I would venture a guess that It would be good at least till OS 11, maybe even 12. If there is one thing about Macs, it's that there is a better record of legacy support, with some apps supporting almost 10 years worth of OS's, until OSX of course. The one major wild card that exists now is the eventual switch to a solely 64-bit OS. That will be the only thing that will limit the life of a Mac on a purely OS update related level, but certainly won't stop a 32-bit Mac from being useful through OS 11 or 12 (whenever the 64-bit switch is made). For my money, these are the major advantages of Macs on a software level- legacy support, the fact that shopping for software doesn't involve making sure that your OS, processor (speed, manufacturer, generation), graphics card, sound card, etc... are supported by the program- the chances are that for the G4, they will be for at least the next 4 or 5 years, potentially 10 (although, as I mentioned, the 64-bit switch really will be the wildcard).
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performance and pricing between macs and pcs
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You are correct. Most PCs ship with one year of take-your-pick virus scanning "suites." But after that, you are on your own. So multiply roughly 30 bones by the number of years you will own the PC to get your added cost.
INNOVATION & INNOVATION
Let's not forget that at least part of our Macs price tags come from the cost of being innovators. Just think about everything they have given us. Graphic interface, cut copy paste, mouse, pda, of course i could go on and on. I for one enjoy being at the top of the innovation food chain. It's like driving a BMW or a Ford Taurus, eventually Ford's gona have the same features and cheaper. I bought my first Mac since way back to the Apple II+, when the new iMac flat panel was released. It only runs at 700mhz and only 256m of ram. It wasn't the speed choice, it was its amazing interface that I wanted my young children to be comfortable with. I mean, just turn on all the speech settings under system preferences. My daughter has this great motherly voice that speaks any text or hot button she runs her mouse over. She is only 3 1/2 and easily navigates to her favorite programs or sites. Bottom line I made the right choice!!
Let's not forget that at least part of our Macs price tags come from the cost of being innovators. Just think about everything they have given us. Graphic interface, cut copy paste, mouse, pda, of course i could go on and on. I for one enjoy being at the top of the innovation food chain. It's like driving a BMW or a Ford Taurus, eventually Ford's gona have the same features and cheaper. I bought my first Mac since way back to the Apple II+, when the new iMac flat panel was released. It only runs at 700mhz and only 256m of ram. It wasn't the speed choice, it was its amazing interface that I wanted my young children to be comfortable with. I mean, just turn on all the speech settings under system preferences. My daughter has this great motherly voice that speaks any text or hot button she runs her mouse over. She is only 3 1/2 and easily navigates to her favorite programs or sites. Bottom line I made the right choice!!
All I know is that my PC never does what it is told. It wakes from hibernation in the middle of the night, it never sorts programs alphabetically in the programs menu, it doesn't redraw the screen properly, it has cheap cheap icons (looks like Steamboat Willy cartoons in comparison to the OS X Matrix consol program), it's noisy (so noisy), it's got a convoluted way of doing things...
Of course, I'm talking about Windows XP on a 6 month old Dell. I suppose you might be using linux or stg on your laptop. Then again, if I was going to do that, I'd still buy Mac hardware!
As for PCs being faster, my PC outpaces my mac by 2.5 to 1 (MegaHertz), but I honestly don't get 2.5 times more work done on it. If anything, they're about par. I'd love to get my hands on a 2.5GHz G5 and see how they compare then. My Mac plays back music better, Mpegs better, everything better. With Safari I've got a faster response (and so much more beautifully rendered page) when surfing the net. I find that DTP applications deliver on their promise of WYSIWYG on the Mac, whereas I have to zoom in at 1600% to see where something really is on the PC.
I don't have to worry about viruses or pay for protection (even if they're sent to me or I go and find then on the web). I would never use email on a PC (unless it's someone else's PC). I find that the average Mac program does what it promises, and with much less hassle and worry (who trusts spy-- er, free-ware programs for the PC???). I can uninstall any program with ease in less than 20 seconds, and I know that it's really off my system.
Most PC manufacturers make cheap feeling machines. Not $/ cheap, more 'not completely thought through', 'not enough attention to detail'. They've just got no style, and let's face it, you don't have to be a fashion-victim to want a bit of style in your life (nice TV/nice amp/nice guitar/nice car/nice hair-cut???).
And don't even talk about keyboard short-cuts. Alt-F-W-F to create a new folder? Aaaargh! And I've yet to meet a PC user who uses a shortcut to create a new folder.
And let's not talk about AppleScript, or scripting languages in general, which can make life way-cool..., and Services are starting to make a difference now...
And the iApps? Worth their weight in gold my son, yes, worth their weight in gold. The 60-day trial version of Dell Picture Studio? (raucous laughter).
And have I mentioned instant waking from sleep/hibernation? Or Quartz Extreme's abilities... or how things 'just work' (changing the bios settings in my PC so that it'll recognise that I've put in a second hard drive was a nice experience).
Anyway, there are those who have the apptitude and patience to deal with PCs. I don't. I just wanna get my work done, whether that work is music creation, movie editing, writing, research, or whether it's the more mundane work I do in publishing...
Of course, I'm talking about Windows XP on a 6 month old Dell. I suppose you might be using linux or stg on your laptop. Then again, if I was going to do that, I'd still buy Mac hardware!
As for PCs being faster, my PC outpaces my mac by 2.5 to 1 (MegaHertz), but I honestly don't get 2.5 times more work done on it. If anything, they're about par. I'd love to get my hands on a 2.5GHz G5 and see how they compare then. My Mac plays back music better, Mpegs better, everything better. With Safari I've got a faster response (and so much more beautifully rendered page) when surfing the net. I find that DTP applications deliver on their promise of WYSIWYG on the Mac, whereas I have to zoom in at 1600% to see where something really is on the PC.
I don't have to worry about viruses or pay for protection (even if they're sent to me or I go and find then on the web). I would never use email on a PC (unless it's someone else's PC). I find that the average Mac program does what it promises, and with much less hassle and worry (who trusts spy-- er, free-ware programs for the PC???). I can uninstall any program with ease in less than 20 seconds, and I know that it's really off my system.
Most PC manufacturers make cheap feeling machines. Not $/ cheap, more 'not completely thought through', 'not enough attention to detail'. They've just got no style, and let's face it, you don't have to be a fashion-victim to want a bit of style in your life (nice TV/nice amp/nice guitar/nice car/nice hair-cut???).
And don't even talk about keyboard short-cuts. Alt-F-W-F to create a new folder? Aaaargh! And I've yet to meet a PC user who uses a shortcut to create a new folder.
And let's not talk about AppleScript, or scripting languages in general, which can make life way-cool..., and Services are starting to make a difference now...
And the iApps? Worth their weight in gold my son, yes, worth their weight in gold. The 60-day trial version of Dell Picture Studio? (raucous laughter).
And have I mentioned instant waking from sleep/hibernation? Or Quartz Extreme's abilities... or how things 'just work' (changing the bios settings in my PC so that it'll recognise that I've put in a second hard drive was a nice experience).
Anyway, there are those who have the apptitude and patience to deal with PCs. I don't. I just wanna get my work done, whether that work is music creation, movie editing, writing, research, or whether it's the more mundane work I do in publishing...
Re: INNOVATION & INNOVATION
Not to nitpick, but Apple really wasn't the innovator for any of the things you mentioned (except for the pda maybe), just the messenger. Heck, the mouse was invented to work with a GUI in 1964. Let's not confuse innovation with introduction to the masses. Even the basics of the Mac's GUI were based on a Xerox concept that Jobs got a peek at back in the 70's. Apple certainly has done its fair share of innovating, I'll give you that, but let's not give them credit for others' ideas.
Hey, are you posting from Xiamen, PRC? Because I was born there as where my father and grandfather... anyways, back on topic now... I have to honestly say macs taught me how to see the world differently... truely. When I was a freshman in high school, I wanted to be a MSDN certified Network Administrator -round off a year with a fat 100k paycheck an spend the rest of my life doing that. Since my freshman year in highschool, I did everything in my power to make that dream come true... including reading those thick programming manuals and trying to learn C++ and Java in to the late hours of the night. I also built many of my own PCs, from SMP Athlons to P-4 overclocked systems. Then one day a friend of mine from track said I should look at a mac, I laughed at him -what a computer illiterate, I thought to myself. Macs are dumb fashion statements bough only by rich people and computer idiots (people who I will make money off of)... anyways we made a bet, he said that if I were to try his Powerbook 667 (this was 2000-2001ish) for two weeks and I didn't like it, then he would leave me alone. But if I do like it, then I'd owe him 20 bucks. I said he was on... so sometime during that two week it hits me, wow, this **** is way better then Windows XP (preview) . That's when I because a mac fan... It also made me challange my beliefs and foundations in life and at the beginning of sophmore year is when I started to shed my geek culture in pursuit of something else. Now, three years later, I am a Political Science -Prelaw/ Sociology major in college. Now in all honesty I probably just grew up and thought about things differently, but I have to say my first experience with that 667 g4 Ti Book was the first tear in what would become a long rip in my old paradgim on life. Anyways, this is so off topic. Im going to repost this on the General Talk forum.
because you asked, and it's a small world, yes, i'm in xiamen now on a business hop. this place kicks ass. small, semi-tropical, modern, relatively inexpensive, 8 hour bus ride to hong kong...
First and foremost: I am often reading these forums but have only posted a few times I think. But I would like to give my 2 cents on this. Sure PC's are cheaper $ and some of their specs may seem to be higher.....but this does not mean much unless you only have $500 to spend and do not know much about computers.....like my grandparents. But you'll most likely be spending that $500 again on a newer PC soon b/c of how quickly they can be become past tense.
I switched when the G4 iMacs came out and haven't looked back. My wife and I have owned a 15" 800 G4 iMac and now a 17" 1GHz G4 iMac, a Bondi Blue iMac (the original just for e-mail and web browsing....and it did run Panther pretty well...bought it for nostalgia reasons)...a blueberry clamshell ibook.....a Graphite SE clamshell iBook....a dual USB snow iBook and now a 12" G4 800 iBook. I have had zero problems with any of these machines. All of these machines have been able to run the latest OS and do not crash. And I have been able to get a pretty penny to sell them when I have upgraded.
A friend of mine had an HP that was purchased 2 years after the bondi blue iMac came out (which I ran panther on) and he tried upgrading to M$ Win XP and could not...the upgrade ended up crashing his PC and he did not want to spend the money to have it fixed....so he gave it away....luckily he owned an iMac DV also so he still had a computer that was working. The last PC my wife and I bought (a compaq...one year before the iMac G4 came out) was a total waste of money. I can't count how many problems we had with it....repairs....printers not working with it......digital cameras not working with it.......reinstalls of the OS....etc. Lots of trouble for an ugly tan box.
My wife and I work on both Macs and PC's and are both in school so we are somewhat poor. But we have learned that sometimes you must sacrifice cash for quality so that a year later you are not kicking yourself and having to buy another PC (which we luckily did not and switched to Apple instead). Along with that we get great Apple software (for free with the machine) and a machine that is tastefully designed.
I switched when the G4 iMacs came out and haven't looked back. My wife and I have owned a 15" 800 G4 iMac and now a 17" 1GHz G4 iMac, a Bondi Blue iMac (the original just for e-mail and web browsing....and it did run Panther pretty well...bought it for nostalgia reasons)...a blueberry clamshell ibook.....a Graphite SE clamshell iBook....a dual USB snow iBook and now a 12" G4 800 iBook. I have had zero problems with any of these machines. All of these machines have been able to run the latest OS and do not crash. And I have been able to get a pretty penny to sell them when I have upgraded.
A friend of mine had an HP that was purchased 2 years after the bondi blue iMac came out (which I ran panther on) and he tried upgrading to M$ Win XP and could not...the upgrade ended up crashing his PC and he did not want to spend the money to have it fixed....so he gave it away....luckily he owned an iMac DV also so he still had a computer that was working. The last PC my wife and I bought (a compaq...one year before the iMac G4 came out) was a total waste of money. I can't count how many problems we had with it....repairs....printers not working with it......digital cameras not working with it.......reinstalls of the OS....etc. Lots of trouble for an ugly tan box.
My wife and I work on both Macs and PC's and are both in school so we are somewhat poor. But we have learned that sometimes you must sacrifice cash for quality so that a year later you are not kicking yourself and having to buy another PC (which we luckily did not and switched to Apple instead). Along with that we get great Apple software (for free with the machine) and a machine that is tastefully designed.
Modified,
I few different options that you may want to at when making comparisons. If you are going to look at the iBooks, I might suggest looking at the 933 MHz instead of the 1 GHz model. In all of the test that I have read about, and from comparing xbench results as well, the 933 Mhz is only a few percentage points slower. If you go with that model you won't really be sacrificing any noticeable speed but would be starting at $1300 (Without student discount). If you want to spend $1600 on an Apple laptop, and you want it to be snappy, I would strongly suggest looking at the 12" Powerbook. It would have a smaller footprint on a desktop, so in class you would have more room to type notes and read from the text book. Also the I have found that documents amoung other things are much sharper on a Macintosh then on a Windows based machine, so it may be just as easy on your eyes to use a 12" Powerbook as a 15" windows laptop. The performance is much better on the Powerbook then on an iBook. The only obvious differences are that the Powerbook has twice the level 2 cache, and a better graphics card. On xbench's result site you will see that user interface test on the 1 GHz Powerbook are on average 70% faster then on a 1 GHz iBook. Also text graphics are about 300% faster and many other graphics test are around twice as fast on the Powerbook then on an iBook running at the same MHz. In the MacWorld review that I read they had performed a rendering test. The 1 GHz iBook took 7 min 54 seconds, the 933 MHz iBook took 8 minutes 17 seconds, and the 12" 1 GHz Powerbook took 4 minutes and 51 seconds. The Powerbook clearly had more snap on this task. Also both of the iBooks were tested with 640 MB of RAM, while the Powerbook in the test only had 512 MB of RAM, but still outperformed the iBooks. With the student discount this should be less than $1600. Also the graphics card on the 12" Powerbook natively supports external dual and mirrored video, the iBook only natively supports mirrored video. I think if you really want to compare $1600 laptops that the 12" Powerbook is the way to go if you can live with the screen size. You can of course use a larger monitor when you are at you home base.
Some food for thought.
I few different options that you may want to at when making comparisons. If you are going to look at the iBooks, I might suggest looking at the 933 MHz instead of the 1 GHz model. In all of the test that I have read about, and from comparing xbench results as well, the 933 Mhz is only a few percentage points slower. If you go with that model you won't really be sacrificing any noticeable speed but would be starting at $1300 (Without student discount). If you want to spend $1600 on an Apple laptop, and you want it to be snappy, I would strongly suggest looking at the 12" Powerbook. It would have a smaller footprint on a desktop, so in class you would have more room to type notes and read from the text book. Also the I have found that documents amoung other things are much sharper on a Macintosh then on a Windows based machine, so it may be just as easy on your eyes to use a 12" Powerbook as a 15" windows laptop. The performance is much better on the Powerbook then on an iBook. The only obvious differences are that the Powerbook has twice the level 2 cache, and a better graphics card. On xbench's result site you will see that user interface test on the 1 GHz Powerbook are on average 70% faster then on a 1 GHz iBook. Also text graphics are about 300% faster and many other graphics test are around twice as fast on the Powerbook then on an iBook running at the same MHz. In the MacWorld review that I read they had performed a rendering test. The 1 GHz iBook took 7 min 54 seconds, the 933 MHz iBook took 8 minutes 17 seconds, and the 12" 1 GHz Powerbook took 4 minutes and 51 seconds. The Powerbook clearly had more snap on this task. Also both of the iBooks were tested with 640 MB of RAM, while the Powerbook in the test only had 512 MB of RAM, but still outperformed the iBooks. With the student discount this should be less than $1600. Also the graphics card on the 12" Powerbook natively supports external dual and mirrored video, the iBook only natively supports mirrored video. I think if you really want to compare $1600 laptops that the 12" Powerbook is the way to go if you can live with the screen size. You can of course use a larger monitor when you are at you home base.
Some food for thought.
i would say that the windows machine option will be nearly twice as much actually.
factor in the variables of a new Windows worm every other week that destroys hard drives and productivity and yea, you do the math.
zero viruses for OSX and counting... err, backwards.
factor in the variables of a new Windows worm every other week that destroys hard drives and productivity and yea, you do the math.
zero viruses for OSX and counting... err, backwards.