Guys: The "Windoze sux, Macs rulz" comments are just goofy and suggest you have no idea what you're talking about.
Jim Arnott's tale of woes installing Windows XP on a computer he built made me laugh. It's a machine put together from random parts; of course you'll need to get the drivers lined up. If you don't want the hassle, buy a pre-built computer. Dell et al will happily install the drivers and the OS for you. I just popped a new PCI Ethernet card in my Mac and guess what, it didn't work until I installed the driver. Big deal! Really, trying to claim that Apple is somehow superior because they natively support a very limited range of hardware is just silly. (BTW, I bet that home-built computer cost substantially less than a comparable Mac.) >I just 'love' PCs. Really I do. I KNOW why there are so many PC techs >and so few Apple techs. PCs need techs, Apples don't. Meh. As someone who makes his living as a Mac support tech, I beg to differ. Macs are no less prone to technical problems than Windows. Extension conflicts? Corrupted font suitcases? Programs crashing with random errors? One program taking down the entire OS? Random system freezes because of memory leaks? If there are fewer Mac techs, it's because Windows machines outnumber Macs 20-to-1. >As with the bus speed, the way the Mac architecture is designed, it doesn't >need as fast as a bus speed as its wintel counterpart. If you look at the >benchmarks, you would see that the difference in bus speed hasn't faltered >the Mac's reign on superior processing power. This is absurd. The fastest PowerPC processor is embarrassingly slow compared to the top-of-the-line x86. The G4 ekes out an advantage with intensive SIMD processes designed to use the AltiVec routine, but for the majority of tasks the PPC is slower. Here's a good article if you'd like to learn something about how the different classes of processors work: <http://arstechnica.com/cpu/01q2/p4andg4e/p4andg4e-1.html> Given that Motorola is laying off several thousand employees in its semiconductor division, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple jumps ship to another manufacturer (probably IBM or AMD) in the not so distant future. >Also, Win XP sucks. . . . XP is a cheap imitation of OS X, M$ modified >some GUI elements, but there is basically no new technology to make it >better than its ME predecessor. So much ignorance here, probably better to leave it alone. >Macs also make killer servers. Take Digitalforest for example, they are one >of the trendsetters who have server farms full of Macs dedicated to high >performance web serving solutions. Gawd, Macs make fairly lousy servers for anything beyond a small shop. Can you get 1U enclosures, redundant power supplies, decent RAID support? Seriously, name one major website (besides Apple.com) that runs off OSX Server. >OS 9 walks all over any windows OS, and OS X will continue to slaughter >every line of code that comes out of M$ for decades. > >As an Apple Developer, I've had the pleasure to kick some major butt with OS >X for almost 2 years now. The best continues to get better. There is no >comparison. > Well, there's a nice bridge in New York City I can let you have for cheap, too! Look, there are many reasons to use a Mac, but blindly spouting Apple's PR isn't going to convince anyone of that. OS9 has some strengths but also serious limitations. OSX addresses some of these issues, but it's still an emerging platform with its own peculiarities. To pretend it somehow walks all over Windows, especially 2000/XP, is just silly. -- Dan -- MacNetwork is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... XRouter Pro | Share your DSL or cable modem between multiple computers! Dr. Bott | Only $199 <http://www.drbott.com/prod/MIH130.html> Now shipping! Farallon Wireless SkyLINE PCI Card for Mac Desktops! <http://www.farallon.com/le/skyline/pci/index.html> Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> MacNetwork list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/macnet.html> Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/macnetwork%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Macintosh? Get free email and more at Applelinks! <http://www.applelinks.com>
