ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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Okay, this has been in the works for at least a week now, but I haven't told a lot of people. But I think it will provide an interesting discussion, and perhaps separate the mature among us from the immature .
I'm switching from my Mac to a PC. Yeah, that's correct. I built a cheap $400 PC about two weeks ago from new or lightly used parts, and it runs circles around my Mac at pretty much everything. I bought a KVM switch so I can have the Mac and PC hooked up to the same keyboard/mouse/monitor set, but I rarely use the Mac anymore. Now I'll try to explain why I decided to switch to the "dark side": I use my computer for a few simple things... listening to music (iTunes), AOL Instant Messenger, surfing the interweb, basic organization functions (contact list, calendar, to-do list), image manipulation (Photoshop Elements), DVD playback and burning, and gaming. I don't make home movies, I don't make music or anything... just those basic functions. Normally, I'd just stay with what Mac I have, since it's fine for all those things. Except gaming. I put a Radeon 9800 Pro in the Mac, and upgraded the processor to a 1.33 GHz G4, and it still sucks for gaming. The PC has an Athlon XP 2400+ (runs at 2.0 GHz), half the RAM of the Mac (512 MB), and a Radeon 9600 Pro video card... and it completely kills the G4 at anything involving 3D acceleration. I came up with an interesting analogy for my situation. No, not a car analogy. A strip club analogy . Bear with me (pun intended). There are plenty of strip clubs that cater to different audiences, but the two most basic ones are the lowest common denominator club that isn't too expensive and is geared towards college students, and the classy, upscale "gentlemen's club." You might spend $50 at a cheap club while an upscale one might cost $100 or $150 for a night out. And at this point in my life, I don't really appreciate all the little niceties that you'd get from a gentlemen's club. So I just go to the cheap one and have fun, and either way, I see boobs . Maybe in a few years I'll have more money and learn to appreciate the nicer club, but until then why not just go to the place that is specifically targeted to me? Same with Macs and PCs. I'm a tinkerer, and while my computer always ran the Mac OS, I didn't treat it the way one treats Macs. I kept trying to get more out of it by adding ridiculously expensive upgrades. I'm just too much of a tinkerer and I don't have enough money to truly appreciate the Mac. I would never even dream of getting an iMac - they're not expandable at all! But perhaps in five or six years, when I am on the road to a successful career and computers take a back seat to the finer things in life, I can once again buy (and appreciate) a sleek, elegant, and efficient Mac. Macs aren't meant for people like me, gearheads who want the latest and greatest stuff for as cheap as you can get it. So, what do you guys all think of this? Want to disown me yet? I still like Macs, in case you're wondering. They're just not right for me (yet). P.S. If anyone wants a PowerMac, I'm selling mine. 1.33 GHz G4 upgrade, 1 GB of RAM, 80 GB hard drive, 8x DVD burner, Radeon 9800 Pro, USB 2.0 PCI card, with a Quicksilver 2001 motherboard and case. It's a screamer, about on par with the iMac G5s, and the Xbench score is generally around 130-140. I'm looking to get a grand or just slightly more for it, which I will use to build a very nice, tricked out PC. This old POS PC I'm using now isn't really up to my standards if it's going to be my only computer. |
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Mr. Vieira
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Tennessee
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So you dig the cheap, skank of a computer with pimples on its butt and homemade thigh tattoos then, right?
Cool. I guess. So much for leaving it up to others to separate the mature from the immature! But seriously, to each his own. No "one size fits all" solution, and you made a case for why you prefer a PC. I can respect that. I said just this past weekend in another post that people can't foist their ideas/opinions on everyone else. For everyone that insists on maxed-out PowerBook or G5 tower all they way, they have to realize not everyone needs/wants that, and shouldn't go around dinging the iBook or eMac or whatever. You don't see it here much, but certainly at other boards (a student will come on and explicitly ask for help on getting an AFFORDABLE Mac laptop for school...within 20 minutes, the resident Spec Whores are trying to get him/her into a 17" PowerBook). Knock yourself out. Maybe one day you'll revisit it all again. I'm already there (and ain't going anywhere), so do what serves you and screw everyone else. It isn't their money and it isn't their usage of it that factors in, is it? I'm soon going to be moving from a 15" PowerBook to a 12" iBook, most likely, and I don't wanna hear any shit about it from any of you! Last edited by psmith2.0 : 2004-10-04 at 11:23. |
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ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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When I was building the PC I referred to it as my mistress, with my Mac being my wife. So much for that.
But I don't think you should call it a cheap skank! The one I'm using right now is, that's for sure... but the new one is going to use an Antec case and probably a 64-bit processor; might not be as nice as a G5 but it sure isn't ugly. Antec makes some nice stuff. EDIT: Here are some pictures... Old: New: I got that green... thing... for free. Hence the nice quality replacement. Last edited by Luca : 2004-10-04 at 11:24. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Portlandia
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Don't have sex with that skanky stripper computer of yours, or you're bound to get an STD.
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¡Damned!
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
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ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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I plan to continue to moderate here. I like to keep up with the Mac world whether I'm using a Mac or not . |
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Mr. Vieira
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Tennessee
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Well, in keeping with the times and all, I think you should make an apology. Then step down.
Won't you apologize? For the children, of course. |
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ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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Need I quote myself again?
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ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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I do plan on installing some version of Linux. Not sure which one, and I'm not sure how to do it... I should probably figure that out though before I get a new hard drive for the PC, so I can partition it correctly. I might contact you sometime soon, \/\/.
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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Unless you are really going to dedicate a major portion of your life to tinkering, stick with Windows and don't install Linux!
Man, oh, man. A guy I know got a new Windows notebook over the summer and decided he wanted to turn his tower into a Fedora (formerly Red Hat) Linux server. Big mistake! I worked with this guy for hours on end thinking that my thorough experience with Mac OS X would be useful. While my knowledge helped a lot in a few areas, it fell way short in others, leaving us completely stymied by various issues. What about Google? Yeah, it helped a little, but often we just found forum pages where people had the same question that no one could answer or other pages where explanations went totally over our heads with technobabble and assumptions that we knew how to do X before doing Y. Anyone installing Linux who doesn't already have some real-world experience with it is going to face a mammoth learning curve. I don't care what people say about some distros using gussied-up installers that are supposed to make it easier to get software running. Not all software titles come with those nice little distributors and even those that do don't explain where everything is put and how to configure it all. Sure, Linux may be great for servers that just sit in closets or the occasional hardcore nerds/tinkerer who has either a lot of time on his hands or a serious bent against Microsoft, but it is still years away from being completely usable by the above-average computer user and a solid decade away from being usable by average Joe Sixpack. The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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Apple Historian
Join Date: May 2004
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Ottawa, ON
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When there's an eel in the lake that's as long as a snake that's a moray. |
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Mr. Vieira
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Tennessee
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ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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There are a few game companies, like Bungie and Blizzard, that develop Mac versions in-house. Those are generally the best-performing Mac games you can get. But most games are ported by Aspyr, and not to knock those guys too hard, but I'd say over half of them are poorly done. Actually I think Aspyr is just the publisher of the Mac version, and they hire subcontracters to actually write the ported game. Anyway, you'll see games published by Aspyr that cost twice as much as the PC version, because they're charging launch prices for the Mac version when the PC version is down to $20 or $30. Sadly, it's the only way they can make money. They also have to wait a while to even determine if it'll be worth it to port a game, and once they decide they will, the porting house is on a tight schedule to release the game in a timely fashion. Personally, I'd prefer fewer games to be ported each year, but that those games are of higher quality, but I guess I don't have much say in the matter. So I decided to solve the problem by just not getting involved with it. I ditched the Mac for gaming and got a PC instead. Now I can play all sorts of games, and they run well. |
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is not a kind of basket
Join Date: May 2004
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Brad,
While I'm not about to jump to the defense of Linux after your post (in zealot fashion that is). . . I will say that learning Linux can be fun. Yes, it can be a steep learning curve, but it depends on how you look at it. When I first started with Linux, I wanted something easy to use. So I installed RedHat 7.1 (latest at the time). .. Boy was that a headache. Time rolled on and I upgraded to 7.2 . . but the small annoyances were still present. The problems I was having was not with incompatibility or funky drivers (or just being a noob). It was with RedHat's config programs... the nifty little GUI programs that did all the hard work for you. I would use them, they would do their job, but the end result was not what I wanted. So I thought, 'why not get your hands dirty and learn to do the work yourself?'. So the hunt began for a simple, yet non-hand-holding distro. This landed me with Slackware Linux 8.1 (latest at the time). I had to setup video, sound, networking, and most other things by hand. . . but one by one with the help of the Slackware community and HOWTO files I had a working desktop that was acted exactly the way I wanted it. Slackware forced me to learn about Linux. . . not because things needed to be fixed (like in RedHat) but because they work just fine if you learn how to set them up. Linux can be as good as YOU make it. (server wise, desktop wise, anything wise) And you are right, Brad, Linux is not ready for any power user of today, or Joe six-pack of tomorrow... I have used distros like SuSE (hehe.. remember that thread?) which prides itself on ease-of-use. .. but sadly, you still need to know a fare bit about Linux to get things done (unless you have a Linux help desk on hand, around the office that is). It's my hobby, most kids my age play video games... I play around with Linux. And the fruits of my hobby are a smooth, tweaked out, up to date system that acts exactly the way I want it to, without having to worry about spyware, or nasty problems with un-patched software. (PS. about that friend of yours who wanted to setup a server on his laptop... yah RedHat on laptops can be a pain, one thing I would have done before installing RedHat would have been running Knoppix to see if all his hardware would work the way it should, and setup a basic server from Knoppix to see if it would do what he wanted... Then just make a copy of the generated config files for reference when dealing with RedHat, which makes things a lot easier.) no sig, how's that for being a rebel! |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Portlandia
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"What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with, and it's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds." - Steve Jobs |
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25 chars of wasted space.
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I remember I used to like Mandrake linux a lot...compared to some others. But I think that was like 8.x I used it. I heard good things about slackware as well.
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25 chars of wasted space.
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Do I have to reformat my HD to install Linux? I believe I do, but that sux I want to try and install Mandrake PPC.
Now I will destroy any credibility on linux that I seemed to have by asking this, but if a program is written for linux, and I compile a program, will it work on Mandrake PPC, or does it have to specifically be written for Linux PPC instead of Linux x86. I mean is the code the same and the compiler different or or are there no programs for PPC linux distros. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2004
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In my opinion, you'd be best off if you kept the Mac for everything *besides* gaming. You can still extract some amount of cash from it by switching the 9800Pro to a weaker card, you can use a cheap DVD-ROM drive for the PC because the Mac already has a DVD burner, and you can backup your stuff between the machines. Having the two machines is even more important if you are a tinkerer type, so that your organizing/messaging software will run smoothly even when you are in the middle of a three day overclocking grind or hardware troubleshoot.
I'm pretty platform agnostic myself, I mostly use software that runs on all major platforms or is easily replaced with another piece of software. Still, if I had a choice such as yours, I would never pick Windows for a "production" platform. I simply can't trust it with the organizing/messaging functions that are important for my life. Bad security, bad availability, bad reliability. If (when) it ever breaks down, is hacked or seriously infected, it means at least a day of installing OS, antivirus, firewall, upgrades, software and *settings* before the box is even close to normal. It's amazing how slow and inconvenient the average Windows installs are, not least for the reboots (IIRC Visual Studio took three reboots in a normal install that went as it was supposed to). With most native Windows programs you can forget about reasonably backing up program preferences, so you'll usually set those up by hand. None of that is fun, it's all just boring mechanical work, and if you consider your time to have any value, Windows is not a good choice. This was just the OS and programs, things become worse if you have to worry about the backup and retrieval of data. I'm getting a gaming Windows PC myself at some point, but no way my productive desktop or server use will ever happen on it. Those jobs are for the Powerbook and the yet-to-be-configured old FreeBSD PC. |
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I shot the sherrif.
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yeah, i had a gaming fix, until i realized that i don't really have time for gaming any more. i'm lucky if i can finish a GBA title. 20 min. here, 10 min. there is about all i can manage these days.
i still do the occasional all nighter for gaming, but i either borrow a rig or we plan StarCraft. (still a favorite) the final straw for me was when i got sick of PC only FPS games like CounterStrike. after that, it was a pretty easy permanent switch. to me it was a combination of small factors. Windows was ugly. it was requiring a fair number of reinstalls. the security patches were getting out of hand. i was tired of updating AV software. basically i didn't trust my PC, and felt it was a little two timing bitch, the only problem being you never knew when you were being cheated on. my mac i could trust. my PC was always waiting to give me a burning case of syphilis. Google is your frenemy. Caveat Emptor - Latin for tough titty I tend to interpret things in the way that's most hilarious to me |
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Member
Join Date: May 2004
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This is why I wish Apple would support something like CHRP again. Imagine how great it would be to be able to go to Newegg and buy a PowerPC motherboard and a standard, interchangeable, and non-proprietary PowerPC CPU module, and the other standard components and still be able to run the Mac OS. Get the Taiwanese or Chinese motherboard makers onboard and drive the prices way down. Integrators or cloners could use these motherboards as well. This could bring over millions of dissatisfied Windows customers to the Mac OS that would otherwise be unwilling to spend the money for Apple made machines.
Now for the reality; yes I realize Apple’s hardware sales would tank because many existing Apple customers would gladly trade Apple style for the greater value CHRP machines would provide, yes I realize this would make a lot more work for Apple in terms of driver and hardware compatibility, and yes I realize IBM can hardly make enough CPUs for Apple and that that they would never be able to supply a large PowerPC clone market, and that Motorola/Freescale sucks. But I can still dream. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2004
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The code must either be immediately compatible across compilers and architectures (rare), or it has to be ported. This might or might not be a big effort. Good, well documented and flexible code is generally easy to port. Code that works close to hardware level or is very optimized tends to be hard to port. All that there is to the porting process is to identify platform dependencies and assumptions, and either generalize them to platform independent form, or if that is impractical or impossible, write parallel code that does the same task on your target platform. |
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ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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Re: Keeping the two machines. I have been trying that, and that's why I have a KVM switch. It was about $50 and provides almost the same function as a second keyboard, mouse, and monitor, without taking any extra space. But in the past two weeks, I've only used the Mac for occasionally transferring files over to the PC. I must not be able to divide my attention very well - not only did I prefer using a single machine for everything, I also can't use dual monitors as my attention can't be split between them. So I've pretty much ruled out a second machine. Besides, a large part of my reason for switching to the PC is due to cost. I don't think it's worth it to keep a machine worth $1000+ when all I use the machine for is web surfing, AIM, and so on. The PC can do all that stuff too. Maybe not as elegantly, but it still works. I see the same internet all of you guys do.
As for getting a game console instead of a gaming PC... well, I have also tried that. I have a GameCube that I do enjoy quite a bit, but it's gotten old. The PC gives me much better control, much higher resolution, and a constant stream of new games to try. The GameCube is kind of inundated with puzzle games, which I hate, and I've already played through most of the really good/popular ones. And it doesn't have any kind of online play, which I think is half the fun of gaming. Anyway, these are just my reasons for the switch. What people say here isn't really going to convince me to change my mind, and I'm not trying to impose. But I welcome the feedback people have been giving. And yes, I would love it if I could buy a generic Mac-compatible motherboard and CPU off NewEgg and stick it in an ATX case. It sucks that even a four-year-old AGP motherboard is $100, a case with poor cooling properties is another $100, and the power supply is another proprietary part that will run at least $50. I'm looking at picking up a brand new, modern motherboard with 8x AGP, SATA, gigabit ethernet, Athlon 64 compatibility, and 5.1 integrated sound (though I'd still use a sound card) for about $80. It's all about mass production. |
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careful with axes
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Hillsborough, CA
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I'm on a PC right now, but there is no way I could function with being a full-time PC user. My PC DIY experiment was a one-off and I don't think I'll be building another anytime soon. I only use this PC for games, compatibility and web browsing...
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2004
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I like consoles, but it's obvious they do not compete with PC's. They are good for some specific types of game: arcade, sports, driving, fighting, platformers, puzzles, simpler kind of RPG's. I bought my first and only console, a PS2, almost exclusively for two specific games, though now I have gotten interested in other ones. PC's are better in simulations, FPS, strategy, hardcore RPG, online anything. |
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ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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You got that right. Soul Calibur rocks my world. So does Super Smash Melee (though I've now basically beaten the entire single player game AND played hundreds of matches against my friends), and Rogue Leader is even still fun (despite having played every mission at least a dozen times).
I guess I could continue using the Mac for everything and the PC for just gaming, but as I said, it seems silly to keep a Mac around for such menial tasks as AIM and web surfing. I'd rather just take the money. If money weren't a factor, I'd build a monster PC for gaming and have a sleek little PowerBook for "real" work. |
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BANNED
I am worthless beyond hope. Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Washington, DC
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But, that's me. I'd be concerned enough about security & stability to keep the Mac for valuable work while playing the bejeezus out of the PC. |
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Veteran Member
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Kinda sucks that you're not able to do the dual monitor thing effectively. Makes things so much nicer! |
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