@dan.hutch

The first version of OS X was widely regarding as Public Beta #2. Plenty of the old guard rubbished OS X until 10.2 came out.

But the speed increase claims always seem to be exaggerated to me. The extra features and refinements are what make the later versions feel mature to me. Try resizing a window and you'll realise that OS X is still SLOOOOOW.

Individual apps have become more efficient. Nobody has to suffer a crap port of Internet Explorer any more. Bug fixes and better multithreading means apps hang less. By 10.2, I just don't see the speed increase. They did a few tricks - they changed the animation on the dialogue box 'sheets' to make them appear quicker - but people made too much of that.

Because the GUI wasn't right - the thing Mac owners really understand - they made some ludicrous technical complaints about OS X. As an ex-Amiga user I felt embarrassed for them!

They said that the multitasking on OS 9 was better than pre-emptive multitasking. They said that manually allocating memory to an application (ie. Get Info on the application, set minimum RAM and preferred RAM) was better than dynamically allocating memory. They could tune the system for efficiency!

They said that that with carefully selected Extensions and Control Panels, the classic MacOS, a system that was awful in everything except the GUI by 1984 standards, was more stable than OS X.

They're strangely silent on these topics now - Apple must've got the GUI right!

Chris

Last edited by clebin on 18-Jan-2005 at 12:57 AM.

@nomore

Quote:

That Acer is one ugly PC.

Feature set priorities is dependant by the purchaser. So, I'm not commenting on the intangibles styling characteristics.

Anyway, the UK doesn't have HP-USA's SR1000Z models...

Quote:

I should think that with Apple's completely custom design, they will have better build quality.

It's manufactured by Foxconn e.g. Leadtek?s AMD motherboards.

Quote:

There are other costs involved with Windows based PCs, such as time and effort involved with the removal of Spyware/Reinstallation

Didn't you read the thread?

Quote:

not forgetting that the Mac comes with iLife. There is no Windows entry-level software which is such high quality and as highly integrated as the iLife suite.

Feature set priorities is dependant by the purchaser.

With HP-USA's SR1000Z model, I can config it with MS Works Suite 2005 and ~$499 USD target price.

HP-USA's SR1000Z model comes with following software...
Apple iTunes
RealPlayer
InterVideo® WinDVD® 5 player (in models with DVD drive)
Intervideo® WinDVD Creator (in models with DVD writers)
RecordNow (in models with CD writers or DVD writers)
Intuit Quicken New User's Edition 2005
Adobe® Photoshop Album STE
Adobe® Photoshop Album Starter Edition
Compaq Organize
Microsoft® Software Jukebox

MS Works Suite 2005 includes
MS Word 2002
MS Encarta Encylopedia Standard 2005
MS Works 8.0 which includes Spreadsheet, Database, Calender, Address Book
MS Money
MS Photo Premium 10
Microsoft AutoRoute 2005

PS; This is assuming that the purchaser is a complete newbie.

Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2005 at 01:42 AM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@nomore

Refer to
HP's Compaq 1229 @GBP ~379

Model - COMPAQ 1229
Product Code - 991859
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Processor Type: AMD Athlon 64 processor 3000+,
Processor speed: ~2008 mhz.
CPU FSB to NB: 2008Mhz (at core speed).
Memory FSB: 400DDR.
HTT: 1600DDR (800Mhz), Full duplex I/O.
---
RAM Memory: DDR400 512MB.
Hard Disk: Capacity 160 GB.
Drives Fitted: DVD Writer and RW double layer.
Graphics card memory: 128 mb
Graphics Description: Ultra 256 2D/3D Graphics.
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ignore ?Intel Extreme? graphics label i.e. it should be NVIDIA's Geforce FX 5200 Ultra.

Also refer to £339.00, HP Athlon XP 2800+(Barton 2Ghz)
http://www.hpstore.hp.co.uk/item?SID=598a6b45636c74ac0c4f3d3ab072eab51f0:1222&sku=PD460A

HP dx6050 Microtower PC, AMD Athlon? XP2800+ (2.08 GHz), Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition SP2, 40 GB, 256 MB, DVD/CDRW 48x combo.

Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2005 at 02:39 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2005 at 02:34 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2005 at 02:27 AM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@nomore
Refer to
http://hardware.silicon.com/desktops/0,39024645,39122043,00.htm
for Euro PC ranking list.

"Acer (Mitsubishi) is now the number two reseller in Europe's top seven economies."

"Top of the pile by some way is still HP. Its share went up from 34 to 34.7 per cent",

Picking on Dell Corp is easy.

Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2005 at 03:08 AM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

-I accidently deleted this post by typing over it in edit mode. Sorry.


The info about Quicken was wrong as i can see now anyhow. And MS word is probably better than AppleWorks in most peoples opinion. But AppleWorks is much better than the standard MS Works suite.

Last edited by BukkY on 18-Jan-2005 at 09:49 AM.
Last edited by BukkY on 18-Jan-2005 at 09:39 AM.
Last edited by BukkY on 18-Jan-2005 at 09:32 AM.
Last edited by BukkY on 18-Jan-2005 at 06:59 AM.
Last edited by BukkY on 18-Jan-2005 at 06:58 AM.

@BukkY

Quote:

Apple iTunes ? Good Stuff, free download

Keep in mind that the your "free download" opens up a different comparison and selection criteria e.g. Open Office, MovieXOne, Soft Yamaha XG-50, Winfast PVR and
'etc'.

Quote:

MS Works Suite 2005 includes ? AppleWorks is better

Appleworks is just an updated version Clarisworks. They are no meant to replace the "big Office" suites. "MS Works Suite 2005" is part of MS Word 2002 and shouldn't be separated from the said suite. Appleworks 6.2.9 is only Excel 2001 and Word 2001 compatible.

Weighting the features is a matter for customer to judge.

Quote:

RealPlayer ? Wow who ever paid for that? (also available as a free D/L for any Comp.)

At least HP included it as choice, not just Quicktime.

Quote:

Intuit Quicken New User's Edition 2005 ? A "special" addition

Refer to http://accountant.intuit.com/products_services/quickbooks_pro_mac/new.aspx
Note the "Intuit Quicken New User's Edition 2005" > "Quicken 2005 for Mac".

Quote:

MS Money ? zzzz

Please review "Quicken 2005 for Mac"'s specifications.

Quote:

So as we can see by comparing this bundle this PC could possibly give you a superior experience in writing a letter in Word.

Note that, ?Intuit Quicken New User's Edition 2005? is technically superior to "Quicken 2005 for Mac".

Quote:

So as we can see by comparing this bundle this PC could possibly give you a superior experience in writing a letter in Word.

MS Word 2002 can handle more than writing a letter i.e. there?s a sizable document automation MIS software industry built on MS Word.

Quote:

Video editing (including HD),

In basic terms; "HD" only refers to resolution. The speed of I/O plays an important part in this. HD MPEG2 handling is not an issue with this Athlon XP 2600+.

Quote:

burning DVDs

Need a DVD burner for this... This would change comparison characteristics.

Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2005 at 09:48 AM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

AppleWorks is appalling! The port to OS X was very poor and by that stage AppleWorks was already long in the tooth. Word jumps over its head.

Thankfully they announced iWork at the keynote as a replacement...

Chris

@Hammer
Why would you be so anti-Mini as to try so hard to shoot it down. Is competition and an extra alternative not welcomed?


Basically what we have seen demonstrated here is that for $500 you can get either:


1. Cheep (but expandable) PC hardware with mostly second rate software on Windows XP Home.

-or

2. A quite low-end Mac with a first rate software bundle including best-of-class software for Audio & Video among other areas, strong system security and the full Mac OS X including the Xtools development suite.


Both are inexpensive but even at the same price the Mac is not "cheep" hardware nor software. Quicken and MS Word documents are about the only two areas the low end PC would have going for it. And you would need to upgrade the graphics on that PC to play games. The Mac has an advantage in areas that may be more useful, exciting to many folks like DV editing, Audio applications and security out of the box.

For document automation MIS software and many other technical or business applications you would probably want a PC. You could upgrade this PC with a video +$400 video card to make it a decent gaming PC but that would put you in another price range. f games is your primary need then a PC is highly recommended. One at around the $1000 and up price range before the monitor is added. A PC does have some advantages. A high quality PC box with a carefully maintained install of XP is a nice computer. It's always nice to have all the platforms you can around. You can "roll your own" system and maintain it so the value of the MacMini is not necessarily for you.

But for $500, many people will get a lot more joy, less headaches and more quality output from the MacMini than the same priced big vendor PC. Minis will sell like hot cakes and leave a great taste in millions of kissers around the world.

Last edited by BukkY on 18-Jan-2005 at 10:25 AM.
Last edited by BukkY on 18-Jan-2005 at 10:14 AM.
Last edited by BukkY on 18-Jan-2005 at 09:54 AM.

@BukkY
In reference to your "burning DVDs"; one may need a DVD burner i.e. an extra $100 for Apple's Mini-Mac i.e. total of $599 USD.

Therefore, I reconfig HPUSA's SR1000Z to target $599.

SR1000Z includes.
Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional with SP2
AMD Sempron(TM) 3000+ operating at 2.0GHz
256MB DDR / PC2700
40GB Hard Drive
16X DVD +/-R/RW drive Dual Layer
9 in 1 Card Reader, 3 USB, + Front Audio Ports (Can't deselect)
64MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce FX 5100, TV-Out
Integrated 5.1 Capable Sound w/ Front Audio ports (Can't deselect 2 channel)
Compaq Keyboard & Scroller Mouse (Can't deselect)
MS Works Suite 2005
2 Firewire 400 ports (Can't deselect to 1 port)
--------------------------------------------
Resulted to $584.99 USD..

OR

SR1000Z includes.
Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Home with SP2
AMD Sempron(TM) 3000+ operating at 2.0GHz
256MB DDR / PC2700
40GB Hard Drive
16X DVD +/-R/RW drive Dual Layer
9 in 1 Card Reader, 3 USB, + Front Audio Ports (Can't deselect)
64MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce FX 5100, TV-Out
Integrated 5.1 Capable Sound w/ Front Audio ports (Can't deselect 2 channel)
Compaq Keyboard & Scroller Mouse (Can't deselect)
2 Firewire 400 ports (Can't deselect to 1 port)
Microsoft(R) Office Basic Edition 2003
--------------------------------------------
Resulted to $598.99

Quote:

Both are inexpensive but even at the same price the Mac is not "cheep" hardware or software. Quicken and MS Word documents are about the only two areas the low end PC would have going for it.

It's a matter of priority for the customer.

PS; It?s good to see that Apple has a solution between $499-599 markets not MIA.

Quote:

And you would need to upgrade the graphics on that PC to play games.

Not with HP-USA's SR1000Z edition; $499 Target for value end PC game box is possible.

SR1000Z includes.
Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Home with SP2
AMD Sempron(TM) 3000+ operating at 2.0GHz
256MB DDR / PC2700
40GB Hard Drive
48x max. CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive (48x32x16x48x)
9 in 1 Card Reader, 3 USB, + Front Audio Ports (Can't deselect)
64MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce FX 5100, TV-Out
Integrated 5.1 Capable Sound w/ Front Audio ports (Can't deselect 2 channel)
Compaq Keyboard & Scroller Mouse (Can't deselect)
MS Works Suite 2005
2 Firewire 400 ports (Can't deselect to 1 port)
--------------------------------------------
Resulted to $499.99 USD. DirectX 9 class GPU with "64MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce FX 5100".

Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2005 at 10:25 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2005 at 10:23 AM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@BukkY

Quote:

1. Cheep (but expandable) PC hardware with mostly second rate software on Windows XP Home.

At least the said AMD box has higher Cinebench 2003 CPU benchmarks i.e. ~264(AXP T-Bred-B 2600+, 333FSB, 2.08Ghz,, nForce2).
That's about the same as iMac G5 @1.8Ghz's ~256 points (www.barefeats.com).

Reference.
http://www.theandyzone.com/computer/shootout/shootout4.html

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@BukkY
Quote:

BukkY wrote: @Hammer Why would you be so anti-Mini as to try so hard to shoot it down. Is competition and an extra alternative not welcomed? Basically what we have seen demonstrated here is that for $500 you can get either: 1. Cheep (but expandable) PC hardware with mostly second rate software on Windows XP Home. -or 2. A quite low-end Mac with a first rate software bundle including best-of-class software for Audio & Video among other areas, strong system security and the full Mac OS X including the Xtools development suite.

This is interesting. PC user with an inferiority complex feeling threatened by a Mac.



The first reaction from the PC camp always is "Macs are too expensive!" Then they dredge up some second rate PC being sold at cost or less. Like comparing Cadillac to Skoda on a cost basis. We all know they a) won't buy a low end Dell or Acer, and b) they'd build their own box, at a higher cost than a low end Mac. (They'll also neglect the full cost of windows or install Linux to keep the costs down for their comparison.)

Sure, there is a lot more software available for windows. But most of it isn't that great to begin with. There are some gems, but you have to find them. Even some of the commercial software isn't the greatest.

The iLife package included with the Mac could probably be duplicated on the PC, but you're probably looking at 4 or more apps at $50 each, instead of the integrated $79 iLife package. Then MS will release a service pack, and your favourite app won't work right...

@Hammer

Quote:

Not with HP-USA's SR1000Z edition; $499 Target for value end PC game box is possible.

I have not heard such a steamy pile of of mulched bovine droppings for quite some time.
This video performance is just so smooth, well difined and vibrant that it even edges out B&W postcards sent in the 1930's for framerate and picture quality.

The ONLY thing that can be said of this video capability is that it meets minimum direct X 9.x requirements, however you try to play ANY recent game that requires the majority of direct X's functionality and watching treacle dribble down a glacier in the antartica will be faster.

Pointing the vitues out on an x86 machine is all well and good(however misguided) but there is no call for such blatant untruth.

_________________

@Hammer

Quote:

In basic terms; "HD" only refers to resolution. The speed of I/O plays an important part in this. HD MPEG2 handling is not an issue with this Athlon XP 2600+.

Who ever tries to edit video in MPEG 2 format will be in for a big suprise!

Last edited by nomore on 18-Jan-2005 at 01:29 PM.

@clebin

Quote:

But the speed increase claims always seem to be exaggerated to me. The extra features and refinements are what make the later versions feel mature to me. Try resizing a window and you'll realise that OS X is still SLOOOOOW.

The resizing problem is a side effect of the Macs rather complex graphics system which uses display PDF. NeXT had the same problem back in the 80's, the display postcript system they used made the system feel slow but it wasn't (OS X can in part be traced back to that OS).

The OS itself is certainly not slow, it was slow(ish) even in Jaguar but Panther has fixed this (there used to be a lot of complaints about OS X, you never hear anything about it these days).

When I got this machine (1.33GHz G4) I was moving up from a 700MHz iBook, the OS changed as well but the speed difference between the two felt much greater than the difference in the hardware - the help system used to amazingly slow, now I'd say it's "laid back".

_________________
Whyzzat?

@minator

My point was really that a most of the improvements have come from improved apps. Even now, speed doesn't come free when you write an app for OS X.

Photoshop runs well, but Dreamweaver MX is unusable. Dreamweaver MX 2004 is slightly better. For the most part Macromedia apps don't run too brilliantly. MS Office isn't that quick, Entourage being the worst bit. The Finder is still slow.

Painter 8 runs far worse than Painter 3 did on my G3/233 under OS 8 or 9. Because of the graphics system you mentioned, the drawing can't keep up with the cursor. I don't think that'll improve much. Same with Fireworks.

VirtualPC is a waste of space on my Powerbook. My old G3 ran RealPC much better.

Even an NeXT/Cocoa-based app like Omniweb took a few versions to run nicely.

I'm not trying to diss OS X, it's just people say "the new version of OS X is so much faster" every time a new version comes out. If it was, it would be like the AmigaOS by now.

Chris

@BukkY

Quote:

And MS word is probably better than AppleWorks in most peoples opinion. But AppleWorks is much better than the standard MS Works suite.

Doesn't matter any more, iWork is just about to be released (29th Jan) and it looks so very good and compatible with all Microsoft file types, have just ordered my copy

_________________
SAM 460 with 2GB or RAM, 1000GB HD, 4 port SATA, DVDRW drive and Radeon HD 4650 GFX card.

@clebin
Quote:

but Dreamweaver MX is unusable. Dreamweaver MX 2004 is slightly better. For the most part Macromedia apps don't run too brilliantly. MS Office isn't that quick

*raises an eyebrow*

I run Dreamweaver flawlessly on my 800Mhz G4, no problem whatsoever. It opens the pages on a second and editing them has no "slowness" to it at all. Same goes for every program in the Macromedia MX suite. MS Office takes a few secs to load but that ain't slow either.

Run Onyx if you haven't and execute all the scripts (if you didn't edit the crontable yourself) and optimize and try again. Those programs shouldn't be slow.

_________________
”It’s all a matter of technique. We have it, and you don’t, so if you shut the #### up, we’ll play some songs and everyone’ll be happy.”

@Desolator

I don't know how you can say that Dreamweaver runs flawlessly! I assume you must be talking about 2004, but even so!

I can't stand little pauses and lock-ups when I click on things. If an app doesn't run properly, I'll end up using BBEdit or Notepad or whatever. The Windows version is far better, as much as it pains me to say it.

I've used it before and after a clean format & reinstall (EDIT: and on two machines) The Powermac G4/667 I use in work is a little slower than yours, but my work mate who uses a 1ghz G4 has the same complaints.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one!

Chris

Last edited by clebin on 18-Jan-2005 at 09:15 PM.

@clebin

Nope, Dreamweaver MX v6.0. :)

Weird, I don't get the lock-ups or pauses except when I'm putting an image onto the page, then the usual 2 second wait thinghy that always comes when one tries to save or open files show up. (about the only thing that bothers me in OS X.. really annoying when opening a new tab in Safari and accidentally hit "download as" and then have to wait for the saverequester to pop up.)

And I run it on an iBook. Hmm, got to try it on someones powerbook or powermac, this seems really weird.

_________________
”It’s all a matter of technique. We have it, and you don’t, so if you shut the #### up, we’ll play some songs and everyone’ll be happy.”

@nomore

Quote:

Who ever tries to edit video in MPEG 2 format will be in for a big suprise!

Non-destructive editing or MPEG Transcoding.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)