talkmagic.co.uk

pdjamez wrote:Hey, at least we missed punch cards, but only just.

Nowt wrong wi' punched cards, tha knows. I remember when the Internet was all in black and white and finished with the National Anthem at 10:30 every night. And if you didn't stand to attention they took you away for "a chat".

You cannot get any better MP3 player than an iPod, I agree with you there

I have something I need to ask about Macs, and this might sound pretty stupid:

Do they have a tower? If they don't, how do you update your graphics card, or insert a new hard drive (without buying an external one)?

ace of kev wrote:I have something I need to ask about Macs, and this might sound pretty stupid:

Do they have a tower? If they don't, how do you update your graphics card, or insert a new hard drive (without buying an external one)?

Not a stupid question at all.

You could buy a Power Mac G5 if you want a tower, but to some extent your thinking like a PC owner. The whole PC market is driven by a hardware/software cycle. The software bloats, you get more hardware. More bloaty software to show off shiny new hardware and the cycle continues.

Mac thinking is entirely different; its all about true commodity computing. The platform is stable, so software developers know what their writing to so that they can target their performance requirements. In addition, Mac developers tend to have an aggressive anti-bloat policy. When you first start to use iLife for example you'll be surprised how little functionality is available. You will soon realise that this isn't a drawback, and what you actually get is what you actually need.

You can upgrade both memory and harddrive on the iMacs and there are instructions on the apple website. Remember that you have a couple of firewire ports on the back; so a big fat tetrabyte external HD isn't such a big deal.

Also remember that the new range of Macs are some of the most powerful desktop, laptop machines available.

Unlike seige, I am a fairly recent convert to the cult of Mac. All I can say is commodity computing rocks. I think its probably my age. I don't want to tinker anymore, I just want stuff to work.

What about games and stuff like that? I do prefer Macs for 'working' (ie. Computing Studies in school), but not at my home. I will get one when I am older.

ace of kev wrote:What about games and stuff like that? I do prefer Macs for 'working' (ie. Computing Studies in school), but not at my home. I will get one when I am older.

Its still true that the title coverage is less for the Mac, but the release lag is narrowing. The hardware and subsystem is built to manage multimedia data so its superbly positioned for games playing. Apparently Halo rocks!

You may be interested in the following story, which gave Mac users no end of gloating rights: http://news.com.com/Xbox+360+demos+running+on+Macs/2100-1043_3-5706658.html. Although to be fair Apple have now dropped IBM PowerPC in favor of Intels more powerful core duo processors.

I was just wondering, I don't even play games on my PC!

I was wondering, when I click on my hard drive it says that the file system:NTFS.

I was wondering if this is the type of hard drive I need to buy for my computer as I need a new one?

The NTFS bit refers to the format used by Windows rather than the type of drive. The formatting is done when the operating system is installed and, if I remember correctly, NTFS has more security options (ownership, etc.) than you can set up in the old FAT32 format. Basically, you can slap any big, modern drive in a bay, connect it up and format it for use.

Gosh, I'm up late. I must stop doing this. My eyes feel like fag burns on a nun's bum.

Kev, what on earth were you doing up at 3 in the morning?! Tut tut...

tetrabyte hard drive

Gee, I could store all of "0000" before I ran out of space!

Kati

katrielalex wrote:Kev, what on earth were you doing up at 3 in the morning?! Tut tut...

tetrabyte hard drive

Gee, I could store all of "0000" before I ran out of space!

Kati

I think your second point is explained by your first. Apologies for the extraneous t.

I was watching the gadget show or something like that last week and they did a comparison test between PCs and the latest MAC. Both machines were identically spec'd with 64 bit performance and they used the same photo editing software to perform the same effect on the same photo of Suzi on each machine.

Surprisingly the PC performed the task 25% faster than the MAC! I was truly surprised at that but they went on to do a couple of more editing tasks that the PC came out tops on.

Then they did a replacements test. Abused the casing of each board and basically killed the mobo in each and some other components. Off goes the guy to a PC store and for a couple of hundred quid he got the parts that were broken. Then he tried to get MAC bits and this is the kiddy. Apple may be extremely generous with their development community however they are NOT generous with the tech side of it. He could not get an off the shelf bit anywhere and even to have the MAC looked at to find out what was needed was going to cost £50 an hour. As ball park figures he was told a mobo for the MAC would be £400!!

The conclusion was that in the era of 32 bit the MAC may have reigned supreme but now in the 64 bit era the PC is outperforming and is more cost effective.

This was based on replacement parts and music and photo editing, this had nothing to do with OS's.

I'm not saying one way or another which is best cos I see the merits of both however it woudl appear that the PC/Mac debate is as closely run now as evr before.

Jordan

You MUST bear in mind that Apple have only just released the 64Bit systems and architecture.

As such, the applications aren't all optimised yet.

The naive PC community are cashing in on this, and saying that the Mac is a slug... However, these 'lab conditions' tests aren't at all conclusive. In fact, biased

Just wait...

Only passing on what I saw. I am on the fence mate. PC's have only jus started on 64 bit too so it will be an interesting fight. I hold no preference one way or the other. If I knew how to use a mac I would but I jus dont come across them so I use PCs, I do not really believe one to better than the other and this debate is much like the Ferrari/Porsche/Mercedes debate. A different winner for different people.

Incidentally, the 'replacment' costs of mac parts is proportional to the amount of times they need replacing due to failure, viri etc.

APPLE design the machine, hardware and software.

I won't debate on this, as I know I'm right

and nor shall I as I've put a nice plump cushion up here on my fence, I've stripped the barbed wire away and its now rather comfortable to sit here LOL

I'd happily have both.

Jordan C wrote::D and nor shall I as I've put a nice plump cushion up here on my fence, I've stripped the barbed wire away and its now rather comfortable to sit here LOL

I'd happily have both.

I do have both... and they both have their merits... I run two Apples and 2 PCs, for reasons I won't go into. But, let me just say, if ever there's a problem, it ain't with the Macs...