see responses in line: On Nov 15, 2008, at 9:44 AM, Tasha Raella Chemel wrote:
> Hi list, I'm thinking about possibly getting a mac, but I had a few > questions. > > 1. One of the biggest problems i have with my dell laptop is that > when I have too many windows open (maybe sixty or so) the system > will start beeping constantly, and the only way to stop the beeping > is to restart. i have a two gig processor with one gig of ram. I > know I probably should not have this many windows open, but as I'm > sure you all know, it's easy to let the windows pile up and forget > to close them. My question: If i got a mac with high specs (maybe > two or fourg gigs of memory) would it be better about having that > many windows open? no. the user is responsible to be responsible and having a huge number of apps runnning and windows open is a user issue. No mattter haow poerful the computer, eventually, you run out of workspace. > 2. Hard drive crashes: my dell laptop usually crashes about twice a > year, and I need to get a new hard drive. granted, i'm a very heavy > user and I'm sure the system gets banged around more than what's > good for it. my question is, if I get a mac, are hard drive crashes > less frequent? any thoughts about whether the pro is more durable > than the macbook? (the new macbooks also have the aluminum casing) This is a maintanence issue and from what you say above, it is apparent that better care needs to be taken to avoid issues of this type. It is possible for an hd to fail, it is deffinit that an hd will fail if it is abused. > 3. Voices. I've heard a sample of the Alex voice, and am not > impressed. It has the same weird emphases and prenunciations as a > lot of the more 'human-sounding" tts's i've heard. are there other > voices that either come on the mac or that i can buy separately that > are comparable to eloquence in that they might sound robotic, but > they are responsive and don't have any weird clicks/emphases? It's > going to be very hard for me to give up eloquence. even viavoice, > which i know you can get for the mac, doesn't compare at all. No, all of the voices for the Mac have odities you are not going to like and if you have found viavoice for the mac, we'd like to know where because it has not turned up in any searches and when I have asked several times after searching all the via voice places I can find and only finding speech recognition, not tts, no one has posted info. > Thanks, Tasha
