On 2007-09-25 23:51:25 +0100, The Natural Philosopher said:

Andy Hall wrote:

It's *substantially* more stable than any Windows environment that I
have used, even with basic applications on that. Starting snd
suspending is fast and works properly on OS/X and for weeks on end.

Lucky you. if I sleep i lose all my network drives.

Really? How are they mounted and to what as the server?



I worked pretty hard to eliminate all but waht I needed from my 98
setup. It was stable mostly, eventually it would rn out of RAM and need
a reboot. every two days or so usually. Its now XP and is a shade
better. But apps still crash of course.



I just ran 'uptime' on my MacBook Pro (i.e. time since last reboot) and
it's at over 8 weeks.

I shut mine down to save power. Well its an old G4.


In terms of speed, and here I am talking about user experience rather
than artificial benchmarks, OS/X and applications is far faster than
Windows. Previously, I had a 3GHz notebook PC with 2GB memory. The
MBP is 2GHz, but dual core and same memory. Even from a cold start
I can have booted OS/X, have logged in, have all system services
started and into Apple Mail while the PC is still loading up.

Yup..unless teh NAC goes 'filseystem check' in whih case it takes
aroudn 7 minutes to boot, its a up a bit quicker than the PC. It runs
slower tho. Similar hardware. I tends to go into 'bugger off I am dong
somethimg' spinning disk mode from time to time while it pages
something in our out.

Mmm... Perhaps that's a G4 issue. I'll try forcing a filesystem
check and see how long it takes, but have never seen this long a boot
time even after a cold power off.





I haven't needed to do anything in terms of system or application
recoveries, registry fixes or reloads of the operating system.


I never needed to do that on a PC either. Bu then I didn't install
loads of crapware.

Neither did I apart from Office.


Having less hardware support is an advantage. It means that
optimisations can be done, as they have been and also that there is a
known platform.

That is straiight out of the marketing lessons no 1 "how to persent a
probelm as an advantage"

Normally I would agree with you. However, PCs are all about
commodity hardware upon which the majority of people install or have
installed for them a proprietary "operating system" from Microsoft and
usually applications from Microsoft as well.

There is very little to choose between the hardware vendors anyway. It
either gets fixed by partial or full replacement.

For the user, most of the investment is in time to fix the software
when it breaks or in getting it to work reliably or at all with
combinations of hardware in the first place. In that respect having
something that is known to run on a defined platform is a distinct
advantage.

OTOH, at least OS/X is based on a reasonably open environment. One
can add and run or add compile and run most Unix based material, for
example.
Even if one doesn't do that, it becomes a comparison between one
vendor's proprietary environment and another's.

So overall, for my use I think it's well worth sacrificing the hardware
vendor choice



There is plenty of commercial, or low cost or free
software out there for OS/X.

Shame none of it is much use isn't it?

Depends what you want. I've never found any problem in finding
something for what I've needed.




I have one or two legacy Windows applications, but these run very
adequately and inexpensively on VMWare. In itself that is useful,
because I can have a preconfigured virtual machine stashed away and
when Windows inevitably breaks copy it into place and be going again
immediately.

And how much did THA lots cost you?

Very little. VMWare costs $79.99 at the moment.



my PC owes me nothing and neither does this Mac., They are both
obsloete, upraded and rehashed to avoid spending cash on bloody
computers.


but otherwise is just after all another bloody computer..

That's true of course. For my usage, which is typical mobile usage
in one sense but technically onerous in others, OS/X is a very good
environment. I would have chucked the thing away and switched to
using Linux on a PC platform by now if not. Certainly I wouldn't
return to use of Windows as a main platform.

Depends on what 'main' means.

Of course. I mean for my major professional use where there is
business criticality.


I do three things with computers. Set em up and program and configure
them, for which the Mac is good enough - just..its go a decent enough
telnet, and it just about runs a halfway decent text editor.

Bugger around bull****ting on the net, which its also reasonably good
at, and writing, which provided I close everything except WORD is
reasonable as well.

And do engineering and graphic type design, for which the Mac has
proved to absolutely and utterly useless. It wont drive the very
expensive plotter. No software exists that allows me to do what I want
on it easily or cheaply, and it cant understand my scanner either.
Neither can the two simulators I want run on it: They need windows, and
without buying a ****ing expensive Intel Mac, that's simply not on.

And printing is very slow. Sure i could spend a fortune on a gigahertz
processor equipped postcript printer to ratserside postcript, and a
gigahertz processor equipped mac to turn te rasters into postcript to
sent to teh expensive printer over a 100batseT network connection, but
frankly te PC does the job faster on a paralell port plotter.

This all sounds very much like issues of trying to run newer generation
software or requirements on older generation hardware.





When I compare the two platforms its perfectly obvious that they are
both deeply flawed. The PC is at least ubiquitous, fast and cheap, and
does the job, except when it crashes. Its optimised for silly features.
The mac is less able to do the job, but its sort of luxury feel. Its
like owning a jaguar versus a kit car. Actually the kit car needs
constant attention, and is unreliable, but its faster and uses less
petrol. The jaguar is expensive, reasonably reliable, but costs a
fortine to run and doesn't corner that well. Nor get you there any
faster n traffic: ty just fallters yu whilest you drive it.

Linux? thats a luton bodied transit with a desel engine in it. Nothing
to look at, and if you want it specialised, you have to mod it
yourself, but its stability personified, and chugs away 24x7 doing very
boring but necessary work.

If there is any system that I actually LIKE, its Linux. Shame it isn't
up to most of what I need to do either..

Whichever way, I think that one ends up spending money. I know
people who are dual booting Linux and OS/X on their Macs for certain
jobs and running Linux under VMWare for others. That can be
reasonable as well. Does depend on what you do, though.