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Apple Issues New G5 Benchmarks
rocketjam writes "According to an article in The Register, Apple has issued SPEC benchmarks for the new dual G5 2GHz machines, comparing it to a two-way Dell Xeon and a 3Ghz Pentium 4 machine. The article says the G5 lagged behind the Dells in integer performance, however in 'the parallel "rate" benchmarks, which tax both of the CPUs in the test machines, the G5 edged out the Xeon 17.2 to 16.7 in the integer score and 15.7 to 11.1 in the floating point tests, suggesting Apple makes far better use of its two CPUs than the Xeon machine....the results augur well for Apple G5 performance in technical and scientific computing environments and for playing games.'"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Here.
Augury: divining the future be examining the entrails of dead birds, or somesuch, especially before a battle. (in ancient roman times)
If sth 'augurs well', that means a favourable outcome is likely.
According to Apple, in certain benchmarks, the G5 is faster than the NEC Earth Simulator.
Far more interested in the progress and development of AMD's Opteron line than all this G5 stuff? I mean, dont misunderstand. I'm excited about desktop 64 bit computing, but I really dont want to be locked into a whole platform. These benchmarks really say to me that the G5 is ok, a little better, but you've gotta go all apple to get it.
Just my pennies.
---
Jedimom.com, go banana!
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
Yes, but when are they gonna test it against the other noble gases?
Five bucks says Argon wipes the floor with the G5, :)
I don't know if you can make the argument that "makes better use of dual CPUs" translates to "better performance at playing games." The few Opteron benchmarks I've seen have shown that it makes *much* better use of multiple CPU than the Xeons, but still lags behind single CPU system for game playing, due to the fact that dual CPUs provide little to no benefit in current games, and the SMP overhead actually reduces perfromance.
Their benchmarks won't mean a thing if there's a shortage of titles for the platform and everyone buys a PC anyway. I'd love to have one of these machines, I am sure I could find some cool things to do with it. But for the price of admission, there's not enough titles out there to make spending the extra $$$ on the hardware worth it.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
Another apple benchmark that shows intel machines running strangely slower then everybody else's benchmarks, with even fewer details then the last time we read this story. Wake me up when there's a real independent review of the state-of-the art on both systems. I wouldn't mind seeing an opteron in the mix also.
Would anyone who happens to be lucky enough to own a G5 like to comment on how much heat it puts out in comparison to say, a Xenon? Just looking at the case is seems as if Apple has taken great care to make it as quiet, as well as cool, however it seems that there is a lot of space in that case.
On the PC, very very few games take advantage of SMP. DirectX itself seems to make zero effort, and games seem to be starting the draw from the same thread that runs the rest of the game logic. At best, you benefit a little (almost immeasurably) on I/O handling or some of the audio processing.
Since SMP is more pervasive on Mac than on PC, do Mac games take more advantage of SMP? Does GL on the Mac render retained mode data outside of the calling thread or otherwise significantly distribute game-related work in the OS itself?
These are the same numbers that have been up on Apple's G5 site for how long now? Since June or something? What are you people? Blind? Or just lazy. Wake me up when you get with the present. People have been arguing the validity and what not of these SPEC scores represent for months now.
Don't Ask Questions. I don't know the answers and even if I did I wouldn't tell you.
v. augur, augured, auguring, augurs
1. To predict, especially from signs or omens; foretell. See Synonyms at foretell.
Auger (your spelling) means a drill, or to drill.
In 'Time' magazine they have an ad every week on page 2, and this week it says the numbers are 16.9 against 16.7 for integer calculations and 15.8 against 11.1 for floating point calculations compared to a dual 3.06 GHz Xeon.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
what? : )
Apple has issued a new release of the "Fastest Personal Computer" advertisement. The ad now reads "#1 Personal Computer Alphabetically". In a statement to the press, Apple CEO Steve Jobbs said, "Our engineers are considering alternative spellings such as Aaple in order to insure that we maintain this exciting edge in the Personal Computer marketplace."
Amazing magic tricks
Could it be that the the operating system plays a role in the results? With data that close, can it really be conclusively said that the Apple hardware is faster?
Windows never really has been that efficient in a dual processor situation.
Well, a fast CPU certainly doesn't do any harm, but a lot of games these days are bound by either processing geometry on the GPU or by memory bandwidth for texture lookups.
Few games are multithreaded, so having two processors isn't such an advantage.
Still, I wouldn't turn one down.
... because this time they have a CPU that doesn't suck?
Seriously, we all knew that the later G3s and all the G4s were behind the competition for all but a few very specialized operations. That's why Apple dumped Motorola, and is now working with IBM.
The G5 doesn't suck. And for the first time, its FSB and memory bandwidth don't suck either. Apple's using standard SPEC benchmarks, and it looks from their writeup like they were fair. So give it a rest.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Yes...but what does auger mean in this context? We all know what augur means...we're geeks.
And what do G5's have to do with boring holes in wood or ice, anyways? And how did we get onto snoblowers?
"the results augur well for Apple G5 performance in technical and scientific computing environments and for playing games."
:)
Right.. because of these tests every pc game developer is now going to make a port to MAC OS of all the games they are developing..
I can see that Apple wants to emphasize that this is one really fast PC, trying to prove it by using 'un-cheatable' numbers as opposed to marketing speech, but I really think they'd look even better if they'd do some comparisions that show what a bandwidth monster those G5s are, which I have been informed is the key to how those Xeons were crushed in the showdown at MW a while ago.
The topic Icon depicts a G4 when the topic is clearly about the G5.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Gee, I could compare the latest, fastest Dell with one that will ship 6 months from now and the one that will ship 6 months from now will win!
An auger would be too big for the holes perforating the G5. The QS G4 speedholes are more auger-sized.
They are irrelevant.
.mp3's really doesn't matter. Photoshop benchmarks? People who are going to be using photoshop professionally have most likely already decided whether or not they're going to buy an Apple. Even if the G5 was undeniably faster by a great margain, I doubt that fact would sell more than a few hundred units. However Apple, look at your site. You're still selling Powermac G4's for considerably less than the G5's. So I want to know how it compares to the G4. Because most of your sales aren't going to be from people who want to buy the fastest desktop computer. It's going to be from people who want to buy the fastest Apple.
DISCLAIMER: I am a fan of apple. I'm typing this on an iBook.
Apple's been pissing me off with the advertising of the G5. All these benchmarks are just plain stupid. They compare it to Pentium 4, Xeon, whatever. Guess what Apple, you forgot a processor. The G4. Really, tell me, inform me as to who is currently torn between a 3GHz Dell and a Dual 2GHz Apple, and needs to know which one is faster. To 99.99% of the market, a few seconds difference encoding
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Mainstreat Intel based OS will see the same problems I guess, 32 and 64 bit versions, linux, windows versions...
But I bet you if id software releases doom3 for a dual g2 64 bits mac... it'll be fabulous performance compared to intel architectures.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
I agree that dual CPUs provide little benefit to games, perhaps if Apple standardised on two processors developers might take advantage of them?
Chasomint has here a table comparing the 1.6 Ghz G5 (slowest available) to 6 other windows machines. It is a complicated photoshop benchmark. The 1.6 Ghz G5 gets beat by the single P4 3.06, however it is the 2nd fastest machine there by benchmark wins. Note that the 1.6 Ghz machine is the lowend G5, and has nowhere near the performance of the dual 2.0 ghz G5's that apple uses to test.
Nice troll. I can't believe you were moderated UP as interesting. Here's a very small list:
- SimCity 4 - released for Apple
- America's Army - released for Apple
- Dungeon Seige - released for Apple
- Neverwinter Nights - released for Apple
- Warrior Kings - released for Apple
- Warcraft III - released for Apple
- Master of Orion - released for Apple
- Unreal Tournament 2003 - released for Apple
- The Sims - released for Apple
- Quake III Arena - released for Apple
- Civilization III - released for Apple
Obviously the list goes on. So there are more games released for the PC. It could be said that there are even more games released for the console market. It seems to me though that games that tend to be commercially viable tend to be ported to the Mac. So next time you want to troll, please, at least have a specific gripe instead of spouting off on something you couldn't care to look into.
In any case there was much consternation in the past about the VeriTest benchmarks becuase they did not use the same compilers that Dell used. Also VeriTest used things like an optimized malloc library on the G5's and faster memory with semi-secret memory timing tweaks in OF. If you want to take these benchmarks with a grain of salt, you should compare the DELL numbers from the SPEC site to those of the G5 from Veritest.
The only benchmarks that should matter are: does it run Photoshop/Premiere/Final Cut Pro faster? I could care less that my computer is a 11.5 compared to 10.32 on another machine. That means nothing to the end user.
I will assume that this is the case, so let me be the first to inform you that BSD errr... I mean OSX has in fact, 'improved' multitasking over your experience with OS 9 or earlier.
Drawing any conclusions about the Mac platform based on experiences with OS 9 or earlier is much like concluding that Automobiles are not useful based on your experience with a motorized skateboard.
Rambling statements aside, on my 5 year old G3 (400mhz) I happily run updates, VirtualPC with WinXP, edit my Photoshop files, use Terminal with all its Unix-y goodness, browse the net, listen to music, and play a game of DiabloII... yes, at the same time.
Now your windows machine can do all that too, but you'd need two OS's to do it
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
The performance gap would be very big, it might dissuade people from buying a mac laptop at this time, they'd wait until there was a G5 laptop... Could be a while before they figure out how to cool one down to fit into a laptop.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
Or as the guys from redvsblue put it here:
The confusing thing about PCs is just that you go to the store, and there is just so many games... everywhere you look! While on the Mac, its just six. And you know which ones are good, 'cause you have already played them on the PC like five or six years ago.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
I think we've been through this before.
If you want to test relative compiler technology, you use the fastest compiler for each platform. If you want to test the platform itself, you use software which is as close to identical between platforms as possible. Hence, gcc.
Pretty basic experimental technique is at work here.
Ummm... not that the availability of games for macs hasn't been traditionally terrible. And they have been getting better with the move to OSX, but I still have a problem with this augur conclusion.
How is running a dual proc machine going to help software that isn't traditionally multi-threaded? The OS might have a fun time swapping which proc gets the game for the next 10 million cycles, but auguring well for performance.... what a farce.
Fnord.sig
64bit != faster. Why must people always assume (especially on /. where you are supposed to be technically inclined) think that 64bit MUST be faster than 32bit.
However, having said that, you do realize that this is comparing a 2Ghz G5 setup to a 3Ghz Intel rig right? So even if they came out equal the G5 is faster per Ghz?
seSales, Point of Sale software for OS X.
ar more interested in the progress and development of AMD's Opteron line than all this G5 stuff? I mean, dont misunderstand. I'm excited about desktop 64 bit computing, but I really dont want to be locked into a whole platform.
You don't want to be "locked in" to the G5, so you'd rather be locked in to the Opteron? The only company that makes AMD Opterons is AMD. This does not make sense...
Sun machines are expensive because of reliability and other things that are needed/wanted in the enterprise space. Sun machines are NOT sold for their speed. I am betting if you put this up against a dual processor Sun workstation that the G5 would blow it away in the speed category.
Sun machines are great, all of my servers are running on Sun's but they are definitely not the fastest kid on the block but they sure are reliable.
seSales, Point of Sale software for OS X.
Agur is the basque word for bye...
;)
I think you meant to write "Say agur to Apple if you want to play games"
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
The G5 consumes huge amounts of power (like 90W), so dont expect to see it in a laptop anytime soon.. Thats why the G5 PowerMac has "climate zones" and "9 silent fans".. lots of heat to move away.
Dont get me wrong, its a great, powerful machine. AND it is rather quiet. Just that the G5 is no laptop stuff...
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Why is Apple going to run around saying how incredibly slow the systems are that they were selling a month ago? What sense does that make for them? If you have a burning desire to see how the G4 does against the G5, wait until Macworld runs some Photoshop tests. And why are you complaning that they are making legit (or at least more legit than the old Photoshop bakeoffs) advertisements that the G5 is faster than Intel's processors?
Apple used GCC in their P4 benchmarks.
/. story about Apple's benchmarks to read all about it.
You know what? You're right. Of course, Apple also used GCC in their G5 benchmarks, so I'm not certain what your point was. This has been debated extensively. Look at the last
t'nera semordnilap
The Apple Developer Connection Student Program is a low-cost membership program (USD $99 / year), providing tools and special discounts for students 18 or over interested in developing for the Mac platform. Members receieve a once-per-lifetime 20% discount on hardware. Hardware can be purchased through the ADC version of the Apple Store (click the 'ADC Hardware Purchase Program Store' link). Without the discount a Dual 2 GHz G5 would be USD $2999, and with the discount a Dual 2 GHz G5 would be USD $2499. Details of the program are covered in the FAQ.
--- Fox
Your neighbour of course. The guy who brags about his $5K new ultra-fast machine which will bring his to new heights of web-surfing, tax-crunching and e-mail-sending pleasure.
Oh, and people who do a lot of video encoding. If I can encode my video at 35fps instead of 29 fps, that is a large difference. It gives me more time to make sure I have tweaked all the settings nicely to give the best encode for the filesize.
"Even if the G5 was undeniably faster by a great margain, I doubt that fact would sell more than a few hundred units."
They already have 100,000 pre-orders. Of course I don't expect this rate of orders to stay steady. If you look at military enrollment statistics in Canada (and probably other countries affiiated with Britain) during the first world war, there was a large wave of fanatics joining in at the beginning and then reality set in and the numbers became more realistic.
"So I want to know how it compares to the G4. Because most of your sales aren't going to be from people who want to buy the fastest desktop computer. It's going to be from people who want to buy the fastest Apple."
I'm not entirely sure what you're implying here. Are you saying that the G4 might be faster than the G5? I find that hard to believe.
Btw: One thing that almost makes me cry is that the FSB on the 2 GHz G5 machines is faster than the CPU clock speed of my iBook. (Sniffle ... )
However, the nature of SPEC is that you perform your own tests and submit them. You certainly should not be performing any other manufacturers tests for them...
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
Apple's Marketing department needs to show television commercials showing how EASY it is to network their computers to existing Windows and Linux corporate networks and continue running in the event of a virus/worm breakout in the Wintel world. Apple needs to show some compatibility with its computers if they ever intend on selling more units to new customers. Apple needs to show that its computers offer LOWER COST OF OWNERSHIP for many computing environments. I simply don't understand why Apple can't grow a spine and show a hint of agressive advertising. Apple has a really good product, both hardware and software, but people aren't going to buy their computers unless they know they aren't going to be stranded ALONE in the computing world when a slight hiccup occurs with hardware or software. One of my friends who works in business management put it like this: "I'm worried about support for software and hardware. Nobody uses Apples in business because they're not supported". While I disagree partially with my friend's statement, there is a little truth to it. If Apple's in the computer business to make money, it better start showing ADVANTAGES of its products compared to the DISADVANTAGES of competition, otherwise no one will notice their product offerings. With The Borg's long history of patches for its products not doing a very good job of protecting the security of networks, email, documents, etc... Apple could begin with an advertisement detailing those advantages.
Well, when you have Photoshop, GoLive, Illustrator, BBEdit, iTunes, Mail, iChat, Safari, Mozilla, RBrowser, MacCVS, etc all open the same time... second processor becomes very very handy.
I typically never noticed the benefits of an MP box until I start doing web development or design on a single processor system. There are noticeable delays when switching between tasks... even on a fast machine.
But, hey, Apple has been selling MP boxes for years now. There are a lot of applications and games that take advantage of SMP on OSX.
Buying an MP system from Apple was the best thing I ever did. My Dual 450 g4 still feels like new to me (as long as I'm not playing games)... even with modern software.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Marketing, pure and simple -- and effective.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
How is running a dual proc machine going to help software that isn't traditionally multi-threaded?
By allowing more than one program at a time to run well.
For example, I might have iMovie capturing DV to an external FW drive while I also doing something like play one of the games that are available for the Mac. I've actually tried and been unable to get iMovie drop out on a dual 1 GHz Mac. No matter what I throw at it, including Finder copies to/from the same external FW drive iMovie is captuing to or firing up Win XP in VPC, iMovie keeps capturing that video without dropping a frame.
Try that with a single processor machine!
While most of us use the x86 architecture, both Windows and Linux run happily on a couple different processors, so we're not really "locked in" by conventional proprietary semaphores. This is more a matter of economics; the x86 is cheap, powerful and prolific, so it's what we use. We're far from "locked in" though.
and usually it will wait for the other threads to finish before continuing.
.plan files from the time when he was developing Q3 to see how SMP came out in the first tries with the Q2 code base (hint: he actually slowed the game down by using both processors).
Very few games take advantage of multiple CPUs. It takes a lot of work to get a modest advantage from a dual-CPU system when developing a game. Take a look at Carmack's
-PainKilleR-[CE]
I want to see Dual G5 vs. Dual Opteron, now *thats* a comparison :)
I have to agree, the multiple processor systems rock. I have a dual 1Ghz MDD machine, near the end of the line for the old G4 architecture (it's the last gen that can boot OS 9 natively, supposedly) and it is quite zippy. Don't underestimate the usefulness of dual processors. I use the old dead freeware gadget "Cycles" to watch both G4s in separate graphs, it's interesting seeing each processor's load. Apps like VPC monopolize one CPU for emulation, and offload OS and screen drawing tasks on the other processor. Some apps really max out everything, like Cleaner 6 or DVD Studio Pro, you can be up to about 98% CPU utilization on both processors, but the system is still responsive enough to toss it in the background and run other hefty apps, the main app will behave nicely and give up CPU cycles. My G4 CPU has improved memory bus bandwidth which made a really obvious improvement in performance doing tasks like encoding that are both I/O intensive and CPU-intensive. But the G5's memory bandwidth looks like it is at least 10x what my G4 can do.
And there's one thing I think people haven't noticed. I looked at Shake 3 and Final Cut Pro, they use a new networked clustering controller called QMaster. It is a new background system service for rendering video out of Shake or FCP Compressor. You can control a whole render farm of Macs from your workstation with QMaster. This doesn't have to be a rack of XServes, it could just be the regular macs around the office. I think Apple's moving to a more networked, distributed processing model, this could be an incredible increase in computing power.
Yes, but what about shitty games? You know, the ones that give you that sinking feeling when you realize that your impulse purchase was a mistake. Most of those don't get ported to the Mac.
Apple needs to reach out to the mediocre and uninspired developers. Churning out another lame wargame with soldiers who dance like puppets when they talk? On x86 there are thirty competing titles, but only two or three on the Mac! Contract-publishing a tedious racing game with no charm or originality? Mac users are waiting for you!
At the most, MacPlay and Aspyr lag 2 years. To be honest, if it's that long they rarely ship with all the problems the PC version did. Obviously I'd like simultaneous release, which Blizzard has always done, but you can't have everything.
The Mac is easier to use. Now it's also as fast (or significantly FASTER) the the PC. It runs all the commercial apps you need. It can emulate proprietary in-house apps with VirtualPC. It can play all the latest games, even if they laga couple months (get a PS2, also!). It's UNIX under the hood and runs X11 for added compatability. All of this, and it's not any more expensive than comparable PC hardware.
It's time to take an objective look at these systems if you're in the market for a new machine. Just take a look. If you don't like it, then don't buy it... but the Mac is a VERY viable platform these days. More so now than ever.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Please stop spreading FUD. This is NOT old news. It's new. Apple updated their scores, and now there are production low end machines that have been tested.
And, we've all seen the "I'm jealous so I'm going to debunk this" website. Next.
You can chose to use a Mac or not. At worst case scenario the Mac is maybe 5 to 10% slower, which is not perceivable to a human unless you're running a multiple day long task. At best, the Mac is 200% faster. That's noticable in the timeframe of a second.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
the G5 edged out the Xeon 17.2 to 16.7 in the integer score and 15.7 to 11.1 in the floating point tests, suggesting Apple makes far better use of its two CPUs than the Xeon machine
Edging out now implies that it's far better?
Now, to answer your question, I don't think that the G5 is supported yet by any of the distributions. Just give them some time (Yellow Dog is very diligent when porting to new models, and the rest follow naturally). I may be wrong on this, since IBM plans to use the PPC970 on some of their products and they would probably want to launch them with Linux.
I just verified the $2499 you mentioned -- this price includes the $99 student membership fee.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
The render farm aspect of Shake 3 and FCP was very intersting to us - we use a Dual 450 G4 as the primary editing machine (backed up with a 667Mhz Powerbook).
Handing off renders to multiple machines would be a big benefit to us, even if it's only to make the Powermac and Powerbook work together - three processors has to be better than two in this sort of task.
If it really works well, for a small outlay it would be pretty easy to put together a little farm of old G4 boxes - dual 450s and 500s to use them purely for the times you hit "render all" in FCP and have 22 layers of video and photoshop files to put together.
I am continually amazed at the performance we get out of our 'humble' Dual 450 machine in Final Cut Pro. It's a tribute to Apple's hardware and software shops that it's so good. Makes me wonder just how mind blowing FCP is on a G5 box!
If you look at the numbers Apple is claiming vs. the latest numbers posted at the SPEC site, then it would appear that the G5 is getting creamed by the Pentium 4 / Xeon.
First, single CPU performance. Apple claims 840 for SPECfp_base2000, and 800 for SPECint_base2000. A Dell Precision 360 with 3.2GHz P4 and DDR400 memory gives 1267 and 1242, respectively.
Next, dual-CPU. Apple claims 15.7 for SPECfp_rate_base2000 and 17.2 for SPECint_rate_base2000. A Dell Precision Workstation 650 with dual 3.06 GHz Xeons gives 18.0 and 25.6, respectively.
Of course, there are lies, damn lies, and benchmarks, but in this case I think it's fair to compare actual SPEC numbers with vendor claims.
And don't get me wrong, I think Apples are wonderful systems. I recommend them to many of my friends. But for raw CPU power, they lag the Intel powerhouse.
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
Simply put.
Please, be my guest and spec out a (comparable!) dual-opteron or a dual-Xenon system with AGP 8x Pro, 1 GHz FSB, 3 PCI-X slots, FireWire, USB, Optical Audio, SATA, DDR400 (8 slots, 2 GB DIMM support), ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, a 56k modem, AirPort Antenna, Bluetooth, a spacious aluminum case, quality power unit, and a CD-RW/DVD-R system for $3000. Don't forget the operating system as well (sure, you can compile Linux from the ground up for it, but I consider my time to be valuable).
That is what you get if you buy a mac for $3000.
If you aren't willing to spend $3000 on a computer, you aren't going to get the highest-end mac that you can buy. Period. Yet that is what you seem to be specifying.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Hell, I can get a brand new Kia for $12,000. Spend $30,000 on a Volvo? Yeah right!
Um... actually, the Quake III test did come out first on the Mac, back in April of '99, then on Linux and Windows. id wanted the initial release of the test version to be on the platform with the fewest/most controlled variations in configurations. Windows users got to try the test a couple weeks after Mac users did.
No, you couldn't squash it, except maybe if your PC came with a FireWire Bulldozer. First, RTFA. Do you see those benchmarks? Second, not only do you get your choice of OS on a G5 (OS X, Linux, etc.) you can also run Office natively, write programs natively that compile to X86, but you can also run X11 applications side by side with Mac OS apps, all on a system running with a BSD Core. The fact that you said, "my choice of OS" cracks me up. Do you even realize that OS X is based on BSD and is open source at the core? Need your precious Windows? Ever heard of Virtual PC? (Which will be compiled for the G5 soon according to Microsoft and Apple.)
I don't know about you, but I'm a goth. Part of that, to me, means I think for myself. In this case, it means no Intel, and no AMD. IMHO, PowerPC and *NIX are the future.
Not always. If the $500 I spend today lasts for one year, but the $800 I could have spent would have lasted two, it's better to spend the $800.
My Dell is a about 18 months old and I'm considering a replacement; the sum total of upgrades I'd have to buy to keep it going make it attractive to just replace the box. My year-old iMac is going strong, and the late-2000 Cube is still playing all the games I've bought recently.
YMMV of course, but the numbers I've seen for businesses (which jibe with my personal experience) show that Apples stay in service more than twice as long, with fewer service calls. There's more to consider when calculating cost than just the sticker price.
-- Cerebus
>>The Mac is easier to use.
:-)
.Mac were still free it would really be no contest.
>
>Arguable. Mostly depends on what you're used to. I've
>been around plenty of noobs with their shiny new boxes.
>I've seen people take to Windows with no problem, and
>I've seen people trip up over Mac OS X.
But - easier to use for advanced users? I'd have to give that to a Mac. I could care less what is easier to learn... Or, if not easier to use, how about less frustrating.
>Could go either way. The other question is what do your
>friends, who will (hopefully) guide you through your
>dark days, use?
Counterpoint - 10 people come up to me and say "my computer keeps rebooting...". I just shrung and say "Sorry mac, I have an Apple". Sometimes it's good to be alone.
>>Now it's also as fast (or significantly FASTER) the the PC.
>For the sake of argument, let's just say that both are
>equally well suited for common consumer tasks: web
>browsing, digital cameras, email, burning CDs, average
>3D games. Stay away from fancy stuff for a second--no
>firewire 800, no DVD burning, etc. Still with me? OK,
>good.
Lost me at the first one. Web browsing? Safari at least lets you block popups. I don't know how many people I've directed to the google toolbar - after I've pointed them to AdAware because they have a large number of very suspicious popups (hey look, the company intranet just added popunders! don't think so...). Oddly, I have yet to need AdAware or the like on my Powerbook.
Email? I get bayesian filtering out of the box. If
Burning CD's? PC's (even modern ones) still seem a bit more fragile in that regard.
Digital camera support might be about equal... but what about digital video? I hate hate hate trying to edit video on a PC. I will never do it again, and I will do everything in my power to save others from doing so as well.
Only a PC user considers burning a DVD "fancy". I consider it nessicary for backups and great for pictures too (for large slideshows). That kind of thing should be basic sttuff for all computers by now, all the parts are there.
You do have a point at games.
>>It runs all the commercial apps you need.
>
>Unless you want games, or cheap clip art, or scores of >other things. Most people do *not* buy MS Office for their
>home computers--the use MS Works or AppleWorks or
>whatever comes with them. Most also steer towards
>cheap photo editors (more than jusr rotate & enhance
> that iPhoto offers) like PSP or the cheap Adobe products, >rather than Quark-Photoshop-Illustrator stuff.
So what's wrong with Appleworks for what most people really do? Why can't I use any of the thousands of cheap clip-art or font CD's? I can... If they need office to read work files, they will just buy (or pirate) Office X. End of story. Windows makes it a little easier to pirate Office if it was not bundled. I can access my corperate intranet just fine from the mac with Citrix and RDC clients for OS X.
And as for Photoshop, you have Elements on both platforms. And the Mac also has GraphicConverter, a really good program for very little money. It even works with 16-bit Tiff's which Elements does not accept... I'm not sure what you were getting at there. Again, games are really the only thing where you have a significantly better library of software.
>It can play all the latest games, even if they laga couple months (get a PS2, also!).
>So after you've bought your expensive (see below) Mac,
> you recommend a $150 console too?
How many PC owners have an XBox? What's up with that? You need as console anyway if you are really into games. Personally I bought a PS2 some time before my Mac because I was tired of the PC merry-go-round of upgrades and driver failures.
>>It's UNIX u
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley