but do you think the world is going to be a better and more stable world if the USA are the only ones who have such compute (and other) power?
What gave you that idea? I would love for everybody to have the same access to knowledge and the same access to the opportunity to contribute and move humanity forward.
So, looking at this, I am wondering if the federal constraints on computer exports are still in place? This Apple supercluster shows that just about anyone now could afford to build a supercomputer giving smaller countries access to compute cycles never before dreamed of for relatively few $$'s
At issue in part is Microsoft's refusal to support Hebrew in Mac versions of Office.
This is particularly important because the font handling in OS X is beautiful with native support of Hebrew making implementation issues for Microsoft trivial.
Why not simply name a product for what it is instead of spending all those dollars to come up with lame names? Although I suppose that is the American way. Come up with some snazzy flash to sell a product based upon image rather than functionality.
Personally I like product names that mean something like Apple Powermac G5 2.0 Ghz. That is descriptive, says who built it, something about what is inside and how powerful just like Porsche 911 Turbo 3.6. Again, who made it, what it is, and some idea of how powerful.
Of course Apple gave them a little bit of a deal on these systems, but on the whole, the bid process was made based upon who gave them the best deal. Apple won out in the free market making this supercomputer cluster one of the most inexpensive supercomputers in the world. Imagine it, we have ASCII blue, ASCII red and ASCII white guarded by guys with guns, and here we have a tech school that appears like they are going to enter the 500 list at potentially number 2. Cool.
I am sure there are large number of cases such as these. It would be facsinating to provide a solution to this as many of these photos deteriorate over time. It seems to me that this is an ideal opportunity for some large corporation with ties to databases, information management or storage to provide a repository for images that people would like to scan in and submit so that these images are not lost to history. It would be great advertising and a good way to develop tools for the management of such resources.
I have been thinking actually of hosting many of these images on one of my servers when I get the time to see if anyone can fill in the history of some of my photos. Sort of like opensouce history. Yes?
So, the posting of photographic archives like this are crucial to historians and historical research. It is absolutely amazing how much information can be gleaned from photographs in terms of street names, individuals, automobile license plates etc... that enable one to pull out the history from bits of information surrounding the subject in photographs. Recently, I was given access to an archive of photos from my late grandfather who was in the OSS, and I am absolutely amazed at the amount of history in these photos. There are images of the meeting with Stalin, Rosevelt and Churchill, images of partisans stringing up Musolini, images of streets and individuals that I would absolutely love to spend time investigating, perhaps even getting another Ph.D. thesis out of it.
see the above comments where a person who submitted to this journal said it cost the submitter $1500 to process his submission. while this is alot of money, i think it's worth the price to maintain ownership of your work.
I too believe that $1500 is a relatively small amount of money to maintain not only ownership of your work, but also ensuring that your work will continue to be available. My comment related to costs however was directed more towards actual printing costs associated with making color plates and press charges.
I should also note that for those publishing in the vision community, Molvis, the journal referenced in the parent post is an excellent peer reviewed online journal, and has no publication costs.
This is good news and I welcome the opportunity to publish in a peer reviewed journal free and open to the public. I should also mention however that the other big advantage of printing in online journals is that you have no publication costs related to color print charges and such. Right now I am preparing a manuscript that would end up costing many thousands of dollars to publish in traditional journals because of all the color charges related to publishing an atlas type of paper.
Also, check out one of the original online peer reviewed journals, Molvis.
Who, these days, buys a $900 computer,..... so a $900+ computer is ridiculous.
Every computer I purchase is an investment. They are purchased to enable me to get maximum work done and stay out of my way while doing it. Because of the computationally intensive nature of my work, I require dual CPU's (or better), a *NIX based OS for multi-threading and multi-tasking, multiple fast hard drives, awesome reliability, built in Firewire 400 and 800 for backups of large multi-gigabyte data files, security, built in DVD burners for distribution and archiving of data, built in support for multiple monitors (lots of data means lots of desktop real estate) etc...etc...etc...
This all means that a $900 computer will not cut it, regardless of manufacturer. For my needs at the high end, OS X powered Macs are the best solution. For many folks needs at the consumer level, iMacs or eMacs are the best solution, and in fact, you might even be surprised at how effective even the cheapest OS X solution is. I have a old G3 iMac that cost me $650 serving up web-pages to the tune of 35,000 hits/day.
Features like software (iTunes, iSync, iCal, iChat, Safari, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, Quicktime etc...etc...etc...) Hardware/software integration that provides a true plug and play experience so you don't have to deal with the damned "Hardware Wizard" from Microsoft whenever you plug in a firewire hard drive or something like that. With OS X, you never get "I see you are trying to add a new hardware device". Rather, you plug the device in and it simply works.
Also, the hardware feature set among many Macs is far and away pretty impressive. The 12in Powerbook I have has built in Firewire, built in wireless antennas for 802.11g, built in USB, built in ethernet, built in slot loading Superdrive allowing me to burn DVD's, built in support for multiple monitors etc..etc...etc... all in a compact package less than 4lbs with good battery life.
With Apple, you also get thoughtful and well researched design that is completely lacking in the Wintel arena. For instance, the last Wintel laptop I had was a joke compared to this in that the manufacturer placed the fan outlet on the bottom!!!! of the case so that if you were using the laptop on your lap, you blocked the fan output of the laptop thus causing it to overheat. Smart, eh? Or look at the design of the dual G5's. This thing is quiet, fast and easy to work with when adding hardware, and one of the most innovative case designs I have ever seen.
The fact is there are really no alternatives for most people.
B.S. Sorry to be so abrupt and crude, but this is simply not correct. There are many alternatives out there including OS X, various flavors of Linux, etc...etc...etc...
Macs are expensive,
Again, this is a popular misconception. If you are talking the local grey box manufacturer, yeah, you can probably get a $499 PC, but it will not have many of the features that the brand name boxes will have or the software. Generally you get what you pay for and with Apple products, you get a quality product with features that really do make a difference. Also at the high end, Macs often are cheaper to purchase. For instance, the OS X workstation I am typing this on right now was a full $900 cheaper than an equivalently configured Dell box and OS X provides a much more productive environment. In fact, for our lab which historically has been Wintel based, every new computer purchase in the last year and a half has been a Mac. The other thing you should know is that Macs have a lower total cost of ownership, require less maintenance, are more reliable, and make folks more productive.
and it's hard to find a good x86 box with Linux preloaded
This unfortunately in some cases has become true with Dell backing off their Linux push at Microsoft's urging. However, there are other companies out there bundling Linux in.
Until reliable, powerful PC's with alternate OSes and applications suites are easily obtainable,
You got the cash to buy all that swag from mowing lawns!?!
Yep, I pushed that damn mower into some of the swankier parts of the neighborhood and charged $20 per lawn with edging per week or $60 month. I could get about 5 lawns done/day making for $100 every Saturday and I still had time for soccer in the evenings. In 1982, that was not too shabby.
In 1982 that had to have cost a couple grand.
$2782 with the computer, screen, printer and disc drive!
All I needed were 28 Saturdays spread over two years down in Texas with a long growing season. Easily doable for a 10-12 year old.
Is this an unedited version of the transcript? Wow, if so, reading through the transcript, it appears Darl is not a very good spokesman for the company. He completely lost the initiative with the debate, has no real direction with which to respond to questions. On the other hand, not to defend SCO or anything, but the interviewer does things that always piss me off in interviews. Namely interrupting and quickly changing the subject before the interviewed gets a chance to adequately respond.
When Darl says "So, if we turned around and opened this code up, like if I showed you the code, I mean, I've got it right here. ...... I'm not going to show you."
This just show me that he is one of those guys that as a kid went around saying "Betcha can't guess what I'm thinking". Those kids used to get beat up or totally ignored. Hmmmm maybe that is the problem we are having today.
My first computer was purchased after mowing lawns for two summers and was an Apple ][+ with 48k and a 16k language card with a modem and dot matrix printer. It also came with that phosphor green screen. That system in many ways was and still is pretty effective. It was on instantly, had built in BASIC, had color support, introduced me to word processing, programming and spreadsheets (with Visicalc), and maintained a productive lifespan for me from 12 years old until my second undergrad year at college.
Thinking back to the pre-internet computer days, it is interesting to see how many of us got information back and forth and this was just as much a revelation to me as the first modem in my Apple ][+ was. My first online experience was with that same Apple ][+ hacking into phone companies after the ma-bell split up to get long distance codes so I could communicate via term with people all over the world. That was pretty heady stuff for a 12 year old back in 1982. I realize now that was stealing, and I make no excuses, but times *were* different back then and hacking was not malicious (at least not from me). There were lots of BBS's around that you could also go to like the Crystal Caverns, and the Pirates Cove where everybody was talking about stuff like the Beagle Bros. I think that is when I permanently set my circadian rhythm to that of nocturnal preference by dialing in to these services late at night when my parents were either at the lab or going back to school.
My first exposure to what we now call the web was with one of the coolest looking computers ever made, the NeXT cube. I remember thinking that just as when I saw my first GUI on an Apple Lisa, that the "web" was going to change life forever. This was the way that information would be handled, thus making it easy for people to find and access data and learn. Unbelievable, but I would now be completely lost without the Internet. I perform journal research over the web whereas previously one had to go to libraries and look through card catalogues. Remember those? One can now cover so much more information using proper tools on the web in an afternoon that you could previously in an entire week at the library.
So, did we have any idea of the Internet back then? Apple apparently had some idea as they were the first company to include built in networking in their computers, but man. What a trip it has been. I can't wait for the next twenty years when I think back and say, Jeez, that dual 2Ghz G5 was sooooo slow. I could'nt even begin to model whole retinal circuits with that thing or even predict global weather patterns in less than two hours.
So, be sure to watch next year's elections for furry white mice.
So, are you saying the incumbent will be getting a little NR2B gene therapy? (For those Slashdotters who are not neuroscientists, NR2B keeps the NMDA receptor in nervous tissues from desensitizing, apparently making learning in mice easier).
This new Autosar announcement is really a spec for an operating system. The companies pushing it don't want to say that, because that means taking on Microsoft. So they present this as a middleware layer. But it's really an operating system API that provides independence from the underlying OS.
This is important as Microsoft has expressed an interest in automotive control systems. In fact, I recently found out that the iDrive system in BMW 7 series automobiles is Windows CE based. (No wonder I hated that monstrosity so much. Commonly accessed functions are buried several menus deep requiring you to absolutely take your eyes off the road for long periods of time.)
Will this new client allow for platform specific optimizations? For instance, the RC client took advantage of Altivec which allowed for Macs to absolutely dominate the small computer benchmarks in those ranking whereas they did not perform nearly as well in the SETI rankings. And just so the Wintel weenies don't feel left out and flame me, other platform specific optimizations could also be taken advantage of for Pentium specific calls or even SGI specific calls.
Put the flaming torch down for just a second and listen:
Flaming torch?!!? What are you talking about? I said I would be happy to support them, but given that the individuals and companies I deal with are cross-platform, Quickbooks needs to also be truly cross-platform and it is not.
They're showing that companies can actually listen to their customers. Support them and maybe other companies will take notice.
This is great and I would be more than happy to support them after this, but this biggest sticking issue with me and Intuit is the apparent incompatibility with their data formats between the Mac OS and Windows of Quickbooks. What is the deal with that? They say that databases can be transferred "once", but going back and forth is impossible.
He's only published four papers this year,.....When I took physiology in college, we read multiple articles which described hypotheses proved by a single figure in one of MacKinnon's papers.
This is exactly why fewer papers published/year can be just as important if not more important than many publications/year. If your work tells the whole story and makes lucid arguments that clarify outstanding problems in science, you have contributed greatly while reducing the number of papers people have to read. By doing this, you also reduce the number of papers other folks will write when they break the problem up into multiple papers often over multiple journals.
You are a typical non-thinking individual. Please cease posting, I will stop flaming your obvious lack of intelligence if you do.
Come out from your anonymous coward hiding place and we'll see whose intelligence is lacking. Take ownership and pride in what you say and write. That is, if you have anything worth saying.
An examination of the total cost of ownership has revealed in the past that Macs simply cost less to own. They retain their resale value much better than the equivalent Wintel PC, they cost less to administrate which means lower salary costs, lower benefits costs etc... to the school district. However, the real stickler in many of these issues is that the school IT folks depend on Wintel to maintain their jobs, so I guess the benefits depend upon which perspective you maintain. As a taxpayer however, I want the best return on my investment. Go with the Macs.
Slashdot Mirror
but do you think the world is going to be a better and more stable world if the USA are the only ones who have such compute (and other) power?
What gave you that idea? I would love for everybody to have the same access to knowledge and the same access to the opportunity to contribute and move humanity forward.
So, looking at this, I am wondering if the federal constraints on computer exports are still in place? This Apple supercluster shows that just about anyone now could afford to build a supercomputer giving smaller countries access to compute cycles never before dreamed of for relatively few $$'s
Well, given that S. Jobs just officially anounced iTunes for Windows, stability issues for Napster are moot for all those windows users out there.
At issue in part is Microsoft's refusal to support Hebrew in Mac versions of Office.
This is particularly important because the font handling in OS X is beautiful with native support of Hebrew making implementation issues for Microsoft trivial.
Efficeon, Pentuim, Escalade, Celeron, Infiniband, Duron, etc...etc...etc...
Why not simply name a product for what it is instead of spending all those dollars to come up with lame names? Although I suppose that is the American way. Come up with some snazzy flash to sell a product based upon image rather than functionality.
Personally I like product names that mean something like Apple Powermac G5 2.0 Ghz. That is descriptive, says who built it, something about what is inside and how powerful just like Porsche 911 Turbo 3.6. Again, who made it, what it is, and some idea of how powerful.
Of course Apple gave them a little bit of a deal on these systems, but on the whole, the bid process was made based upon who gave them the best deal. Apple won out in the free market making this supercomputer cluster one of the most inexpensive supercomputers in the world. Imagine it, we have ASCII blue, ASCII red and ASCII white guarded by guys with guns, and here we have a tech school that appears like they are going to enter the 500 list at potentially number 2. Cool.
I am sure there are large number of cases such as these. It would be facsinating to provide a solution to this as many of these photos deteriorate over time. It seems to me that this is an ideal opportunity for some large corporation with ties to databases, information management or storage to provide a repository for images that people would like to scan in and submit so that these images are not lost to history. It would be great advertising and a good way to develop tools for the management of such resources.
I have been thinking actually of hosting many of these images on one of my servers when I get the time to see if anyone can fill in the history of some of my photos. Sort of like opensouce history. Yes?
So, the posting of photographic archives like this are crucial to historians and historical research. It is absolutely amazing how much information can be gleaned from photographs in terms of street names, individuals, automobile license plates etc... that enable one to pull out the history from bits of information surrounding the subject in photographs. Recently, I was given access to an archive of photos from my late grandfather who was in the OSS, and I am absolutely amazed at the amount of history in these photos. There are images of the meeting with Stalin, Rosevelt and Churchill, images of partisans stringing up Musolini, images of streets and individuals that I would absolutely love to spend time investigating, perhaps even getting another Ph.D. thesis out of it.
see the above comments where a person who submitted to this journal said it cost the submitter $1500 to process his submission. while this is alot of money, i think it's worth the price to maintain ownership of your work.
I too believe that $1500 is a relatively small amount of money to maintain not only ownership of your work, but also ensuring that your work will continue to be available. My comment related to costs however was directed more towards actual printing costs associated with making color plates and press charges.
I should also note that for those publishing in the vision community, Molvis, the journal referenced in the parent post is an excellent peer reviewed online journal, and has no publication costs.
This is good news and I welcome the opportunity to publish in a peer reviewed journal free and open to the public. I should also mention however that the other big advantage of printing in online journals is that you have no publication costs related to color print charges and such. Right now I am preparing a manuscript that would end up costing many thousands of dollars to publish in traditional journals because of all the color charges related to publishing an atlas type of paper.
Also, check out one of the original online peer reviewed journals, Molvis.
Who, these days, buys a $900 computer, ..... so a $900+ computer is ridiculous.
Every computer I purchase is an investment. They are purchased to enable me to get maximum work done and stay out of my way while doing it. Because of the computationally intensive nature of my work, I require dual CPU's (or better), a *NIX based OS for multi-threading and multi-tasking, multiple fast hard drives, awesome reliability, built in Firewire 400 and 800 for backups of large multi-gigabyte data files, security, built in DVD burners for distribution and archiving of data, built in support for multiple monitors (lots of data means lots of desktop real estate) etc...etc...etc...
This all means that a $900 computer will not cut it, regardless of manufacturer. For my needs at the high end, OS X powered Macs are the best solution. For many folks needs at the consumer level, iMacs or eMacs are the best solution, and in fact, you might even be surprised at how effective even the cheapest OS X solution is. I have a old G3 iMac that cost me $650 serving up web-pages to the tune of 35,000 hits/day.
Features? Like "software"?
Features like software (iTunes, iSync, iCal, iChat, Safari, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, Quicktime etc...etc...etc...) Hardware/software integration that provides a true plug and play experience so you don't have to deal with the damned "Hardware Wizard" from Microsoft whenever you plug in a firewire hard drive or something like that. With OS X, you never get "I see you are trying to add a new hardware device". Rather, you plug the device in and it simply works.
Also, the hardware feature set among many Macs is far and away pretty impressive. The 12in Powerbook I have has built in Firewire, built in wireless antennas for 802.11g, built in USB, built in ethernet, built in slot loading Superdrive allowing me to burn DVD's, built in support for multiple monitors etc..etc...etc... all in a compact package less than 4lbs with good battery life.
With Apple, you also get thoughtful and well researched design that is completely lacking in the Wintel arena. For instance, the last Wintel laptop I had was a joke compared to this in that the manufacturer placed the fan outlet on the bottom!!!! of the case so that if you were using the laptop on your lap, you blocked the fan output of the laptop thus causing it to overheat. Smart, eh? Or look at the design of the dual G5's. This thing is quiet, fast and easy to work with when adding hardware, and one of the most innovative case designs I have ever seen.
The fact is there are really no alternatives for most people.
B.S. Sorry to be so abrupt and crude, but this is simply not correct. There are many alternatives out there including OS X, various flavors of Linux, etc...etc...etc...
Macs are expensive,
Again, this is a popular misconception. If you are talking the local grey box manufacturer, yeah, you can probably get a $499 PC, but it will not have many of the features that the brand name boxes will have or the software. Generally you get what you pay for and with Apple products, you get a quality product with features that really do make a difference. Also at the high end, Macs often are cheaper to purchase. For instance, the OS X workstation I am typing this on right now was a full $900 cheaper than an equivalently configured Dell box and OS X provides a much more productive environment. In fact, for our lab which historically has been Wintel based, every new computer purchase in the last year and a half has been a Mac. The other thing you should know is that Macs have a lower total cost of ownership, require less maintenance, are more reliable, and make folks more productive.
and it's hard to find a good x86 box with Linux preloaded
This unfortunately in some cases has become true with Dell backing off their Linux push at Microsoft's urging. However, there are other companies out there bundling Linux in.
Until reliable, powerful PC's with alternate OSes and applications suites are easily obtainable,
Go here.
You got the cash to buy all that swag from mowing lawns!?!
Yep, I pushed that damn mower into some of the swankier parts of the neighborhood and charged $20 per lawn with edging per week or $60 month. I could get about 5 lawns done/day making for $100 every Saturday and I still had time for soccer in the evenings. In 1982, that was not too shabby.
In 1982 that had to have cost a couple grand.
$2782 with the computer, screen, printer and disc drive!
All I needed were 28 Saturdays spread over two years down in Texas with a long growing season. Easily doable for a 10-12 year old.
Is this an unedited version of the transcript? Wow, if so, reading through the transcript, it appears Darl is not a very good spokesman for the company. He completely lost the initiative with the debate, has no real direction with which to respond to questions. On the other hand, not to defend SCO or anything, but the interviewer does things that always piss me off in interviews. Namely interrupting and quickly changing the subject before the interviewed gets a chance to adequately respond.
When Darl says "So, if we turned around and opened this code up, like if I showed you the code, I mean, I've got it right here. . ..... I'm not going to show you."
This just show me that he is one of those guys that as a kid went around saying "Betcha can't guess what I'm thinking". Those kids used to get beat up or totally ignored. Hmmmm maybe that is the problem we are having today.
My first computer was purchased after mowing lawns for two summers and was an Apple ][+ with 48k and a 16k language card with a modem and dot matrix printer. It also came with that phosphor green screen. That system in many ways was and still is pretty effective. It was on instantly, had built in BASIC, had color support, introduced me to word processing, programming and spreadsheets (with Visicalc), and maintained a productive lifespan for me from 12 years old until my second undergrad year at college.
Thinking back to the pre-internet computer days, it is interesting to see how many of us got information back and forth and this was just as much a revelation to me as the first modem in my Apple ][+ was. My first online experience was with that same Apple ][+ hacking into phone companies after the ma-bell split up to get long distance codes so I could communicate via term with people all over the world. That was pretty heady stuff for a 12 year old back in 1982. I realize now that was stealing, and I make no excuses, but times *were* different back then and hacking was not malicious (at least not from me). There were lots of BBS's around that you could also go to like the Crystal Caverns, and the Pirates Cove where everybody was talking about stuff like the Beagle Bros. I think that is when I permanently set my circadian rhythm to that of nocturnal preference by dialing in to these services late at night when my parents were either at the lab or going back to school.
My first exposure to what we now call the web was with one of the coolest looking computers ever made, the NeXT cube. I remember thinking that just as when I saw my first GUI on an Apple Lisa, that the "web" was going to change life forever. This was the way that information would be handled, thus making it easy for people to find and access data and learn. Unbelievable, but I would now be completely lost without the Internet. I perform journal research over the web whereas previously one had to go to libraries and look through card catalogues. Remember those? One can now cover so much more information using proper tools on the web in an afternoon that you could previously in an entire week at the library.
So, did we have any idea of the Internet back then? Apple apparently had some idea as they were the first company to include built in networking in their computers, but man. What a trip it has been. I can't wait for the next twenty years when I think back and say, Jeez, that dual 2Ghz G5 was sooooo slow. I could'nt even begin to model whole retinal circuits with that thing or even predict global weather patterns in less than two hours.
So, be sure to watch next year's elections for furry white mice.
So, are you saying the incumbent will be getting a little NR2B gene therapy? (For those Slashdotters who are not neuroscientists, NR2B keeps the NMDA receptor in nervous tissues from desensitizing, apparently making learning in mice easier).
This new Autosar announcement is really a spec for an operating system. The companies pushing it don't want to say that, because that means taking on Microsoft. So they present this as a middleware layer. But it's really an operating system API that provides independence from the underlying OS.
This is important as Microsoft has expressed an interest in automotive control systems. In fact, I recently found out that the iDrive system in BMW 7 series automobiles is Windows CE based. (No wonder I hated that monstrosity so much. Commonly accessed functions are buried several menus deep requiring you to absolutely take your eyes off the road for long periods of time.)
Will this new client allow for platform specific optimizations? For instance, the RC client took advantage of Altivec which allowed for Macs to absolutely dominate the small computer benchmarks in those ranking whereas they did not perform nearly as well in the SETI rankings. And just so the Wintel weenies don't feel left out and flame me, other platform specific optimizations could also be taken advantage of for Pentium specific calls or even SGI specific calls.
Put the flaming torch down for just a second and listen:
Flaming torch?!!? What are you talking about? I said I would be happy to support them, but given that the individuals and companies I deal with are cross-platform, Quickbooks needs to also be truly cross-platform and it is not.
They're showing that companies can actually listen to their customers. Support them and maybe other companies will take notice.
This is great and I would be more than happy to support them after this, but this biggest sticking issue with me and Intuit is the apparent incompatibility with their data formats between the Mac OS and Windows of Quickbooks. What is the deal with that? They say that databases can be transferred "once", but going back and forth is impossible.
He's only published four papers this year, .....When I took physiology in college, we read multiple articles which described hypotheses proved by a single figure in one of MacKinnon's papers.
This is exactly why fewer papers published/year can be just as important if not more important than many publications/year. If your work tells the whole story and makes lucid arguments that clarify outstanding problems in science, you have contributed greatly while reducing the number of papers people have to read. By doing this, you also reduce the number of papers other folks will write when they break the problem up into multiple papers often over multiple journals.
You are a typical non-thinking individual. Please cease posting, I will stop flaming your obvious lack of intelligence if you do.
Come out from your anonymous coward hiding place and we'll see whose intelligence is lacking. Take ownership and pride in what you say and write. That is, if you have anything worth saying.
An examination of the total cost of ownership has revealed in the past that Macs simply cost less to own. They retain their resale value much better than the equivalent Wintel PC, they cost less to administrate which means lower salary costs, lower benefits costs etc... to the school district. However, the real stickler in many of these issues is that the school IT folks depend on Wintel to maintain their jobs, so I guess the benefits depend upon which perspective you maintain. As a taxpayer however, I want the best return on my investment. Go with the Macs.