Oops! Meant to point out:
where neutron star wrote:
This technique only works when individual files are selected, not when folders are selected. In fact, it’s misleading because when files and folders are selected, it gives the cumulative size of the files, but ignores the folder sizes.
On both the Mac and the PC, a file occupies a certain minimum amount of allocated space, whether it uses it all or not. If it needs more than that, it gets two of those blocks.
These minimum amounts vary according to the size of the media on which the files are placed: on a 1.4 MB floppy, a little text file may be 1-2K. That same file on a 1 GB Jaz drive will eat up 20K. (The newer HFS+ format of System 8 MacOS uses smaller minimum blocks, allowing you to save space on large drives by not letting lots of little files chew up giant allocated blocks of storage space, but the underlying situation still exists, only the size of the allocated unit has changed).
I’m not sure, but I think Windows tries to return the actual size of the data (rather than the size it takes up on disk) when you do a “Properties” check or view file size in a detailed list window. Unfortunately, the destination disk, whatever it may be, will need more room to hold all those files because of the minimum allocated block size problem.
Disable Similes in this Post
This is basically correct. The reason that some people occasionally have the problem where the listed file is smaller than what the disk says is available, and then it won’t fit, is because a floppy (or zip, for that matter) and a hard drive use different file systems with different block sizes. Under certain file systems, 5 1-KB files take up a lot more space than 1 5-KB file.
Oh, and I have to say, why is everyone complaining about seeing all the .dll and .ocx etcetera files? Does it matter? Are they bothering you? Does it bother you that you don’t know what they are, and it isn’t immediately obvious what they do? Did you know that Macs have a lot of the same things, but they’re hidden from view by the OS – and that Windows can do exactly the same thing, if you want it to?
I must say that I think this is the exact reason why many PC users get so PO’ed about the Mac. For the past 15 years or more, the Mac users have been telling them that their PC is a pile of crap and that before long the users of the world will realize this and switch to Mac. It still goes on today, as we are seeing now, even though the battle between Apple and the rest of the world is over.
Is it your experience that PC people start conversations in order to trash the Mac? I’m not sure how that topic would even come up…
PeeQueue
JoeyB:
you are absolutely correct. Aliases are very handy. Particularly during web development.
I guess it would be neat to be able to actually move stuff around, but it’s entirely not necessary. If you want to group things together, put ‘em all in the same folder. Sure your graphics apps aren’t physically next to each other on the drive, but that’s not gonna’ slow down the machine. If it make you feel better, put the icons next to each other and let the OS worry about where it -really- is. I also don’t understand why you’d need to back up an application. You’ve got the originaly instally disks, right? I’ve got every one of my apps saving and loading from My Documents. Granted you’ve got to tinker with RegEdit to get Notebook and others to do this, but it makes it very simple to only have to back up one directory (or a small tree as Visual C++ 6.0 creates mini project trees).
About file space, because the file formats are different between your HD and floppy or Zip disk, there is not a one-to-one correllation for the amount of space a file will take up. Because NTFS and FAT 32 both have smaller blocks, these files when copied to a floppy will take up more space. So Windows isn’t necessarily lieing when it reports the file sizes, it’s just not telling you the whole truth that the same file will need more space on the floppy. The more files you’re copying the less accurate it will be. Therefore when you said you were copying [a lot] of files you will need in the future to estimate up. Now ya’ know.
How does the Mac handle it? Pop up window saying “Not enough space!!!”?
X) About the CD skipping, if you play your CD’s through an analog channel to the sound card you’ll NEVER have this problem. This might not be possible on a laptop as it requires extra wiring directly from the CD player to the sound card. I’m thinking this problem occurs with the advent of Digital Data Extraction wherein the music is sent in digital format via the system bus which, as you know, has other things to do. Most desktop CD rom’s have a play button on the front. If it’s been hooked up correctly you can push this and listen to uninterrupted music. Oh, Winamp isn’t such a great product.
“Many applications won’t let you open files if they don’t have an extension that they recognize, even if the data contained within is completely compatible.” Why would you need to open an *.TXT file in LViewPro? Or a .WAV file in Excel? The extension and the programs are designed to know what works with what. If you change *.EXE to *.BAT, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t work. Maybe I’m not looking at the problem the way your are. Perhaps an example could clarify why you’re having difficulties.
Emulators) I’d like to see the benchmarks you’ve uncovered using the PC emulator on a Mac vs. a PC. If this is true, it’s the first I’ve heard of ANY emulator being faster than native.
“this was the fault of the application”) Certainly you know that MS doesn’t write all of the PC software. Many times it’s the app that screws something up for us too. I particularly hate it when an app remaps the cntrl-x/c/v keys.
What’s the difference between minimizing something to the start-menu-bar vs. having it in the upper right corner of the screen? Also, leaving that stuff running all the time uses up system resources.
AHunter3:
I don’t have the problem you’re having with de-maximization. What version of Windows is that? I’ve got three sessions of IE5.0 open, two maxed and one not-maxed, and they don’t change on their own. I’ve conducted a little test to see if I could duplicate your problem, but nope. Please give more details.
You’re absolutely right about all those damn files. I hate them. I particulary don’t like driver files or the way they are installed. What ever happened to INSTALL.BAT?
The keystroke conventions exist, but some app designers refuse to adhere. CTRL-Left-Click to select individual members of a list.
If I can see some convincing data on the emulator thing, I’m almost ready to switch camps especially when considering the indestructability of the Mac keyboards. I once spilled a Mountain Dew on our server keyboard and it blew a capacitor which then went on to toast a couple other computers on the network. Ooops. If only we had had a Mac.
Not really. Macs have a tiny handful of hidden (invisible) files, if that’s what you mean, but they are fairly self-explanatory if you make them visible. And nothing like the hordes of files in Windows.
Here is an example of what I’m talking about: this is just the files starting with “W” in the root of the Windows directory:
WRITE.EXE
Waves.bmp
WANGIMG.EXE
WANGSAMP
WINMINE.EXE
WINHELP.EXE
WINHLP32.EXE
WINNEWS.TXT
WININIT.EXE
WINVER.EXE
WELCOME.EXE
WINFILE.EXE
WINSOCK.DLL
WINIPCFG.EXE
WINPOPUP.EXE
WABMIG.EXE
WAVEMIX.INI
WIN.INI
WPXERROR.LOG
WINSOCK.OLD
WPXINDEX.LST
WIN386.SWP
winzip32.ini
winfile.ini
Winhelp.ini
WINWORD6.INI
WinHlp32.BMK
win.1
WININIT.BAK
My copy of Windows95 contains 249 items (not counting the ones in subdirectories). Windows\System contains 718 items.
For comparison’s sake, my Mac System Folder (OS 8.6) contains 44 items (not counting the ones in subfolders). Control Panels contains 46 items; Extensions contains 196; Preferences (a true Mac hell-hole, that folder) contains 259 items. Very few of these files have incoherent names. The PC has “WABMIG.EXE”; the Mac has “MacIPX Preferences”. The PC has “K2V_SWC.INI”; the Mac has “Startup Disk”. I know what my files mean on the Mac, and there are fewer of them, and they are organized in ways that make more sense.
Much of what constitutes a Mac application file is modular, inside the same file but able to be edited separately (the resources), so in that sense it is “hidden from the user”, true enough–is that what you were referring to?. So OK (::he says, launching ResEdit: 
– Now I see a list of resources, each with a 4-letter code, some of which are self-explanatory (“ALRT”, “ICON”, “MENU”), others of which are less so (“cicn”? “FREF”?), but each resource has its own pictoral icon to help indicate its purpose. Only truly geeky Mac users (or 4th graders who like to replace menu names such as “File” and “Edit” with “Barf” and “Fuckoff” :)) have any business going here.
But it’s kept out of the way for a reason. People have everyday reasons to be looking at the files on their hard drive and it is only reasonable that they should expect to understand what they see there. People should know their directory structure and what’s on their drives. The resources of an application file are actually modular elements of the raw code and it is a good thing that they are embedded in the file and it is a good thing that you don’t see them without going to additional measures to see them.
And if it’s fair to bring up a Mac’s resource fork stuff, it’s only fair to talk about the registry 
And I bet the average PC user will have legitimate reason to edit the registry a hell of a lot more often than the average Mac user will need to edit a file resource!
Disable Similes in this Post
The average PC user should [bold]never[/bold] edit the registry.
PeeQueue
oops!
Huh? How long have you used a Mac? I’ve had my Mac for about 3 months. For the first week or so, I admit, I felt the same way about the way the Mac doesn’t “close” a program when you close the window. It drove me nuts too. Then, I figured out that all I need to do is press the apple key + Q, and the program is closed. Easy easy easy. It’s different from clicking to close a window, but I don’t think it takes any longer, and I’ve adjusted quite nicely. I don’t scratch my head wondering why my program hasn’t closed. I know it’s closed after I press the Apple+Q key. No biggie.
I admit, I’m confused about some of what you’re saying there. But, I do know what you are talking about the “right click” over a link to get the pop-up menu, and then open the link up with a new window. I really missed that on my Mac, since I am a right-click sort of person on Windows. Then I (God Forbid!) read my Mac OS 8 book, and figured out that if I held my mouse down for a second over the link, the same pop-up menu would come up, and I could open the link up in a new window. This works with both Netscape 4.08 and IE 4. No biggie.
I am not finding anything (yet) that is so monumentally inconvenient with the Mac. I miss the right click, but I now know many of the keyboard shortcuts I need to get the same thing done, in about the same amount of time. (Maybe less - I am glad to be less mousy-clicky dependent. Keyboard shortcuts are good!)
Now, this is just my point of view. I wanted to learn how to use this Mac. I still miss some things about Windows (I wish the Mac would have the “thumbnail” preview thing of images and HTML files, like Win 98 does.) But, I am finding that I get along well with the Mac. And, thanks to my handy Mac OS books, I am finding that many things that I “miss” about Windows are not really gone on a Mac, just are done differently, (if you care to learn the alternatives, which I obviously do.)
Yeah? Your point being? 99.99% of Win users have no reason to even open the Windows dir, let alone care about how many files are in it or what they do.
Cockamamie? C’mon, do want someone to pop out of the computer and whisper the size in your ear? You have to select the files anyway to copy them. Once you have that done all you have to do is glance downward. I’m not quite sure whats cockamamie about that.
And it would take time, my precious time to hold down that damn mouse button for a couple seconds rather than just right-clicking. I get the menu NOW instead of two seconds from now.
So let me get this straight. The program is still open, yet you cannot see it. You mean like what happens when you MINIMIZE it in Windows? The only difference I can see here is that Mac uses a dropdown menu and Windows uses a little bar across the bottom of the screen.
I’ve never used this program, but I’ll give an example using Photoshop. If I’m working in Photoshop and I’m done with Image1, I close Image1. Photoshop remains open even if there are no other images open in the program.
I am the user formerly known as puffington.
Yeah? Your point being? 99.99% of Win users have no reason to even open the Windows dir, let alone care about how many files are in it or what they do.
Cockamamie? C’mon, do want someone to pop out of the computer and whisper the size in your ear? You have to select the files anyway to copy them. Once you have that done all you have to do is glance downward. I’m not quite sure whats cockamamie about that.
And it would take time, my precious time to hold down that damn mouse button for a couple seconds rather than just right-clicking. I get the menu NOW instead of two seconds from now.
So let me get this straight. The program is still open, yet you cannot see it. You mean like what happens when you MINIMIZE it in Windows? The only difference I can see here is that Mac uses a dropdown menu and Windows uses a little bar across the bottom of the screen.
I’ve never used this program, but I’ll give an example using Photoshop. If I’m working in Photoshop and I’m done with Image1, I close Image1. Photoshop remains open even if there are no other images open in the program.
I am the user formerly known as puffington.
Oopsie. And they thought flood control would eliminate the double posts! FOOLS! HAHA! I’ll screw up what I’m doing no matter how hard someone tries to stop me!
PeeQueue wrote:
For the record, I’ve never told anyone their computer is a “pile of crap” or had anything derogatory to say about it. In fact, for years, I assumed that what my PC buddies were telling me about how Windows was as good as the MacOS was true… It wasn’t until I actually started using PCs again that I came to feel that the MacOS was indeed superior. I have called my PC a pile of crap on numerous occasions… never anyone else’s.
Indeed. For the last 7 years I’ve had PC people stopping by my office to tell me how stupid I am for purchasing a Macintosh. “Apple sucks”. “Hey MacBoy. When you gonna get a real computer?” Some of these guys even took the time to write me emails while I was out of the country. From my perspective, it’s been the PC die-hards that have been the extremist, though I admit that Guy Kawasaki and the EvangeLists are probably examples of the other extreme.
Me, I’m just a guy trying to make a living and finding it personally preferable to use Macs than PCs. As I’ve said before, I have no issues if you prefer PCs over Macs, though I suspect that most people who feel that way have never actually given a Mac a serious try. I’m not out to convert anyone, however I’m not the kind of guy to sit around and watch quietly as people spread misinformation. If I’m guilty of that in the reverse, then I humbly appologize, however I think that most of my ‘anti-Windows’ points have been valid.
There are actually a couple of things I really like about the PC. I really, really like the fact that I can do file system operations in the file dialogs (delete files, rename files, move files, etc.). That is a feature that I find I use quite often and wish my Mac could do that. I also like the task bar, though it can get overcrowded fairly quickly. I’m pretty sure there are task bar equivalents for the Mac, but I haven’t bothered to look.
previously sixseatport wrote:
I actually think that could be healthy. I’d like to hear it. It would probably go a long way toward helping me appreciate some things about Windows and insure that if there are people on the fence, they get an honest assessment.
neutron star,
You wrote:
I think you have seriously overestimated this percentage. Given that I, as a new user, was dinking around in my winnt directory within hours of first firing up, I’d say that most serious computer users probably will… so unless you’re saying that only 0.01% of PC users are serious users, maybe you should reconsider your claim.
[quote]
And it would take time, my precious time to hold down that damn mouse button for a couple seconds rather than just right-clicking. I get the menu NOW instead of two seconds from now.
[quote]
Well, if you need immediacy, you can hold down the control key when you click (in Netscape anyway) and it behaves just like a right click in Windows. I don’t know if Internet Explorer behaves this way.
No, they’re not really the same thing. The Macintosh menu thing is just the applications, where the task bar is the open windows. If you open four windows in Excel on a PC, you’ll have four tabs in the task bar. Do the same thing on a Macintosh, you’ll only see Excel in the application list. This is why I think the Windows way is a little better when you have relatively few windows open. You can go from a specific window in one application to a specific window in another application with just one click.
So Photoshop is the exception to the rule. Canvas, BTW is a lot like Photoshop, except that it does layered vector gaphics too. Canvas v7 now has sprite graphics which let you perform all kinds of filter effects (including those from many Photoshop plugins) on vector objects… Really cool! But I digress. In my mind, quitting the application just because you’ve closed the last window is just one step shy of shutting down the computer because you close the last application… You’d think that was pretty silly, wouldn’t you?
neutron star,
You wrote:
I think you have seriously overestimated this percentage. Given that I, as a new user, was dinking around in my winnt directory within hours of first firing up, I’d say that most serious computer users probably will… so unless you’re saying that only 0.01% of PC users are serious users, maybe you should reconsider your claim.
[quote]
And it would take time, my precious time to hold down that damn mouse button for a couple seconds rather than just right-clicking. I get the menu NOW instead of two seconds from now.
[quote]
Well, if you need immediacy, you can hold down the control key when you click (in Netscape anyway) and it behaves just like a right click in Windows. I don’t know if Internet Explorer behaves this way.
No, they’re not really the same thing. The Macintosh menu thing is just the applications, where the task bar is the open windows. If you open four windows in Excel on a PC, you’ll have four tabs in the task bar. Do the same thing on a Macintosh, you’ll only see Excel in the application list. This is why I think the Windows way is a little better when you have relatively few windows open. You can go from a specific window in one application to a specific window in another application with just one click.
So Photoshop is the exception to the rule. Canvas, BTW is a lot like Photoshop, except that it does layered vector gaphics too. Canvas v7 now has sprite graphics which let you perform all kinds of filter effects (including those from many Photoshop plugins) on vector objects… Really cool! But I digress. In my mind, quitting the application just because you’ve closed the last window is just one step shy of shutting down the computer because you close the last application… You’d think that was pretty silly, wouldn’t you?
neutron star, another example why having so many files in the Windows directory sucks:
At my previous job, we had several PC’s that needed to connect to a server database. All were successful in connecting except two or three. My supervisor put me in charge of finding out what was wrong with those PC’s. Eventually I figured out it was a missing DLL. (All PC’s were running the same version of Windows.) How the DLL went away, no one knows, but it’s very possible someone deleted it by mistake or some program removed it. To find out, I had to compare the list of files in the Windows directories. Well, it’s a lot easier to compare a list of 50 files than a list of 700. Haven’t you ever heard the expression “DLL hell?” That expression exists for a good reason.
neutron star,
You wrote:
I think you have seriously overestimated this percentage. Given that I, as a new user, was dinking around in my winnt directory within hours of first firing up, I’d say that most serious computer users probably will… so unless you’re saying that only 0.01% of PC users are serious users, maybe you should reconsider your claim.
[quote]
And it would take time, my precious time to hold down that damn mouse button for a couple seconds rather than just right-clicking. I get the menu NOW instead of two seconds from now.
[quote]
Well, if you need immediacy, you can hold down the control key when you click (in Netscape anyway) and it behaves just like a right click in Windows. I don’t know if Internet Explorer behaves this way.
No, they’re not really the same thing. The Macintosh menu thing is just the applications, where the task bar is the open windows. If you open four windows in Excel on a PC, you’ll have four tabs in the task bar. Do the same thing on a Macintosh, you’ll only see Excel in the application list. This is why I think the Windows way is a little better when you have relatively few windows open. You can go from a specific window in one application to a specific window in another application with just one click.
So Photoshop is the exception to the rule. Canvas, BTW is a lot like Photoshop, except that it does layered vector gaphics too. Canvas v7 now has sprite graphics which let you perform all kinds of filter effects (including those from many Photoshop plugins) on vector objects… Really cool! But I digress. In my mind, quitting the application just because you’ve closed the last window is just one step shy of shutting down the computer because you close the last application… You’d think that was pretty silly, wouldn’t you?
Yikes!!! The board kept telling me it was closed for maintenenance, but it must have logged all of my submissions… sorry! Maybe a moderator will clean that up???
inertia wrote:
These are not benchmarks I’ve uncovered, they were head-to-head comparisons of a number of activities that I engage in. I’ll explain, but first a bit of history. It all started when I first got my PC. There are a few Excel worksheets that I have to work with that are huge. I noticed that they took exceptionally long to load, one in particular took nearly 3 minutes (it’s about 20MB). I remembered opening on a Macintosh a few months earlier and it didn’t seem that long, so I took the file home and loaded it onto my G3. It took only 15 seconds to load in Excel there. I thought, “This is curious.” It had seemed that my 366MHz Pentium II was not as zippy as my 300MHz G3, but I originally attributed it to my imagination or possibly Mac bias. I tried several other similar tests on both computers. I run a lot of the same software on both platforms, so it was pretty easy to pit one against the other. In every test (I can describe them all to you, if you want) my Mac was at least 3 times as fast - sometimes, much, much faster… This got me thinking, what if I load up some of these applications in Virtual PC and see how the emulator compares? Of course, I expected the emulator to fall on it’s butt in this battle. I only tried a handful of operations using Excel, Canvas, POV-Ray and a couple of standard PC benchmarks I found on the WWW. What I found surprised even me. The standard benchmarks only barely beat the Mac in emulation mode. It wasn’t surprising that the PC would win, but I expected a greater margin. The real surprise was that Excel, in the Virtual PC environment, loaded large files faster, saved large files faster, and recalculated large sheets faster. Canvas, in the Virtual PC environment, saved and loaded faster, redrew complex images faster, and executed filters faster. POV-Ray… you guessed it… rendered faster. The speed improvements varied from “just marginal” to “dramatic”. The operations I chose were inflated to highlight the differences and minimize errors in starting the operations, however they were typical of the kinds of things that I, well typically do…
Incidentally, I have a friend that has seen similar results between his PC and his Mac. His Mac is slightly faster than mine, but his PC was about the same speed. He did say that he had some games on the PC that were optimized for his graphics card that performed much better on the PC than on the Mac emulating a PC.
For the few things that we do in Virtual PC mode at home, it has far exceeded my expectations. Far from being, as someone put it, “a toy”.
Several people have pointed out that the problem with file sizes may be related to block size limits in the file system. I’m sure this is partially a factor and this had already occured to me, however several things made me question whether this was the whole story.
First, when I first discovered the problem I was still using an earlier service pack (4 I think). For some reason, files below a certain threshhold would report 0 bytes in the properties dialog, so very small files wouldn’t register. When I upgraded to service pack 6, this went away.
Second, after my upgrade to service pack 6, I thought I was safe. I tried another copy, first looking at the actual byte count, which failed - most likely due to the phenomenon that has been mentioned about block sizes. But I’m no dummy (no comments from the cheap seats). I then retried the copy operation paying attention to the approximate size (the one that appears outside the parentheses). This copy operation failed in the same way. Now I don’t know what that approximation is, but it apparently does not take block size into account, because by my theory this should have been more than I would need on the smaller disk that would have a smaller minimum block size.
Third, being a bit of a perl hacker, I threw together a quick script to count the actual bytes in all the files in a folder. The result did not agree with either number reported by the Properties dialog… I suppose that I could have made some counting error, but I finally just gave up and decided that I didn’t know who to believe.