So out of the 6 classes I have this semester, there's only one in which I have no wireless Internet access...and unfortunately it's the one where I could use it the most - my Technical Writing Class. Thankfully, I'm not in that class right now so I can babble to you all :)
I was up in New Haven for the long weekend and it looks like I brought some warm weather up with me because it wasn't nearly as freezing as it had been in the days before I got up there. It wasn't bad at all.
I'm in two very interesting classes this semester: a compiler design class and an ASIC design class. Both classes look like they're going to be the most time consuming of my load this semester, and they are both on Tuesdays/Thursdays. We're only one week into the semester but both of those classes are turning out to be worth the effort. You may hear me ramble on about them as the semester goes on...just a heads up.
I posted the Intel Roadmap article you all asked for, although we focused on desktop CPUs in this one if there's enough demand I can do something similar for Opteron/Xeon. It's more difficult doing this stuff for ATI and NVIDIA because they share much less data with their partners than AMD and Intel do for example. ATI has actually kept an extremely tight lid on their R420, but I've got a few more sources to tap into before calling it a day.
With wireless Internet available in classes I'm seeing more and more students bringing in laptops, but what I find curious are the number of Apple Powerbooks being used. I'm not a big fan of Apple's hardware, although their ergonomics engineers have definitely earned their keep. The Powerbooks are far from the lightest devices around but they seem to have decent battery life and most of the users I've asked say that they are fast enough for what they do.
The seal on the deal however seems to be OS X, which brings me to my point - being a member of the group of the hardest of hardcore PC users, would you all ever consider not necessarily moving to an Apple but maybe adding one to your collection of computers? I've thought about it in the past, just as an experiment, but the hardware never excited me and the feel of the OS was just a little uncomfortable for me. Just curious as to what you all think.
Despite my issues with Apple's hardware, I am a huge iPod fan as well as a big Cinema Display advocate (although there are finally some more interesting PC displays available).
I've got another wedding location to visit this afternoon (I leave in about 6 minutes, after class gets out) and....ooh class got out early, I'll catch you all later :)
I was up in New Haven for the long weekend and it looks like I brought some warm weather up with me because it wasn't nearly as freezing as it had been in the days before I got up there. It wasn't bad at all.
I'm in two very interesting classes this semester: a compiler design class and an ASIC design class. Both classes look like they're going to be the most time consuming of my load this semester, and they are both on Tuesdays/Thursdays. We're only one week into the semester but both of those classes are turning out to be worth the effort. You may hear me ramble on about them as the semester goes on...just a heads up.
I posted the Intel Roadmap article you all asked for, although we focused on desktop CPUs in this one if there's enough demand I can do something similar for Opteron/Xeon. It's more difficult doing this stuff for ATI and NVIDIA because they share much less data with their partners than AMD and Intel do for example. ATI has actually kept an extremely tight lid on their R420, but I've got a few more sources to tap into before calling it a day.
With wireless Internet available in classes I'm seeing more and more students bringing in laptops, but what I find curious are the number of Apple Powerbooks being used. I'm not a big fan of Apple's hardware, although their ergonomics engineers have definitely earned their keep. The Powerbooks are far from the lightest devices around but they seem to have decent battery life and most of the users I've asked say that they are fast enough for what they do.
The seal on the deal however seems to be OS X, which brings me to my point - being a member of the group of the hardest of hardcore PC users, would you all ever consider not necessarily moving to an Apple but maybe adding one to your collection of computers? I've thought about it in the past, just as an experiment, but the hardware never excited me and the feel of the OS was just a little uncomfortable for me. Just curious as to what you all think.
Despite my issues with Apple's hardware, I am a huge iPod fan as well as a big Cinema Display advocate (although there are finally some more interesting PC displays available).
I've got another wedding location to visit this afternoon (I leave in about 6 minutes, after class gets out) and....ooh class got out early, I'll catch you all later :)
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
19 Comments
View All Comments
slalah - Sunday, February 8, 2004 - link
My own experience with Macs: I had four self-built PC's of the Athlon/Duron variety and decided to try out an eMac/iBook combination (I'm very cheap). By the end of the year all of my PC's were starting to gather dust as I started using the Mac more and more often. My only qualm is that I actually had to pay for Office. iTunes and my 40GB iPod (which also backs up my /user directory) combined with all of the free creative software that is included has switched me completely off of PC use in my home. I also find myself remotely administering most of the PC's via VNC and RDP (MS Terminal services) while at work. There are a few IE only web tools that I need to administer that currently don't work well with Safari or Firebird, but this is very rare.I currently have only one computer-- a 15" Albook with a DVD burner and 512MB of DDR RAM. I find that it does everything I currently need a computer to do.
I've got the latest build of Ethereal plus a really great wireless listening app (Kismac) to do basic forensics and security checks.
Though I was originally skeptical about .Mac, I have to agree that it really does streamline your computing experience. I may even get rid of my domain and start using .Mac for my blog and for posting all of my digital photos to friends and relatives if I can get over the whole ego thing about sending links to a .Mac site.
The Powerbooks and iBooks are just great all around computers. If Apple would just introduce a low priced desktop with a G5, then I would probably purchase one of those as well to be the center of my digital entertainment hub. (I rarely watch TV anymore and just purchase any series I want off of Amazon, or have Conan capped from a friend.) I watch all my movies off of an InFocus X1 digital projector... it's great.
Arun - Monday, January 26, 2004 - link
Evan the reason you haven't seen many CS Majors with Apples is because you haven't gone out into the real world.I do OS kernel development (UNIX) for a living and prefer my PowerBook over my two PCs. One of them died because of memory issues (win2k killed itself) and I haven't bothered recovering data or fixing it yet. Before my powerbook which is now 3 months old (first apple I have ever owned) I would have spent a night fixing it.
I built the PC myself with parts hand picked after reading reviews here and on tomshardware. I have had nothing but problems with all the cheap PC hardware to date. 2 bad hardrives (probably because of the Power Supply) got a new PS. Bad memory that killed my OS, all of this probably because of a bad mother board. I used Soyo, Maxtor, ATI, Mushkin.
I wish the PC had firewire target mode support like the apples. I could have used it to get the data off the PC with out having to reinstall the OS or move the disk to another system. Target mode alows one system to act like a disk and get mounted on another system via a fire wire cable. All I would have to do was set my PC to target mode in the firmware (BIOS/OBP) and mount the disk on my laptop and pull all the data.
Macs have some cool features that many PCs or even Unix boxes don't
GL - Monday, January 26, 2004 - link
Adam, Macs use regular ATA-compatible hard disks. Notwithstanding certain drive geometry incompatibilities that computers from that time exhibit with the much larger HDs today, If you paid a premium for a Mac-compatible model you got ripped off. Not only that, but Panther has built in support for reporting S.M.A.R.T. errors. Furthermore, all Macs ship with a diagnostic CD that you can boot to test various components such as RAM, video chipset, and hard disks. If you were feeling especially motivated, you might even boot into OpenFirmware and see what you could do from there.There was a way to deal with your situation - you just were not aware of it.
Which leads me to another interesting phenomenon regarding Mac perceptions. When people encounter a problem with Windows and Linux, they assume there must be a solution but they are not aware of it. When people encounter a problem with Macs, they assume there is no solution because if there were one, they would be aware of it.
As for the cornocopia of hardware solutions, let's look at today's current OEMs for hardware components (readily available to upgrade a Mac or PC):
CPUs: Mac { IBM, Motorola }, PC { Intel, AMD, Transmeta }
Motherboards: Mac { none }, PC { several }
RAM: Mac, PC { the same providers }
Hard disks: Mac, PC { the same providers }
Optical drives: Mac, PC { the same providers though you may need to purchase CD/DVD-authoring software for the Mac or hack some resource files for native support }
Video : Mac { Nvidia, ATI }, PC { Nvidia, ATI, S3 }
Sound: Mac { M-Audio, several high end companies }, PC { AOpen, C-Media, Creative Labs, M-Audio, several high end companies }
Keyboards & Mice: Mac, PC ( the same providers }
With the exception of CPU choice, where neither the PC camp or Mac camp can source parts from the other for their systems, most of the hardware is available on all platforms today. And of the vast majority of hardware upgrades, the only blatantly missing company on the Mac side is Creative Labs and the motherboard makers. But for video cards, when was the last time you wanted a S3 card?
For those that are interested, I would highly recommend checking out this guy's webpage - he upgraded his eMac and also overclocked it from 800 MHz to 1.33 GHz. And no, he didn't have the help of overclocking via BIOS nor jumpers on the motherboard.
http://www.lbodnar.dsl.pipex.com/eMac/eMac-upgrade...
Adam - Monday, January 26, 2004 - link
I grew up myself using Macintosh; actually I never used anything else existed until I got a PC two years ago.The real issue that Anand brought up was that the hardware did not excite him and the OS was uncomfortable for him. I agree.
I just installed Panther 10.3 on a G4 that my parents have owned for a couple of years. I purchased a new harddrive for it because the 10 GB disk that came with it was, to be frank, crap. I bought a new "Mac Compatible" HDD.
Installation of Panther went perfectly. It was up and running in a few hours. My mom did her email and shopping; when my sister came in town she did some homework and internet browsing. Then all of the sudden booting problems with the disk. Some component was failing--but here is the real willy--I could not diagnose the problem. Why? All of the hardware is literally screwed into metal plates on the motherboard. And Apple's hardware is so stinking proprietary that there is no way to really replace any component.
At least with a PC there is a way to deal with situations like this. With PC's we have a cornocopia of hardware soltutions and variable configurations that are just not available on the Mac platform. That is boring to me.
And as far as I know, OSX has very little configurability. One thing that is nice about WinXP is you can strip it down for performance, configure it to your liking, even make it "look" like OSX, if that is what you like.
Evan - Saturday, January 24, 2004 - link
I've tried PC's and apples for years as a casual user and a programmer. I have yet to find one CS major (including myself) who preferred the Apples. That really says more to me than my own preference towards hardware.Not being able to upgrade is just one of many flaws.
Also, to those who say there's only one mouse button: PLUG IN A 2+ BUTTON MOUSE!
GTaudiophile - Friday, January 23, 2004 - link
Virge & GL: Fantastic, thought-out posts!GL - Thursday, January 22, 2004 - link
Generalizations are never 20/20, but I think there are a few more subtle reasons why PC users frown upon Macs. Certainly, some of these reasons were my own prior to 2003.1) An inflated ego over PC skills. Disregard the fact that 90% of current PC hobbyists' eyes would glaze over with the mention of smartdrv.sys, himem.sys and emm386.exe et al; or the connection between port 220/DMA 1/IRQ 5 and Soundblaster; or when asked to get excited about the simplicity of a COAST module over previous technologies. Simply put, these PC users are proud (as they should be) that they have a certain skill. But anything that will even come close to making that skill useless or outdated, is a big threat to their ego. And the funny thing is that modern PC assembly and usage is a cake walk compared to how it used to be. Today's PC enthusiasts are playing with Duplo blocks whilst yesterday's generation were forced to play with Technic kits sans instructions, so to speak. I'm sure somewhere in this world, somebody is repairing 8-track players and is damn proud. But the rest of the world has moved on. If you don't have a clue what an 8-track player is, let alone understand how to fix one, nobody cares. My suggestion to this group of people is to not let their ego get in the way of broadening their horizons when it comes to technology. Maybe that 8-track repair person's skill is rather useless today - but perhaps s/he's taught him/herself how to repair DVD players.
2) Piracy. Admit it - how many of you budget software prices into the cost of your computer? I see several hands...out of an audience of thousands. When you buy a Mac, you're paying for the hardware and the OS, iLife, and a few bundled apps. Apple may even get more out of you, as .Mac provides several services that make the experience of using their computers even more seamless. This raises the cost of the computer and there's no getting out of it. Sure, I enjoy buying my PC parts at cut-rate prices in those gray static bags too! But if I were forced to shell out for the OS and core applications I used for every PC I've assembled, I might not be so thrilled about the costs of my hobby. And no - those cheap eMachines and Dells with their own software bundles have got nothing on the quality and breadth of the software that comes pre-installed on even the lowest end Mac.
3) Fear of being associated with previous stereotypical Mac users. There was a time when I'd hide myself in the corner of the coffee shop, sipping my latté, wearing my black turtleneck, feverishly typing on my iBook hoping nobody was laughing at me, the stereotypical Mac user. OK, all kidding aside, how many people have this outdated perception of what a Mac user is? How many of the people that just answered 'yes', look down on that particular mental picture. I see; quite a few. Well, for all you geeks that don't want to be mistaken for being a San Franciscan starving artist, why not check out some of the newer Mac users. You know, like Srinidhi Varadarajan who brought new meaning to the infamous Slashdot motto "imagine a beowulf cluster of those!". Or how about Bill Joy. Or Robert Metcalfe. Or Tim O'Reilly. Or several members of the team that brings you Perl. If you can't be comfortable being listed alongside these Mac users, then you're right - perhaps they aren't your cup of tea.
Anyways, I thought I'd just bring to attention some of the more subtle, though in my opinion, more predominant reasons why some people decide not to use a Mac in this day and age. It's not all about cost and videogames.
ChefJoe - Thursday, January 22, 2004 - link
Well, I recently had to bring a few G3 computers up to date. We went with Mac OS X 10.2 and I'm very impressed. I've been a PC user since the dos days and things just seemed too dumbed down - especially with the one button mouse. It irked me. Well, after rebuilding the two G3s I started to like these Macs. Sure, I'm not going to replace my home PC with one, but I'm actually very comfortable using them for light duty tasks with OS X. The neat taskbar thing at the bottom and the fact that you can use USB 2 button scroll mice just fine (it's a miracle) and the really nice setup for the filesystem and permissions. I know I've barely tapped what's included in the OS install, but I'm still very impressed.Anonymous - Thursday, January 22, 2004 - link
3 intelligent posts in a row and then number 7....Raj - Thursday, January 22, 2004 - link
I think ViRGE should be a reviewer!!!