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solvs said:While there are people here who don't know much about Windows, most of us do. Or at least we know more about it than the average Windows user knows about the Mac, as I said. I also find that when someone makes a mistake about something Microsoft related, they are often corrected. I'm one of those with my "little certifications" and a job fixing XP all day (which I am very well paid for, and quite good at if I do say so myself). Windows has it's good qualities just as OS X has it's bad ones... but when I spend all day fixing these stupid little issues that shouldn't be happening in the first place for people who wouldn't know a firewall from a hole in their head, I gotta say it's nice to come home to a Mac.
And spend a little time bashing something that gives me a lot of grief.
A lot of the PC-bashers bash "Windows" by using Windows 98 FUD. They pretty much use the term "Windows" to mean *any* version of Windows not neccessarily the current one. This is evident everytime I see someone talking aobut rampant BSOD, ActiveX problems, or registry problems. Even virus problems basically disappeared with SP2, which has been out over a year now.
The other thing... Windows bashers tend to attribute all the flaws of mainstream PC's to Windows and all PC's. They act like Dell is the only company that makes PC's or all PC's are of that same level of quality. They act like all that crap (bloatware) that comes installed on your typical Dell, e-Machine, or HP is part of Windows when it's obviously not. It's really hard for me to take a basher seriously when they call Windows bloated. The footprint of Windows is much smaller than that of OS X and the hardware requirements are far lower as well.
I've had BSODs and registry issues with 2000/XP too. And viruses/spyware with XP2. Not as bad as it was, but it's still there. True, my custom built Win2000 machine is usually pretty stable, but I'm not going to say it always works well. Of course, most of this comes down to personal preference.BGil said:
I mean, OS X pisses me off on occasion, but Windows still sucks ***.
1) Go to whoever taught you english, and slap them. Hard. Then go get a new english teacher. That first post against jimmi was just appallingwako said:
2) The PC versions of the game are usually highly optimised, and many run DirectX, and so when they're ported, they aren't optimised at all (for some games, I doubt they did more than stick it through a PPC compiler once and forgot about it), and have to run under a different graphics engine, which would take too much time to fix.
If you want a game that was properly optimised for PPC, look at Quake 3, for which the flop/frame ratio is pretty much equal
BGil said:
Well, the Windows registry model is a bad idea. Its very existence is a threat to stability. That said, I've had BSOD's on all three of my XP computers over the years. Largely it was caused by a faulty Canopus DV capture card on one system, bad nVidia drivers on another, and who knows what on my current machine. Many of the users do indeed use the Windows 98 days for much of their anti-Windows fuel, just like Mac bashers often reference OS 8...the difference being that many of the problems haven't been addressed fully by MS.
As to Windows "bloat"...you can't compare install sizes directly because the two OSes have vastly different core paradigms. The GDI+ rendering system has a much smaller footprint than the OpenGL/Aqua system in OS X, but it also has many limitations and failures. OS X is a larger install than many Linux flavors, but is not dramatically out of hand when you consider what's included. The argument is very difficult because POSIX and Win32 are not identical in design metaphors, and Linux/BSDs can be installed in 300MB or 3GB very easily, whereas you'll never get Windows even close to 1GB. But those sizes don't matter unless you know the starting points. A 1GB OS growing to 10GB is much more significant than a 7GB one going to 10GB.
Claims of Windows bloat are based on the fact that Windows is now 2GB+ at install time, whereas Windows 98 could be squeezed into 300MB. Has that much really changed in Windows technology? No. Even Windows 2000 to XP saw an increase of hundreds of MB--with few changes. Windows suffers from code bloat because engineers at Microsoft add more code to fix problems rather than rewrite the old code. They do this to make sure nothing becomes incompatible...but it has an obvious snowball effect on relative size. Mac OS has a great deal more flexibility here, because developers have access to all of the hardware that's ever run OS X. They can avoid bloat without the high costs Microsoft would incur to do so.
The hardware requirements for XP and OS X are pretty much the same.
It may be true that "Windows Bashers" attribute some of the problems to the Hardware company (dell, hp, etc.), but this is probably the reason why they went to a company like Apple, that makes the Hardware and the Software.BGil said:
In my opinion, this is what makes Apple sooooo good.
The truth is that people are ignorant generally. I see the most idiotic things said about Windows and PCs in this forum, just like I see idiotic things said about Macs on PC forums...raggedjimmi said:Have i been spoiled on the MacRumors forums or what?
you guys are the best forum guys ever. by the way.
ps. I'm typing this on my windows laptop so please excuse the spelling mistakes. silly machine without a spell checker
solvs said:
Not to defend Windows... but get rid of IE and Outlook. Zero viruses and zero spywares
Of course you can always double click mail attachments you receive from strangers, but that is largely a moot point, since I can always hand craft something specially for your Mac machine too
solvs said:
BSOD's on XP/2000 are no more common than kernel panics on OS X.
What viruses have you gotten while on SP2? How did you get them?
That's third-party hardware. You could easily have the same problems with Mac hardware. Video editing hardware, in my experience, has always degraded the stability of the host system.
XP Pro SP2 is about a 1.2gb install. XP and Windows 98 bare very few similarities underneath. Completely different kernels, completely different file systems, system restore, IIS, Indexing, encryption, zip compression, Windows Movie Maker, DX9, .Net, GDI+, Windows Messenger, and numerous other things account for the size difference. Don't be fooled by the fact that XP is largely compatible with and looks a lot like Windows 98, it's very different. It's much more different than OS X 10.0 is from Tiger.
System Restore by itself is responsible for a lot of space used by a typical XP installation. Depending on how it's configured this could be up to 10% of the hard drive. 2000 didn't include all the "consumer stuff" either. No Windows Movie Maker, working compatibilty mode, wifi features, theme engine, revamped Explorer, or many othe things.
No they aren't. XP runs on a Pentium 1 with 64 megabytes of ram. OS X requires 4 times more ram, twice as much hard drive space, and a processor from the PIII era.
Using standard deployment tools that come on the XP CD (in the valueadd folder) you can chop an XP install down well under 1GB. There's also the Windows XP Embedded stuff that allows you to chop XP down to "small linux distro" sizes. Apparently you can get it down under 100MB's easily or with third-party tools you can get a fully functioning version down to around 240mb's. It's a far cry from Windows 95 being able to be chopped down to 10megabytes but it's still impressive in comparison to what people claim about Windows and hot bloated is supposedly is.
Go look at Window Server 2003 or any of the systems decended from it (XP 64-bit or Vista). All of them have recieved substantial code rewrites. Vista, for all intents and purposes, replaces every major API and system (DirectX, GDI+, networking, audio, graphics, and all of Win32) with completely new stuff. WinFS even redefines the storage platform and file system of the Windows platform.
That's not really the case. Apple's OpenGL implementation just sucks. Look at the opengl scores in Cinebench, for example. Many games that are opengl based are properly optimized for the Mac but they can't even run as fast as the Linux port of the same game. Doom3 was optimized extremely well for Mac and even after several hacks to make it run faster it still lags behind both the Linux and Windows version by a large margin.
Quake3 only runs similarly on the Mac because the PC version had it's SMP support broken years ago. SMP and even SLI have little to no effect on the PC version while SMP on the Mac version performs like it should.
But yes, nearly every game runs better in DirectX on Windows than it does in OpenGL on anything else. One reason is that the Mac never fully lets a game take control of the hardware. It's almost like your entire desktop is running in the background all the time. Apple also spends very little time optimizing their drivers for gaming whereas Nvidia and ATI do huge optimizations for PC (Apple supplies their own ATI and Nvidia drivers IIRC).
The other reason is that DirectX just seems to be faster than OpenGL at this point. This is particularly true if you're using a sound card with a DSP.
I don't use either myself.generik said:Not to defend Windows... but get rid of IE and Outlook. Zero viruses and zero spywares
But tell that to the drones at work who don't know any better. And for the record, you can still get spyware on FireFox, it's just not as easy. I use Spybot, Adaware, and Spywareblaster on my PC, as well as a hardware and software firewall and virus protection. Not everyone knows computers as well as I do.Just a few weeks ago we had a machine that caught a virus and spead it to other machines on the network. Not fun. You'd think our Network Security group would be more careful, but even with all of our protection we still caught one.
solvs said:I don't use either myself.
Just a few weeks ago we had a machine that caught a virus and spead it to other machines on the network. Not fun. You'd think our Network Security group would be more careful, but even with all of our protection we still caught one.
1. Get rid of anything IE..
2. Same with outlook..
3. Always run your user account as a limited user
4. Only run with admin when you *absolutely* have to.
I'd be curious to see a spyware/virus that can get on and install itself as a service/start up each login without me seeing it
I think you answered your own question there - it could happen, but it doesn'tBGil said:
Incorrect. 10.4 runs perfectly well on a 120Mhz 604e with 128MB, which, seeing as 10.4 is closer to Vista than XP, that's pretty damn good
They CAN'T get rid of IE because IE is practically the heart of the OS. No IE, no Windows. The spirit of the OS is DOS, which, for the life of me I'm not sure why they stick with a dead OS (it's like Latin).
I work all day on Windows as well, and go home and play with OS X. I get mroe work done on my MAc than I do on Windows, and the overall experience is just more pleasing.
I don't have to have a certification to know what i'm talking about because I use both extensively every day. I will NEVER, EVER own a Windows box (unless another CEO mishap screws apple..then I guess by then we should have soemthing decent out for Linux, eh?)
Seriously. Games is such a tacky excuse. Like I said before, buy a console: whose sole purpose in existance is to run games, which, have higher FPS rates than PC games on average, load faster, and are just plain more fun when I can sit on my couch with a controller, a beer, and a cigareete rather than an office chair, a keyboard mouse so I can't navigate my beer and cigarette to my mouth.
It's a shame that game develoeprs don't support Macs as much as they should. But when it comes down to it, the better OS really is OS X. At least, in my opinion.
Note, any spelling errors are because I am using WINDOWS right now. Can't even get a godamn spellchecker on a browser. What year is this? ARGH!
I work all day on Windows as well, and go home and play with OS X. I get mroe work done on my MAc than I do on Windows, and the overall experience is just more pleasing.
I don't have to have a certification to know what i'm talking about because I use both extensively every day. I will NEVER, EVER own a Windows box (unless another CEO mishap screws apple..then I guess by then we should have soemthing decent out for Linux, eh?)
Seriously. Games is such a tacky excuse. Like I said before, buy a console: whose sole purpose in existance is to run games, which, have higher FPS rates than PC games on average, load faster, and are just plain more fun when I can sit on my couch with a controller, a beer, and a cigareete rather than an office chair, a keyboard mouse so I can't navigate my beer and cigarette to my mouth.
It's a shame that game develoeprs don't support Macs as much as they should. But when it comes down to it, the better OS really is OS X. At least, in my opinion.
Note, any spelling errors are because I am using WINDOWS right now. Can't even get a godamn spellchecker on a browser. What year is this? ARGH!
Um, it's ALL third party hardware for Windows, unless it's a keyboard or mouse. I don't see how that applies. I've had hardware bring Windows down completely; on OS X, the biggest problem I've had is that hardware not working. There are exceptions, but this is the general experience of most Mac users.BGil said:
Yes, that's the point. XP and OS X 10.1 are about the same age. If you want to compare oranges to oranges, you'd be talking about System 8.6 vs. Tiger, and Windows 98 vs. XP SP2.
Not at initial install--there's nothing to restore to, so it takes up no space.
Windows XP system requirements: 233MHz Pentium (II) 128MB of RAM (64 is supported but won't work at any usable speed).
OS X 10.1 required a 233MHz processor with 128MB of RAM. Tiger requires 256MB of RAM.
WinFS is a joke that's not even coming with Vista. It's a new feature using added code that will work on XP, too. All of the existing code will still work on Vista, for the most part, meaning it hasn't been replaced. The ambitious start Longhorn built has been cut back to very little of substance. WinFX, if they ever get it working, is a reorganization more than a rewrite. Server 2003 is certainly an improvement, but that's at the expense of compatability, just like 64-bit edition. They can pull Apple-like stunts there, because there's less to maintain as far as compatibility.
No, 233mhz Pentium 1 not Pentium 2. And the required amount of ram is 64 megabytes. The recomended amount is higher.
No, it's not "ALL third-party hardware for Windows". That's complete B.S.
I'm sitting here right now using a PC with 2 video cards, two tv tuners, a fully loaded motherboard, a USB MIDI Keyboard, two ethernet controllers and more. My uptime is 29 days, 3hours, and 47 minutes... and that's only because that was the last time I booted this machine into Vista or Ubuntu otherwise it would be much longer. And no, unlike the uptimes of most Macs this does not include the time where the computer has gone to sleep (which by all means is cheating). This computer is used 24 hours a day.
The original post was about Canopus hardware. Canopus uses their own drivers and they suck. Try using a similar system on the Mac (like Media 100i) and you'll see it sucks just as bad.
I can go on for days about the kernel panics we used to get from Media 100i (average about 1 per day) and all the instability problems we now have with Blackmagic and AJA cards.
For any content creation system, use good reputable hardware and don't stay on the cutting edge as far as driver updates go and you'll be okay. That applies to the Mac as well. In fact, with a Mac I would recommend not even installing the Apple OS updates until one can be certian they are safe. You don't even need third-party hardware to create great instabilty on a Mac. Just look at the reports coming in from ANY 10.x.x release.\
Seondly, the experience of most Mac users is that their computers don't even support any third-party (internal) hardware. No video cards, no PCI, no PCIe, no extra hard drives or disk drives... nothing. The few Macs that do support internal expansion don't support nearly as many devices. The video card selection is limited, PCIe cards just began to show up, many soundcards don't work etc.
A USB or Firewire device causing an OS crash on either platform is rare in comparison to internal hardware. So the experience of most Mac users is simply not applicable here.
Obviously that's not the point because the original quote was this:
Claims of Windows bloat are based on the fact that Windows is now 2GB+ at install time, whereas Windows 98 could be squeezed into 300MB. Has that much really changed in Windows technology? No.
Obviously much has changed between Windows 98 and XP.
It still takes up space because it creates a default restore point. That point will restore the machine back to the "fresh install state". Every application install from that point on creates another restore point. Every day the machine is used (even if nothing is installed) is potentially another chance for the system to make a restore point. So nearly any XP machine you come across will have a lot of space take up by system restore (unless it's a corporate machine). Also, the Hibernate feature carves out a portion of hard drive space equal to the amount of ram you're running. In the case of most PC's today (that use hibernate) that means either 512mb's or 1GB.
It only runs on that processor with a massive hack. A hacked XP will run on any x86 processor with a math coprocessor... meaning it runs on a 486DX.
"Perfectly well" is obviously relative here because I have a Mac Mini and even it doesn't run Tiger "pefectly well" with 256mb's or ram. I have a G3 500 mhz iMac and it's absolutely excruiciating to run Tiger on it.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=firefox+spell-checker
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=ie+spell-checker
A joke? Probably to MS haters with zero understanding of the technology. I fail to see how MS giving something away for free to it's current users is somehow negative. Only a true hater could make a comment like that.
LOL! If that's what you think then I'm going to stop addressing your points at all because you're just plain ignorant. WinFX is a completely new set thing. There's more difference between WinFX and Win32 than their is between Carbon and Cocoa.
I didn't say it ran well.
1. IE is fine in SP2. IE shells like Maxthon and AvantBrowser are just as secure as FireFox or Safari, if not more because of the existience of better popup and ad blockers.
2. Outlook 2003 is fine. email malware is all about social engineering, all new email clients take pretty much the same steps to prevent it and likewise are all similarly vunerable.
3. That's not really necessary with SP2. Viruses and Malware can't just install itself without user consent. If the user is the kind of person who simply installs everything that any site may ask them to install then yeah you probably want to run as a limited user. IF you know anything about computers then you're fine as an admin. Historically, most Windows malware doesn't need to be run as admin. In fact, most end-user malware on all systems doesn't need to be run as admin.
---Basically, just install SP2 and you'll be fine. Run FireFox or Maxthon for added protection. Oh yeah, and install everything that comes into your inbox.
I perfer gaming on a console but the framerates are in no way higher than on a PC. I don't think there's a console game in existience that has a higher framerate than 60FPS. And keep in mind most consoles (PS2, Gamecube) can only really do 720x480. PC's have much better resolution. KB+Mouse is also the superior way to play a first-person shooter. There are also a lot of games that exist on PC that don't exist on console and online gaming for PC is much better than it is for PS2 or Gamecube (Xbox is pretty good).
I have a hardware firewall in the form of my router and fileserver and I have Spybot and Adaware. Haven't run Spybot or Adaware in months and probably about 3 times in the last year. All they find on my system are cookies so I don;t feel the need to use them anymore.
BTW, Cookies are the majority of the spyware world and they work just as well on the Mac (and Linux) as they do on Windows. Every Mac fanatic in the world will deny that Mac are supceptable to (and have on their machines) 95% of the spyware that Windows XP SP2 users get but given the nature of spyware it's absolutely true. IT always will be as long as the web stays cross-platform.
1. You can remove IE if you want.
2. XP is not in any way shape or form built on DOS. The only thing XP has regarding DOS is a compatibility mode and the ability to make DOS boot disks.
There is less DOS code and leftovers in NT-based systems than their is Classic code (and spirit) in OS X.
Well done for pointing out some facts in your previous posts that are usually neglecting by 'over eager' fanatics in the mac community. People would be more capable of making the right choices in life if they were always able to see things the way they really are, and not the way they want them to be.BGil said:
On the technical side, I feel the need to point out that you cannot truly remove IE from Windows XP. It will remove the icons, but the program still exists, and the OS still uses it. It is firmly cemented into the structure of the system.
But you are 100% correct about DOS. XP came from NT, not from DOS or Windows 16-bit platforms.
dubbz said:
Which reminds me, if I may relate a longish story, of my LAST Windows nightmare which happened last week in three consecutive days. Forgive me if I ramble. a bit.
I'm a tech director, the big cheese, the guy who's supposed to know everything. Well, of COURSE I don't know everything, but I will go to my grave knowing right from wrong when I see it. And I DO have enough brains to figure out what IS truth. This story starts off slow, then builds to a mightmare of monumental proportions, and culminates in the "eureeka" moment for me.
1. I am responsible for 800 macs on Open Directory (or not), and about 25 PC's. I have 20 XServes, two T-1 lines and all that gear, fiber lines, 10 closets with a total of 40 switches, completly wireless including the WAN, yadda yadda yadda. Pretty nice setup if I do say so myself.
Question one: Out of the total hours working on computer issues last week, what percentage of time was spent on Mac related problems?
Answer: Zero
1. I have a pretty nice Vaio in my office that handles some network video survellance cameras. All the sudden I was unable to access Windows updates. This machine is PRISTINE. I do little with it, and ALL SW is up-to-date. I'm a COMPLETE anal retentive when it comes to this machine. I had a few minutes and decided to call Microsoft. I got right through... to India. Now don't get me wrong with what I am about to say... I am not even CLOSE to a racist, but what the HELL am I calling India for? I got a pleasant enough man, very courteous... I guess... because I couldn't understand what he was saying. At all. After an HOUR of doing this and that and me saying "could you repeat that?" over and over and over again, I hung up. Then I started getting e-mails... not just from him, but others as well. Apu: "In regard to case DFR65737287484... we hope we... blah, blah, blah."
Sitra: "In regard to case DFR65737287484... we would like... blah, blah, blah."
AND Phone calls: "I an referring to case the number of DFR65737287484 and would thank you this muchly difficult issue.. blah, blah, blah."
That was last week, and I STILL get e-mails... "We are closing this case to not resovled and blah, blah"
I GAVE them the error code. Don't they know their own codes? It did it in safe mode. Shouldn't THAT tell them something?
A complete restore.
2.
A call came from a PC laptop user. "Somethings wrong". I LOVE hearing that from the PC crowd, and sort of expect it! The laptop wouldn't respond... a mouse click yielded results in sometimes 2 minutes. Norton was on it and up to date. The Windows updates were done. There were perhaps 50 processes running that I could tell. I worked on it two hours, getting nowhere. I handed it off to my assistant, who knows PC's better than most folks I've met. Two hours later, still no progress. Result: Complete restore #2. Some might say that we spent too much time on it and should have re-imaged it, but we had the time (800 Macs humming like sewing machines in the background), and we were damn curious why a machine working not 15 minutes before was suddenly off the deep end.
3... The final straw and my path to enlightenment.
At 2:05 pm last Thursday my ENTIRE network went down. Talk about sphicnter tightening... imagine having hundreds of productive people doing nothing, your entire population reduced to tidying up their desks and chit-chatting.
What the HELL was going on? I looked and searched and turned on EtherPeek.... I had NOTHING. I called out T-1 provider... we were being attacked by a Denial-of-Service from all over the world. Port 445. He closed the port. NOW we were being attacked from the INSIDE. Port 445... used by Windows. I had a clue! So the search began on the 25 PC's we have. I check laptops... all clean... desktops... all clean. One left: The weather station on the DMZ! I went to it.... Norton: Up to to date. Auto protect: ON. Let's do a scan: Clean. Ad-Aware? Clean. Spy-Ware? Clean. Windows Update? On and up to date that day. I turned it off.
The network ran like a top almost immediateley.
Back on.
Dead network.
What the HELL could THIS be??
While I pondered this issue in my office, it hit me: Enlightenment, and all because of, get this, an AOL commercial I saw the night before.
AOL's main selling point was not content, ease of use, and the like. No, it was becasue it has built-in virus protection!
I sent a letter out to our dear users saying this, and I paraphrase:
If you saw this:
"Buy the new Ford FOCUS! Now with ROUND TIRES that fall off 10% less often!"
Would you buy that car?
No?
Then why the hell did you buy a PC?
For the life of me I just can't understand why good, intelligent people, some that are dear to me, insist on buying a product with devastating flaws included right in the box it came it. Can someone please tell me?
I have BANNED the use of "guest" PC's, and all new and existing PC's must be inspected by our department prior to even turning them on. They REQUIRE XP Realease 2, all the updates and Norton Utilities. We will not spend any time trying to recover your work becasue of the time involved. You are to keep your own backups. PC's that have any hint of infection will be immediately erased. If the PC balks at updates and/or has trouble with a boot CD, they will be executed on the spot. There is no appeal. My ruling is final.
Different companies operate their technology in different ways, and 'standards' are created. Obviously in your company, Macs are the standard. So of course you are going to have more problems with the non standard equipment than with the standard equipment.Les Kern said:
In my previous company (about 1200-1400 computers), we operated 90-95% PCs and 5-10% Macs. How much of my time was spent fixing Mac related problems?
About 50%...
All it takes is to run an app from within 8 or 9 that fools the installer into thinking that it has the "necessery requirements". And I count a 60sec boot time on a machine that old quite good (it *can* run on any PowerPC proc). I'd like to see your 486 match thatBGil said:
PCMacUser said:
But that's assuming that we may not have the tools, either physical or mental, to handle anything Windows related, and that is just not so. Not at all. Our tech folks CAME from the PC industry. Not only that, in ALL the large institutions in my area and quite a few around the country (I have tendrils!), the evidence is irrefutable that Win is a complete drain on productivity. But I'm sure what you describe does happen.
All I know is is that I turned down a 6-figure job working in an all-PC shop, and I thank my god nightly that he gave me the wisdom to refuse.
PCMacUser said:
Wow, faulty reasoning and anecdotal "evidence" to boot. Your experience is outside the norm. Most of the time, support people support products in proportion to that product's deployment in the work place/market place -- assuming symmetric failure rates and thus some notable exceptions: macs in an IT environment. Same goes for linux. We had only a few linux machines at work last summer (I was in an IT department at a very large college) and they never hiccuped, but the damn Windows web/SQL server went down several times a day, EVERY day. (I know because I was developing database applications, and everytime it went down I couldn't test my code, nor could I even access the share my files were on. I did most of my work offline as a result.) Our DBA was about to kill himself, he almost missed his vacation because he was on the phone with MS so much about it. With only a few days left he installed SQL on a linux server, copied over the database files, and pulled the plug on the Windows server.
Your observation may pan out, however, if by "nonstandard" you mean not routinely supported. Like any technology, things are going to break if you don't maintain them. If you weren't keeping those macs up to date and routinely running maintenance scripts on them, then you can't expect them to work without hiccup.
Plus, if IT is incompetent when it comes to macs, they are obviously going to spend more time than they should fixing them.
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