But how much does it cost to get OS X for the Dell? Don't forget to add $40 for Norton Antivirus and time lost doing software updates. Yes, there's software update for the Mac too. Three so far this year... but I just booted my PC for the first time since Christmas and I had over 30 "critical updates" waiting for me.
So for $499 you get an entire solution as an embedded computer; developer tools, OS, and hardware.
For $249 I get a PC to do the development on.
For another $250 I get a flash-booted Soekris box the size of a paperback book to use as the embedded system itself. And I don't have to reboot to test it.
The second system costs me another $250. Your second system costs you another $250.
Your proposed solution would be to develop on a $200 Intel PC for a $80 PowerPC solution.
So?
If the code you write cares if it's running on a Power PC, a 486, a Pentium, or an ARM... you need to get some practice writing portable software. I've written code that's run on everything from the Cosmac 1802 to the DEC Alpha. The first few ports (mostly PDP-11 to VAX) were rough, but after a while you get the hang of it. I've developed software on the PDP-11 that's run without just a recompile on the 1802, 8080, and 6502. I've got software in production now that was written on the 8086 and ported to the 286, 386, Sparc, Alpha, and now Itanium. Again, almost all that was just a recompile... the biggest problem was the Alpha. You're not going to be going from 16 bit to 64 bit here, just from 32 to 32. No problem, mate, or it shouldn't be.
Apart from being free (as in speech), just what do NetBSD and Yellow Dog Linux have that the pre-installed software doesn't have?
A more reliable file system (HFS+ is way behind Berkeley FFS... the only time in a quarter of a century that I have had a UNIX file system corrupted so badly that I couldn't even repair it from single-user mode was when the "diskadd" script on a SCO UNIX box started formatting drive 0 (that it was booted off) instead of drive 1 (the new disk). And even then I was able to save everything to tape just using the ratty remains of the file system before that final reboot.
Which brings me to the next point. OS X does not provide standard UNIX tape support. You can't backup using dump or AMANDA or any other standard UNIX tape tools, you have to fork out money to Dantz for Retrospect. That's just messed up.
But I sure as hell wouldn't buy a Mac mini to run Linux on to get around these problems. A small form factor PC with a tape drive installed would probably come out cheaper than a whole Mac Mini. It's what I do, I don't trust data on HFS+ and I dump over the net to an old DLT on an old cheap PC running FreeBSD.
Dude, the article was about people buying Mac Minis to run Linux on. There's no non-geeks in sight. That's not "another debate altogether", it's exactly the debate right here right now.
No DVD player in the Dell, nor FireWire, nor a modem, nor a stack of bundled software, [...]
The software is the key. No matter how much you spend on a Dell or HP you'll never get OS X. Let alone the stuff that runs on it...
But the article was about people buying the Mac Mini to run Linux or BSD on. And that's just looneytunes. Once you set the software aside you can get way better for less.
Laptop technology, which is what the Mini uses, is more expensive.
If I was going to run free UNIX on it... I can buy a refurb Thinkpad T23 with matching specs to the Mini for about the same price. Best laptop keyboard in the world. Decent screen. Faster processor, even after you adjust for the megahertz myth. More versions of Linux and BSD available for it. For a little more I can get 1400x1050 resolution... that's better than the 17" powerbook... in a 14" screen.
But it won't run OS X. And that's the bottom line.
If you're looking for a Linux box, you can walk into Frys and match it spec-for-spec for half the price.
But I wouldn't call a Dell anything "cheap". I mean, no matter what else you get, at the end of the day you've got a Dell. Never buy a computer from a company that rhymes with "Hell".
Crossover cable and matching IP addresses, then wake up the daemons.
I'd recommend getting a cheap 10/100 switch and a couple of straight cables instead, just so you can add more stuff later. If you have cable/DSL, I just got a wireless-G access point + 4-port switch + firewall router for $30 at Frys... it's the easiest way to go (just don't forget to lock fown the WiFi or you'll be open to wardrivers).
For example, a long time I ago I stopped buying music instead of the very rare CD because I already had a sizable collection. Then, due to MP3's and music sharing I was exposed to more music and old music I had enjoyed, but never got. Because of that my CD purchasing has more then doubled!
For me it was iTunes and the iPod Shuffle. WIth iTunes I've been able to set up smart playlists that churn my music library... with party shuffle pulling out of a playlist that contains songs I haven't listened to in a day (if they're five stars) down to six weeks (if they're 2 stars) I'll eventually hear everything, and stuff I like more often.
So I stick music in there and let it show up as much as I like... and then go to iTMS and buy more songe by the same artists, or go to Amazon if they're not in iTMS.
And with the same playlist feeding my iPod Shuffle, but sorted by "least often played", I hear more music more often... and when it comes up on the shuffle I know it's gonna come up pretty soon in iTunes... when I'll be online, and I can hit the stores.
I've bought more music in the past year than I've bought in the decade before. In my case, you can't credit P2P directly... I don't use P2P networks... but I pay attention to recommendations and people send me stuff and of course there's always 3hive... but I can't believe I'me some paragon of copyright virtue, it seems like there must be other people doing the same kind of thing, yes?
The only downside is my playlist is so esoteric I've never gotten any recommendations from Audioscrobbler... apparently there's noobody with a close enough match for them to pick from.
It's about the simple fact that if the producer of a good chooses to place certain terms and conditions on the consumer's use of that good, the consumer is morally obligated to abide by all those terms (whatever they may be) or refrain from using the product altogether.
I don't recall seeing that one in the Constitution, the Bible, the Federalist Papers or Dask Kapital, or any of the other moral and ethical frameworks that people have come up with...
You mean I gotta quit overclocking, and take the extra unsupported RAM out of my daughter's iMac, and leave my copy of "Steal This Book" out so someone can steal it...? Damn.
There is a moral issue there, but it's got nothing to do with obeying the terms of a contract you probably haven't read and certainly never signed, and everything to do with supporting the artists... and corrupt and inefficient as the label system is it's the only channel between most people and their favorite artists. Oh, you can talk about downloading the works and sending a few bucks to the singers and songwriters, but people who can't be bothered to turn in rebate forms can't be expected to do that...
A lot of people already hate the way they sound on the phone, and could pick a better voice to represent them... dibs on Robin Williams! Alternatively, you could vocode your boss's voice into Frank Welker's or Gilbert Gottfreid's.
Now ask youself, how a company shipping millions of dollars a year, is going to stay at the top of the heap by having a huge percentage of those things coming back?
There's all kinds of shit in the world, it's not all explosive diarrhea. Sometimes you'll eat shit and you know it right away, but not always. There's the kind that lies in wait, delayed action shit, that you can't smell until you've had the machine for a year or two... until something goes wrong and you have to fix it... until you want to expand it, because your needs have changed... whatever.
We had an IT manager who was really fond of Dells, for a while. Lucky for us she was also responsible for fixing them, and had the class to come and tell me I was right about them all along. "Never buy a computer from a company whose name rhymes with Hell", I said, "Dell, Packard Bell, Gateway"... "Gateway doesn't rhyme with Hell", she pointed out. "Just wait", I said, "You'd be amazed what it rhymes with when you get going..."
Re:If Dell does AMD, nVidia will be pissed...
on
Dell Might do AMD
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· Score: 1
Dell can use AMD in high-end gaming systems as well as anyone else.
Well, yes, they could, but they don't. That's why we're discussing the possibility of Dell shipping AMD on slashdot to begin with.
Which brings us back to nVidia's new chipset. The only reason I can think of for nVidia to bother supporting SLI on P4 is because Dell only ships Intel and they're the biggest computer manufacturer in the world. If they start building AMD-based gamer boxes, there goes the market for nForce 4 for P4.
I've a friend who likes to test mainboards, he uses several combinations of PCI cards filling all the PCI slots with expensive SCSI cards, etc
Tell me, exactly how many gamers (the computer industry's equivalent of "audiophiles", except they're the biggest part of the performance market instead of being a profitable niche for boutique manufacturers) are going to "fill all the PCI slots with expensive SCSI cards, etc", compared to the number that will go "SLI! l33t!".
Re:If Dell does AMD, nVidia will be pissed...
on
Dell Might do AMD
·
· Score: 1
You don't get to be the #1 computer vendor of all time by selling shit.
Nice theory. Pity that so many companies from Commodore (#1 personal computer manufacturer with the Commodore-64), Radio Shack (TRS-80 outsold Apples for years), through Gateway and Dell have proven that most people can't tell a hawk from a handsaw and buy the cheapest shit they can instead of paying extra for quality.
You get to be the #1 personal computer manufacturer by selling the cheapest boxes, whether they're shit or not is more or less irrelevant.
With intel, I can buy a motherboard with a intel or serverworks chipsets, which is not exactly the same than a VIA/Nvidia shitty chipset that people uses with AMDs.
You're obviously not a gamer.
If Dell does AMD, nVidia will be pissed...
on
Dell Might do AMD
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I mean, nVidia just did this new P4 chipset to let you pull their dual-GPU trick on Intel, and since all the hardcore gamers use Athlon-64 about the only market for this chipset is Dell. If Dell starts shipping AMD there goes the market...
They aparrently did invent a machine and patent it, or at least the crimping operation the machine performed, then tried to expand the patent to the general idea of performing the crimping operation... and the patent office did its job for once and rejected it.
This is like the guy who patented some kind of tabs to stick a screen protector to a curved screen, then went back and slipped in an amended patent on any kind of screen protector after the Palm Pilot and Palm Pilot screen protectors started showing up on the market... then around sending nastygrams to everyone who was selling any kind of screen protectors... and a lot of people apparently paid up.
You gotta wonder how many people just pay and we never hear about it. I'm glad the USPTO caught this one, it's a pity they don't pay this kind of attention more often...
Slashdot Mirror
But how much does it cost to get OS X for the Dell? Don't forget to add $40 for Norton Antivirus and time lost doing software updates. Yes, there's software update for the Mac too. Three so far this year... but I just booted my PC for the first time since Christmas and I had over 30 "critical updates" waiting for me.
As someone else noted, the Russians made it further.
That one went down 12 km. Or is this just effectively deeper because it's being drilled through the ocean floor?
And OS X can run a lot of BSD stuff without too much work.
Yeh, it's a checkbox in the installer.
So for $499 you get an entire solution as an embedded computer; developer tools, OS, and hardware.
For $249 I get a PC to do the development on.
For another $250 I get a flash-booted Soekris box the size of a paperback book to use as the embedded system itself. And I don't have to reboot to test it.
The second system costs me another $250. Your second system costs you another $250.
Your proposed solution would be to develop on a $200 Intel PC for a $80 PowerPC solution.
So?
If the code you write cares if it's running on a Power PC, a 486, a Pentium, or an ARM... you need to get some practice writing portable software. I've written code that's run on everything from the Cosmac 1802 to the DEC Alpha. The first few ports (mostly PDP-11 to VAX) were rough, but after a while you get the hang of it. I've developed software on the PDP-11 that's run without just a recompile on the 1802, 8080, and 6502. I've got software in production now that was written on the 8086 and ported to the 286, 386, Sparc, Alpha, and now Itanium. Again, almost all that was just a recompile... the biggest problem was the Alpha. You're not going to be going from 16 bit to 64 bit here, just from 32 to 32. No problem, mate, or it shouldn't be.
Apart from being free (as in speech), just what do NetBSD and Yellow Dog Linux have that the pre-installed software doesn't have?
A more reliable file system (HFS+ is way behind Berkeley FFS... the only time in a quarter of a century that I have had a UNIX file system corrupted so badly that I couldn't even repair it from single-user mode was when the "diskadd" script on a SCO UNIX box started formatting drive 0 (that it was booted off) instead of drive 1 (the new disk). And even then I was able to save everything to tape just using the ratty remains of the file system before that final reboot.
Which brings me to the next point. OS X does not provide standard UNIX tape support. You can't backup using dump or AMANDA or any other standard UNIX tape tools, you have to fork out money to Dantz for Retrospect. That's just messed up.
But I sure as hell wouldn't buy a Mac mini to run Linux on to get around these problems. A small form factor PC with a tape drive installed would probably come out cheaper than a whole Mac Mini. It's what I do, I don't trust data on HFS+ and I dump over the net to an old DLT on an old cheap PC running FreeBSD.
Now, for the non-geeks
Dude, the article was about people buying Mac Minis to run Linux on. There's no non-geeks in sight. That's not "another debate altogether", it's exactly the debate right here right now.
No DVD player in the Dell, nor FireWire, nor a modem, nor a stack of bundled software, [...]
The software is the key. No matter how much you spend on a Dell or HP you'll never get OS X. Let alone the stuff that runs on it...
But the article was about people buying the Mac Mini to run Linux or BSD on. And that's just looneytunes. Once you set the software aside you can get way better for less.
Laptop technology, which is what the Mini uses, is more expensive.
If I was going to run free UNIX on it... I can buy a refurb Thinkpad T23 with matching specs to the Mini for about the same price. Best laptop keyboard in the world. Decent screen. Faster processor, even after you adjust for the megahertz myth. More versions of Linux and BSD available for it. For a little more I can get 1400x1050 resolution... that's better than the 17" powerbook... in a 14" screen.
But it won't run OS X. And that's the bottom line.
Half-right...
If you're looking for a Mac, the price is great.
If you're looking for a Linux box, you can walk into Frys and match it spec-for-spec for half the price.
But I wouldn't call a Dell anything "cheap". I mean, no matter what else you get, at the end of the day you've got a Dell. Never buy a computer from a company that rhymes with "Hell".
Crossover cable and matching IP addresses, then wake up the daemons.
I'd recommend getting a cheap 10/100 switch and a couple of straight cables instead, just so you can add more stuff later. If you have cable/DSL, I just got a wireless-G access point + 4-port switch + firewall router for $30 at Frys... it's the easiest way to go (just don't forget to lock fown the WiFi or you'll be open to wardrivers).
Damn, you got the good one.
drinkypoo: There's no reason for nVidia to support intel.
drinkypoo: I think a more likely reason is that nVidia wants to get their slice of the Pentium pie.
Will the real drinkypoo please stand up?
For example, a long time I ago I stopped buying music instead of the very rare CD because I already had a sizable collection. Then, due to MP3's and music sharing I was exposed to more music and old music I had enjoyed, but never got. Because of that my CD purchasing has more then doubled!
For me it was iTunes and the iPod Shuffle. WIth iTunes I've been able to set up smart playlists that churn my music library... with party shuffle pulling out of a playlist that contains songs I haven't listened to in a day (if they're five stars) down to six weeks (if they're 2 stars) I'll eventually hear everything, and stuff I like more often.
So I stick music in there and let it show up as much as I like... and then go to iTMS and buy more songe by the same artists, or go to Amazon if they're not in iTMS.
And with the same playlist feeding my iPod Shuffle, but sorted by "least often played", I hear more music more often... and when it comes up on the shuffle I know it's gonna come up pretty soon in iTunes... when I'll be online, and I can hit the stores.
I've bought more music in the past year than I've bought in the decade before. In my case, you can't credit P2P directly... I don't use P2P networks... but I pay attention to recommendations and people send me stuff and of course there's always 3hive... but I can't believe I'me some paragon of copyright virtue, it seems like there must be other people doing the same kind of thing, yes?
The only downside is my playlist is so esoteric I've never gotten any recommendations from Audioscrobbler... apparently there's noobody with a close enough match for them to pick from.
It's about the simple fact that if the producer of a good chooses to place certain terms and conditions on the consumer's use of that good, the consumer is morally obligated to abide by all those terms (whatever they may be) or refrain from using the product altogether.
I don't recall seeing that one in the Constitution, the Bible, the Federalist Papers or Dask Kapital, or any of the other moral and ethical frameworks that people have come up with...
You mean I gotta quit overclocking, and take the extra unsupported RAM out of my daughter's iMac, and leave my copy of "Steal This Book" out so someone can steal it...? Damn.
There is a moral issue there, but it's got nothing to do with obeying the terms of a contract you probably haven't read and certainly never signed, and everything to do with supporting the artists... and corrupt and inefficient as the label system is it's the only channel between most people and their favorite artists. Oh, you can talk about downloading the works and sending a few bucks to the singers and songwriters, but people who can't be bothered to turn in rebate forms can't be expected to do that...
But you'd look like a lunatic walking around moving your mouth but not talking?
People talking on handsfree cells already look like that.
A lot of people already hate the way they sound on the phone, and could pick a better voice to represent them... dibs on Robin Williams! Alternatively, you could vocode your boss's voice into Frank Welker's or Gilbert Gottfreid's.
I think what DELL needs to do is start a second in-house "brand" just to build and market AMD based solutions.
Maybe they can buy what's left of HP?
Now ask youself, how a company shipping millions of dollars a year, is going to stay at the top of the heap by having a huge percentage of those things coming back?
There's all kinds of shit in the world, it's not all explosive diarrhea. Sometimes you'll eat shit and you know it right away, but not always. There's the kind that lies in wait, delayed action shit, that you can't smell until you've had the machine for a year or two... until something goes wrong and you have to fix it... until you want to expand it, because your needs have changed... whatever.
We had an IT manager who was really fond of Dells, for a while. Lucky for us she was also responsible for fixing them, and had the class to come and tell me I was right about them all along. "Never buy a computer from a company whose name rhymes with Hell", I said, "Dell, Packard Bell, Gateway"... "Gateway doesn't rhyme with Hell", she pointed out. "Just wait", I said, "You'd be amazed what it rhymes with when you get going..."
Dell can use AMD in high-end gaming systems as well as anyone else.
Well, yes, they could, but they don't. That's why we're discussing the possibility of Dell shipping AMD on slashdot to begin with.
Which brings us back to nVidia's new chipset. The only reason I can think of for nVidia to bother supporting SLI on P4 is because Dell only ships Intel and they're the biggest computer manufacturer in the world. If they start building AMD-based gamer boxes, there goes the market for nForce 4 for P4.
I've a friend who likes to test mainboards, he uses several combinations of PCI cards filling all the PCI slots with expensive SCSI cards, etc
Tell me, exactly how many gamers (the computer industry's equivalent of "audiophiles", except they're the biggest part of the performance market instead of being a profitable niche for boutique manufacturers) are going to "fill all the PCI slots with expensive SCSI cards, etc", compared to the number that will go "SLI! l33t!".
There's no reason for nVidia to support intel.
Dell's money spends as well as anyone else's.
You don't get to be the #1 computer vendor of all time by selling shit.
Nice theory. Pity that so many companies from Commodore (#1 personal computer manufacturer with the Commodore-64), Radio Shack (TRS-80 outsold Apples for years), through Gateway and Dell have proven that most people can't tell a hawk from a handsaw and buy the cheapest shit they can instead of paying extra for quality.
You get to be the #1 personal computer manufacturer by selling the cheapest boxes, whether they're shit or not is more or less irrelevant.
With intel, I can buy a motherboard with a intel or serverworks chipsets, which is not exactly the same than a VIA/Nvidia shitty chipset that people uses with AMDs.
You're obviously not a gamer.
I mean, nVidia just did this new P4 chipset to let you pull their dual-GPU trick on Intel, and since all the hardcore gamers use Athlon-64 about the only market for this chipset is Dell. If Dell starts shipping AMD there goes the market...
They aparrently did invent a machine and patent it, or at least the crimping operation the machine performed, then tried to expand the patent to the general idea of performing the crimping operation... and the patent office did its job for once and rejected it.
This is like the guy who patented some kind of tabs to stick a screen protector to a curved screen, then went back and slipped in an amended patent on any kind of screen protector after the Palm Pilot and Palm Pilot screen protectors started showing up on the market... then around sending nastygrams to everyone who was selling any kind of screen protectors... and a lot of people apparently paid up.
You gotta wonder how many people just pay and we never hear about it. I'm glad the USPTO caught this one, it's a pity they don't pay this kind of attention more often...