To an extent, the computer has become like food
and wine. I don't know about you, but I figure I
have *enough money* to eat genuine chicken
marsala or lamb procen�al or carne adovada con
chile rojos.
I know I *could* eat a Big Mac or a Swanson's
Frozen Dinner or, for that matter, I could
subsist on 99� packages of Ramen Noodles or even
dog food. Or I could take my harvesting knife
and my slingshot and go forth and harvest greens
and roots and maybe kill a blue jay or squirrel
to take home and clean and cook. It's all food,
it will all keep you alive and some options are
clearly cheaper than others.
I like a good montepulciano, a find merlot, a
nice cabernet sauvignon, with a strong tannin
taste, a bit smoky and moderately herbal and
lightly floral, not too dry, a taste that should
swell and elaborate on the tongue. Of course
there's always Paul Masson and Gallo, not to
mention Thunderbird and Night Train and Wild
Irish Rose.
I use Macs. My main Mac is a mere 7 years old -
a WallStreet PowerBook sporting a Sonnet G4/500
and 512 MB of RAM, running Panther 10.3.8
effortlessly as its OS, running a real second
monitor courtesy of a VillageTronic CardBus card,
doing USB or FireWire also via CardBus cards (I
can only run 2 out of 3 at a time), limping along
with 10-base-T Ethernet, using nice native SCSI
to run my even-more-ancient UMAX flatbed scanner,
using USB for my much-newer UMAX slide scanner
and printer and optical mouse, using ADB for my
wonderful Saratoga keyboards at work.
I know I could use a Dell or other baseline PC.
It processes bytes, it has a screen, a mouse, a
keyboard, it does internet, runs apps, saves
docs. But thank god I don't have to. I'd rather
run a 7100 or a Quadra and have the Mac
experience, and as it turns out I can afford a
WallStreet with some serious upgrade equipments
so it's no contest.
If, for the sake of argument, I *wanted* a PC,
I'd get a totally decked-out AlienWare (even if I
had to get it used, and a couple
performance-cycles old) or I'd have a PC geek
build me a do-it-yourself box with four Athlons
or Xeons inside. But frankly I've never had any
itch to own a PC. I've got a Mac and if I want a
PC experience I'll run it in emulation.
And if, when the next compelling iteration of
PowerBook comes out, Apple is offering it for
$4800 and competing PC offerings are going for
$710, I may worry about Apple's future but I
won't mind shelling out the extra to get the
computer I reallly want. It's soft shell crabs
with fresh calamari instead of Gordon's fish
sticks and by god it's worth it.
At 8:54 PM -0700 5/26/05, Gregg Eshelman wrote:
--- NODEraser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<clip>
The main problem (?) is that computers are just so
damned cheap
anymore. I "affectionately" call Dell the computer
of the month club,
because that's how they market their computers. I
suppose Apple isn't
far behind, with the Mac mini and other systems
coming down in price.
When the PCs first dropped below $1,000, that's when
Apple needed a new LC. Instead they made the over
priced and under-performing Cube. :P
--
Allan Hunter
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<http://home.earthlink.net/~ahunter>
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