Andy Hall wrote:
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?



SMB to a Linux server, or servers. TCP conns need to be 'kept alive'

NFS is probably better, but I loathe it.


Yup..unless teh MAC goes 'filesystem check' in which case it takes
around 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
something' 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.


Bootng is alas assumed to be from a cold power off or it's not booting
is it?





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.


Point taken

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.


Mmm. I am not sure how accurate that assesment is..but the mots pepl I
know are very computer literate and do very advanced things with their
computers: What is on the machins OS wise tends to reflect the use to
which it wll be put.

The graphic artists have Macs.
The software developers have Linux or Windoze.
The kids with the games have PC's.



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.


But not that easily: The GUI interface is extremely specialised: sure
you can run X11 but that rather defeats the point of having the Mac at all.

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 spent over 4 weeks ****ing around with ths Mac to see what its limits
were, and was extremely frustrated to find that they were basically massive.

Its become a simple writing desk. Its pleasant enough at that.




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.



No, with the Mac and the rest of it? Printers/plotters/scanners etc.


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.


It the business critically depends on something that simply doesn't run
on a Mac, then the business runs windows.

Millions of businesses run windows. its 'good enough'



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.


And yet an upgrade to XP found all the older kit working flawlessly.




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.

Well I have all three here now. Linux is for the server, because its
rock solid at that.

Macs for ****ing about and to run my wifes typography stuff, which it
runs well enough.

PC for my engineering stuff, which Macs don't even get out of bed for.

I think the 4 machines here haven't cost much more than a grand..well
maybe this mac was more when it was bought.

Very little has been bought new. A lot is cast offs from affluent people
who don't want a 5 year old machine.