OT - Damn computers

I have used three Mac's in the last year for extended periods & without doubt are the best made computers available & never had one system crash of any kind.

PC's are bloody crap, but I have to use them for work right now. If it was up to me it would be PowerBooks all round!

Nige

David,

Give me *any* Commodore over this piece of junk PC here......

In fact, I think I will dig out one of mine..choice from the attic :

PET2000 VIC20 C64 Amiga 500 x 2 Amiga 600 Amiga 1200 Amiga 2000 Amiga 4000-40 CD32 CDTV

Oh gosh...I thin I bought way too much hardware...along with that lot are :

ZX81 x 3 Atari 800XL x 2

Various junked PC's

-- Nelly

P.S. Should I sell them?!

Apple OS/X is a unix under their GUI, so it's closer to Linux than you might think, but news of a gaping hole in security has just broken, involving the Help system. Not good news for Apple.

I certainly know a lot of people who have good things to say about Apple, and they don't have some of the braindead software that gets into Windows on a default install. And the same for Linux. I've used an Apple myself. The GUI is different enough to be a bit awkward, at first, and there are types of software which are not easily available on an Apple, but if the software you need is available, it's a good answer.

Remember too that your iTunes problem could be nothing to do with Apple. It's using the sound drivers installed on the system. With my Windows machine, every so often something gets changed for no apparent reason. A different sound driver, or a different version of Acrobat reader as a default, or some other glitch. So check the sound driver, and check that it doesn't change to something else.

IIRC then its based around FreeBSD, isn't it not Linux?

What make of PC do you buy?

The reason I ask is that I am typing this on my 10 day old Athlon 64 bit laptop with just about everthing you add to a laptop. It is the fifth PC in a row I have bought from the same company over 10 years and have never had a problem or failure with any of them that was not entirely user-caused.

Have a look at

Macs have some very good points, particularly unix based stability but whether they will suit you depends on what you do with your computer. PC's score on price, upgradability and software support. If you already own a fair amount of PC software you will have to bin it.

HTH.

A mongrel one. Cheap as chips. But that's only because I've bought branded ones in the past and have found them little better. So I figured I might as well pay very little, and get a rubbish computer, as pay a lot and get a rubbish computer.

They're actually one of our customers, I've not had one of their systems before but they seem a pretty well sorted company. Having read some of the other responses about Apples, I think the Powerbook could be putting an appearance in over the next few months.

Photoshop is the only thing I use which is expensive. I also sync my phone & PDA up, so I'll have to look into whether that could be done on a Mac, but I guess it could fairly easily.

From how you describe your computer use, you should have no problems running a mac, but make sure you go and try one before you buy - they are an acquired taste. Also beware of the advice of Mac owners - they are like Land Rover owners, hot on evangelising, short on seeing the real short-comings of their favourite machine! :D

(snip)

(snip)

Depends how long since you used Linux how unfriendly you would find it now - the various distributions have become much more friendly in the last year or two. And, of course, you can run a dual boot system Windows/Linux and Linux can access all your existing or new Windows files.

JD (sent using Mandrake 9.2 linux distribution)

in article snipped-for-privacy@uni-berlin.de, David French at snipped-for-privacy@virgin.net wrote on 19/5/04 2:36 pm:

I use a G3 Mac powerbook pretty much every day for photographic editing and wirelessly sending pics. Apart from problems with the Orange data card it's reliable, strong and good quality. I would recommend Apple.

Also beware of the advice of Mac owners - they are like Land Rover owners, hot on evangelising, short on seeing the real short-comings of their favourite machine! :D

Very True ;-)

I was using Red Hat 6.2 on a DEC Alpha box. It took me an ENTIRE WEEKEND to work out how to boot the O/S... Then I realised I had no idea what to do with it, and when I did think of something I couldn't work out how to do it, so I flogged it on eBay.

I'm sure Linux has become much more user-friendly, but knowing what complexity's sitting behind that pretty interface puts me off. I think I'll be better with an O/S designed for technophobes (Apple) than one designed by hard-core anoraks (some of whom I went to college with) :)

David

Twas Wed, 19 May 2004 21:00:58 +0000 (UTC) when "d.sillitoe" put finger to keyboard producing:

I don't know what you mean!

my 20 year-old 110 is, erm... err. nice.

yes ok.

Regards. Mark.(AKA, Mr.Nice.)

If you're referring to the SCO case, my money's on IBM and the rest of the world ...

Fedora (Red-Hat) is free as is Mandrake - you can either download the ISO images and make you own CD's or (this is where money gets involved) buy it on CDs or DVD with manuals.

Tried to download Mandrake last week and it seemed to require joining the Mandrake Club (or some such) which required a credit card. SuSe and RedHat definitely want dosh.

Didn't try Fedora.

In the writings of David French, the scrolls contained these prophetic words:

Most stability issues with Windows don't actually come down to Windows ironically but third party drivers. I am currently running a rock stable Win 2K platform, often for weeks on end with very few glitches. This is graphics workstation for photography and design. Essentially it's a workhorse.

My other computer is Linux, SuSE 9.1. This is probably one of the best distros out there. If you are looking a Mac then consider Linux as Macs are running *nix core underneath their front end. Steep learning curve but depending on what you do there is plenty of software around to help you move to Linux. Been running it for the last week with no problems what so every, detected all my hardware and is running smoothly. You can get a evaluation CD from their site that does not need to install itself you run the OS from the CD (similar to the Knoppix idea).

Problem with the 3 systems is that often have security holes, Apple Macs have problems with Firewire drives (plus a few unresolved security vulnerabilities), Linux with UF issues and hardware issues, and Windows well where do you want me to start?

Essentially it comes to this:

1) What you want to do? 2) How 'cutting' edge is your hardware 3) How much money are you willing to spend?

At the moment my preferences for OS are as follows:

1) Win 2K if you need the software compatibility, just make sure you run Win Update regular. 2) SuSE 9.1 if you want a fast, stable system with a lot of software (pre-configured). Downside, is that it's sometimes throws a spanner in the works for no reason. Can chew up disk space faster than a Windows box. 3) Apple Macs, Fast easy(?) to use system, but damned expensive for essentially *nix box. G5 processors are nice though :o)

Finally if you need to run Windows apps, try Wine or CrossOver office on a Linux box. Most apps work pretty well :o) Linux also comes with system integrators now (Yast for SuSE and MandrakeSoft for Mandrake I believe). Both a very stable and makes the administration of the system *very* easy, but for more exotic configurations you may still to get your hands dirty.

in article BCD18995.81B5% snipped-for-privacy@sillitoe.com, d.sillitoe at snipped-for-privacy@sillitoe.com wrote on 19/5/04 10:00 pm:

Possibly. But I can say one thing for definate...the longest time that I had a PC working without going wrong was three months. I had the Bondi iMac

5 years before anything went wrong - logic board had to be replaced which cost £110 for parts and labour. Of the two PC's I've had the second one was probably the worst and would crash every week at least once. There are programmes for the Mac so you can run PC programmes on them though, although I've not bothered and can't comment on how good they are. Also the virus threat isn't as great and although I have a virus scanner installed, have never ever come acroos one on either of my computers.

Lots of direct access to the free ISOs.

P.

And if the world revolved solely around reliability, we'd all be driving Toyotas. . . . . . .