay so much more for a laptop that runs it. Let it also be said, XP isn't great enough that I would pay a lot more to buy a machine with that on it, if OSX laptops were cheaper.

This weekend, for $599, Best Buy had a Gateway laptop with a Turion 64 MK-36, 1 GB PC4200 RAM, 100 GB HD and a Vista Premium-caliber graphics card.

I kind of see it as this way, PC's are more like your Vauxhalls, NISSANs and so on but your Apple's are the likes of Ferrari's, Rolls Royce's, Lamborghini's...
It all comes down to what you yourself needs not what your ego wants to show up your mates that sadly affects the majority of people.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by rdf8585

This weekend, for $599, Best Buy had a Gateway laptop with a Turion 64 MK-36, 1 GB PC4200 RAM, 100 GB HD and a Vista Premium-caliber graphics card.

15 to 1 it was louder than a quad G5 tower, making it completely unacceptable for anything but airport or construction site use - or the three-minutes-a-day-check-his-email-and-turn-it-off home user.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by dmetzcher

You probably never saw one in Windows XP, either, unless you turned it on. XP stopped displaying the BSOD, with Microsoft opting instead to just reboot the machine. You have to tell XP to show you blue screens now. The same should be true for Vista. It was a brilliant way to turn the BSOD into a thing of the past. If you can't solve all the problems, just make the symptom go away, and people will say they are no longer experiencing it.

I had XP crash every so often, but it would automatically restart.

Vista, on the other hand, blue screens and then automatically restarts.

[goMac]

How much of that Best Buy price was mail in rebates?

Edit: Wasn't this weekend the Best Buy laptop sale? As far as I remember, they were cutting prices on a bunch of laptops, but Apple and a few of the good PC brands were exempt from the price cuts.

[rdf8585]

No mail in rebates. Just a straight $599 and they still have it ...... EDIT: It's gone to sold out in the past 15 minutes - someone here buy one?

Gateway - Notebook with AMD Turion™ 64 - MX6446

I have a PC laptop but its over 3 years old and its fan is on the bottom of the thing so it runs hot and comes on way too often. I don't think I'd get a Dell laptop again b/c of it.

I'd love to see a 699 Apple laptop with a Core Solo and no front row and maybe no iSight camera. Personally, I might get some use out of an iSight camera (more than likely very little though).... but not sure about Front Row.

[freudling]

Ya, you used a mini. Try a new imac...

[rdf8585]

Originally Posted by freudling

Ya, you used a mini. Try a new imac...

An iMac makes no sense for me, personally. I just bought a digital LCD two months ago and I still have a 3 ghz P4 lying around here. I can't see myself buying an iMac as long as my LCD works. I might give the Mini another shot, but not for another 12-15 months and my laptop needs an upgrade more than my desktops do.

I'd love to buy a Macbook, but not at 1200+ (1 GB addition) ..... if it was 700 bucks maybe. But they're not, so oh well, right?

[hookem2oo7]

i had a PC laptop with a mobile athlon xp...it got about 2 hours of battery life (display dimmed all the way, processor running at 530MHz instead of the full 1800MHz). it was one of the $599 specials a few years ago. I went to a "slow, outdated" iBook G4 that got nearly 6 hours under the same conditions (dimmed display, reduced processor speed). That alone is enough for me to tolerate the slowness (i'm not arguing that the iBook is fast)

[badsey]

Originally Posted by EFFENDI

Not good enough? Are you insane? Unless you use one on a daily basis (like I do) you really have no clue as to what you are talking about. The Mac Pro is the fastest, best performing Mac right now, and they are NOT expensive when compared to their PC counterparts. Check the facts before you make blanket statements like that. Multi-core processors (those with 4+) will be VERY expensive when they are released. So if you are waiting for a cheap, multi-core workstation, plan to wait a long time.

Intel has had Quad-Core out for quite a while.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=2846

Intel has built a prototype of a processor with 80 cores that can perform a trillion floating point operations per second.

CEO Paul Otellini held up a silicon wafer with the prototype chips before several thousand attendees at the Intel Developer Forum here on Tuesday. The chips are capable of exchanging data at a terabyte a second, Otellini said during a keynote speech. The company hopes to have these chips ready for commercial production within a five-year window.

As expected, Intel announced plans to have quad-core processors ready for its customers in November 2006. An extremely fast Core 2 Extreme processor with four cores will be released then, and the newly named Core 2 Quad processor for mainstream desktops will follow in the first quarter of next year, Otellini said.

Notebooks will get a face lift next year with the Santa Rosa platform, which will provide notebooks with new technologies like 802.11n wireless and flash memory. Intel believes it will be the first to add flash memory to a notebook motherboard, which will improve boot times and reduce power consumption, Otellini said.

The Mac Pro is good, but not great. Depends what needs you have for a computer. OSX is the important part here. It can take advantage of all these cores well. You simply are misinformed about Intel and their chips = nothing more nothing less.

The Mac Pro is a cheap 4 core (2x2) workstation. Accessible for most and OSX is cheap ~$100.

Even the iPod will be multicore eventually. = This is the direction CPUs are going.

[rdf8585]

This isn't a complaint, but just curious - you can have the dock on the bottom, right or left but why not at the top? I keep mine on the bottom, doesn't bother me there, but curious why there isn't an option for the top.