New PCs for $300, how can Macs compete?

[Lanbrown]

Ahh, how nice name-calling. Only kids do that, so you better check with your mommy before you access the Internet.

Go to any peecee support site, preferably the manufacturers and see how many complaints they have.
Especially upgrading the video card. If it's broke fix it, but the peecee world can't and keep 25 years of software intact.

Opens your eyes and when you see a company selling the same crap based on a 25 year old design, that shows a lack of innovation.

 

[Rower_CPU]

Keep it clean, guys.

 

[Das]

Originally posted by Lanbrown
Ahh, how nice name-calling. Only kids do that, so you better check with your mommy before you access the Internet.

Go to any peecee support site, preferably the manufacturers and see how many complaints they have.
Especially upgrading the video card. If it's broke fix it, but the peecee world can't and keep 25 years of software intact.

Opens your eyes and when you see a company selling the same crap based on a 25 year old design, that shows a lack of innovation.

name calling? ehh? who...? Sorry if you got the impression that I was belittling you personally, not my intention.

Anyhoo, I guess I've dealt with PCs and macs long enough that I can work around traditional "computer" problems. I've gone through about 20 gfx cards with no problem unless you're talking video capture cards can be a pain with balancing OS updates and drivers. Really, it's one of the easiest things to do. At the most, (I'm talking 98 days) I've had to enter the BIOS and fix a few niggling options (mainly when upgrading memory). It may be built on old technology, but it's old technology that works dandy. I don't want an OSX of the PC world that renders old software useless, heck I'm still miffed that I now have to use an emulator to run Sam & Max.

 

[Lanbrown]

You mentioned Hitler.

Head over to HP and see how many people have success getting a PCI video card in the system that has integrated graphics. Some are successful and some have no luck at all. The BIOS is very crude and really needs an update. The IRQ subsystem needs to be thrown out as well. Getting rid of both would have a sever hindrance on compatibility. If Intel got the IA-32 compatibility right in the Itanic, they would have struck gold. If they could have gotten PIII at 1.4GHz performance, companies probably would have picked up on it. Getting about 500MHz is not very enticing, now you need two to three times the processors for the same task.

In some ways the peecee companies want a different platform and in others, they do not. When applications are truly portable (OS independent) I believe you will see a departure from the peecee world. Infiniband should open the door for more commonality between platforms and will solely rest on software. Once that barrier is broken, X86 will truly die down.

 

[slightly]

Macs don't compete on price. They compete on quality, ease-of-use, reliability, user satisfaction and loyalty, innovation, attention to detail, OS stability and cool factor.

That was an easy thread. What's next?

Matt

PS why is this in "Software Discussion"?

 

[Rezet]

Whoa! Big News!
They used to be called Emachines. for $400 the whole computer.
Let me tell you something about them. My cheapo frind got one of those. And Guess what. He replaced HDD already, CDRW died as well. Front side bus is like 100Mhz. And working on whooping 2.0 Ghz celeron.
Both fron USBs 1.1 stopped functioning. Sound card's output has crappy contact for some reason and and makes noise whenever u play music. Floppy jammed twice already. Programs for some reason don't see 10/100 ethernet at all, even though it is there.
It's impossible to upgrade because everything inside is so bulky, you have to take absolutely everything apart to even upgrade memory. It's noisy and something trembles inside, annoying the hell out of me and him.
Device manager in the control panel has some strange devices that it shows as there but are not installed properly.
It's running whopping Win XP Home that is for some reason so slow, that you literally have to wait 1 min when u launch MS Excel.
NOt to mention that it is loadded to commercial programs and other trash that takes a week to clean up. The number of times that computer froze is simply amazing.
Even If I wanted to find anything good about it, I couldn't except for the price. But Then again, if you think what I just told you worth 400 bucks, then maybe its a good deal.
at 2.0Ghz Celeron it cannot handle warcraft 3 on higher resolution than 640x480 normally.
And video card will take ur breath away. It uses same shared memory that is working on 100Mhz! Vey nice indeed! Even when you move the window, it is choppy.

You get what you pay for man. I wouldn't pay much attention to that walmart garbage. walmart isnt exactly known for selling hi quality items.
besides this mac for a few more hundreds will rape the hell out of any offered in walmart.

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APP...Jkt3PDiP1Q/1.0.7.1.0.5.19.1.0.19.3.1.1.0?35,3

 

[Das]

Originally posted by Lanbrown
You mentioned Hitler.

Head over to HP and see ...

Nah, I was being sarcastic about the PC industry being so evil that they would challenge Hitler by giving fast stuff at a cheap price. He used IBMs ironically.


Anyhoo, of course you're going to have people that can't put in a video card correctly. Most would try putting a PC card in a mac if they could then complain about it not working. I've changed the video cards from 2 hps and one dell without any modification. One using ME on an athlon, one using 2000 on a p4 and one using xp on a p4. At the most, you'd only have to select the card in the BIOS and that's rare. Besides, on most of these cheap PCs, they don't offer AGPs, they only have integrated graphics and pci slots.

 

[tazo]

Originally posted by Rezet
Whoa! Big News!
They used to be called Emachines. for $400 the whole computer.
Let me tell you something about them. My cheapo frind got one of those. And Guess what. He replaced HDD already, CDRW died as well. Front side bus is like 100Mhz. And working on whooping 2.0 Ghz celeron.
Both fron USBs 1.1 stopped functioning. Sound card's output has crappy contact for some reason and and makes noise whenever u play music. Floppy jammed twice already. Programs for some reason don't see 10/100 ethernet at all, even though it is there.
It's impossible to upgrade because everything inside is so bulky, you have to take absolutely everything apart to even upgrade memory. It's noisy and something trembles inside, annoying the hell out of me and him.
Device manager in the control panel has some strange devices that it shows as there but are not installed properly.
It's running whopping Win XP Home that is for some reason so slow, that you literally have to wait 1 min when u launch MS Excel.
NOt to mention that it is loadded to commercial programs and other trash that takes a week to clean up. The number of times that computer froze is simply amazing.
Even If I wanted to find anything good about it, I couldn't except for the price. But Then again, if you think what I just told you worth 400 bucks, then maybe its a good deal.
at 2.0Ghz Celeron it cannot handle warcraft 3 on higher resolution than 640x480 normally.
And video card will take ur breath away. It uses same shared memory that is working on 100Mhz! Vey nice indeed! Even when you move the window, it is choppy.

You get what you pay for man. I wouldn't pay much attention to that walmart garbage. walmart isnt exactly known for selling hi quality items.
besides this mac for a few more hundreds will rape the hell out of any offered in walmart.

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APP...Jkt3PDiP1Q/1.0.7.1.0.5.19.1.0.19.3.1.1.0?35,3

my brother and mom share a 633mhz celeron emachine and have had no probs, cept with winme, which we replaced with 2k pro. Runs fine now.

as for the upgradeability issue, that is the same on all towers from the big(ger) names.

The usb thing is obviously the same as with all comps, sometimes you get a defective model. There was aguy who posted about hwo his ehternet port was DOA. doesnt make all macs unreliable, he got a bad apple (heh pun). Do not implicate an entire company based on one bad machine based on your own personal experience.

-tazo

 

[Rezet]

Originally posted by tazo
my brother and mom share a 633mhz celeron emachine and have had no probs, cept with winme, which we replaced with 2k pro. Runs fine now.

as for the upgradeability issue, that is the same on all towers from the big(ger) names.

The usb thing is obviously the same as with all comps, sometimes you get a defective model. There was aguy who posted about hwo his ehternet port was DOA. doesnt make all macs unreliable, he got a bad apple (heh pun). Do not implicate an entire company based on one bad machine based on your own personal experience.

-tazo

The thing is that one bad experience would make me never want to deal with that company nor to recommend it to anyone. One experiance matters.

 

[Lanbrown]

Originally posted by Das
Nah, I was being sarcastic about the PC industry being so evil that they would challenge Hitler by giving fast stuff at a cheap price. He used IBMs ironically.


Anyhoo, of course you're going to have people that can't put in a video card correctly. Most would try putting a PC card in a mac if they could then complain about it not working. I've changed the video cards from 2 hps and one dell without any modification. One using ME on an athlon, one using 2000 on a p4 and one using xp on a p4. At the most, you'd only have to select the card in the BIOS and that's rare. Besides, on most of these cheap PCs, they don't offer AGPs, they only have integrated graphics and pci slots.

And some of the systems do not recognize the card and thus it will not work. The peecee is based upon a lot of specifications, some follow them better then others.