A Month with a Mac: A Die-Hard PC User's Perspective [Archive]

cb911

Oct 21, 2004, 09:07 PM

i just found this article from some dude's blog. i did a search for it here, and was surprised that no one posted this yet.

i haven't read the whole thing yet, but i seems really intersting. it's not quite a review of anything, just an article on a 'die-hard' PC users experience with a Mac. and from what i've read so far, it seems that it's not written with any bias, i think the author is trying to be as open-minded as possible.

and the article: http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2232

Blue Velvet

Oct 21, 2004, 09:13 PM

I'm afraid that this has been posted before... recently, within the last 4 weeks or so.

Can't find exactly where, but I'm sure somebody will dig it out.

Fukui

Oct 22, 2004, 12:36 AM

You can tell when he says, "Internet Explorer for the Mac is basically a piece of garbage." He's being Objective!!

Also I agree with his assessment of OS X Office...

"There are clear differences between the Mac and Windows Office interface that are seemingly unnecessary because the changes made to the Mac version don't exactly make the suite fit in any better with OS X as the application still feels very un-Mac-like. Instead, it seems that the changes to Office were made for the sake of making the suite different than its Windows counterpart, which doesn't make much sense at all to me.
"

I do love OS X and Apples H/W, but OS X does need a huge shot of fat-cutting and Office needs a serious re-factoring... fortunately the former should be fixed with Tiger! :)

Apple Hobo

Oct 22, 2004, 12:59 AM

You can tell when he says, "Internet Explorer for the Mac is basically a piece of garbage."

I agree with him on that 100%. :D

jemeinc

Oct 22, 2004, 01:43 AM

I enjoyed that article— right up until the last line- when he suggested that Apple might do good, business wise, by offering up some Macs for PC users on a 30 day trial period...lol... I'm sure that was tongue in cheek, but it did bring up some crazy memories... lol.. Been there, done that, not going back...;-)...

munkle

Oct 22, 2004, 02:34 AM

I'm afraid that this has been posted before... recently, within the last 4 weeks or so.

Can't find exactly where, but I'm sure somebody will dig it out.

No biggie but it has been posted before,

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=92264&highlight=anandtech
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=92236&highlight=anandtech

Illmatic

Oct 22, 2004, 01:09 PM

I was enjoying the article until I came to the end and realized that not once did he bring up iLife or the Pro User Suite with DVDSP and FCPHD. I truly think that these products are the a huge factor with anyone who has made the switch.

chanoc

Oct 22, 2004, 03:01 PM

Mav451

Oct 22, 2004, 04:14 PM

That dudes blog looks like a Windows GUI interface, *****ty design. With all he did, it could have been done on a G4 -- no need to blow 3k (+/-). Maybe he should have compared rendering video and audio to get a real perspective of how fast a G5 really is compared to a WinBlows machine.

<off topic>

This morning I went to my friend's house to show him how to burn a CD. We had a 2.8Ghz P4, Windows Media Player, 512MB DDR, and a 32x10x40x CD-RW. It took > 30 minutes to rip, convert (from WMA to Audio), and burn the CD. :rolleyes:

My 500Mhz ibook G3 can rip and burn in < 20 minutes using iTunes. :p

</off topic>

Too hilarious. You think that 2.8 P4 had something to do with ripping time? I can rip/burn in under 8 mins if i used dbPowerAMP. Whether I had my 800 Tbird, my friend's 2000+ or my overclocked Barton, it would all rip at the same speed. dbPowerAMP is free software folks, and one of the most used rippers (since early 98).

If you're friend is using Windows Media Player to do it, i mean, what do you expect?

5300cs

Oct 22, 2004, 06:43 PM

It has been a very difficult article to write, and I hope that all of the people to whom I'm writing at least gained something useful out of this - I know that I did.

Nope, I gained nothing from the article. Next....

XnavxeMiyyep

Oct 22, 2004, 08:18 PM

Nope, I gained nothing from the article. Next....
I gained something from it. I didn't know previously that you could hold command to highlight text and drag images from a window without making it active, which is very useful.

Overall, it was a nice article.

maxterpiece

Oct 23, 2004, 12:51 AM

I gained something from it. I didn't know previously that you could hold command to highlight text and drag images from a window without making it active, which is very useful.

Overall, it was a nice article.
yeah a lot of the key commands he mentions are cool. It was only about the things he does on his computer which i think limited it in a way. There was no discussion of WMP for mac and how crap that is. There is a lot of software that is missing that he could have whined about. Likewise there was no mention of iphoto or imovie/final cut, or how plug and play a lot of hardware for mac is. But i did really enjoy hearing about all the keyboard shortcuts. There were a bunch of mail shortcuts that I didn't know about too.

J.Allen

Oct 23, 2004, 03:55 AM

This morning I went to my friend's house to show him how to burn a CD. We had a 2.8Ghz P4, Windows Media Player, 512MB DDR, and a 32x10x40x CD-RW. It took > 30 minutes to rip, convert (from WMA to Audio), and burn the CD. :rolleyes:

My 500Mhz ibook G3 can rip and burn in < 20 minutes using iTunes. :p

My 3.5 year old athlon 1000MHz home brew can do it in under 10. What's you point. I'll have a video made up to prove it if you want.

5300cs

Oct 23, 2004, 05:52 AM

But much like the U.S. election system, although there may be the illusion of multiple options for your OS, in reality, there is really only one. If you want any sort of software compatibility, driver support and don't want to be made fun of, Windows is the way to go. There have been righteous attempts by smaller OSes to gain traction, and some of them have (e.g. Linux), but for the most part, we're dealing with a one-party OS system. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing; quite contrary, in fact. I believe that Windows XP is the best thing to ever come out of Redmond and I have very few issues with the OS. I actually liked the XP theme when it first came out and I've been happier with Windows XP than any previous Microsoft OS (except maybe the good ol' DOS days). When installed on the right hardware with the right drivers (and with an eye to be wary of poorly written apps), I found that Windows XP was just as stable as any other OS that I'd ever encountered. My personal machine would go months between reboots without a single problem. It's not that there is anything wrong with Windows; it's that if you want the option, if there's any particular thing that you don't like about the way Windows works, you're straight out of luck.

This bit completely did it for me. Couldn't take it seriously after that (although I tried...)

Mav451

Oct 23, 2004, 12:26 PM

Colonel Panik

Oct 23, 2004, 02:04 PM

(if XP was as unstable as the zealots on this board to be, why would there be so many PC enthusiasts, overclockers, tweakers?

Not contradicting you, but let's face it. If you want to build your own machine, you can't really do it with a Mac. You can make your own box, sure, but you need to have a Mac ROM to do so, and to get one of those, you need to buy one. So, that avenue is kinda closed for Mac zealots.

That said, I still think that the best thing about my Mac is that I don't notice it when I'm working on it, whereas my PC is just in my face, not doing things I want it to do, not taking care of buisness. Still, I need it for work so I just put up with it.

I guess the car analogy would be something like this - people don't pimp their Mercedes and Jaguars, but they most certainly do pimp their Ford Escorts...

If you're into building your own PC, way to go and I fully support that. I actually just appreciate the work that Apple has put into the hardware and OS and apps so that they *mostly* just do the job... But I think it would be nice to see home-build Macs...

PlaceofDis

Oct 23, 2004, 04:09 PM

i agree with 5300cs, simply because the author is being narrow minded by saying that you really only have one choice of OS for compatibility, now for some people this may be true, i dont doubt that windows XP properly taken care of is stable, but i do doubt the fact that it is many people's only option. I only use macs and im fine, plenty of people get by using Linux and OS X with no issues, the author is being biased against other OSes simply because Windows is his territory. Windows is good for some things true, but nothing i need because i havent run into any problems with my mac

Mav451

Oct 23, 2004, 05:22 PM

Not contradicting you, but let's face it. If you want to build your own machine, you can't really do it with a Mac. You can make your own box, sure, but you need to have a Mac ROM to do so, and to get one of those, you need to buy one. So, that avenue is kinda closed for Mac zealots.

That said, I still think that the best thing about my Mac is that I don't notice it when I'm working on it, whereas my PC is just in my face, not doing things I want it to do, not taking care of buisness. Still, I need it for work so I just put up with it.

I guess the car analogy would be something like this - people don't pimp their Mercedes and Jaguars, but they most certainly do pimp their Ford Escorts...

If you're into building your own PC, way to go and I fully support that. I actually just appreciate the work that Apple has put into the hardware and OS and apps so that they *mostly* just do the job... But I think it would be nice to see home-build Macs...

I think you misunderstood what i meant. I said, PC users are coming from the perspective of their SELF-built, Name-brand component boxes. Are the Mac users, who criticize PC's, trying these kind of PCs? Or are they still comparing their experiences to your run-of-the-mill Dell/HP system? If you compare experiences to experiences, Mac users and PC users aren't even comparing the SAME THING.

Have Mac users tried a self-built box, say for example, like mine? To know what MY SHOES are like? (i.e. the expression the shoe representing my experiences and POV). Now, I admit now that I have only used library/Lab condition G5's (10.3.3). I, however, do have an iBook, which I use when I'm in my bed/couch. (that is only experience with 10.2 in the home though).

solvs

Oct 23, 2004, 05:30 PM

This morning I went to my friend's house to show him how to burn a CD. We had a 2.8Ghz P4, Windows Media Player, 512MB DDR, and a 32x10x40x CD-RW. It took > 30 minutes to rip, convert (from WMA to Audio), and burn the CD.
It only takes me a couple of minutes to rip and burn on my PC... using iTunes of course. You can also do it with Nero, or when I used to do it with Easy CD Creator (which was a pain in the butt). If you are talking built-in software like WMP, there's your problem. Especially with the re-encoding. That is a pain, and time consuming.

5300cs

Oct 23, 2004, 06:18 PM

Mac users refusing to believe the claims of a PC enthusiast? This is even more hypocritical than a Mac user saying a PC users hasn't tried a Mac, when the Mac user hasn't even tried a box built by an enthusiast (non-Dell/HP junk). I've tried a Mac (G5's), own a Mac, and I own a enthusiast box (self-built) so I would hope you are coming from the same level here. I truly hope so.

Here we go again :rolleyes:

YES, I've built my own machine before. Many times. If I want a quick and dirty Linux server I'll go out and make my own. But everytime some pc user tries a Mac, I'm supposed to drop everything and listen to them like they're some Oracle or something? Gimme a break...

What is it with you and building your own machine? Are you on some quest or something? Do you enjoy arguing with Mac people because you know they can't build their own machines?

risc

Oct 23, 2004, 06:19 PM

If you compare experiences to experiences, Mac users and PC users aren't even comparing the SAME THING.

Have Mac users tried a self-built box, say for example, like mine?

Well said and very valid. At the moment I really believe hardware comes down to choice of OS. I've built every PC I've ever owned but they've always had Linux or *BSD on them. I switched to Mac over a year ago because Panther imho is the best UNIX desktop out there.

Your points about the stability of XP are valid too. I use an XP box at work and other than apps sitting there blank then drawing in a little later (rare but it happens) it's as stable as Linux or OS X. It also has a shed load more software (including viruses/malware crap), but it's not UNIX so it's not something I'd use at home.

The whole Hardware/OS thing though is pointless use what you want!

solvs

Oct 23, 2004, 07:59 PM

Mav451

Oct 23, 2004, 08:04 PM

I've built my own PCs before. Explorer seems to crash on me all the time. Everything else is usually fine, except maybe certain apps that hog all my resources and slow my PC to a crawl, but Explorer (and not just IE, I use FireFox) seems very susceptible to errors. Most of the time it's pretty stable if I'm not trying to do too much with good hardware. But when it goes down, it really goes down. I've seen Blue Screens with software errors too, and a lot of data corruption out of nowhere for no reason. Plus, it's more difficult to install Win2000 on a 200GB hard drive than it should be. Even with on-board ATA/133.

Edit: Ha, spell check doesn't like the word FireFox. How do you like that?

The explorer.exe problem was very common on XP vanilla. If you installed SP1 as a service pack onto of XP vanilla, you still had the problem. How did I fix it? Clean install. University has XP Pro w/ SP1 Integrated for cheap, so that's what I use. No more explorer.exe problems. That's a ditto with SP2 as well, but SP2 is more security oriented.

Yeah, the 137GB 48-bit LBA limitation pre-XP SP1 is nonsense. Add to that, it requires a slip-streamed custom XP install to install SATA w/o a floppy. I'm still on PATA.

Mav451

Oct 23, 2004, 08:06 PM

meh nevermind.

V.A.Toss

Oct 24, 2004, 11:34 AM

In this "what crashes more XP or OSX?" debate your all basing your ideas on experiences without looking at their individual context.

Generally the harder u push a PC, or a mac, the more it crashes. Most crashes are either caused by drivers installed/uninstalled repeatedly, bad drivers, memory errors, or internet explorer.

Some of your here are comparing OSX to windows, and yet youve said it in your own posts that u use them both for different purposes. Thats really hardly comparing them on an even playing field is it?
Some of you are even saying that youve used 1 or the other briefly and that "from your experience" theyre roughly the same.
Well sorry, but you cant base any ideas on briefly using a product, or even using the 2 products for different purposes.

If you want to compare them both to find out if XP is as bad as some say, then you push both machines hard in a series of similar apps, over a long perios of time. Thats experience.

From my experience, XP is no way as bad as mac zealots will tell u, and for most light users it will appear roughly as stable as OSX.
But if u push both hard, constantly installing/uninstalling different drivers, running apps, pushing both machines to the limits of their allocated memory; then things start to go a little wrong for XP. Normally ending in a reformat and reinstallation. OSX however keeps alot stabler, not perfect, but stabler. Also, when memory gets tight explorer has a habit of crashing, which is annoying. I have to reinstall XP woughly twice a year after it confuses itself, i reinstall OSX roughly once every 18 months.
OSX is stabler. But windows is not the virus it was in the ME or 98 days.

theres my 2 pence.

SiliconAddict

Oct 24, 2004, 03:15 PM

I've built my own PCs before. Explorer seems to crash on me all the time. Everything else is usually fine, except maybe certain apps that hog all my resources and slow my PC to a crawl, but Explorer (and not just IE, I use FireFox) seems very susceptible to errors. Most of the time it's pretty stable if I'm not trying to do too much with good hardware. But when it goes down, it really goes down. I've seen Blue Screens with software errors too, and a lot of data corruption out of nowhere for no reason. Plus, it's more difficult to install Win2000 on a 200GB hard drive than it should be. Even with on-board ATA/133.

Hmmm. I'm assuming you are speaking of explorer.exe windows GUI shell. To date I have never under 2000 and XP ever had a BSOD under those OS's from explorer. I don't know what you are doing but that shouldn't happen. When explorer crashes it will take down the GUI and then respawn it within 10-15 seconds. (I get impatient and simply spawn a new explorer process. *shrugs*

AS for Win2K on a 200GB drive. At work I'm sitting on a Seagate 200GB drive. I had zero problems with the install other then a bad hard drive out of the box that made me think I had to preformat it because Windows was being a PITA at formatting it. I loaded the Seagate utils and it came back clean. After 2 days of putzing around I exchanged it and bam. Flawless. Boot. Partition. Format. Install. Configure. Done.

SiliconAddict

Oct 24, 2004, 03:28 PM

Let me guess, you doubted his claims of stability?

My friends at college have easily left their XP boxes running for over 2-3 months. And they don't even keep it as clean as me (JV16 PowerTools/Spybot/Firefox). Anandtech's claims aren't that suprising, but if you choose to just shake your head and believe what you want to believe, that's your choice too.

I have in the last couple year of use NEVER crashed under XP (I do not count one instance since I was trying to shoehorn a driver into a video card and it wasn't being happy. I simply use the driver rollback option and I was back. I always play around with the drivers on my systems. That wasn't XP's fault. That was me for geeking on my puter. :D )

On 2000 I can count on 1 hand how many times I've crashed in the last 4 years. Again most of which goes back to drivers in 90% of those cases. Toggling between LCD, video out, line out, both LCD/video out, and all to fast caused my 2K box to BSOD. The onscreen error was obviously a video card drive .dll. I will never use Toshiba laptops ever again. They simply don't support their hardware but that is a different topic.
The fact is that 2K and XP are as stable as OS X. Period. What makes OS X better is dedicated drivers for its hardware but that can be a blessing and a curse. I know on my desktop I am continually getting better and better performance once a quarter with my aging GeForce 4 card because Nvidia is constantly updating their unified drivers package. Ditto with my Audigy card. Apple releases updates how often for their video cards? Do they ever update the other components of their systems?

Nik_Doof

Oct 24, 2004, 07:06 PM

Imho, there is a diffrence between BSOD crashes, unstable crashes, unusable crashes, and application crashes. I dont think they should be humped together and try to explain em all together like the article writer tried to do.

Let me step though them:

BSOD/Kernel Errors: them times where your working away and BOOM the OS crumbles below you, this in my experience 9/10 is hardware related, be dodgy drivers or bad hardware. I've had crashes on my XP machine due to bad memory, and the same on MacOSX, simple replacement fixed the problems

Unstable crashes: times when a application pokes somewhere its not supposed to and just sends a ripple of chaos though the system, nothing runs 100% until you give it a reboot, i've only experienced this on XP sofar.

Unusable crashes: this is where a application or summat dies and locks the system, had many of these on XP, and only 2-3 on OSX.

Application crashes: when nice little apps go bad, i get ALOT of these on OSX but thats due to running beta software or stuff thats just not ready for the prime time, XP is the same where you get a crash message, and the system is still running a-ok.

I wish the author would re-vist this and go over these findings in similar catagories, yes OSX crashes, but how many times has the system died due to it?

solvs

Oct 24, 2004, 10:32 PM

Hmmm. I'm assuming you are speaking of explorer.exe windows GUI shell. To date I have never under 2000 and XP ever had a BSOD under those OS's from explorer. I don't know what you are doing but that shouldn't happen. When explorer crashes it will take down the GUI and then respawn it within 10-15 seconds. (I get impatient and simply spawn a new explorer process. *shrugs*

AS for Win2K on a 200GB drive. At work I'm sitting on a Seagate 200GB drive. I had zero problems with the install other then a bad hard drive out of the box that made me think I had to preformat it because Windows was being a PITA at formatting it. I loaded the Seagate utils and it came back clean. After 2 days of putzing around I exchanged it and bam. Flawless. Boot. Partition. Format. Install. Configure. Done.
Explorer crashing and BSOD were 2 separate things. Sorry, should have been more clear. The Explorer crashes seem to be worse after I install WMP9. I've had nothing but trouble with that. Especially when it tries to play everything. Sometimes it just hangs, and I have to restart it, even when I'm not clicking a media file. The BSODs are pretty rare nowadays, but I still get some. One time I installed a security program, and some how it screwed something up. I had to reboot in Safe Mode and manually remove it. I couldn't uninstall it, because it said it wasn't installed properly and would BS at start-up. :rolleyes: Ok, technically the programs fault, but it still pissed me off. Never said OS X was perfect. It has it's own issues. But Windows does piss me off on a regular occasion. At least I'm learning a lot. :p

The 200GB drive issue was a pain in the butt. It wouldn't recognize the onboard ATA/133, so I used a PCI card. Wouldn't recognize the driver, even from a floppy. Might have been in part to the fact that I was using a Win2000 CD, pre-service pack. I slip-streamed SP4 (which was an issue in itself) and created a new boot disk. Then I restored my files from a back up disk after all the updates. I got it working finally, but it wasn't as easy as it should have been. I know if I used XP it would have worked, but I used to have XP Pro at work, and didn't like it. My Mom has XP Home on her PC, and it's a PITA sometimes. I'm sticking with Win2000 for now, even if I still can't reinstall it because it says it can't find Windows when I restart.

That's why I had a backup drive, system and all. Even when the last time it said the paging file was too small. :rolleyes: Finally got that working though too.

ijimk

Oct 24, 2004, 10:51 PM

The best web browsers out there period are firefox and safari period.

Lancetx

Oct 24, 2004, 10:52 PM

Here we go again :rolleyes:

YES, I've built my own machine before. Many times. If I want a quick and dirty Linux server I'll go out and make my own. But everytime some pc user tries a Mac, I'm supposed to drop everything and listen to them like they're some Oracle or something? Gimme a break...

What is it with you and building your own machine? Are you on some quest or something? Do you enjoy arguing with Mac people because you know they can't build their own machines?

I agree wholeheartedly. I've built more than one Windows box in the past before myself and the entire experience is WAY overrated. I'm not a Mac user because I can't build my own PC, I'm a Mac user because I don't want to either build nor use a PC anymore. :rolleyes:

hob

Oct 24, 2004, 11:32 PM

Jeez that was a long article... I have a coupla comments...

Ok, so I was a "hardcore" pc user, like the guy in the article... until about 18 months ago, when i got an iBook and quickly moved on to a PowerBook.

Similar to the author of the article, I was a little... dissapointed with the performance of my mac. It doesn't seem like you get as much (hardware) bang for your buck, but I do love the operating system.

Thing is, for the amount of money I've spent on Apple Laptops... well, the iBook would die every 2-3 months due to logic board problems, which was a massive PITA... And the Powerbook seems to be sinking in the corner right now, which I guess I'll have to get looked at sometime before the warranty expires...

I dunno, I prefer OS X wayyyy more than Windows XP... but on a well managed or well built PC, XP can be quite... good! Though it's just everything about OS X - it's much better thought out, I'd fully agree with all the things the author was saying about OS X vs XP...

Maybe I should buy a G5 too... oh wait, I don't have £1500... did he say he got it with educational discount? Apple should probably cap educational discount at £1000 - 'cos anyone who can afford to pay more than that for a computer sure ain't a student round here!!

Hob
(at uni)

HiRez

Oct 25, 2004, 10:36 AM

I found the guy refreshingly unbiased. I really did think he went into it with an open mind, no easy task when you're so used to one way of doing things. Even though I think OS X is vastly superior to Windoze, I imagine it's not all that obvious at first. As he correctly points out, it's the little things that make it better, the details. Most people writing reviews like this never get that far. I know if I started using Win XP every day, I'd find it very frustrating, not only because of its inferiority, but just because old habits are hard to break. And to be honest, I'd probably let my bias get the best of me and dump on it for some things it didn't really deserve. It's too bad he didn't get to some of the other great software like iPhoto, GarageBand, iMovie, iChatAV, Keynote, FCP, Xcode, and QuickTime Pro that are not even available on Windoze, but overall I say he did a good job on the review.

MattG

Oct 25, 2004, 10:49 AM

I use both Macs and PCs at work, and I'd be lying if I told you the PC crashes more than my Mac. My Windows XP SP2 laptop has been up for almost two weeks now without a reboot. I can't remember the last time I was able to keep my G5 up that long without having to reboot...

HiRez

Oct 25, 2004, 10:54 AM

I wish the author would re-vist this and go over these findings in similar catagories, yes OSX crashes, but how many times has the system died due to it?He addressed that directly, when he said:OS X is built on a very solid core and it does handle individual applications crashing much better than Windows does. I've never had to reboot the entire system because one application crashed.

SkudShark

Oct 25, 2004, 11:00 AM

Hey I know this is OT from thread, but drop me an email and a email addy I can rpely to if you still want that Ipod :)

Lord Blackadder

Oct 25, 2004, 01:10 PM

Overall a good article, I pretty much agree, except about being "out of luck" with any OS other than Windows.

lol, I think the author summed up what you've all been arguing about rather succinctly:

OS X crashes
Windows XP crashes
My G5 machine crashes a bit less than any of my Windows XP machines

That's my experience too. The 98 and ME days really turned me off to the Win OS entirely because they were horrifically unreliable and buggy. Recently we switched to XP at work and I am surprised at the stability it is possible to achieve with it (although 2000 seemed faster on our P4s). With that said, I think that OS X is slightly more stable. It clearly comes out ahead (to me) in customizability and integration of function. A very clean, well-designed UI.

But neither are idiot-proof! If I do something bone-headed I can screw my computer up, whether it be OS X, Windows.

HiRez

Oct 25, 2004, 07:26 PM

What I liked is that he talked about how Windows machines seem to get bogged down and confused when you throw too much stuff at them at once (The HD grinding is something which really bugs me on Windows machines.). This is also my experience. Win XP generally does fine when you're running a single app at a time. But when you want to really do some hardcore multitasking, things get dicey. On my now-old and lowly 800 MHz PowerBook, I regularly have something like this going: Cinema4D rendering a 3D sequence. Another C4D animation doc open in the foreground which I can work on at the same time. Photoshop & After Effects open. Safari open with lots of windows/tabs open. Mail, RBrowser, Address Book, iChat, and IcyJuice (ICQ client), Preview, Terminal, and BBEdit all open. Unison open and actively downloading files. iTunes playing music. Often I also have Xcode and Interface Builder open as well, just because I don't like to quit and restart them. Now with the full 3D renders, it can slow down a tiny bit since it always pegs the CPU at 100% but I find it amazing I can do all this at once, constantly switching apps, and so it all without a hitch, still getting work done on one thing while everything else is happening in the background, on a 3-year-old Mac laptop. With 768 MB RAM. It looks something like this:

http://home.earthlink.net/~benstahl/misc/images/multitask.jpg

I shudder to think what would happen if I tried that on Windows.

bryanc

Oct 25, 2004, 08:13 PM

I've heard this "if your Wintel Box is crashing a lot, you've either got bad hardware or you're an idiot who can't maintain a system properly" line a lot since switching to OS X and commenting on how much more stable it is than my PCs.

I don't think that's the whole story. My PCs are built from good components, and I've been using computers since 1968 and I really do know what I'm doing. So I don't think crashes are often due to incompetence on my part or crappy hardware. To be fair, my PCs don't crash as much as they used to, but they almost never crash under Linux, and they *do* crash under Windows (less under 2000 than XP). But the most revealing aspect of the crashing behaviour of my PCs is that they're generally stable if they're not working that hard...it's when I start taxing them (deconvolution of big datasets, for example) that they'll generally crap out.

What I love about my Macs is that, whatever I throw at them, they'll keep running, and if I realize that some task is going to take half-of-forever, I can kill it without destabilizing my system.

So for the secretary running Word, or the casual web-surfer or gamer, a PC running windows is good enough (although, IMHO, a mac would be better). But for someone who really needs a modern computer, OS X is vastly superior to Windows, and, IMHO, somewhat better than other variants of Unix currently available.

Cheers

AdamR01

Oct 25, 2004, 08:25 PM

But the most revealing aspect of the crashing behaviour of my PCs is that they're generally stable if they're not working that hard...it's when I start taxing them (deconvolution of big datasets, for example) that they'll generally crap out.

Heat issues possibly?

cb911

Oct 26, 2004, 07:44 AM

well, looks like this article was posted before. :o but it seems to have spawned some more conversation this time around as well. :)

one thing i somehow found funny:
For whatever reason, this process is quite CPU intensive, making the G5's fans spin up if you drag an image for too long. With two CPUs, however, it's not really invasive, but it's just interesting to hear fans spin up while you're dragging an image around.

he he. :p whoa! don't drag those images for too long! the poor little dual-G5 might not be able to handle it! :eek: :D

i just tried dragging, and holding some pics from Safari on my PB, and it didn't bring the fan on. what would cause the G5's to do this? :confused:

and i'm sure we can all vouch for OS X's amazing ability to multi-task. i never realise quite how good OS X handles that until i look at a Windows box. :)

@ SkudShark - you want to give me an iPod? sure, i can always use another one. email on the way. :p