Read the website more carefully. A built in 100baseT ethernet and a 56k modem are available for $49, which I imagine everyone would go for. That's not a PC card option, that's an internal device.
The Dell Inspiron 8000 mentioned above IS available with the GeForce2Go (you can choose ATI OR Nvidia) - in fact, it is the only Dell that is available with the nvidia card. Go back and read it again.
Please note this laptop is cheaper than Apple's CHEAPEST tower, contains built in FireWire, built in display (The Mac has none), similar expandability options (2 PC card slots), a BETTER (if you can believe that - it is!) video card. And oh, did I mention this is a PORTABLE?
Order one up with Windows 2000, you won't regret it. Easily the best OS ever for laptops, and I usually hate MS junk, so that's saying something.
Interestingly, the powerbook and ibook are much more competitive than PC laptops, if you're looking at just raw speed and price.
Er, okay. Look, I like the TiBook alot, but there's no way I'd call it "competitive" with PC laptops. At a starting price of $2500 it's definitely up there on the 'botique' shelf. If they lost the fancy, one of a kind widescreen LCD, they could probably sell a lower end model for $1500 - but they won't.
The new iBook is really nice, too. Bad news is they've crippled it, probably to avoid taking sales away from the Ti. You can only get 1024x768 on the video out, (Even though the chipset can do 1600x1200, Apple broke it on purpose) and it also won't do dual display like the TiBook and most PC laptops.
No PC Card slots is also a big minus for me - that's the primary way to expand a laptop, and it's important, because on a portable, you don't have alot of options. (Yes, you can hook up a lot of stuff with FireWire - but it's not future proof - a PC Card slot lets me add ANY interface that comes out in the next, say, 3 or 4 years.
Everyone marvels at how small the iBook is - no shit, because it's lacking a regular video out port, PC card slot, and connector for port replicator. That stuff takes up space, and it's not so hard to imagine a Dell Inspiron 4000 being the same size if they took away half the computers expansion capabilities!
Yes, the iBook has FireWire - my boss just bought a new Sony - also a 'name' brand, it has FireWire, 900mhz Pentium III, DVD, etc., etc. $1300. I've seen the story a hundred times. Even if you spot the iBook the claimed 2:1 processor speed advantage (500mhz mac = 1Ghz PC), the Sony destroys that iBook.
Like I've said in previous posts, I like Apple and the MacOS. But since the demise of the clones, their pricing is getting worse, worse, and worse. In the clone era the lowend G4 tower would have been $999 - about what I bought my PowerMac 7200/90 for when it was the low end of the line. It compared nicely to my roomates Pentium 90 and I felt good about that purchase. The price/performance ratio is just not there for Apple right now. Maybe that's Motorola fault, I don't know. But the situation smells.
If Apple can sell the lowend iMac for $799, why can't they take out the CRT, put in 3 PCI slots and a faster G3 and sell me a tower for $799. I think the answer is they could, they just won't.
Do you know what's the going price for x86 equivalent of the apple MB ( all 64bit pci,quality pcb, etc etc )... about $500-600... same goes for the casing and other components.
Do you have any stats to show that Apple motherboards are worth $500-$600? I don't even know if it's POSSIBLE to spend that much on an x86 motherboard. If you could, for that much money, I'm sure it would be a dual processor, server class board, lots of slots, probably onboard SCSI and 2 ethernet ports at that price. Made by a quality manufacturer, like Abit, no junk. And I bet it's less than $600, too, I'm just to lazy too check pricewatch. I'm sure someone else can back me up with actual specs and pricing.
I'm so glad that Felten is going to continue with his lawsuit, even though it appears no charges will be filed. Dropping out now would accomplish nothing because around the corner the RIAA would just attempt to scare the next person... and the next... etc.
A victory would set a great precedent for the future and make a clear statement that such intimidation won't get very far in the courts
What happened to "the computer for the rest of us?"
I guess "the rest of us" now means people who earn $70k a year.
Sony is a premium brand, but they also deliver a good value. My boss just bought an awesome Sony laptop - $1400. Pentium III 800, huge drive, 14" screen, DVD, etc. Extremely competitive, and it still says "sony" on it.
Yes - and the iMac is currently available at $799 I believe. So yes, they COULD hit the $999 price point if they chose to. $799 - $50 (CRT) + $250 (LCD) = $999! Where is it?
I don't really care about the iMac and it's screen anyway. What I want is the iMac, add 3 PCI slots, subtract the monitor and put it in a tower case. They could sell it for $800. Why won't they? They'd rather have the entry level G4 be $1699!
If Appple can sell the iBook for $1299, it should easily be able to sell a flat screen iMac for LESS, like $999. (Bigger, easier to manufacture form factor, no custom laptop motherboard and component engineering, cheaper video, sound, and network bits.) Where is it?
Flat LCD panels are $349 at Fry's. A huge OEM like Apple must be able to get those for about $200!
I agree they make great hardware. I myself also have a 7200 still kicking. But the difference in the quality of the hardware does not account for the massive price difference. And the price difference keeps getting worse since 1997.
I'm willing to pay, say, $200 more than a PC to get a better case, quality motherboard and memory, etc. But not $1000.
I've always felt that if they halved their prices, they would sell twice as many machines. Bring back the clones!
Not really. The screen is smaller (Dell's $1300 laptop is a 14"). It has no PC Card slots, very important since it's the only way to expand your laptop sometimes.
And worst, the video on the machine is CRIPPLED. It's the same ATI video hardware used in the $2500 TiBook. Should be great, right? Wrong. Apple INTENTIONALLY disabled dual display, and also limited the video out to external displays to a measly 1024 x 768. (The card can do 1600 x 1200, no problem). This is totally lame.
Compare the iBook to the Dell Inspiron 4000... it doesn't do well. And the iBook is probably the MOST price competitive computer that Apple has, the other lines are all much worse! The G4 tower pricing is a cruel joke.
MacGimp is a good idea, and I hope it keeps getting better. Don't delude yourself into thinking that anyone is using it for real work, though.
Professional print layout and design requires the user to work in the CMYK color space instead of RBG. The Gimp does not support this, so even if you used it, you would still have to go to Photoshop eventually before you went to press.
As a Macintosh fan, I'm tired of defending Apple and their increasingly overpriced computers. Does everyone remember how cheap Macs got when the clones were in existence? There was a period of 2 years where Macs cost about the same as the equivalent PC. That time is gone.
With the clones eliminated, Apple has returned to their price gouging ways.
Additionally, since Motorola can't deliver dramatically faster G4s, Apple is now crippling the low end to avoid making the high end look bad. The new iBook, for example, is a nice computer. It contains the same video hardware as the TiBook. But Apple has crippled the video on the iBook, so it won't do anything higher than 1024 x 768 on an external display, and also can't do dual displays. Of course, the TiBook can - for $2500.
Apple's price/performance ratio is now so terrible that you can buy a NICE PC laptop for the price of the cheapest G4 tower.
For a while, they were telling us a G4 was as fast as a Pentium III at twice the clockspeed. Fair enough. Are they now going to start saying they're 3 times as fast? That's what they'd have to claim to make the computer look competitive.
The cheapo iMac is not for me. No expandability, I need PCI slots, and I already have a nice monitor. What computer does Apple have for me? The entry level G4 tower is $1700, featuring their slowest G4, a pokey hard drive and bus, and not enough memory to run OSX effectively. Want a video card upgrade? The GeForce3 is a $300 UPGRADE (note: not outright, that's the UPGRADE price), a total joke.
Do any other Mac fans feel completely frustrated with Apple right now?
Why is any cool wireless service always metered? Palm.net is the same way... I hate services where I always feel like I'm on a timer, whether it's a cellular phone, CPPD modem, or GameWorks (pay by the hour video gaming). That's one reason I liked Ricochet so much - flat rate, no cap.
Is it really that much more expensive for providers to sell unlimited service? I imagine these are 'turn it on, use it, turn it off' type applications. You couldn't continuously use it if you tried.
So is there any reason for the cap, other than that they can?
I believe that most wireless access points allow you to allow/block users based on the unique MAC address of their ethernet card, so you could ban 'bad' users based on that.
I guess they could keep buying new NICs but that would get really expensive. So that's a good solution.
Of course you can always password protect your wireless net too.
Okay, so I've got some spare bandwidth on my DSL line. If I throw down $300 for a wireless base station, what are my legal liabilities if I provide free access to anyone who wants to use it?
if it is too difficult to encode sound files as.nap's, the few people who still use napster will quickly abandon it.
Uh, you don't get it. There isn't going to be ANY way to encode your audio to.nap. All.nap files will be official and come from the Napster servers. You can't just encode your own music and then share it under the new system.
Will the new format work in the current portable MP3 players, or will it require a new player that can decode the format, or worse still a proprietary player?
No, this definitely will NOT work in your portable. In fact, they will probably make it difficult for your average non-techie to play it anywhere EXCEPT inside the Napster client.
Yes, that means it won't work in your nice new solid state digital audio player. Yes, that also means I'm not interested.
Then use another search engine! The Yellow Pages places big giant ads for companies that are willing to pay, others get just a line-item listing.
No one is forcing you to use the free service of go.com, excite.com, or even google. How do you think they pay for hardware, bandwidth, and programmers? Selling banner ads won't keep a search engine going. As long as you know companies paid to be listed in bold (red, highlited, whatever) print, who cares?
Considering that search engines are provided free of charge to the public, what's the fuss? There is advertising bias in everything - magazine product reviews, movie reviews on TV, etc.
The only problem I have with it is if they CLAIMED to be impartial, but were not. It's obvious to me that most, if not all search engines are selling results. Usually they disclose it in an obvious manner.
I'd rather have googlecom sell results than have there be no more google at all.
Slashdot Mirror
The Dell Inspiron 8000 mentioned above IS available with the GeForce2Go (you can choose ATI OR Nvidia) - in fact, it is the only Dell that is available with the nvidia card. Go back and read it again.
Please note this laptop is cheaper than Apple's CHEAPEST tower, contains built in FireWire, built in display (The Mac has none), similar expandability options (2 PC card slots), a BETTER (if you can believe that - it is!) video card. And oh, did I mention this is a PORTABLE?
Order one up with Windows 2000, you won't regret it. Easily the best OS ever for laptops, and I usually hate MS junk, so that's saying something.
Er, okay. Look, I like the TiBook alot, but there's no way I'd call it "competitive" with PC laptops. At a starting price of $2500 it's definitely up there on the 'botique' shelf. If they lost the fancy, one of a kind widescreen LCD, they could probably sell a lower end model for $1500 - but they won't.
The new iBook is really nice, too. Bad news is they've crippled it, probably to avoid taking sales away from the Ti. You can only get 1024x768 on the video out, (Even though the chipset can do 1600x1200, Apple broke it on purpose) and it also won't do dual display like the TiBook and most PC laptops.
No PC Card slots is also a big minus for me - that's the primary way to expand a laptop, and it's important, because on a portable, you don't have alot of options. (Yes, you can hook up a lot of stuff with FireWire - but it's not future proof - a PC Card slot lets me add ANY interface that comes out in the next, say, 3 or 4 years.
Everyone marvels at how small the iBook is - no shit, because it's lacking a regular video out port, PC card slot, and connector for port replicator. That stuff takes up space, and it's not so hard to imagine a Dell Inspiron 4000 being the same size if they took away half the computers expansion capabilities!
Yes, the iBook has FireWire - my boss just bought a new Sony - also a 'name' brand, it has FireWire, 900mhz Pentium III, DVD, etc., etc. $1300. I've seen the story a hundred times. Even if you spot the iBook the claimed 2:1 processor speed advantage (500mhz mac = 1Ghz PC), the Sony destroys that iBook.
Like I've said in previous posts, I like Apple and the MacOS. But since the demise of the clones, their pricing is getting worse, worse, and worse. In the clone era the lowend G4 tower would have been $999 - about what I bought my PowerMac 7200/90 for when it was the low end of the line. It compared nicely to my roomates Pentium 90 and I felt good about that purchase. The price/performance ratio is just not there for Apple right now. Maybe that's Motorola fault, I don't know. But the situation smells.
If Apple can sell the lowend iMac for $799, why can't they take out the CRT, put in 3 PCI slots and a faster G3 and sell me a tower for $799. I think the answer is they could, they just won't.
Do you have any stats to show that Apple motherboards are worth $500-$600? I don't even know if it's POSSIBLE to spend that much on an x86 motherboard. If you could, for that much money, I'm sure it would be a dual processor, server class board, lots of slots, probably onboard SCSI and 2 ethernet ports at that price. Made by a quality manufacturer, like Abit, no junk. And I bet it's less than $600, too, I'm just to lazy too check pricewatch. I'm sure someone else can back me up with actual specs and pricing.
A victory would set a great precedent for the future and make a clear statement that such intimidation won't get very far in the courts
I guess "the rest of us" now means people who earn $70k a year.
Sony is a premium brand, but they also deliver a good value. My boss just bought an awesome Sony laptop - $1400. Pentium III 800, huge drive, 14" screen, DVD, etc. Extremely competitive, and it still says "sony" on it.
I don't really care about the iMac and it's screen anyway. What I want is the iMac, add 3 PCI slots, subtract the monitor and put it in a tower case. They could sell it for $800. Why won't they? They'd rather have the entry level G4 be $1699!
Apple will never sell a computer for $500 in order to gain marketshare. That would make too much sense.
Flat LCD panels are $349 at Fry's. A huge OEM like Apple must be able to get those for about $200!
I'm willing to pay, say, $200 more than a PC to get a better case, quality motherboard and memory, etc. But not $1000.
I've always felt that if they halved their prices, they would sell twice as many machines. Bring back the clones!
And worst, the video on the machine is CRIPPLED. It's the same ATI video hardware used in the $2500 TiBook. Should be great, right? Wrong. Apple INTENTIONALLY disabled dual display, and also limited the video out to external displays to a measly 1024 x 768. (The card can do 1600 x 1200, no problem). This is totally lame.
Compare the iBook to the Dell Inspiron 4000... it doesn't do well. And the iBook is probably the MOST price competitive computer that Apple has, the other lines are all much worse! The G4 tower pricing is a cruel joke.
The cost difference Apple is paying between cdrom drives and cdrw drives can't be more than $20. Where does the rest of the difference come from?
Professional print layout and design requires the user to work in the CMYK color space instead of RBG. The Gimp does not support this, so even if you used it, you would still have to go to Photoshop eventually before you went to press.
With the clones eliminated, Apple has returned to their price gouging ways.
Additionally, since Motorola can't deliver dramatically faster G4s, Apple is now crippling the low end to avoid making the high end look bad. The new iBook, for example, is a nice computer. It contains the same video hardware as the TiBook. But Apple has crippled the video on the iBook, so it won't do anything higher than 1024 x 768 on an external display, and also can't do dual displays. Of course, the TiBook can - for $2500.
Apple's price/performance ratio is now so terrible that you can buy a NICE PC laptop for the price of the cheapest G4 tower.
For a while, they were telling us a G4 was as fast as a Pentium III at twice the clockspeed. Fair enough. Are they now going to start saying they're 3 times as fast? That's what they'd have to claim to make the computer look competitive.
The cheapo iMac is not for me. No expandability, I need PCI slots, and I already have a nice monitor. What computer does Apple have for me? The entry level G4 tower is $1700, featuring their slowest G4, a pokey hard drive and bus, and not enough memory to run OSX effectively. Want a video card upgrade? The GeForce3 is a $300 UPGRADE (note: not outright, that's the UPGRADE price), a total joke.
Do any other Mac fans feel completely frustrated with Apple right now?
Is it really that much more expensive for providers to sell unlimited service? I imagine these are 'turn it on, use it, turn it off' type applications. You couldn't continuously use it if you tried.
So is there any reason for the cap, other than that they can?
My DSL provider gives me 7 IP addresses - what's stopping me from assigning 6 of those via DHCP to whoever happens to use my wireless network?
I think I uninstalled that already but thanks for the reminder.
I guess they could keep buying new NICs but that would get really expensive. So that's a good solution.
Of course you can always password protect your wireless net too.
Okay, so I've got some spare bandwidth on my DSL line. If I throw down $300 for a wireless base station, what are my legal liabilities if I provide free access to anyone who wants to use it?
Really? Which program? Are you sure you aren't thinking of BearShare or one of the other Gnutella clients?
Uh, you don't get it. There isn't going to be ANY way to encode your audio to .nap. All .nap files will be official and come from the Napster servers. You can't just encode your own music and then share it under the new system.
No, this definitely will NOT work in your portable. In fact, they will probably make it difficult for your average non-techie to play it anywhere EXCEPT inside the Napster client.
Yes, that means it won't work in your nice new solid state digital audio player. Yes, that also means I'm not interested.
The moderation on parent post is amazing... I don't think i've even seen one post get modded so much.
No one is forcing you to use the free service of go.com, excite.com, or even google. How do you think they pay for hardware, bandwidth, and programmers? Selling banner ads won't keep a search engine going. As long as you know companies paid to be listed in bold (red, highlited, whatever) print, who cares?
The only problem I have with it is if they CLAIMED to be impartial, but were not. It's obvious to me that most, if not all search engines are selling results. Usually they disclose it in an obvious manner.
I'd rather have googlecom sell results than have there be no more google at all.