A Month with a Mac: A Die-Hard PC User's Perspective
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Right on, Ridley.
Additionally Mac OS X can run both 32 bit AND 64 bit apps on the new G5 chip. Not much of an issue now but as apps get rewritten it will become one (a positive one that is)
Re cost: this is an old chestnut. Yes Pee Cees are cheaper compared to Macs, but then start to match up a dull with identical hardware & software specs. Macs ARE cheaper. Don't forget we have iMovie, iTunes & iPods, iPhoto & iDVD, GarageBand etc & all apart from the iPod comes free with any new Mac.
I've had Macs now for 4 years. I have had No virii. I went to the Symantec site tonight & checked out my laptop for security. All ports are in stealth mode. ie can't be seen. Try that on a Windoze Box even after SP2 has been applied. But do visit the Register for their take on SP. Its still a dangerous system to surf with.
Finally, I have trouble shot my Macs myself - zero calls to anyone.
My oldest Mac (aG4 450 Mhz) can run the latest system Mac OS X 10.3.5 with no problem and even earlier Macs can do the job too. Can the same be said of XP?
Nuff said!
Additionally Mac OS X can run both 32 bit AND 64 bit apps on the new G5 chip. Not much of an issue now but as apps get rewritten it will become one (a positive one that is)
Re cost: this is an old chestnut. Yes Pee Cees are cheaper compared to Macs, but then start to match up a dull with identical hardware & software specs. Macs ARE cheaper. Don't forget we have iMovie, iTunes & iPods, iPhoto & iDVD, GarageBand etc & all apart from the iPod comes free with any new Mac.
I've had Macs now for 4 years. I have had No virii. I went to the Symantec site tonight & checked out my laptop for security. All ports are in stealth mode. ie can't be seen. Try that on a Windoze Box even after SP2 has been applied. But do visit the Register for their take on SP. Its still a dangerous system to surf with.
Finally, I have trouble shot my Macs myself - zero calls to anyone.
My oldest Mac (aG4 450 Mhz) can run the latest system Mac OS X 10.3.5 with no problem and even earlier Macs can do the job too. Can the same be said of XP?
Nuff said!
Coppula eam se non posit acceptera jocularum
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Interesting article and find myself agreeing with what Ridley says about where the writer hopes to seek his income.
Took the plunge last year and got a Mac for home. Fine, had teething troubles in making the change, mostly I now realise because after Windows I expected computers to have problems and I tried too hard in setting up instead of letting the Mac do things perfectly. Says it all really, and once I learnt to trust the Mac never looked back for all the reasons given here. Still use a PC at work and hate every minute of it. Fighting to change that but meeting entrenched Windows thinking from a few people (the "brainwashed flock"!) who convince themselves that standardisation is more important than productivity.
Interesting comments here about the cost aspect. Mac can cost a bit more, but did not realise until pointed out here how much I am already taking for granted in terms of marvellously functioning software that comes with the Mac. Only extra software I have on the Mac is Office .... and guess which is the most problematic software on my Mac! Anybody here use Openoffice?
Right, fine, call this the zealous ramblings of a convert. Not worried in the slightest, found out that life is too short to live with the pain of a PC.
Took the plunge last year and got a Mac for home. Fine, had teething troubles in making the change, mostly I now realise because after Windows I expected computers to have problems and I tried too hard in setting up instead of letting the Mac do things perfectly. Says it all really, and once I learnt to trust the Mac never looked back for all the reasons given here. Still use a PC at work and hate every minute of it. Fighting to change that but meeting entrenched Windows thinking from a few people (the "brainwashed flock"!) who convince themselves that standardisation is more important than productivity.
Interesting comments here about the cost aspect. Mac can cost a bit more, but did not realise until pointed out here how much I am already taking for granted in terms of marvellously functioning software that comes with the Mac. Only extra software I have on the Mac is Office .... and guess which is the most problematic software on my Mac! Anybody here use Openoffice?
Right, fine, call this the zealous ramblings of a convert. Not worried in the slightest, found out that life is too short to live with the pain of a PC.
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The Road Warriors Story
Writing from a Middle Eastern hotel via a wireless network. Except the hotel doesn't have a wireless network.
I've connected via the cable to the wall and clicked on my room number to accept the daily charge. So far very familiar to many ppruners I'm sure except I then disconnected the network cable and plugged a unit the size of a cigarette packet into the wall power socket. The ethernet cable has now gone into a port in it. The printer has been plugged into a usb port on the same wall unit as has a mini jack going to some powered speakers.
The entire crew are now surfing wirelessly from one paid connection, printing wirelessly when they need it and listening to one of my iTunes playlists over the powered speakers.
No-one has entered an IP address or configured anything at all - just entered the name of our company as a password.
That was just over one minute to get everyone on line including the initial cable swaps. With this ease of use in an operation that that so often preoccupies these pages for a one person setup at home is it any wonder that there is now only one remaining PC holdout amongst the crew?
The unit - Airport Express - 129 bucks. The cig packet sized travellers' friend.
Regards
Rob
I've connected via the cable to the wall and clicked on my room number to accept the daily charge. So far very familiar to many ppruners I'm sure except I then disconnected the network cable and plugged a unit the size of a cigarette packet into the wall power socket. The ethernet cable has now gone into a port in it. The printer has been plugged into a usb port on the same wall unit as has a mini jack going to some powered speakers.
The entire crew are now surfing wirelessly from one paid connection, printing wirelessly when they need it and listening to one of my iTunes playlists over the powered speakers.
No-one has entered an IP address or configured anything at all - just entered the name of our company as a password.
That was just over one minute to get everyone on line including the initial cable swaps. With this ease of use in an operation that that so often preoccupies these pages for a one person setup at home is it any wonder that there is now only one remaining PC holdout amongst the crew?
The unit - Airport Express - 129 bucks. The cig packet sized travellers' friend.
Regards
Rob
Plastic PPRuNer
Well, far be it from me to contradict Ridley, and everyone here knows that I'm not a Microsoft lover - very much the reverse in fact since my "real" OS is SuSE Linux 9.1 and the superb Mepis Linux [ http://www.mepis.org/ ] which I cannot recommend too highly.
Actually it isn't the quality or security of MS products that repels me but Microsoft's attitude and business practices. I'm not going to go into the details (it would take far too long) but the subversion of standards, the vendor lock-ins, the lies, the deceit, the relentless destruction of anyone who dares to challenge their hegemony, the eternal lawsuits that only they have the money to fight and most recently the covert campaign against Linux using the repulsive SCO as a stalking-horse just turn me right off. Nope, MS is a convicted monopolist who wants to own the whole sandbox and won't play nice with the other kids.
Maybe it's because I'm a bit of a nerd at heart but I have to confess that I've had very little trouble with my 2 installations of XP (I didn't have much trouble with 98 either, but that's another story). Of course, I have hardware and software firewalls, adware scanners, malware scanners, antivirus software, snoopers and update and patch things regularly. Not to speak of backups, registry savers and the like. They all run as cronjobs and rarely require any active intervention - though the compulsory reboots are annoying. I run all sorts of apps., including games, heavy duty graphics processing, rafts of free software or shareware and download tons of stuff to try from the Net. Hard lockups? Perhaps 6 in the last year. Bluescreens and Stops? Never had one. Application crashes? Sure - mostly Explorer barfing for some reason. Security issues? Lots of fruitless knocking on the hardware firewall door, that's for sure. Driver issues? Yeah, sometimes (never did get that USB modem working) but a lot less headaches than in Linux. Well, they do say your mileage may vary....
All in all I don't think that XP isn't so bad (though it's horribly overpriced and fenced in by draconian EULAs). From the point of view of OS design it is quite insecure, but that in a way is the price of maintaining the extraordinary compatibility with older iterations and DOS apps. Sure they could have made it more secure, but that would have broken a lot of older stuff and produced howls of indignation.
I can't say much about Macs except to say that any BSD based OS can't be all bad! But I can talk about my beloved Linux and more specifically Linux on the desktop. Linux has pretty much won on the server platform - everyone know that Apache makes IIS look like a pile of poo. On the desktop Linux has arrived at a bit of a crossroads and is having to do a lot of growing up very fast. Hardware drivers are a real pain (of course Apple never has that problem) partly because Linux is newish to the desktop, partly because closed source drivers don't sit very comfortably with the GPL and partly, I suspect, because MS leans on manufacturers who might be thinking of releasing Linux drivers (they've done it in the past and will continue to do it until the DOJ grows some balls and teeth). Application installation, even with binaries written for your distro, can be painful. Windows had DLL hell, Linux has dependency hell. Sure, you can compile source yourself but most people are intimidated by this and it still doesn't solve everything. Red Hat's RPM format is, in spite of it's deficiencies, becoming the norm (sorry Debian users) but package management just has to be made better. Adoption of the Linux Standard Base http://www.linuxbase.org/ will go a long way towards addressing such problems. Applications? Well, apart from games (and Doom III for Linux has been released) there ain't much in it these days and it's getting better all the time.
The good thing is that all these criticisms are being addressed right now. Every month brings improvements in smoothness, interoperability and ease of use. Sometimes it's hard to keep up!
The worst that could happen would be for MS to release Microsoft Linux! But I don't think they ever will.
Actually it isn't the quality or security of MS products that repels me but Microsoft's attitude and business practices. I'm not going to go into the details (it would take far too long) but the subversion of standards, the vendor lock-ins, the lies, the deceit, the relentless destruction of anyone who dares to challenge their hegemony, the eternal lawsuits that only they have the money to fight and most recently the covert campaign against Linux using the repulsive SCO as a stalking-horse just turn me right off. Nope, MS is a convicted monopolist who wants to own the whole sandbox and won't play nice with the other kids.
Maybe it's because I'm a bit of a nerd at heart but I have to confess that I've had very little trouble with my 2 installations of XP (I didn't have much trouble with 98 either, but that's another story). Of course, I have hardware and software firewalls, adware scanners, malware scanners, antivirus software, snoopers and update and patch things regularly. Not to speak of backups, registry savers and the like. They all run as cronjobs and rarely require any active intervention - though the compulsory reboots are annoying. I run all sorts of apps., including games, heavy duty graphics processing, rafts of free software or shareware and download tons of stuff to try from the Net. Hard lockups? Perhaps 6 in the last year. Bluescreens and Stops? Never had one. Application crashes? Sure - mostly Explorer barfing for some reason. Security issues? Lots of fruitless knocking on the hardware firewall door, that's for sure. Driver issues? Yeah, sometimes (never did get that USB modem working) but a lot less headaches than in Linux. Well, they do say your mileage may vary....
All in all I don't think that XP isn't so bad (though it's horribly overpriced and fenced in by draconian EULAs). From the point of view of OS design it is quite insecure, but that in a way is the price of maintaining the extraordinary compatibility with older iterations and DOS apps. Sure they could have made it more secure, but that would have broken a lot of older stuff and produced howls of indignation.
I can't say much about Macs except to say that any BSD based OS can't be all bad! But I can talk about my beloved Linux and more specifically Linux on the desktop. Linux has pretty much won on the server platform - everyone know that Apache makes IIS look like a pile of poo. On the desktop Linux has arrived at a bit of a crossroads and is having to do a lot of growing up very fast. Hardware drivers are a real pain (of course Apple never has that problem) partly because Linux is newish to the desktop, partly because closed source drivers don't sit very comfortably with the GPL and partly, I suspect, because MS leans on manufacturers who might be thinking of releasing Linux drivers (they've done it in the past and will continue to do it until the DOJ grows some balls and teeth). Application installation, even with binaries written for your distro, can be painful. Windows had DLL hell, Linux has dependency hell. Sure, you can compile source yourself but most people are intimidated by this and it still doesn't solve everything. Red Hat's RPM format is, in spite of it's deficiencies, becoming the norm (sorry Debian users) but package management just has to be made better. Adoption of the Linux Standard Base http://www.linuxbase.org/ will go a long way towards addressing such problems. Applications? Well, apart from games (and Doom III for Linux has been released) there ain't much in it these days and it's getting better all the time.
The good thing is that all these criticisms are being addressed right now. Every month brings improvements in smoothness, interoperability and ease of use. Sometimes it's hard to keep up!
The worst that could happen would be for MS to release Microsoft Linux! But I don't think they ever will.
Last edited by Mac the Knife; 14th Oct 2004 at 19:37.
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Towers
That is very cool. I would have never thought of that.
Now all I need is a larger crew than the 2 of us on the freighter to make it worthwhile.
Whats the range like on the express in a hotel enviroment with all the reinforced concrete and the like.
That is very cool. I would have never thought of that.
Now all I need is a larger crew than the 2 of us on the freighter to make it worthwhile.
Whats the range like on the express in a hotel enviroment with all the reinforced concrete and the like.
Coppula eam se non posit acceptera jocularum
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MS to release Microsoft Linux!
... and I thought you such a well brought up person ... 
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The unit - Airport Express - 129 bucks. The cig packet sized travellers' friend.
I have always used PCs with Windows due to cost and software / hardware availability issues and have never really had any problems (except when I was running Windows ME - horrible, horrible OS). XP has been absolutely fine.
Oggin
PPRuNe Handmaiden
My cute lil 12" iBook from Apple works every time.
FRED, my Windows PC has taught me a lot about software, hardware, virus protection, system crashes....
I run both. I know which one I prefer to use if I want to keep my blood pressure low.
FRED, my Windows PC has taught me a lot about software, hardware, virus protection, system crashes....
I run both. I know which one I prefer to use if I want to keep my blood pressure low.
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Oggin, yep 'g' standard router in base station mode. Remembers five configurations so you could use one slot as relay rather than base. This means you can use it on a home or commercial wifi system to act as a repeater to extend the range of your regular base station. Our centrino tablet PC is on the aircraft so haven't tried linking it yet - we like to keep it out of our sight until we have to do perf calculations
Daysleeper: The iBooks seem to be able to suck a signal from just about nowhere which isn't fair. Therefore we had our 17 inch Powerbook man roaming - the metal casing makes reception far more problematic. No problems for adjacent rooms in a modern concrete palace but, as you'd suspect, the rebarred concrete floors prevented reception above and below the room where the Airport was plugged in.
However, our remaining PC stalwart isn't on duty at the moment but we're looking forward to his return as he has an outstanding USB external antenna ( a Linksys product I think) which might do the trick on floor to floor reception.
Finally, and as we're talking comms for RoadWarriors, firewalls. Prime PPRuNe audience don't have the luxury of a known and trusted hardware firewall much of the time so here's a recommendation for the Mac contingent. You're working on a unix software base which the masters of the command line can configure for protection in incredible detail. There's a utility out there now which will give you a very usable point and click version of what they can manage. Search on 'BrickHouse' and give it a trial. My lot have found it very useful indeed while out on the road.
Regards to all,
Rob
Daysleeper: The iBooks seem to be able to suck a signal from just about nowhere which isn't fair. Therefore we had our 17 inch Powerbook man roaming - the metal casing makes reception far more problematic. No problems for adjacent rooms in a modern concrete palace but, as you'd suspect, the rebarred concrete floors prevented reception above and below the room where the Airport was plugged in.
However, our remaining PC stalwart isn't on duty at the moment but we're looking forward to his return as he has an outstanding USB external antenna ( a Linksys product I think) which might do the trick on floor to floor reception.
Finally, and as we're talking comms for RoadWarriors, firewalls. Prime PPRuNe audience don't have the luxury of a known and trusted hardware firewall much of the time so here's a recommendation for the Mac contingent. You're working on a unix software base which the masters of the command line can configure for protection in incredible detail. There's a utility out there now which will give you a very usable point and click version of what they can manage. Search on 'BrickHouse' and give it a trial. My lot have found it very useful indeed while out on the road.
Regards to all,
Rob
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Rob
Think I will invest in one for the house - I get quite a bit of attenuation in various house locations due to walls etc. Does it just plug into an electrical wall socket and bobs your uncle? As previously stated, my hardware / software is all from Bill Gates but is all 802.11g capable.
Cheers
Oggin
you could use one slot as relay .... can use it on a home ... wifi system to act as a repeater to extend the range of your regular base station.
Cheers
Oggin
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That's right OA,
Worked straight out of the box. Easy enough to find a picture of it. The 'cigarette packet' has two or three prongs on one end corner for connection to the mains. For road warriors the corner removes so you can slot in the correct prongs for the power system in the whichever part of the world you find yourself.
Plug in and at the bottom you have three ports. Ethernet, usb and stereo mini jack. Finally there is a LED window facing the room cycling between yellow and green to let you know when connected and working/transmitting.
In addition to creating an instant wireless network with remote printing/scannning or whatever you've got usb wise there's one other aspect that might appeal with regard to your thoughts on extending range around the home.
For music fans the software adds a new function to iTunes ( comes with all Macs but a free download for you PC people) which gives you a drop down choice. Normal output or the names of any wireless networks available. Select the network name and the music is silenced on your system and piped to the mini jack on the Airport Express. Pop it into a socket near your stereo, connect a lead to an aux input and voila.
We really rather like it!
Regards again
Rob
Worked straight out of the box. Easy enough to find a picture of it. The 'cigarette packet' has two or three prongs on one end corner for connection to the mains. For road warriors the corner removes so you can slot in the correct prongs for the power system in the whichever part of the world you find yourself.
Plug in and at the bottom you have three ports. Ethernet, usb and stereo mini jack. Finally there is a LED window facing the room cycling between yellow and green to let you know when connected and working/transmitting.
In addition to creating an instant wireless network with remote printing/scannning or whatever you've got usb wise there's one other aspect that might appeal with regard to your thoughts on extending range around the home.
For music fans the software adds a new function to iTunes ( comes with all Macs but a free download for you PC people) which gives you a drop down choice. Normal output or the names of any wireless networks available. Select the network name and the music is silenced on your system and piped to the mini jack on the Airport Express. Pop it into a socket near your stereo, connect a lead to an aux input and voila.
We really rather like it!
Regards again
Rob
My first computer was an Amstrad, then an Apple II greenscreen, then onto the PC lines, with 286, 386, 486, pentium and so on.
Then my son put me onto Mac. What a difference.
I now run an iMac for everyday stuff and a G4 Powerbook when I want to get fancy.
I needed a software update for the Powerbook. Easy. While visiting my son's office, I put it on the desk, turned it on, no cables needed for anything; and it connected to the AirPort server and downloaded the goodies from broadband in no time flat. Needed some bits from son's machine - connect via firewire in target mode, drag the desired bits onto my hard drive, thank you very much.
Update my mobile phone's address book via bluetooth.
Create home movies with iMovie, link it with a slideshow of digital photos from iPhoto, put them together with a very professional front page with iDvd, burn it, and life is easy.
Convinced a musician friend to make the change to Mac after he saw my setup. Last weekend he and a friend performed their first paid gig in an electronic music festival using GarageBand, a month after first seeing the program. He is ditching his PC and expensive software for the Mac and its included goodies.
I have a PC in a corner of the office, only because I haven't yet bought a copy of Virtual PC for OS/X, and I need to run some software which the Oz gummint hasn't seen fit to write for Mac - the eTax software.
Then my son put me onto Mac. What a difference.
I now run an iMac for everyday stuff and a G4 Powerbook when I want to get fancy.
I needed a software update for the Powerbook. Easy. While visiting my son's office, I put it on the desk, turned it on, no cables needed for anything; and it connected to the AirPort server and downloaded the goodies from broadband in no time flat. Needed some bits from son's machine - connect via firewire in target mode, drag the desired bits onto my hard drive, thank you very much.
Update my mobile phone's address book via bluetooth.
Create home movies with iMovie, link it with a slideshow of digital photos from iPhoto, put them together with a very professional front page with iDvd, burn it, and life is easy.
Convinced a musician friend to make the change to Mac after he saw my setup. Last weekend he and a friend performed their first paid gig in an electronic music festival using GarageBand, a month after first seeing the program. He is ditching his PC and expensive software for the Mac and its included goodies.
I have a PC in a corner of the office, only because I haven't yet bought a copy of Virtual PC for OS/X, and I need to run some software which the Oz gummint hasn't seen fit to write for Mac - the eTax software.
aka Capt PPRuNe
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Virtual PC for the Mac... DON'T BUY IT!!!!
Guess who bought the company that originally produced it? Yep... Micro****e and they have ruined it. It will run Windoze XP but it is utterly useless unless your metabolic rate is the same as stalactite.
M$ tweaked the product and it is now useless. I wasted money on upgrading the old version. I needed access to a Windoze environment to run Explorer as some dorks decided to make the company intranet accessible ONLY to the Windoze version of Explorer.
Thankfully I married a lovely wench who has her own Dell laptop. Now I just use that for work access to my roster. Everything else is Mac.
Just to point out some more of the complexities, I purchased a Netgear wireless router for the home and a card for the laptop. Trying to set up the router using the PC was tedious and not very clear. So, ethernetted into the router with the Mac and set it up using just a few clicks and voila... home hot spot. Discovered a neighbour had one too and hadn't protected it and thought about getting rid of my broadband but on second thoughts gave him some friendly advice about protecting his network.
Just ask PPRuNe Towers about some very important people who run unprotected networks. Probably because they are such a pain to set up using 'Doze systems.
Guess who bought the company that originally produced it? Yep... Micro****e and they have ruined it. It will run Windoze XP but it is utterly useless unless your metabolic rate is the same as stalactite.
M$ tweaked the product and it is now useless. I wasted money on upgrading the old version. I needed access to a Windoze environment to run Explorer as some dorks decided to make the company intranet accessible ONLY to the Windoze version of Explorer.
Thankfully I married a lovely wench who has her own Dell laptop. Now I just use that for work access to my roster. Everything else is Mac.
Just to point out some more of the complexities, I purchased a Netgear wireless router for the home and a card for the laptop. Trying to set up the router using the PC was tedious and not very clear. So, ethernetted into the router with the Mac and set it up using just a few clicks and voila... home hot spot. Discovered a neighbour had one too and hadn't protected it and thought about getting rid of my broadband but on second thoughts gave him some friendly advice about protecting his network.
Just ask PPRuNe Towers about some very important people who run unprotected networks. Probably because they are such a pain to set up using 'Doze systems.
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Virtual PC for the Mac... DON'T BUY IT!!!!
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I've just ordered a pair of G5 iMacs
Let us know how it goes there are probably a lot of sales resting on your opinion.
Danny needs to kick someones bottom about the windowfication of his company. My company intranet is only avaliable on Explorer, but at least its usable on the MAC version and we forced them to re-issue our cd ops manuals in a MAC friendly format.
