So Opteron is to be more of a competitor to Itanium than a replacement for Athlon MP.
Does anyone know if AMD has a replacement for Athlon MP planned? Will Athlon 64 be released in a 2-way version? I see that there will be Athlon MP "Barton" as well as Opteron, but I don't see any Hammer powered Athlon MP (perhaps a Clawhammer based part?)
Re:Compact Discs Obsolete & Universally Standa
on
The Future of the CD
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· Score: 1
That lapdoes have integrated WIFI, and the 12" PowerBook has neither the gigabit ethernet, the firewire 800, nor the backlit keyboard of the 17" powerbook.
The Alienware desktop P4 (3.06GHZ HT) powered laptop runs 2 and a half hours. It's a tank, but it's still laptop.
I don't hate macs. I think that the're cool, actually. If I had $1800, I might get a PowerBook G4. I instead got an Athlon XP 1600+ notebook with a DVD/CDRW, 256M of DDR, 40G disk, integrated LAN and modem, and Windows XP for $1100. It's not as cool as the PowerBook G4, but it gets the job done.
"Further, NO PENTIUM LAPTOP EVER compares to an Apple laptop."
That's bullshit. Go look at a P4-m 2.4ghz laptop and come back and tell me that.
"This is due to the fact that Apple uses the same processors across the board."
My laptop has an Athlon XP in it. A real Athlon XP. It has power management features and smaller packaging, but it is otherwise an actual Athlon XP.
Your source for benchmarks was also
"There is a lot to say about being productive in speed to. The Apple GUI is clean and consistent. Whether slow or smaller percentage of market, more people get more things done faster on a Mac. That's based on real world tests."
That, my friend, is also bullshit. That test was done several years ago by an agency contracted by Apple. Unless you're talking about a different test. I really don't know since you didn't bother to provide a source.
"So is EVERY OTHER PC website. (Filled with meaningless benchmarks)"
Yes, but they document their hardware and their software. Look at AMD's benchmarks on their webiste. They give hardware and software details. Apple does not.
"Sharp LCD (lowest quality) vs a Samsung or Philips LCD (highest quality)"
Ok, so the LCD sucks. I agree that Sharp LCDs suck. But that doesn't mean that it's not "fully featured".
Look, I never said that the Sharp notebook was better than the PowerBook G4. It's not. For one, the graphics on the Sharp are crap. I admitted that. And I'll agree that the mobile P3 is not the fastest CPU on the block.
But Apple didn't say that their laptop was the "best". They said that it was the "smallest fully featured notebook computer". I would say that the Sharp notebook is "fully featured". It may be a piece of shit. But that's not the issue. The issue is whether it's "fully featured". Maybe Apple argues that it doesnt' have a "desktop class" processor. I would argue that the 12" PowerBook G4 doesn't either.
My problem is not with Apple's hardware or software. I personally think that it's overpriced. But there's nothing wrong with that - that's what free enterprise is all about. Apple clearly offers a premium product and prices their products accordingly.
My problem is with Apple's continued spread of bullshit about their computers. If they would market on the merits of their hardware and software (instead of a bunch of "horror stories" about how PCs are bad), I would have a lot more respect. I'm a PC person - I love building my own systems. But even I'm attracted by their hardware. But the claims that they make are neither documented nore conducted scientificly. Look at AMD's website and their benchmarks - that's what Apple should be aiming for, not a bunch of empty claims about Macs "crushing" Pentiums. And not the same Altivec illustration that they have been using for three years.
I think that the problem is that Apple's hardware is not competitive from a speed perspective. Say what you will about the PowerPC, but it's just not as fast.
That's not what Apple should be marketing. They have a lot more to offer than raw speed. That's what they should be marketing.
All of those games will switch to PS 1.3 when they are run on non 1.4 hardware. 3DMark03 switches to the slower 1.1.
The GeForceFX supports 1.4, as well as 2.0. It's part of the DX9 spec, and the GeForceFX is a fully compliant DX9 part.
Re:Compact Discs Obsolete & Universally Standa
on
The Future of the CD
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· Score: 1
OK, no superdrive. Most desktops don't have a DVD-R, however.
And, yes, when SpeedStep kicks in the P3 does scale back considerably. That can be disabled. And don't give me the "PowerPC kills Pentium" argument. The architectures are so different that any comparisons are questionable at best.
My point was not that this Sharp computer was better than the PowerBook. It isn't. But calling the PowerBook G4 12" the "smallest fully featured notebook" is a pretty big stretch.
Apple always makes statements that have no meaning. The G4 "Crushes Pentiums". It has a shorter pipeline that accomplishes tasks in "12 fewer steps" (huh?). They provide a Photosop benchmark but don't tell what filters and operations were performed (other than saying that they were "nine commonly used operations", what the configuration of the Dell system was, what OS was used, etc - how are we supposed to believe their benchmarks if they won't even give the details? They give a wonderful diagram of squares piling up in a Pentium - comparing SIMD to single instructions? Huh? What are they even talking about? They used BLAST to test XServe, but they used completely different products to compare XServe and the PC systems. On their Apache tests, they don't show what type of content was served, what version of Apache was used, whether the XServe had 1.5GB of memory or 256M, whether the Dell system was a single or dual P3, whether the XServe was single or dual PPC, whether the systems were RAID0, or any other important details.
Apple's website is filled with charts and graphs and promises that mean absolutely nothing.
But it's cheap, available, compatable, fast, and damn common.
Both AMD and Intel have shown that x86 can be a high performance architecture. Sure, it took resources. But less than 3% of the transistors on a P4 or Athlon are devoted to converting instructions to microcode.
So, what's the problem? It's cheap, compatable, fast, and available. What more could you want from a CPU?
We can't play the game of "if [insert RISC architecture here] had won". It didn't. So are we to abandon 20 years of compatiblilty to change to a "more efficent" architecture?
Intel thinks so. EPIC is radically diffrent. And we see where it's gotten them.
AMD does not. They take x86, clean it up, make it smarter, and call it x86-64. It's imperfect. But it's also fully x86 compatible. That means that twenty years of software are compatable with it. That means that I can take Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP or Redhat 8.0 or any other x86 OS and run it. And it runs well. Damn well. P4 3.06GHZ HT well.
Don't want to migrate all your software? Opteron and Athlon 64 are the perfect answer. Great 32-bit performace, and 64-bit functionality for the OS and apps that support it.
Someone could switch my computer with a Crush-K8 powered Athlon 64 system, steal my disks, reload my OS (Windows XP Pro 32-bit), and I could come back the next day and not notice it.
Compatability exists because the past doesn't just go away. That's why x86 still exists. That's why I believe that Hammer will be a smash hit (excuse the pun).
Windows Server 2003 is already running on Itanium. Trust me. You can download the 360-day beta for free from their website.
Re:Compact Discs Obsolete & Universally Standa
on
The Future of the CD
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· Score: 1
"Apple currently has the thinnest/lightest laptop on the market with an optical drive."
What about this notebook from Sharp? It's 4.13 lbs with a CD-RW/DVD Combo vs. 4.6 lbs for the 12" PowerBook G4. It's also about the same volume as the Powerbook G4 (110.6132 for the G4, somewhere between 103 and 113 for the Sharp). It also has an external PC card slot, FireWire, 2x USB, Integrated 802.11b, Integrated 10/100 LAN, TV and VGA out, An integrated modem, a P3 1.13GHZ, 256M of memory, 40G HDD, XGA secreen, etc.
Very comparable to the 12" PowerBook G4, except perhaps for the GPU.
The PowerBook starts at $1,799.
The Sharp system starts at $1,799.
So, when Apple says they have the "smallest fully featured notebook", the're lying. Unless a "fully featured notebook" has to be a Mac.
Look at Tom's followup, it describes a very inexpensive circuit that can protect the CPU, and how that circiut managed to protect the CPU during heatsink failure.
That circuit has been on many motherboards for quite some time.
And, let's be real. A properly installed heatsink will almost NEVER disloge itself from the system randomly. Fan failure is more common, but that can be handled by the BIOS or software like MBM5.
"Did I say that? No. Would you care to cite examples?"
How about our favorite, Ellen Feiss. She claimed that a PC glitch destroyed her paper. Microsoft Word, as well as most other good office suites (Abiword and Openoffice included) will automatically save your paper. And, if she used Windows 2000 or XP, it would be highly unlikely that the OS would just die.
How about Bill Swan. He claimed that cheap, cobbled together PC hardware didn't work. He talked about "the famous illegal operation, again and again". Well, now we know he's using Windows 95 or 98 (ME and onward have a different error message). He claimed that it wouldn't burn CDs, but he also said that he got the burner from a friend. He talks about how the Mac "just works". Well, of course it does. So does a Dell, an HP, or a Gateway. If you don't want to have to solve computer problems, but a prebuilt system. Don't put together unknown hardware and Windows 98 and just expect it to work. He also talks about how his Mac "doesn't drop you off the Internet". Hmmm, that would be an ISP problem, most likely. Perhaps Bill was an AOL user and he switched to another ISP when he got his Mac. Who knows.
So this begs the question, why do people find Macs so much better? Answer: because, until 2000, PCs sucked. So did Macs. Anyone here use OS9? It locked, crashed, and generally screwed up everything, and it didn't multitask at all. Windows 98 is the same way. Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP are completely different.
So someone with a four to five year old PC, with a four to five year OS, built on top of DOS, switches to a modern UNIX based OS on a modern system with plenty of RAM. Of course their experience will be better. Their experience would also greatly improve if they purchased a modern PC with a modern OS (2000 or XP).
How about I compare OS 8.5 on a 333MHZ iBook to Windows 2000 on an Athlon XP 1.2GHZ notebook? Who would win then?
"Maybe, but it's the same company and the same corporate philosophy behind the two. Maybe they differ in many ways, but some people have grown tired of the direction MS is taking their operating system and seek something else. Besides, Steve Jobs has a point when he says that there are benefits to having a company produce the hardware and the software. I know people all around who have moved on to XP. Most of them have retreated to previous version."
I somehow find it surprising that the people you know prefer Windows 98 or ME to XP. If you're talking about Windows 2000, than I'll agree - XP Home is a step down, and XP Pro isn't much of a step up (Remote desktop is nice, but that's about it).
98 crashes. A lot. You shouldn't need evidence to prove this. ME is the same way.
I have never gotten a stop error on my Windows XP system. Never. The OS has never gone down, either. Explorer crashes are annoyingly common, but managable. Once in a while one of my apps will go down.
Right now, my uptime is closing on 300 days (I hibernate when I go on vacation or to a LAN party).
The GUI may not be as pretty as Aqua, but it gets the job done. I have never seen how the dock/finder deals with 300 programs, but the Start Menu manages quite well.
The user interface is not perfect, but neither is Apple's. And at least I don't have to deal with the Dock.
One company producing the hardware and the software. Sure, there are benefits. But there is a big downside: you live in a closed world. I can feel confident that almost all of the hardware I can buy will work with my system. I built my system. Most people don't understand why someone would want to build a system. Those are the kinds of people who use their computer to check email and surf the web. To them, a computer is a tool. To me, it is a project. It is something that I put real time and effort into, and I find that gratifying.
I wouldn't be able to get that experience with a Mac.
Many aren't like me. That's OK. Not everyone wants to build a car... or a PC.
Those people use Windows, mostly. Some hate it. Some despise it. Some love it. But Windows isn't about love. It's about function. It's about getting the job done and getting on with your life. At my school, we have 600 PCs running Windows 2000. Everything works. All the time. I can do research, type a document in Word, save it to my share, and print it out in the library. And here's the thing: everyone else can too. Windows must be doing something right.
So, yes, many have horror stories. Many Mac users do, too. But 95% of the problems described in the "Switch" campaign aren't problems on Windows 2000 or XP. Crashes are rare. Plug and Play actually works, and well (ever add a PCI card during hibernation?). And it's pretty easy to use.
My brother has a laptop with XP on it. He wanted to send some pictures to a friend. He connected the digicam, and the photo wizard popped up. He clicked the email option and selected which photos he wanted. At the end, an Outlook Express window popped open with the photos attached. The photos were resized to 640x480 and compressed with a lower quality JPEG setting so that they would be managable. He typed in the email address, the message, the subject, and hit send.
Windows works. My brother, knowing nothing of drivers or JPEG or image resizing, managed to send some photos via email, and, as far as he was concerned, he never had to copy them to his hard drive.
Windows is imperfect. So is Mac. But a bunch of "switch" testimonials about how Apple is "so much better" help no one. All that is spread is misinformation based on the misconceptions of former PC users.
Macs may just work. So does my PC. So do the ones at my school. So do my friend's PCs. And millions of other PCs.
"I bet these ads will be loaded with implied falsehoods"
What, and Apple's ads aren't? They find someone with Windows 98 loaded on a piece of garbage PC to tell them about their experience. Of course they had a bad experience.
Windows XP and Windows 98 are in a different universe. Imagine comparing XP to Mac OS 9. That's what Apple is doing. And that's what Microsoft will probably do.
$864 for a very nice system. It's no P3 3.06/Radeon9700/RDRAM, but it can still play UT2003 (DM-Antlus) at 1024x768 with all effects and stay above the monitor vsync (I enabled vsync in the UT2003 config).
The Athlon 2800+ wins sometimes, and admiddadly loses in the other tests. However, we're talking about 5% or less here. It's not like the P4 is twice as fast.
The P4 is a respectable CPU and Intel's strategy has clearly allowed them to push it.
AMD's strategy has also worked. With a much lower R&D budget they have managed to remain competative (although they are going bankrupt in the process). AMD CPUs now power about 10% of PC desktop systems. The Athlon may not be as technologically advanced as the P4 3.06GHZ with Hyper-Threading, but it can certainly crunch numbers nearly as well.
Athlon XP Barton will be shipping in a few weeks (if AMD doesn't do another "paper launch"). That will be the real CPU to compare to the P4.
Re:Maybe she had just switched from an x86 laptop.
on
Baked Apple
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· Score: 1
That would be funny it the PowerBook G4 wasn't such an effective lap warmer.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, that proves me wrong.
So Opteron is to be more of a competitor to Itanium than a replacement for Athlon MP.
Does anyone know if AMD has a replacement for Athlon MP planned? Will Athlon 64 be released in a 2-way version? I see that there will be Athlon MP "Barton" as well as Opteron, but I don't see any Hammer powered Athlon MP (perhaps a Clawhammer based part?)
That lapdoes have integrated WIFI, and the 12" PowerBook has neither the gigabit ethernet, the firewire 800, nor the backlit keyboard of the 17" powerbook.
The Alienware desktop P4 (3.06GHZ HT) powered laptop runs 2 and a half hours. It's a tank, but it's still laptop.
I don't hate macs. I think that the're cool, actually. If I had $1800, I might get a PowerBook G4. I instead got an Athlon XP 1600+ notebook with a DVD/CDRW, 256M of DDR, 40G disk, integrated LAN and modem, and Windows XP for $1100. It's not as cool as the PowerBook G4, but it gets the job done.
"Further, NO PENTIUM LAPTOP EVER compares to an Apple laptop."
That's bullshit. Go look at a P4-m 2.4ghz laptop and come back and tell me that.
"This is due to the fact that Apple uses the same processors across the board."
My laptop has an Athlon XP in it. A real Athlon XP. It has power management features and smaller packaging, but it is otherwise an actual Athlon XP.
Your source for benchmarks was also
"There is a lot to say about being productive in speed to. The Apple GUI is clean and consistent. Whether slow or smaller percentage of market, more people get more things done faster on a Mac. That's based on real world tests."
That, my friend, is also bullshit. That test was done several years ago by an agency contracted by Apple. Unless you're talking about a different test. I really don't know since you didn't bother to provide a source.
"So is EVERY OTHER PC website. (Filled with meaningless benchmarks)"
Yes, but they document their hardware and their software. Look at AMD's benchmarks on their webiste. They give hardware and software details. Apple does not.
"Sharp LCD (lowest quality) vs a Samsung or Philips LCD (highest quality)"
Ok, so the LCD sucks. I agree that Sharp LCDs suck. But that doesn't mean that it's not "fully featured".
Look, I never said that the Sharp notebook was better than the PowerBook G4. It's not. For one, the graphics on the Sharp are crap. I admitted that. And I'll agree that the mobile P3 is not the fastest CPU on the block.
But Apple didn't say that their laptop was the "best". They said that it was the "smallest fully featured notebook computer". I would say that the Sharp notebook is "fully featured". It may be a piece of shit. But that's not the issue. The issue is whether it's "fully featured". Maybe Apple argues that it doesnt' have a "desktop class" processor. I would argue that the 12" PowerBook G4 doesn't either.
My problem is not with Apple's hardware or software. I personally think that it's overpriced. But there's nothing wrong with that - that's what free enterprise is all about. Apple clearly offers a premium product and prices their products accordingly.
My problem is with Apple's continued spread of bullshit about their computers. If they would market on the merits of their hardware and software (instead of a bunch of "horror stories" about how PCs are bad), I would have a lot more respect. I'm a PC person - I love building my own systems. But even I'm attracted by their hardware. But the claims that they make are neither documented nore conducted scientificly. Look at AMD's website and their benchmarks - that's what Apple should be aiming for, not a bunch of empty claims about Macs "crushing" Pentiums. And not the same Altivec illustration that they have been using for three years.
I think that the problem is that Apple's hardware is not competitive from a speed perspective. Say what you will about the PowerPC, but it's just not as fast.
That's not what Apple should be marketing. They have a lot more to offer than raw speed. That's what they should be marketing.
All of those games will switch to PS 1.3 when they are run on non 1.4 hardware. 3DMark03 switches to the slower 1.1.
The GeForceFX supports 1.4, as well as 2.0. It's part of the DX9 spec, and the GeForceFX is a fully compliant DX9 part.
OK, no superdrive. Most desktops don't have a DVD-R, however.
And, yes, when SpeedStep kicks in the P3 does scale back considerably. That can be disabled. And don't give me the "PowerPC kills Pentium" argument. The architectures are so different that any comparisons are questionable at best.
My point was not that this Sharp computer was better than the PowerBook. It isn't. But calling the PowerBook G4 12" the "smallest fully featured notebook" is a pretty big stretch.
Apple always makes statements that have no meaning. The G4 "Crushes Pentiums". It has a shorter pipeline that accomplishes tasks in "12 fewer steps" (huh?). They provide a Photosop benchmark but don't tell what filters and operations were performed (other than saying that they were "nine commonly used operations", what the configuration of the Dell system was, what OS was used, etc - how are we supposed to believe their benchmarks if they won't even give the details? They give a wonderful diagram of squares piling up in a Pentium - comparing SIMD to single instructions? Huh? What are they even talking about? They used BLAST to test XServe, but they used completely different products to compare XServe and the PC systems. On their Apache tests, they don't show what type of content was served, what version of Apache was used, whether the XServe had 1.5GB of memory or 256M, whether the Dell system was a single or dual P3, whether the XServe was single or dual PPC, whether the systems were RAID0, or any other important details.
Apple's website is filled with charts and graphs and promises that mean absolutely nothing.
It may not be the best option.
But it's cheap, available, compatable, fast, and damn common.
Both AMD and Intel have shown that x86 can be a high performance architecture. Sure, it took resources. But less than 3% of the transistors on a P4 or Athlon are devoted to converting instructions to microcode.
So, what's the problem? It's cheap, compatable, fast, and available. What more could you want from a CPU?
We can't play the game of "if [insert RISC architecture here] had won". It didn't. So are we to abandon 20 years of compatiblilty to change to a "more efficent" architecture?
Intel thinks so. EPIC is radically diffrent. And we see where it's gotten them.
AMD does not. They take x86, clean it up, make it smarter, and call it x86-64. It's imperfect. But it's also fully x86 compatible. That means that twenty years of software are compatable with it. That means that I can take Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP or Redhat 8.0 or any other x86 OS and run it. And it runs well. Damn well. P4 3.06GHZ HT well.
Don't want to migrate all your software? Opteron and Athlon 64 are the perfect answer. Great 32-bit performace, and 64-bit functionality for the OS and apps that support it.
Someone could switch my computer with a Crush-K8 powered Athlon 64 system, steal my disks, reload my OS (Windows XP Pro 32-bit), and I could come back the next day and not notice it.
Compatability exists because the past doesn't just go away. That's why x86 still exists. That's why I believe that Hammer will be a smash hit (excuse the pun).
Opteron will more likely be closer to the prices of Athlon MP - higher, but still sub $1000.
You mean like the phones that have existed in the US for 3+ years?
We don't live in the stone age, you know.
Windows Server 2003 is already running on Itanium. Trust me. You can download the 360-day beta for free from their website.
"Apple currently has the thinnest/lightest laptop on the market with an optical drive." What about this notebook from Sharp? It's 4.13 lbs with a CD-RW/DVD Combo vs. 4.6 lbs for the 12" PowerBook G4. It's also about the same volume as the Powerbook G4 (110.6132 for the G4, somewhere between 103 and 113 for the Sharp). It also has an external PC card slot, FireWire, 2x USB, Integrated 802.11b, Integrated 10/100 LAN, TV and VGA out, An integrated modem, a P3 1.13GHZ, 256M of memory, 40G HDD, XGA secreen, etc. Very comparable to the 12" PowerBook G4, except perhaps for the GPU. The PowerBook starts at $1,799. The Sharp system starts at $1,799. So, when Apple says they have the "smallest fully featured notebook", the're lying. Unless a "fully featured notebook" has to be a Mac.
"Hell Windows 95 isen't even seven years old, and they doen't even suport it."
And RedHat still supports their software from 7 years ago?
How about Apple?
Look at Tom's followup, it describes a very inexpensive circuit that can protect the CPU, and how that circiut managed to protect the CPU during heatsink failure.
That circuit has been on many motherboards for quite some time.
And, let's be real. A properly installed heatsink will almost NEVER disloge itself from the system randomly. Fan failure is more common, but that can be handled by the BIOS or software like MBM5.
"Did I say that? No. Would you care to cite examples?"
How about our favorite, Ellen Feiss. She claimed that a PC glitch destroyed her paper. Microsoft Word, as well as most other good office suites (Abiword and Openoffice included) will automatically save your paper. And, if she used Windows 2000 or XP, it would be highly unlikely that the OS would just die.
How about Bill Swan. He claimed that cheap, cobbled together PC hardware didn't work. He talked about "the famous illegal operation, again and again". Well, now we know he's using Windows 95 or 98 (ME and onward have a different error message). He claimed that it wouldn't burn CDs, but he also said that he got the burner from a friend. He talks about how the Mac "just works". Well, of course it does. So does a Dell, an HP, or a Gateway. If you don't want to have to solve computer problems, but a prebuilt system. Don't put together unknown hardware and Windows 98 and just expect it to work. He also talks about how his Mac "doesn't drop you off the Internet". Hmmm, that would be an ISP problem, most likely. Perhaps Bill was an AOL user and he switched to another ISP when he got his Mac. Who knows.
So this begs the question, why do people find Macs so much better? Answer: because, until 2000, PCs sucked. So did Macs. Anyone here use OS9? It locked, crashed, and generally screwed up everything, and it didn't multitask at all. Windows 98 is the same way. Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP are completely different.
So someone with a four to five year old PC, with a four to five year OS, built on top of DOS, switches to a modern UNIX based OS on a modern system with plenty of RAM. Of course their experience will be better. Their experience would also greatly improve if they purchased a modern PC with a modern OS (2000 or XP).
How about I compare OS 8.5 on a 333MHZ iBook to Windows 2000 on an Athlon XP 1.2GHZ notebook? Who would win then?
"Maybe, but it's the same company and the same corporate philosophy behind the two. Maybe they differ in many ways, but some people have grown tired of the direction MS is taking their operating system and seek something else. Besides, Steve Jobs has a point when he says that there are benefits to having a company produce the hardware and the software. I know people all around who have moved on to XP. Most of them have retreated to previous version."
I somehow find it surprising that the people you know prefer Windows 98 or ME to XP. If you're talking about Windows 2000, than I'll agree - XP Home is a step down, and XP Pro isn't much of a step up (Remote desktop is nice, but that's about it).
98 crashes. A lot. You shouldn't need evidence to prove this. ME is the same way.
I have never gotten a stop error on my Windows XP system. Never. The OS has never gone down, either. Explorer crashes are annoyingly common, but managable. Once in a while one of my apps will go down.
Right now, my uptime is closing on 300 days (I hibernate when I go on vacation or to a LAN party).
The GUI may not be as pretty as Aqua, but it gets the job done. I have never seen how the dock/finder deals with 300 programs, but the Start Menu manages quite well.
The user interface is not perfect, but neither is Apple's. And at least I don't have to deal with the Dock.
One company producing the hardware and the software. Sure, there are benefits. But there is a big downside: you live in a closed world. I can feel confident that almost all of the hardware I can buy will work with my system. I built my system. Most people don't understand why someone would want to build a system. Those are the kinds of people who use their computer to check email and surf the web. To them, a computer is a tool. To me, it is a project. It is something that I put real time and effort into, and I find that gratifying.
I wouldn't be able to get that experience with a Mac.
Many aren't like me. That's OK. Not everyone wants to build a car... or a PC.
Those people use Windows, mostly. Some hate it. Some despise it. Some love it. But Windows isn't about love. It's about function. It's about getting the job done and getting on with your life. At my school, we have 600 PCs running Windows 2000. Everything works. All the time. I can do research, type a document in Word, save it to my share, and print it out in the library. And here's the thing: everyone else can too. Windows must be doing something right.
So, yes, many have horror stories. Many Mac users do, too. But 95% of the problems described in the "Switch" campaign aren't problems on Windows 2000 or XP. Crashes are rare. Plug and Play actually works, and well (ever add a PCI card during hibernation?). And it's pretty easy to use.
My brother has a laptop with XP on it. He wanted to send some pictures to a friend. He connected the digicam, and the photo wizard popped up. He clicked the email option and selected which photos he wanted. At the end, an Outlook Express window popped open with the photos attached. The photos were resized to 640x480 and compressed with a lower quality JPEG setting so that they would be managable. He typed in the email address, the message, the subject, and hit send.
Windows works. My brother, knowing nothing of drivers or JPEG or image resizing, managed to send some photos via email, and, as far as he was concerned, he never had to copy them to his hard drive.
Windows is imperfect. So is Mac. But a bunch of "switch" testimonials about how Apple is "so much better" help no one. All that is spread is misinformation based on the misconceptions of former PC users.
Macs may just work. So does my PC. So do the ones at my school. So do my friend's PCs. And millions of other PCs.
Take a look at the new Ipaq - smaller than the Palm V.
So that's why the 737 is the most common commercial airplane on the planet?
"We gave you the mobile phone"
Huh? Perhaps you introduced widespread, standardized GSM service, but mobile phones existed in the US before they did in Europe.
Who do you have for service? I have Verizon, and it's been clear and reliable for the past two years. I've also heard that Sprint is quite good.
BTW: With Active desktop you can also stick widgets on the taskbar.
Except that Smart Tags were DROPPED from IE6 after public outcry.
"I bet these ads will be loaded with implied falsehoods"
What, and Apple's ads aren't? They find someone with Windows 98 loaded on a piece of garbage PC to tell them about their experience. Of course they had a bad experience.
Windows XP and Windows 98 are in a different universe. Imagine comparing XP to Mac OS 9. That's what Apple is doing. And that's what Microsoft will probably do.
Nope, it would have to be 1.67 GHZ, otherwise it would be Centrino XP 1900+.
It's not relavent. It's called thermal protection, and it's been on AMD motherboards for nine months. It's been in AMD CPUs since Palamino.
4: If you live in one of the 60 areas with LIL service.
Local into local service is available in many areas for the country.
- You get your local channels (not national feeds)
- No waivers
- No antenna test
Now, there's still a large part of the country without LIL service. That's the real issue.
Personally, I like to have my cake and eat it too.
$90 AthlonXP 2000+
$140 512M DDR266
$72 Asus A7N266-VM (NForce)
$150 Chaintech GT21 GeForce4 4200 128M @ 500/250
$55 Alpha PAL8045 + Panaflo 28cfm
$190 2X Samsung SpinPoint 80G 7200 RAID0
$50 TDK 32X CD-RW
$30 Hitachi 6X DVD-ROM
$50 Enlight Micro ATX 300W Chassis
$17 Microsoft Internet Keyboard
$20 Logitech MX Optical Mouse
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$864
$864 for a very nice system. It's no P3 3.06/Radeon9700/RDRAM, but it can still play UT2003 (DM-Antlus) at 1024x768 with all effects and stay above the monitor vsync (I enabled vsync in the UT2003 config).
"It's clearly spanking Athlon now"
6 &p =1
Hold on, a few % is "spanking"?
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=174
The Athlon 2800+ wins sometimes, and admiddadly loses in the other tests. However, we're talking about 5% or less here. It's not like the P4 is twice as fast.
The P4 is a respectable CPU and Intel's strategy has clearly allowed them to push it.
AMD's strategy has also worked. With a much lower R&D budget they have managed to remain competative (although they are going bankrupt in the process). AMD CPUs now power about 10% of PC desktop systems. The Athlon may not be as technologically advanced as the P4 3.06GHZ with Hyper-Threading, but it can certainly crunch numbers nearly as well.
Athlon XP Barton will be shipping in a few weeks (if AMD doesn't do another "paper launch"). That will be the real CPU to compare to the P4.
That would be funny it the PowerBook G4 wasn't such an effective lap warmer.