Does Vista let you make those stupid application windows (the ones that surround your document windows in an outside frame window, except for the more modern with-it programs like Word and Internet Explorer that got rid of 'em, apparently) transparent or better yet just get rid of them entirely?
You can check out Bestbuy.com, Circuitcity.com, or Compusa.com. Many of the machines now come with Vista instead of MCE 2005. But you will see a whole slew of machines for around and less than $850.
Darwin doesn’t include the GUI, though, so that’s hardly useful.
Obviously you can find laptops for $850 or less. My point was that you won’t find any with as many features and functionality as a competitively priced Mac. A few posts up I just picked one apart, although on second glance I was wrong about the line-in port… the $880 PC included a mic jack. Still lacking in a current OS, bluetooth, FireWire, webcam, and remote control, however. Oh, and DVI now that I notice it…
For instance, check this guy out.
And for only $699.
Firewire, remote and MCE2005, plus line in and software by Sonic for video stuff.
A blue tooth adaptor is only $30 and a webcam, what, <$20?
Don’t get me wrong, I think that $1100 for what you have is a good price for a stable machine like that, but don’t think that there aren’t other (possibly) better systems out there for less.
What your obsession is with FireWire I can only imagine. But you might want to look up IEEE 1394.
That’s after $200 in rebates, of which $150 expire if you don’t buy it during a 4-day period. You’re out of pocket $900, which isn’t really a fair comparison. Apple sometimes gives away free iPods with their Macs, or you can buy refurbs… that’s a closer price comparison to one with rebates.
RAM and HD are good, but I’m not up to speed with processors (no pun intended). Is a Pentium Dual-Core as good as a Core 2 Duo?
I’m not sure how much a BT dongle and webcam are… I’ve never needed to shop for them. But I love that I can take my Mac with me and be able to surf the web using the cell phone in my pocket as a modem without an ugly USB device hanging off the side. Or use my webcam in public without having to tote around a huge device on a cord.
And that’s sort of my point… it all just works. I don’t need to worry about piecing together a system that does everything I need. I’d rather just buy the total package and not worry about it.
Anyway, that is an excellent deal on some good hardware. I bet it runs Linux marvelously!
I call it FireWire because I use a machine made by Apple, and that’s what Apple calls it.
My point was that at least a couple of the computers linked to so far have “FireWire” support, even though you keep listing it as something they don’t have. They can’t call it FireWire, since Apple is trademark happy, but it’s the same thing.
Ah, okay, I guess I got too caught up in Apple Speak, huh? Sorry for ignoring IEEE 1394 on that first linked computer.
We got a new HP Vista machine to test our software on. If anyone gets an HP or probably Compaq computer with Vista on it, be sure to disable the horrible “HP Total Care Advisor” program. It was taking around 78 MB of memory and 10% CPU all the time.
Otherwise, meh, it’s 75% the same as XP. It’s a pretty interface, but I really don’t see what’s so 3d about it except when you click the “Switch between windows” button down near the start menu. Then you get a view of all open windows rotated into a 3d view like this:
http://www.kodyaz.com/photos/windows_vista_ultimate_edition_rc1_screenshots/images/435/original.aspx
That view isn’t really that useful or interactive; you just click on the window you want to switch to and you’re back to 2d. The “glass” is sort of interesting; you can see the window(s) behind your current window through the title bar. All in all the color and effects tend towards light blues and light cyans, looking rather Mac-like to me.
I see some price discussion, this machine was purchased at Sams Club, it was ~$800 and had a 320GB drive, 1GB of RAM, and an Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+ processor. Decent machine to be sure.
That isn’t terribly new, or Mac-specific. Still, I’m sure a Mac looks much better down at Cafe Nervosa.
As a long-time Mac user, and one-time evangelist, I have accepted that I am in the minority of Mac users. When faced with the arguments of “small” or “dwindling” market share, “no software”, or “costs too much” I just reply that Apple has about the same market share in computers that BWM has in cars, and you don’t find too may BMW owners complaining about lack of cheap peripherals or parts, too few dealers, or their high-performance purchase was too expensive.
Vista… meh indeed. Five+ years to create an OS that barely matches up with the current OS available to Apple users, and will be outdated within a few months. I’ll stick with my Macs and compute in style and comfort. When I have to dabble in the Windows world, Vista will be no more inviting than XP, 97, 95, etc.
Having started out (all 'dem years ago) with CP/M, then DOS, and reluctantly to Windows 1.0 on up to XP, I agree with all those who are frustraated with and furious at MS.
I’ve always known Apple (and I first used a II) was superior, but for too many reasons to list, had to continue with PCs.
Win got worse and worse and worse, and all computer phreaks scratched their heads wondering why they could not emulate Mac, and much later, Linus, and make a decent OS.
Over the years i noticed one thing. Most computer people hated MS and most of those who just used a computers as a tool at work thought it was fine.
Obviously the folks at MS noticed that too.
Some of can remember back when you walked into a computer shop and spent the next couple of hours talking computer with the staff and any other customers there. No more.
Then a light went on when I read a couple of years ago that somebody from MS pointed out a basic business truth. Once there were more non-computer phreaks than phreaks, MS decided to try to make Win for that majority. More frustration or us, less for the, uh, idiots.
That explaisn all the current problems listed here. Of course, it still does not explain why Win 1.0, 3.0, 3.1 etc was so awful…
I didn’t say it was new or Mac-specific, but none of the computers people have pointed out to me have had Bluetooth, which is required to use my phone as a modem unless I wanted to tote along another cable.
So if I was on one of those PCs and wanted to do it, I’d always have to bring my PC and a bluetooth dongle. I’d have to install the drivers that came with the dongle and probably the drivers for my phone. Then I’d have to figure out whether I could use Windows’ dial-up networking or whether the bluetooth dongle I purchased had some proprietary dialing software. God forbid it used a 3rd party software dialing solution, since Windows would surely warn me about it and make me click an “okay” box to do what I just told it to do. Then, of course, a few seconds later I’d get a pop-up balloon in the corner to tell me I’d just connected. Yeah, I know I just connected… I TOLD IT TO CONNECT.
My Mac, on the other hand, just worked.
To be honest my laptop has a 3G card. Plugged it in, installed a very easy bit of software, it contacted the network and that was it. It doesn’t sit entirely flush with the side of the case though. I’m sure I can handle the scorn.
Most people who still use Bluetooth around here are young teens who have cheap GPRS phones. They can send each other dirty videos, slowly.
Excuse me? I have used Macs. The one I used was slow as shit, a pain in the ass, and for some damn reason had a mouse with only one button on it. 30 seconds in to using it I was longing for a PC, and all I was doing was browsing the web to kill time before class.
It’s like mac users get a different edition of XP than the rest of us. I can’t remember the last time my computer crashed, and I can’t remember the last time I had a window randomly pop up. I don’t get viruses or spyware, and everything on my computer works exactly the way I want it to.
I don’t think this OS discussion would be complete without this video TrueNuff.tv | Sketch Comedy Videos (Slighty NSFW language)
That won’t be a problem for this version of Office at least. The new xml-based file formats have an x on the end of the extension – .docx, .xlsx, etc.
I don’t know what machine you were using or what OS; I didn’t have a high regard for pre-OS X systems, and the initial release of OS X was slower than a hobbled snail, but the last few verisions have been pretty seamless and handle power management and startup/shutdown much better than any Microsoft OS I’ve used (and I’ve used them all from Windows 2 through XP).
You can purchase a multi-button mouse; OS X supports pretty much any function you like in a USB mouse. I use a Logitech trackball on my PowerBook and it works fine. I have to agree that Apple’s One Button To Rule Them All approach is pretty stupid.
I can’t imagine anything that you’re doing with a web browser that would be so dramatically different between Windows and Mac that it would make such a difference. There are a few things that irritate me about Safari, but they’re beyond basic web browsing activities.
No, there’s a different level of tolerance. As others have said, OS X was designed with a lack of obtrusive activity in mind; Windows apologists might not “notice” all of the annoying things Windows does, but going from OS X to Windows is like driving a BMW and then sitting down in a GM product; suddenly, assholish pretensions of superiority aside, you realize what people mean when they talk about “refinement” and “precision”, and what it means not to have it.
Plus, as a BSD user and admin, I appreciate how OS X works under the hood. No stupid inherently insecure Registry system to deal with (which in my mind ranks as “worst security exploit ever”); you can install a program without having root permissions, you can jail off potentially hazardous programs, you can easily monitor and kill errant processes, you can get at and use the underlying system utilities via a clean, functional CLI using standard scripting languages, you can control and communicate between high level applications with a consistent, well-supported scripting language and standard interfaces. OS X is inherently easier to secure and harder to breach; I’m not saying it can’t be done, but between the open source, extensively tested BSD background and the highly consistent and well documented graphical API, it’s hard to find a chink in the armor to exploit.
Whenever I go to developer conferences for high performance computing applications about half the crowd has PowerBook/MacBooks and the rest are running Linux on a variety of Intel laptops, seemingly constantly compiling drivers and trying to get their 802.11g adaptors working properly. That’s fun of course, and I have a signficant amount of respect for Linux (despite dealing with its limitations on a daily basis), but OS X is the polished, read-for-prime-time version of Unix that computer geeks and code warriors have been pining for for years. This is well and beyond what the standard user needs from an OS, but for someone who wants to run Unix-type applications but still have a non-kludg-y interface OS X is incomparable, and Windows (even XP) is…subpar at best. And performance? Don’t talk to me about performance. XP is a muscle car, and from everything I’ve heard, Vista is a diesel tractor. OS X (.2 and beyond, at least) seems to scale pretty nicely, even on older PPC machines.
Stranger