Sorry, but wrong--unless you had enough foresight to have invested in PCI-E capable PC 5 years ago, your upgrade options are limited now. I have a 2.xGHZ Pentium IV Compaq and added a less than 2-year old video card (AGP) to hopefully extend it's worthwile gaming life. Waste of money. The bus, chipset, memory...it's all outdated, and throwing a good video card in there does nothing for FPS. I have the most solid experiment too, as my boys fight over who gets to use the 2-year old iMac instead of the Compaq when it comes time to play WoW. "The crappy pc is so slow dad, you should buy another iMac"...(not making that up). My Compaq can only hope to be as useful 5 years from now, as my 9-year old G4 Mac still is today.
Even with that anecdote, I'm still going to buy a stupid $400 generic Dell Inspiron 530 or something and throw the video card I already have in there, just so we can have both WoW accounts going at once. So in two years when the Dell is obsolete, I'll throw it away and buy another $400 P.O.S., and my original iMac will still be going strong, probably (hopefully without any hardware failures, as I don't really like to think about opening that sucker up).
The G3 and G4 processors beg to differ. Don't let scorching hot G5 and 1st gen Intel CoreDuo chips (and a poorly vented Cube) ruin the entire legacy of Macintosh computers, please.
1) A much improved video card (especially for the Mac Mini)
Maybe I've seen it wrong, but a much WORSE video option on the entry iMac. The integrated video on the 20" iMac is the only option now. My 2.5 year old iMac has a dedicated 256mb video card capable of playing Crysis at playable (but not great) frame rates. Now you can't even play video games on an iMac without springing for the 24" and have to go to the mid range one before dedicated video becomes an option.
What a no-brainer conclusion. Doubling ram from 2GB to 4GB obviously isn't going to do much, considering 2GB was pretty optimum to begin with. Boosting a cpu from 2.4 to 2.6 is not going to even be perceived, except in a bench test. The only story here is that prices remained the same with slight spec upgrades, and video got worse on the low end. So if you were in the market for a midrandge 24" iMac, the new midrange is a better deal than it was last week. If you were in the market for an entry level 20" iMac, the new model isn't much of a deal, and with integrated graphics, a step backwards.
Depending on your connection, and the vicinity of your local Best Buy, I'd argue one could download a game and be playing it LONG before you; get the kids ready, get the wife's permission, load up the car, drive to Best Buy, find the game, stand in line, drive home, install game, get the wife's permission, and then play the game.
I've tried to resell games on ebay and Craigslist and never have any success. Too many people are either afraid they won't work (one time license keys) or there is something wrong with the disk or something.
Even if box sales fell to, say, 10% of all sales, do you REALLY want to cut 10% of your sales by removing your games from the shelves of Frys/Best Buy? How many sales would you lose by NOT having it sitting there on the shelf staring at me when I walk into Frys to buy a printer?
Out of spite and general boycott I do not listen to my old Metallica CDs
Wow, you really showed them! I mean after you paid $9.99 for Ride the Lighting, you now are sticking it to the MAN buy not playing that thing (even though you already paid for it years ago).
I'm not sure Metalica has been considered "heavy metal" for at least two decades now. They pretty much killed the metal with the Black Album. Great ROCK album, but a lousy metal album.
If you take something without the intent to pay for it, you are a thief. The same thing is true if you walk into a store and steal an ABBA CD, just because you can, and never had any intention of buying the CD in the first place because you hate ABBA.
This is neither the usenet of the 90's nor an email message...The layout has always been very clear for me...I'm sorry if "Reply to This" is too complicated for you...It's patently obvious...
Just like I thought. You are super-smarter than the rest of us neophytes.
stevegadd.com RIGHT NOW and check out the discography. Music is rubbish since 1990 or so, eh? Then try Steve Gadd's drumming with Bonnie Raitt in 1989-1990ish time frame. Most of Gadd's fame came from the 70s, so you'll certainly find something in his discography you know. James Taylor, Steely Dan, Paul Simon...anything?
No problem. I get tired of all the "why are you so dumb you can't even figure out slashdot thread layouts" comments, when it's pretty obvious that there are enough quirks and bugs in the forum that not everybody seems to post things in the right spot, or see things posted in the right spot. It's the entire "blame-the-user" logic of the average slashdot nerd that makes me pine for another forum with as much depth as this one.
Nope it was in fact a reply to the parent post, that's why I clicked reply there, and not reply to your post.
Wow, aren't you pissy today? I don't know if you've noticed, but slashdot isn't exactly the most user-friendly forum to follow, especially in lengthier threads. That's why most of us QUOTE what we are responding to. We try to make it clear to fellow slashdotters instead of yelling things about "overinflated egos" and the like.
Seriously, it's posts like yours that really really make it hard to come back to slashdot. For every 10 great posts, there are a couple like yours--pointless, mean, and somehow trying to boast how much smarter you are than the rest of us.
My software company only has three home Mac users out of 300 employees. They must obviously discriminate against Mac users....nope, not buying your logic.
Yeah, go into a job interview and tell the person interested in paying YOU how to do their job. That's sure to get you the position. Please, people, keep this crap up so I can keep landing jobs on my first interview.
I think Ringo was a drummer in a band that made great music. That's a big difference;-) Maybe if I knew more about the behind-the-scenes involvement I would change my tune about him, but all his OTHER music projects have been pretty horrid, even by Beatles fanatics standards.
Just for the record, I'm not much of a Beatles fan. My favorite song of theirs is "Hey Bulldog", so that probably tells you a lot of what I think about them;-)
That's a cool drum part. It's easily top 10 for "rock drumming", even though it is cliche and gimmicky. I play that one for people a lot because, well, it's cool sounding.
You are absolutely wrong. The only "packaging" my guys do is that we give away "good music", period, no strings attached. We also don't expect anything in return. I play for free...beer and tips welcome. I'm not in this business at all, as my software career is my business. My music is my hobby, there is no packaging, and it is nothing like cosmetics.
You'd rather listen to Deep Purple than any of the thousands of recordings that Steve Gadd has made? Hmmm.... Not that Deep Purple is bad or Iaian Paice is awful, but come on, that means Iain Paice has been heard on ONE SONG by anybody under the age of 35. EVERYBODY has heard Steve Gadd--they just don't know it. Same goes for Coliauta (even though I think he's can be over-the-top technical at inappropriate times, he does scale it back for the pop-country gigs he's recorded).
Wipeout is rubbish. I can't stand surf music either. Not worth my time.
I forget the name, but The Who drummer on the track Emminence Front is an amazing "pocket" drummer. They currently use ex-Oasis drummer (and Ringo Starr's son) Zack Starkey, who is a lot like Keith Moon. Now this conversation has come full circle!
Have you ever seen the video of Mike Portnoy playing with his Beatles tribute band? I despise Portnoy's over-playing Dream Theater stuff, but man, that Beatles playing he did convinced me that the Dream Theater stuff is exactly that...theater.
I own a 20" iMac (white). You don't have to sell me on one. Would I would like, however, is a cheapie Mac tower like all the other companies make (the only difference being it would run OSX), so I can have a second Mac for my kids. $1200 is a bit much just to run World of Warcraft.
I have to respectfully disagree with you on the "midrange" idea. Apple did that under Scully and had a panalopy of mis-named models, like Centris, Deforma? Quadro, Hydra? I think it confused the market.
All they need is ONE model, and they could even call it...drum roll...Macintosh. There would be no confusion, as long as they made one model (with the same type of upgrade options you see now on the Apple store). A simple tower with two or three expansion slots an expansion bay..generic Intel processor, like a 2.4 C2duo, 2gb ram, 500mb hard drive, and $600 price tag (no monitor). It would be a couple hundred dollars more than an equivalent Dell Inspiron 5xx, but it would run OSX (worth the extra money) and benefit from consistently high consumer reports ratings in dependability and service.
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Yeah, they have their moments of stupid like with cracking Mac Cube cases, powerbook latch failures and screen cracking,
Well I suppose if you had mentioned some issues from THIS decade, you might have had a point ;-)
Sorry, but wrong--unless you had enough foresight to have invested in PCI-E capable PC 5 years ago, your upgrade options are limited now. I have a 2.xGHZ Pentium IV Compaq and added a less than 2-year old video card (AGP) to hopefully extend it's worthwile gaming life. Waste of money. The bus, chipset, memory...it's all outdated, and throwing a good video card in there does nothing for FPS. I have the most solid experiment too, as my boys fight over who gets to use the 2-year old iMac instead of the Compaq when it comes time to play WoW. "The crappy pc is so slow dad, you should buy another iMac"...(not making that up). My Compaq can only hope to be as useful 5 years from now, as my 9-year old G4 Mac still is today.
Even with that anecdote, I'm still going to buy a stupid $400 generic Dell Inspiron 530 or something and throw the video card I already have in there, just so we can have both WoW accounts going at once. So in two years when the Dell is obsolete, I'll throw it away and buy another $400 P.O.S., and my original iMac will still be going strong, probably (hopefully without any hardware failures, as I don't really like to think about opening that sucker up).
Heat management has ALWAYS been a Mac issue.
The G3 and G4 processors beg to differ. Don't let scorching hot G5 and 1st gen Intel CoreDuo chips (and a poorly vented Cube) ruin the entire legacy of Macintosh computers, please.
1) A much improved video card (especially for the Mac Mini)
Maybe I've seen it wrong, but a much WORSE video option on the entry iMac. The integrated video on the 20" iMac is the only option now. My 2.5 year old iMac has a dedicated 256mb video card capable of playing Crysis at playable (but not great) frame rates. Now you can't even play video games on an iMac without springing for the 24" and have to go to the mid range one before dedicated video becomes an option.
What a no-brainer conclusion. Doubling ram from 2GB to 4GB obviously isn't going to do much, considering 2GB was pretty optimum to begin with. Boosting a cpu from 2.4 to 2.6 is not going to even be perceived, except in a bench test. The only story here is that prices remained the same with slight spec upgrades, and video got worse on the low end. So if you were in the market for a midrandge 24" iMac, the new midrange is a better deal than it was last week. If you were in the market for an entry level 20" iMac, the new model isn't much of a deal, and with integrated graphics, a step backwards.
First obviously, no download waiting
Depending on your connection, and the vicinity of your local Best Buy, I'd argue one could download a game and be playing it LONG before you; get the kids ready, get the wife's permission, load up the car, drive to Best Buy, find the game, stand in line, drive home, install game, get the wife's permission, and then play the game.
I've tried to resell games on ebay and Craigslist and never have any success. Too many people are either afraid they won't work (one time license keys) or there is something wrong with the disk or something.
Even if box sales fell to, say, 10% of all sales, do you REALLY want to cut 10% of your sales by removing your games from the shelves of Frys/Best Buy? How many sales would you lose by NOT having it sitting there on the shelf staring at me when I walk into Frys to buy a printer?
Out of spite and general boycott I do not listen to my old Metallica CDs
Wow, you really showed them! I mean after you paid $9.99 for Ride the Lighting, you now are sticking it to the MAN buy not playing that thing (even though you already paid for it years ago).
I'm not sure Metalica has been considered "heavy metal" for at least two decades now. They pretty much killed the metal with the Black Album. Great ROCK album, but a lousy metal album.
If you take something without the intent to pay for it, you are a thief. The same thing is true if you walk into a store and steal an ABBA CD, just because you can, and never had any intention of buying the CD in the first place because you hate ABBA.
This is neither the usenet of the 90's nor an email message ...The layout has always been very clear for me...I'm sorry if "Reply to This" is too complicated for you...It's patently obvious...
Just like I thought. You are super-smarter than the rest of us neophytes.
stevegadd.com RIGHT NOW and check out the discography. Music is rubbish since 1990 or so, eh? Then try Steve Gadd's drumming with Bonnie Raitt in 1989-1990ish time frame. Most of Gadd's fame came from the 70s, so you'll certainly find something in his discography you know. James Taylor, Steely Dan, Paul Simon...anything?
Since you don't seem to be aware of the pinch/zoom feature, I guess you've never actually used an iPhone?
No problem. I get tired of all the "why are you so dumb you can't even figure out slashdot thread layouts" comments, when it's pretty obvious that there are enough quirks and bugs in the forum that not everybody seems to post things in the right spot, or see things posted in the right spot. It's the entire "blame-the-user" logic of the average slashdot nerd that makes me pine for another forum with as much depth as this one.
Nope it was in fact a reply to the parent post, that's why I clicked reply there, and not reply to your post.
Wow, aren't you pissy today? I don't know if you've noticed, but slashdot isn't exactly the most user-friendly forum to follow, especially in lengthier threads. That's why most of us QUOTE what we are responding to. We try to make it clear to fellow slashdotters instead of yelling things about "overinflated egos" and the like.
Seriously, it's posts like yours that really really make it hard to come back to slashdot. For every 10 great posts, there are a couple like yours--pointless, mean, and somehow trying to boast how much smarter you are than the rest of us.
My software company only has three home Mac users out of 300 employees. They must obviously discriminate against Mac users....nope, not buying your logic.
Yeah, go into a job interview and tell the person interested in paying YOU how to do their job. That's sure to get you the position. Please, people, keep this crap up so I can keep landing jobs on my first interview.
I think Ringo was a drummer in a band that made great music. That's a big difference ;-) Maybe if I knew more about the behind-the-scenes involvement I would change my tune about him, but all his OTHER music projects have been pretty horrid, even by Beatles fanatics standards.
Just for the record, I'm not much of a Beatles fan. My favorite song of theirs is "Hey Bulldog", so that probably tells you a lot of what I think about them ;-)
That's a cool drum part. It's easily top 10 for "rock drumming", even though it is cliche and gimmicky. I play that one for people a lot because, well, it's cool sounding.
You are absolutely wrong. The only "packaging" my guys do is that we give away "good music", period, no strings attached. We also don't expect anything in return. I play for free...beer and tips welcome. I'm not in this business at all, as my software career is my business. My music is my hobby, there is no packaging, and it is nothing like cosmetics.
You'd rather listen to Deep Purple than any of the thousands of recordings that Steve Gadd has made? Hmmm.... Not that Deep Purple is bad or Iaian Paice is awful, but come on, that means Iain Paice has been heard on ONE SONG by anybody under the age of 35. EVERYBODY has heard Steve Gadd--they just don't know it. Same goes for Coliauta (even though I think he's can be over-the-top technical at inappropriate times, he does scale it back for the pop-country gigs he's recorded).
Wipeout is rubbish. I can't stand surf music either. Not worth my time.
I forget the name, but The Who drummer on the track Emminence Front is an amazing "pocket" drummer. They currently use ex-Oasis drummer (and Ringo Starr's son) Zack Starkey, who is a lot like Keith Moon. Now this conversation has come full circle!
Have you ever seen the video of Mike Portnoy playing with his Beatles tribute band? I despise Portnoy's over-playing Dream Theater stuff, but man, that Beatles playing he did convinced me that the Dream Theater stuff is exactly that...theater.
I own a 20" iMac (white). You don't have to sell me on one. Would I would like, however, is a cheapie Mac tower like all the other companies make (the only difference being it would run OSX), so I can have a second Mac for my kids. $1200 is a bit much just to run World of Warcraft.
I have to respectfully disagree with you on the "midrange" idea. Apple did that under Scully and had a panalopy of mis-named models, like Centris, Deforma? Quadro, Hydra? I think it confused the market.
All they need is ONE model, and they could even call it...drum roll...Macintosh. There would be no confusion, as long as they made one model (with the same type of upgrade options you see now on the Apple store). A simple tower with two or three expansion slots an expansion bay..generic Intel processor, like a 2.4 C2duo, 2gb ram, 500mb hard drive, and $600 price tag (no monitor). It would be a couple hundred dollars more than an equivalent Dell Inspiron 5xx, but it would run OSX (worth the extra money) and benefit from consistently high consumer reports ratings in dependability and service.