I would just encourage you to also consider that the architecture of a Mac is different. Apple has a graphical representation of their Advanced PowerPC G5 System Controller (It's #4 in the graphic) which is totally different than the Intel world.
in addition, there are immesurable differences in the productivity of OS X over XP or Linux and, so I may not be considered too much of a zealot, these differences may swing wildly in either direction based on the user's own familiarity with an alternative OS and their own personal learning curve.
You used the words "invest" whcih are good words to use when talking about an Apple product. My 400 Mhz Powerbook G4 is totally viable running Panther, even though it came with OS 9 preloaded.
And prices are coming down. Even a hundred bucks here or there is significant:
Checkout the $800 eMac (1.25Ghz G4 and 17" screen), or the new 12" Powerbook ($1600). For that same $1600, you can also get into the G5 lineup.
If you RTFA, you will note the dock manages all the connections:
connected the iPod mini to my Pioneer car stereo using the CD-RB10 adapter, which connects to the L+R audio output RCAs from the iPod mini using the line-out from the Belkin car charger. I added two extra cigarette lighter adapters to plug in the car charger and the LEDs. Everything was nicely hidden below the center console.
Re:Really how fast is this 1.25GHz machine
on
Apple Revises eMac
·
· Score: 1
You're just making it worse for yourself, amichalo. With each post you look more and more foolish. It's obvious that deep down you know you overspent for an underpowered computer, and no amount of unsupported assertions about how OSX is "so much better" than anything else or bad "M$ Windoze" jokes is going to make that feeling go away
For what it is worth, I did not post the "eat a dick" comment. I can see how it looks like it would be me, being that it was anonymous and I am not posting anonymously. At any rate, I had nothing to do with that and don't know who did. Perhaps someone else is on Slashdot besides you and me.
As for your observations about my self esteme, you are simply trying to start a flame.
Find one post I have ever made with a slang reference to MS or Windows.
Re:The first ever "bargain" Mac
on
Apple Revises eMac
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The statement was that it was a bargain Mac, not a bargain piece of hardware.
I fully disagree that one can simply exclude the cachet of Mac/OS X ownership and the benefits of such by saying "well it comes with XP so that is the same".
That is exactly what is NOT the same. Otherwise, why would people buy Macs, because the cases look cool?
Re:Answer this instead..
on
Apple Revises eMac
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If you want a game machine, buy a PS2
If you want to run some special windows only app, buy Virtual PC for OS X
If you want to get work done in an efficient, user friendly, secure, stable, virus-free, low stress manner, buy a Mac
Saving a buck of two for an inferrior user experience....priceless
There are somethings money can't buy....for everything else, there's Microsoft.
Re:Still way outdated, Apple fanatics please read.
on
Apple Revises eMac
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
Please enjoy your windows boxes. We'll see you on the flip side when you finally give OS X a try.
I am by no means rich, but in the grand scheme of things, a few hundred bucks to buy a system that WORKS SO MUCH BETTER THAN WINDOWS XP is worth it to me.
The hardware specs aren't what makes the difference man, it's the SOFTWARE. OS X is the best of UNIX under a fantastic GUI.
Re:The first ever "bargain" Mac
on
Apple Revises eMac
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
My comment was this is a bargain Mac.
Did the Windows box come with: - combo drive (DVD R, CD RW) - wireless and bluetooth support - Photo, movie, dvd, and music editing software (iLife) - Jaguar - the cache of owning a mac?
What a rip off Apple, no one is ever gonna buy the 40 GB iPod now - not when for just $300 more they can get a 40 GB music player with a combo drive, airport extreme & bluetooth support, and a 17" CRT for viewing cover art and playlists.
Plus it comes with Garageband and iTMS BUILT IN!!!
Re:Really how fast is this 1.25GHz machine
on
Apple Revises eMac
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Anyone know this machine with the 1.25 GHz G4 processor fares against the new Intel 3.2Ghz processor with 1Gb RAM?
The 1.25Ghz G4 fares extremely well - It costs a lot less!
While the P4 3.2 costs between $300 and $400 just fo rthe chip, this $800 unit includes the 1.25 G4, Combo drive, 40GB hd, 256K Ram, CRT built in custom housing, video, networking, USB 2, Firewire800, Airport Extreme upgrade path, Bluetooth upgrade path, OS X Jaguar, iLife (Garageband, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, iTunes) and the cache of owning an Apple.
You can check out this review of the 1.25 Ghz G4 when it first came out and this review of the P4 3.2Ghz vs. an Athlon
The first ever "bargain" Mac
on
Apple Revises eMac
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
For under $800 this Mac is a bargain for potential "switchers". It is a Jaguar system for those who don't want to invest in a $2,000+ G5 setup to give the Mac a try.
When I wanted to try out OS X, I did so with a $1800 Powerbook Ti G4 at 400Mhz, 256k RAM, 20GB HD, and a CD/DVD reader. I found that system well equiped to flex the power of then OS 10.1. Panther and Jaguar are both responsive on my 400Mhz PB and I can only imagine that on the $800 eMac, especially if the 256k is upgraded, it would be a great low cost Mac.
This eMac system is well equiped for experimenting with iMovie, iPhoto, iTunesMusicStore, and GarageBand - all which come with it. For just $200 more you get a DVD burning SuperDrive and twice the drive space.
But like I say, for $800, this is a great system for those who don't want to make the investment in a G5 inorder to give OS X a try.
From the photos, this looks just like an Apple Pro Keyboard without the Apple symbol on the COMMAND keys.
How am I supposed to make a buying decision?
If the difference is in the engineering, perhaps they need to show some examples of this premium key switch versus some others. I need a way of understanding what the heck is so great about this keyboard.
I would most easy part with my money if they produced a "dust free" keyboard. Don't look too closely!
Help me understand why gaming on a PC that costs $3000-$4000 makes more sense than gaming on a $200 console?
To the topic, I can see if you want to game on an airplane you would need a laptop or some console that doesn't exist today, but isn't a great deal of excitement in games these days all about interconnected gaming with the First Person Shooters?
Will the PS3 and other next-generation offerings from console makes finally spell an end to PC Gaming?
I could never understand why people spent upwards of $3,000-$4,000 on a PC when they could buy a $200 console, all the acessories, and a big screen for far less.
Am I missing something that makes a PC more atractive than a PS3 with a fast graphics card, HD, and braodband connection?
Working for one of the nation's largest banks, I held the title "business analyst". My team needed to implement a custom client/server application within a 700 person processing division.
Because I was not under the IT umbrella, I was not authorized to install or use "development tools" on my work PC. Interesting as I had been promoted to my position from within the technical training group where we certified all bank programmers before they could develop bank systems for production.
Realizing It would take about 4 years to get our project on the IT schedule, and outsourcing dollars did not exist, we turned to the only applications deployed on our PCs: the MS Office suite.
Using Excel and our knowledge of n-tier architectures, a colleague and I used some excel spreadsheets as a DBMS, while others functioned as the presentation layer, and our business rules were coded in VB of Applications macros (this is a sub-set of the oh-so-robust Visual Basic language specifically for MS Office).
This was horrible work and mind numbing to try to figure out how to push Excel and the VBA scripting language to its limits. Worse still, I became one of those people who buys a "Using MS Excel" book at Barnes and Noble in hopes of getting some documentation on VBA.
The thing worked great, though scalability was aweful, and in the end, IT promoted the other guy to a "systems analyst" position while I left the bank for a dot-com (oops...but that's another story).
I am sorry, but broadband in the household is not like FDR's Public Works Proejcts of the 1930's. Roosevelt used such initiatives to give work to those hammered by the Great Depression while simultaneously modernizing the US infrastructure - electricity for rural communities and the like.
I agree people should have broadband, but Bush needs to let ECONOMICS drive that, not legislation. When demand is high enough, providers will answer. Until then, there are plenty of other issues our government needs to take a look at.
Interesting that when I vistied buymusic.com on my Mac with Safari (go to preferences -> Advanced -> uncheck JavaScript) I saw a few Buymusic.com exclusives.
Of the FOUR exclusives they have, one is titled "All down hill from here".
Apple doesn't want just any joe schmoe with a smelly t-shirt selling songs for the iPod because Apple wants to maintain a level of quality with the entire user experience, from the purchase of songs on iTMS to the browsing of their songs on iTunes to the uploading and management to the seamless integration between the store and iTunes.
No one goes t-shirt sniffing when an indy movie house places a G5 order.
Apple wants to make money. What does Apple care if "smelly t-shirt" guy wants to sell music encoded to only be playable on an apple product?
What if Apple not only licensed the DRM, (= more music = more iPods = more $) but also sold it in bundled with Xserve technology?
Make it so an Indy music producer just has to copy songs to a "publisher" program which encodes and makes available on-line.
They could spec a Xserve Music Server that an Indy music producer could buy (Xserve RAID etc) all pre-configured and easily managed (even sell remote management support so Apple supports the thing). They customize the variety of e-Commerce templates and copy music to a program that will encode it and add it to the library.
Now Apple can support Indys AND keep their own music library "clean".
Slashdot Mirror
I would just encourage you to also consider that the architecture of a Mac is different. Apple has a graphical representation of their Advanced PowerPC G5 System Controller (It's #4 in the graphic) which is totally different than the Intel world.
in addition, there are immesurable differences in the productivity of OS X over XP or Linux and, so I may not be considered too much of a zealot, these differences may swing wildly in either direction based on the user's own familiarity with an alternative OS and their own personal learning curve.
You used the words "invest" whcih are good words to use when talking about an Apple product. My 400 Mhz Powerbook G4 is totally viable running Panther, even though it came with OS 9 preloaded.
And prices are coming down. Even a hundred bucks here or there is significant:
Checkout the $800 eMac (1.25Ghz G4 and 17" screen), or the new 12" Powerbook ($1600). For that same $1600, you can also get into the G5 lineup.
12.1" iBook G4 @ 1.0GHz, 256MB RAM, Combo Drive. $1099
14.1" iBook G4 @ 1.0GHz, 256MB RAM, Combo Drive. $1299
14.1" iBook G4 @ 1.2GHz, 256MB RAM, Combo Drive. $1499
12.1" PowerBook G4 @ 1.33GHz, 256MB RAM, Combo drive. $1599
12.1" PowerBook G4 @ 1.33GHz, 256MB RAM, SuperDrive. $1799
15.2" PowerBook G4 @ 1.33GHz, 256MB RAM, Combo Drive. $1999
15.2" PowerBook G4 @ 1.5GHz, 512MB RAM, SuperDrive. $2499
17" PowerBook G4 @ 1.5GHz, 512MB RAM, SuperDrive. $2799
ibook press release
powerbook press release
But I don't have any mod points :(
I highly encourage anyone who needs alaughtot checkout the 419 eater website referenced in the news clip.
They got this scammer to pose with a loaf of bread on his head and mail them a photo!
And this scammer actually spent $21.50 to mail this guy a $20 USD bill!
Just browse the trophy room and then read teh entire message.
If you RTFA, you will note the dock manages all the connections:
connected the iPod mini to my Pioneer car stereo using the CD-RB10 adapter, which connects to the L+R audio output RCAs from the iPod mini using the line-out from the Belkin car charger. I added two extra cigarette lighter adapters to plug in the car charger and the LEDs. Everything was nicely hidden below the center console.
You're just making it worse for yourself, amichalo. With each post you look more and more foolish. It's obvious that deep down you know you overspent for an underpowered computer, and no amount of unsupported assertions about how OSX is "so much better" than anything else or bad "M$ Windoze" jokes is going to make that feeling go away
For what it is worth, I did not post the "eat a dick" comment. I can see how it looks like it would be me, being that it was anonymous and I am not posting anonymously. At any rate, I had nothing to do with that and don't know who did. Perhaps someone else is on Slashdot besides you and me.
As for your observations about my self esteme, you are simply trying to start a flame.
Find one post I have ever made with a slang reference to MS or Windows.
+ Virus free. Check.
You're on crack
The statement was that it was a bargain Mac, not a bargain piece of hardware.
I fully disagree that one can simply exclude the cachet of Mac/OS X ownership and the benefits of such by saying "well it comes with XP so that is the same".
That is exactly what is NOT the same. Otherwise, why would people buy Macs, because the cases look cool?
If you want a game machine, buy a PS2
If you want to run some special windows only app, buy Virtual PC for OS X
If you want to get work done in an efficient, user friendly, secure, stable, virus-free, low stress manner, buy a Mac
'e' stands for 'education'.
Apple released the eMac as a more durable, less expensive alternative to the LCD iMac. Schools wanted it.
Dell Dimension 2400...sixhundred seventy-nine dollars....
Dell Dimension 4600...nine hundred ninty eight dollars....
Saving a buck of two for an inferrior user experience....priceless
There are somethings money can't buy....for everything else, there's Microsoft.
Please enjoy your windows boxes. We'll see you on the flip side when you finally give OS X a try.
I am by no means rich, but in the grand scheme of things, a few hundred bucks to buy a system that WORKS SO MUCH BETTER THAN WINDOWS XP is worth it to me.
The hardware specs aren't what makes the difference man, it's the SOFTWARE. OS X is the best of UNIX under a fantastic GUI.
My comment was this is a bargain Mac.
Did the Windows box come with:
- combo drive (DVD R, CD RW)
- wireless and bluetooth support
- Photo, movie, dvd, and music editing software (iLife)
- Jaguar
- the cache of owning a mac?
What a rip off Apple, no one is ever gonna buy the 40 GB iPod now - not when for just $300 more they can get a 40 GB music player with a combo drive, airport extreme & bluetooth support, and a 17" CRT for viewing cover art and playlists.
Plus it comes with Garageband and iTMS BUILT IN!!!
Anyone know this machine with the 1.25 GHz G4 processor fares against the new Intel 3.2Ghz processor with 1Gb RAM?
The 1.25Ghz G4 fares extremely well - It costs a lot less!
While the P4 3.2 costs between $300 and $400 just fo rthe chip, this $800 unit includes the 1.25 G4, Combo drive, 40GB hd, 256K Ram, CRT built in custom housing, video, networking, USB 2, Firewire800, Airport Extreme upgrade path, Bluetooth upgrade path, OS X Jaguar, iLife (Garageband, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, iTunes) and the cache of owning an Apple.
You can check out this review of the 1.25 Ghz G4 when it first came out and this review of the P4 3.2Ghz vs. an Athlon
For under $800 this Mac is a bargain for potential "switchers". It is a Jaguar system for those who don't want to invest in a $2,000+ G5 setup to give the Mac a try.
When I wanted to try out OS X, I did so with a $1800 Powerbook Ti G4 at 400Mhz, 256k RAM, 20GB HD, and a CD/DVD reader. I found that system well equiped to flex the power of then OS 10.1. Panther and Jaguar are both responsive on my 400Mhz PB and I can only imagine that on the $800 eMac, especially if the 256k is upgraded, it would be a great low cost Mac.
This eMac system is well equiped for experimenting with iMovie, iPhoto, iTunesMusicStore, and GarageBand - all which come with it. For just $200 more you get a DVD burning SuperDrive and twice the drive space.
But like I say, for $800, this is a great system for those who don't want to make the investment in a G5 inorder to give OS X a try.
From the photos, this looks just like an Apple Pro Keyboard without the Apple symbol on the COMMAND keys.
How am I supposed to make a buying decision?
If the difference is in the engineering, perhaps they need to show some examples of this premium key switch versus some others. I need a way of understanding what the heck is so great about this keyboard.
I would most easy part with my money if they produced a "dust free" keyboard. Don't look too closely!
Help me understand why gaming on a PC that costs $3000-$4000 makes more sense than gaming on a $200 console?
To the topic, I can see if you want to game on an airplane you would need a laptop or some console that doesn't exist today, but isn't a great deal of excitement in games these days all about interconnected gaming with the First Person Shooters?
Will the PS3 and other next-generation offerings from console makes finally spell an end to PC Gaming?
I could never understand why people spent upwards of $3,000-$4,000 on a PC when they could buy a $200 console, all the acessories, and a big screen for far less.
Am I missing something that makes a PC more atractive than a PS3 with a fast graphics card, HD, and braodband connection?
Working for one of the nation's largest banks, I held the title "business analyst". My team needed to implement a custom client/server application within a 700 person processing division.
Because I was not under the IT umbrella, I was not authorized to install or use "development tools" on my work PC. Interesting as I had been promoted to my position from within the technical training group where we certified all bank programmers before they could develop bank systems for production.
Realizing It would take about 4 years to get our project on the IT schedule, and outsourcing dollars did not exist, we turned to the only applications deployed on our PCs: the MS Office suite.
Using Excel and our knowledge of n-tier architectures, a colleague and I used some excel spreadsheets as a DBMS, while others functioned as the presentation layer, and our business rules were coded in VB of Applications macros (this is a sub-set of the oh-so-robust Visual Basic language specifically for MS Office).
This was horrible work and mind numbing to try to figure out how to push Excel and the VBA scripting language to its limits. Worse still, I became one of those people who buys a "Using MS Excel" book at Barnes and Noble in hopes of getting some documentation on VBA.
The thing worked great, though scalability was aweful, and in the end, IT promoted the other guy to a "systems analyst" position while I left the bank for a dot-com (oops...but that's another story).
I am sorry, but broadband in the household is not like FDR's Public Works Proejcts of the 1930's. Roosevelt used such initiatives to give work to those hammered by the Great Depression while simultaneously modernizing the US infrastructure - electricity for rural communities and the like.
I agree people should have broadband, but Bush needs to let ECONOMICS drive that, not legislation. When demand is high enough, providers will answer. Until then, there are plenty of other issues our government needs to take a look at.
Here's a hint, turn your head East.
Interesting that when I vistied buymusic.com on my Mac with Safari (go to preferences -> Advanced -> uncheck JavaScript) I saw a few Buymusic.com exclusives.
Of the FOUR exclusives they have, one is titled "All down hill from here".
This reminds me of some of the song titles Apple had posted in their press releases for hitting certail sales numbers:
10 millionth - Complicated
25 Millionth - Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!
50 Millionth - Path of Thorns
That's a load a crap:
Apple doesn't want just any joe schmoe with a smelly t-shirt selling songs for the iPod because Apple wants to maintain a level of quality with the entire user experience, from the purchase of songs on iTMS to the browsing of their songs on iTunes to the uploading and management to the seamless integration between the store and iTunes.
No one goes t-shirt sniffing when an indy movie house places a G5 order.
Apple wants to make money. What does Apple care if "smelly t-shirt" guy wants to sell music encoded to only be playable on an apple product?
See my post on indy music and the Xserve
What if Apple not only licensed the DRM, (= more music = more iPods = more $) but also sold it in bundled with Xserve technology?
Make it so an Indy music producer just has to copy songs to a "publisher" program which encodes and makes available on-line.
They could spec a Xserve Music Server that an Indy music producer could buy (Xserve RAID etc) all pre-configured and easily managed (even sell remote management support so Apple supports the thing). They customize the variety of e-Commerce templates and copy music to a program that will encode it and add it to the library.
Now Apple can support Indys AND keep their own music library "clean".