"They carried the same codebase forward from Windows 3.1, never completely scrapping it, always just bolting new parts on. This has caused Windows to end up like a Rube Goldberg machine, so complicated on the inside that "they" say nobody at Microsoft really knows what everything in there actually DOES."
WRONG. Windows 95, 98, and ME may be based (partially) on Windows 3.1, but very little code in Windows NT/2000/XP comes from Windows 3.1.
"They really pounded the nails in the coffin when they deliberately bound IE into the O/S to frustrate the DOJ during the browser wars. By binding so many things right into the O/S, they glued themselves to their codebase. Can they even separate their GUI from the underlying O/S anymore?"
Statements like this indicate that you dont't know how IE/Windows integration actually works. IE isn't part of the kernel, nor is it any more integrated into the OS than, for example, DirectShow. Microsoft's HTML rendering engine ("Trident") is simply a dynamically-linked-library used by many Windows applications (help, Internet Explorer, the shell). This is no different from KHTML in KDE or WebCore in OS X.
"3. Given that this monstrous, mammoth codebase is a hideous nightmare to try and "fix", obviously the smart thing is to pull a Steve Jobs: scrap the whole beast and glue a beaufitul, stable frontend onto a FreeBSD backend with a Mach Microkernel. This would turn Windows into a thing of beauty and stability, like the Mac O/S. But, CAN they? Is it even possible?"
Come on. From what I have heard, the Windows codebase is actually very *clean*. Far more so, in fact, than your typical Linux distro.
Microsoft is nowhere near screwed. With almost $40 billion in cash and great programming talent, you can be assured that Windows will be dominant for years to come.
No, you're thinking of the DL585, which is quad-Opteron (up to 8-cores). The DL385 is dual-processor (though you can install dual-core Opterons to get 4 total cores).
"Do you think Intel, AMD and the various memory makers aren't "very grateful" of the extra business they get from the dizzyingly high requirements of Windows nowadays?"
Because, as we all know, GNOME runs *great* with 128MB of memory. And of course, Mac OS X is absolutely smooth on 128MB as well.
With 256M of memory, Windows is as nippy as any other fully-featured desktop environment.
Your results are not indicative of flash performance - CF is simply not that fast. I frequently get 10MB/sec with my USB 2.0 SD card reader and generic PQI 1GB SD card.
Flash can be *very* fast. Remember, you can interleave many flash chips using RAID-like techniques without the cost of having multiple disk assemblies.
"Chess can never be reduced to a number of possible moves just like art can never be reduced to a number of strokes. God gave us something which seperates us from all other things on earth. We are unlike anything else."
Wrong wrong wrongedy wrong. We are very much like many other things on Earth. You only need to look at the physiology of an ape to see that. Of course, we are not apes. Indeed, we are unlike everything else - but, indeed, so are apes. It's like claiming that my PC is unique - indeed, my custom-built system is "unlike anything else". It's meerely a property of a specific classification. You, on the other hand, are trying to make it into something that it is not.
"Chess can never be reduced to a number of possible moves"
Recent competition seems to have disproved that. Indeed, it is possible to be highly effective at chess merely by evaluating vast numbers of moves.
Does that tell us that we are less smart? Does it indicate that computers are "superior" to humans? No. It merely indicates that chess is not the ultimate test of thinking that we thought it was.
Someday, however, we may have computers that can paint. Computers that can "think". Do not believe that there is some "divine difference" that makes us the only things capable of thought. There isn't.
"They fail to deliver useful drivers for *nix. X.Org developers should be able to implement all what they want, and for that they need better-documented hardware. Only then will we have a real eyecandy, hardware-accelerated desktop à la Quartz Extreme."
No, only when you realize that NVIDIA's Linux drivers already support XRender acceleration and turn on the feature in xorg.conf will you have a real eyecandy, hardware-acceleated desktop à la Quartz Extreme.
The 6800LE may have a 256-bit bus, but it's GDDR, not GDDR3. Many 6600GTs have memory clocks above 1000MHz (my Gigabyte is 1120MHz stock), which doesn't quite match the memory bandwidth of the 6800LE (17.9GB/s vs. 22.4GB/s) but is close enough to not make a huge difference.
With 8-pipes, the 6800LE is beaten handily by the 6600GT (also 8-pipe, but clocked at 500MHz instead of 300MHz). Only if you plan on softmodding does the 6800LE make sense - and even then it's a crapshoot.
At $160, it's price competitive, but it's not redily available in PCIe variants. Not to mention that there's a much better selection of 6600GT cards, and that they generally have simpler/quieter cooling systems.
"I know the parent is cliche now, but dang it, I've had many opportunities to fly some of the Mexican airlinelines lately, and it reminds me of the way things used to be. Hot meals. Silverware. The *whole* can of soda. Free booze (yeah, even domestic flights). Pillows. Blankets. Little doily-things on the headrest so the previous passenger's grease wouldn't infect your head. In flight magazine (yeah, in English). Enough legroom for my 6'2" body. And all of this in tourist class. And you know, on my last flight, I bought the tickets a couple of days in advance, and it was the same price as when I'd checked them a month in advance.
And just to show that I'm still a little sexist, latina stewardesses of the highest calibre."
You didn't get any of that for free. You paid for it in the price of your ticket. Air travel is *significantly* cheaper today than it was even 10-15 years ago. Why? Because discount carriers who dropped "luxuries" for lower fares started to take over the market. Market pressure forced the major carriers to drop the amenities as well.
"And you know, on my last flight, I bought the tickets a couple of days in advance, and it was the same price as when I'd checked them a month in advance."
This is stupid. When you book late, you *should* pay more. Why? Because allowing everyone to book at the last minute adds uncertainty and increases costs. When the flights are booked months in advance, the carrier can select which airplane to use (777-200 or A319, for example) and otherwise juggle the schedule to ensure that airplanes operate *full*.
This is one of the huge differences from the 70s - airplanes are "overbooked" or "underbooked" far less often. Requiring you to book far in advance allows the carrier to ensure that airplanes will leave at capacity. In the long run, that translates to lower ticket prices.
Moreover, charging higher prices for later booking allows business travelers (who often book days or even hours in advance, and who don't care about cost) to subsidise my ticket.
Face facts: air travel has reached the point where it is nothing more than a fast bus service. No frills, just cram an airplane full of people and get them to their destination 5 hours later. The seats are cramped, the bathrooms are tiny, and the airplane is noisy - but if if saves me money on my ticket, I'm all for it.
Oh, and if the sparse accomidations bug you, there's always First Class.
"With Linux, the driver for the video doodad is probably already installed; for everything else there's apt-get. No compiling, no driving, and probably less total time spent than the Windows approach:)"
Wrong wrong wrongedy wrong. There may not be compiling, but there is undoubtably configuration. Not to mention that you need editing software - and current Linux solutions are aimed squarely at the high-end.
And that's if the "video capture doodad" is even supported at all. Most aren't.
On Windows, the "video capture doodad" likely comes with software to install. You install, reboot, plug in the device, and fire up the software.
Microsoft has been convicted of monopolistic practices. Apple has not."
I hate to break it to you, but Apple is conducting monopolistic practices with iTMS *right now*. Using your 86% marketshare in MP3 players to lock people in to your player software and your music download service is exactly the kind of shit that Microsoft was convicted for.
"Um, yeah, except we've got, um, several years of observational data about what happens when people eat fruit. Not some much with the tiny synthetic molecules."
Uhhh, yeah? We have lots of experience with synthetic molecules. The keyboard you are typing on right now is made of "tiny synthetic molecules".
"Because you're not wearing your kitchenware in the form of tiny teflon fibers."
Right, so there's *less* chance that the PTFE particles will be heated to the point where they decompose.
PTFE is extremly non-reactive, and precisely because of this it is used in medical implants.
"By the way, Teflon pans are deadly to birds when overheated. A gas is formed which can kill your pet in a matter of minutes. Does it affect humans? Dunno. You can read DuPont's assessment of the danger to birds here."
If, indeed, you are heating your pans beyond the 280C tempeature where PTFE decomposes, you may be at risk. However, there are many other chemicals commonly used in cooking (vegetable oils, butter) that can be dangerous to birds at lower temperatures.
"Wow, talk about a step backwards. Isn't openfirmware the reason powerbooks sleep and come out of standby immediately (unlike my windows laptops... all of them take approx 5-15 seconds to wake up) "
No.
- PowerBooks don't come out of sleep immediately (generally 4-5 seconds on my friend's 12"). - PC notebooks can wake quickly, too. My CL-56 took 2-3 seconds and my Toshiba takes 3-4. Most of that is the hard drive spinning up.
I wouldn't go quoting Tog so easily. Remember, he has written *multiple* articles on why the OS X Dock sucks.
Apple may do usability studies, but they are dreadfully incompetent in a variety of ways. Things like "the application can be open but have no windows" and "let's make a big application launcher / switcher utility, but without text labels" show that.
The Dock sucks. It really does. It's big, so it takes up a lot of room on the screen. Turning on magnification makes it a moving target. Turning on auto-hide makes it delightfully hard to access. Applications get "stuck" under the dock. Minimized windows become difficult to identify (as it turns out, pages of text all look the same when reduced to 80 pixels).
Windows is "document based". When I have four websites open, I have four icons on the taskbar. When I have four Word documents open, there are four icons on the taskbar for them, too.
Mac OS is "application-centric". You could have 100 Word documents open and still have only one icon for "Word". OS X makes you think in terms of applications.
There are lots of usability problems in OS X. It's just that no one actually looks for them.
"To this day, a Dual 2.5GHz G5 still pounds a 3+GHz P4/AMD whatev into the ground"
Not the case. The Anandtech benchmarks a few days ago showed that the PPC970 has an extremely weak FPU compared to either Pentium-4 or Athlon 64/Opteron. It also has abysmal memory latency (more than double the Opteron) and it's integer performance isn't anything to write home about either.
Despite Apple's marketing bullshit, the PPC970 is a very weak CPU that performs well in some specific applications (BLAST, RC5). Apple uses those applications, along with optimized "benchmarks", to claim that their platform is faster.
Yesterday, Apple announced that they would be switching to x86. It's not because a "dual G5 pounds a 3+GHz P4", it's because it *doesn't*.
It's hard to compete with the world's two largest desktop CPU companies. Intel has their advanced process technology (generally regarded as 9 months ahead of the rest of the industry) and AMD has the excellent Athlon core which has been relentlessly refined and optimized.
You get far more exposure to radiation from using a cellphone than you do from living near a cell tower.
It's R-Squared, stupid. You are a few centimeters from the phone and at least 30m from the tower. The tower just doesn't put out enough power to make a sizable impact on your exposure.
"AMD is a lot smaller than either Intel or IBM..."
Not eactly. While they are certainly a lot smaller than Intel, they are considerably larger than IBM in terms of semiconductor fabrication capability. In fact, AMD's Dresden Fab 30 can turn out over 500,000 Athlon 64 CPUs every week if necessary - it's one of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturing facilities.
"Everybody *assumes* that WPA is easily worked around, but there's not a really good solution out there."
Spend 5 minutes on the phone with Microsoft? Really, all you have to do is call them, answer three questions, and enter the activation code. Total time: about 5 minutes.
Question 1: Is this the first time you're activating Windows (Answer: NO)
Question 2: May I ask why you are reactivating Windows? (Answer: Changed Hardware)
Question 3: Other than this computer, how many computers is this copy of Windows installed on? (Answer: None)
That's it. Then you get your confirmation number and can go on your merry way.
XP's not a server, and WS2003 is far *easier* to deploy and manage than 2000 ever was. If you've ever worked with Exchange, IIS, or AD, let me tell you - WS2003 is a substantial move forward. I think it's the best product that Microsoft has ever released.
"Intel makes decent hardware but they're nothing like a PPC or an AMD chip. Everyone knows it."
If "everyone knows it", then why do 75% of the computers out there run on Intel CPUs? Intel's Pentium-M is a damn-fine CPU. Intel has a strong brand - their hardware may not always be the lowest power or the fastest, but it has a reputation for compatibility and reliability.
"But Apple holds a certain market share, a share of people who don't give a damn what the hardware (or software) costs, they want their Mac."
You assume that a Mac with a Pentium isn't going to be a Mac. That's bull. People like Macs because the hardware is well designed and it integrates well with the (also well-designed) OS. When was the last time you saw the CPU in your Mac? For most people, it was *never*.
"Macintoshes are built like computers SHOULD be built."
Often they are not. Apple's iBook series was plagued with logic-board issues for *years*. The PowerBook G4s make your lap toasty. The G4 towers were damned noisy. Early G5s were far noisier than many PCs (bad fan firmware). The G5 can be a nightmare to upgrade. The Mac Mini is damned hard to open/upgrade.
If you want to look at a well designed computer, take a look at the HP XW8200. It may not have the "wow" factor of the G5, but it has *tons* of engineering touches inside that make it easy to work with. Things like tool-less PCI/PCIe card retention. Like a drive cage that holds 5 disks without screws. Like a drive cage that dampens vibration. Like a 90-degree rotated header on the motherboard for neater cable routing.
The XW8200 is clean inside, it's fast, and it's quiet. That's engineering at work.
Apple produces some nice computers. But so does HP.
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"They carried the same codebase forward from Windows 3.1, never completely scrapping it, always just bolting new parts on. This has caused Windows to end up like a Rube Goldberg machine, so complicated on the inside that "they" say nobody at Microsoft really knows what everything in there actually DOES."
WRONG. Windows 95, 98, and ME may be based (partially) on Windows 3.1, but very little code in Windows NT/2000/XP comes from Windows 3.1.
"They really pounded the nails in the coffin when they deliberately bound IE into the O/S to frustrate the DOJ during the browser wars. By binding so many things right into the O/S, they glued themselves to their codebase. Can they even separate their GUI from the underlying O/S anymore?"
Statements like this indicate that you dont't know how IE/Windows integration actually works. IE isn't part of the kernel, nor is it any more integrated into the OS than, for example, DirectShow. Microsoft's HTML rendering engine ("Trident") is simply a dynamically-linked-library used by many Windows applications (help, Internet Explorer, the shell). This is no different from KHTML in KDE or WebCore in OS X.
"3. Given that this monstrous, mammoth codebase is a hideous nightmare to try and "fix", obviously the smart thing is to pull a Steve Jobs: scrap the whole beast and glue a beaufitul, stable frontend onto a FreeBSD backend with a Mach Microkernel. This would turn Windows into a thing of beauty and stability, like the Mac O/S. But, CAN they? Is it even possible?"
Come on. From what I have heard, the Windows codebase is actually very *clean*. Far more so, in fact, than your typical Linux distro.
Microsoft is nowhere near screwed. With almost $40 billion in cash and great programming talent, you can be assured that Windows will be dominant for years to come.
No, you're thinking of the DL585, which is quad-Opteron (up to 8-cores). The DL385 is dual-processor (though you can install dual-core Opterons to get 4 total cores).
"Do you think Intel, AMD and the various memory makers aren't "very grateful" of the extra business they get from the dizzyingly high requirements of Windows nowadays?"
Because, as we all know, GNOME runs *great* with 128MB of memory. And of course, Mac OS X is absolutely smooth on 128MB as well.
With 256M of memory, Windows is as nippy as any other fully-featured desktop environment.
Your results are not indicative of flash performance - CF is simply not that fast. I frequently get 10MB/sec with my USB 2.0 SD card reader and generic PQI 1GB SD card.
Flash can be *very* fast. Remember, you can interleave many flash chips using RAID-like techniques without the cost of having multiple disk assemblies.
"Chess can never be reduced to a number of possible moves just like art can never be reduced to a number of strokes. God gave us something which seperates us from all other things on earth. We are unlike anything else."
Wrong wrong wrongedy wrong. We are very much like many other things on Earth. You only need to look at the physiology of an ape to see that. Of course, we are not apes. Indeed, we are unlike everything else - but, indeed, so are apes. It's like claiming that my PC is unique - indeed, my custom-built system is "unlike anything else". It's meerely a property of a specific classification. You, on the other hand, are trying to make it into something that it is not.
"Chess can never be reduced to a number of possible moves"
Recent competition seems to have disproved that. Indeed, it is possible to be highly effective at chess merely by evaluating vast numbers of moves.
Does that tell us that we are less smart? Does it indicate that computers are "superior" to humans? No. It merely indicates that chess is not the ultimate test of thinking that we thought it was.
Someday, however, we may have computers that can paint. Computers that can "think". Do not believe that there is some "divine difference" that makes us the only things capable of thought. There isn't.
"They fail to deliver useful drivers for *nix. X.Org developers should be able to implement all what they want, and for that they need better-documented hardware. Only then will we have a real eyecandy, hardware-accelerated desktop à la Quartz Extreme."
No, only when you realize that NVIDIA's Linux drivers already support XRender acceleration and turn on the feature in xorg.conf will you have a real eyecandy, hardware-acceleated desktop à la Quartz Extreme.
Seriously. Ubuntu even has a Wiki page:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DropShadows
(They mention the open-source ATI drivers that support Radeon 9000, but the NVIDIA drivers work as well)
The 6800LE may have a 256-bit bus, but it's GDDR, not GDDR3. Many 6600GTs have memory clocks above 1000MHz (my Gigabyte is 1120MHz stock), which doesn't quite match the memory bandwidth of the 6800LE (17.9GB/s vs. 22.4GB/s) but is close enough to not make a huge difference.
With 8-pipes, the 6800LE is beaten handily by the 6600GT (also 8-pipe, but clocked at 500MHz instead of 300MHz). Only if you plan on softmodding does the 6800LE make sense - and even then it's a crapshoot.
At $160, it's price competitive, but it's not redily available in PCIe variants. Not to mention that there's a much better selection of 6600GT cards, and that they generally have simpler/quieter cooling systems.
"I know the parent is cliche now, but dang it, I've had many opportunities to fly some of the Mexican airlinelines lately, and it reminds me of the way things used to be. Hot meals. Silverware. The *whole* can of soda. Free booze (yeah, even domestic flights). Pillows. Blankets. Little doily-things on the headrest so the previous passenger's grease wouldn't infect your head. In flight magazine (yeah, in English). Enough legroom for my 6'2" body. And all of this in tourist class. And you know, on my last flight, I bought the tickets a couple of days in advance, and it was the same price as when I'd checked them a month in advance.
And just to show that I'm still a little sexist, latina stewardesses of the highest calibre."
You didn't get any of that for free. You paid for it in the price of your ticket. Air travel is *significantly* cheaper today than it was even 10-15 years ago. Why? Because discount carriers who dropped "luxuries" for lower fares started to take over the market. Market pressure forced the major carriers to drop the amenities as well.
"And you know, on my last flight, I bought the tickets a couple of days in advance, and it was the same price as when I'd checked them a month in advance."
This is stupid. When you book late, you *should* pay more. Why? Because allowing everyone to book at the last minute adds uncertainty and increases costs. When the flights are booked months in advance, the carrier can select which airplane to use (777-200 or A319, for example) and otherwise juggle the schedule to ensure that airplanes operate *full*.
This is one of the huge differences from the 70s - airplanes are "overbooked" or "underbooked" far less often. Requiring you to book far in advance allows the carrier to ensure that airplanes will leave at capacity. In the long run, that translates to lower ticket prices.
Moreover, charging higher prices for later booking allows business travelers (who often book days or even hours in advance, and who don't care about cost) to subsidise my ticket.
Face facts: air travel has reached the point where it is nothing more than a fast bus service. No frills, just cram an airplane full of people and get them to their destination 5 hours later. The seats are cramped, the bathrooms are tiny, and the airplane is noisy - but if if saves me money on my ticket, I'm all for it.
Oh, and if the sparse accomidations bug you, there's always First Class.
"With Linux, the driver for the video doodad is probably already installed; for everything else there's apt-get. No compiling, no driving, and probably less total time spent than the Windows approach :)"
Wrong wrong wrongedy wrong. There may not be compiling, but there is undoubtably configuration. Not to mention that you need editing software - and current Linux solutions are aimed squarely at the high-end.
And that's if the "video capture doodad" is even supported at all. Most aren't.
On Windows, the "video capture doodad" likely comes with software to install. You install, reboot, plug in the device, and fire up the software.
Doesn't sound so hard to me.
Huh? A 1394a card is like $30 bucks at Best Buy. And lots of low-end PCs ship with 1394a ports. And video editing software is built in to Windows XP.
Your comment doesn't make any sense.
Or T-Mobile USA. They offer unlimited data for $20 a month.
Get an NForce4 SLI board and run two GeForce PCIe graphics cards (or two ATI PCIe graphics cards). You will be able to support up to four monitors.
The Matrox Parhelia is slow, as are PCI (not PCIe) cards.
"Easy.
Microsoft has been convicted of monopolistic practices. Apple has not."
I hate to break it to you, but Apple is conducting monopolistic practices with iTMS *right now*. Using your 86% marketshare in MP3 players to lock people in to your player software and your music download service is exactly the kind of shit that Microsoft was convicted for.
"Um, yeah, except we've got, um, several years of observational data about what happens when people eat fruit. Not some much with the tiny synthetic molecules."
Uhhh, yeah? We have lots of experience with synthetic molecules. The keyboard you are typing on right now is made of "tiny synthetic molecules".
"Because you're not wearing your kitchenware in the form of tiny teflon fibers."
Right, so there's *less* chance that the PTFE particles will be heated to the point where they decompose.
PTFE is extremly non-reactive, and precisely because of this it is used in medical implants.
"By the way, Teflon pans are deadly to birds when overheated. A gas is formed which can kill your pet in a matter of minutes. Does it affect humans? Dunno. You can read DuPont's assessment of the danger to birds here."
If, indeed, you are heating your pans beyond the 280C tempeature where PTFE decomposes, you may be at risk. However, there are many other chemicals commonly used in cooking (vegetable oils, butter) that can be dangerous to birds at lower temperatures.
"Wow, talk about a step backwards. Isn't openfirmware the reason powerbooks sleep and come out of standby immediately (unlike my windows laptops... all of them take approx 5-15 seconds to wake up) "
No.
- PowerBooks don't come out of sleep immediately (generally 4-5 seconds on my friend's 12").
- PC notebooks can wake quickly, too. My CL-56 took 2-3 seconds and my Toshiba takes 3-4. Most of that is the hard drive spinning up.
I wouldn't go quoting Tog so easily. Remember, he has written *multiple* articles on why the OS X Dock sucks.
Apple may do usability studies, but they are dreadfully incompetent in a variety of ways. Things like "the application can be open but have no windows" and "let's make a big application launcher / switcher utility, but without text labels" show that.
The Dock sucks. It really does. It's big, so it takes up a lot of room on the screen. Turning on magnification makes it a moving target. Turning on auto-hide makes it delightfully hard to access. Applications get "stuck" under the dock. Minimized windows become difficult to identify (as it turns out, pages of text all look the same when reduced to 80 pixels).
Windows is "document based". When I have four websites open, I have four icons on the taskbar. When I have four Word documents open, there are four icons on the taskbar for them, too.
Mac OS is "application-centric". You could have 100 Word documents open and still have only one icon for "Word". OS X makes you think in terms of applications.
There are lots of usability problems in OS X. It's just that no one actually looks for them.
Yes, and Microsoft controls both the hardware and the software on the XBox. It has custom DRM chips. It doesn't have a BIOS.
And it still runs Linux.
"To this day, a Dual 2.5GHz G5 still pounds a 3+GHz P4/AMD whatev into the ground"
Not the case. The Anandtech benchmarks a few days ago showed that the PPC970 has an extremely weak FPU compared to either Pentium-4 or Athlon 64/Opteron. It also has abysmal memory latency (more than double the Opteron) and it's integer performance isn't anything to write home about either.
Despite Apple's marketing bullshit, the PPC970 is a very weak CPU that performs well in some specific applications (BLAST, RC5). Apple uses those applications, along with optimized "benchmarks", to claim that their platform is faster.
Yesterday, Apple announced that they would be switching to x86. It's not because a "dual G5 pounds a 3+GHz P4", it's because it *doesn't*.
It's hard to compete with the world's two largest desktop CPU companies. Intel has their advanced process technology (generally regarded as 9 months ahead of the rest of the industry) and AMD has the excellent Athlon core which has been relentlessly refined and optimized.
That's why Apple chose Intel.
You might not want to go ouside then.
You get far more exposure to radiation from using a cellphone than you do from living near a cell tower.
It's R-Squared, stupid. You are a few centimeters from the phone and at least 30m from the tower. The tower just doesn't put out enough power to make a sizable impact on your exposure.
"AMD is a lot smaller than either Intel or IBM..."
Not eactly. While they are certainly a lot smaller than Intel, they are considerably larger than IBM in terms of semiconductor fabrication capability. In fact, AMD's Dresden Fab 30 can turn out over 500,000 Athlon 64 CPUs every week if necessary - it's one of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturing facilities.
At 1.8lbs, that's probably one hell of an expensive notebook. I suspect that the battery life isn't too great, either.
"Everybody *assumes* that WPA is easily worked around, but there's not a really good solution out there."
Spend 5 minutes on the phone with Microsoft? Really, all you have to do is call them, answer three questions, and enter the activation code. Total time: about 5 minutes.
Question 1: Is this the first time you're activating Windows (Answer: NO)
Question 2: May I ask why you are reactivating Windows? (Answer: Changed Hardware)
Question 3: Other than this computer, how many computers is this copy of Windows installed on? (Answer: None)
That's it. Then you get your confirmation number and can go on your merry way.
5 minutes of time is a far cry from "impossible".
"XP & 2003 are pains to use as a server."
XP's not a server, and WS2003 is far *easier* to deploy and manage than 2000 ever was. If you've ever worked with Exchange, IIS, or AD, let me tell you - WS2003 is a substantial move forward. I think it's the best product that Microsoft has ever released.
"Intel makes decent hardware but they're nothing like a PPC or an AMD chip. Everyone knows it."
If "everyone knows it", then why do 75% of the computers out there run on Intel CPUs? Intel's Pentium-M is a damn-fine CPU. Intel has a strong brand - their hardware may not always be the lowest power or the fastest, but it has a reputation for compatibility and reliability.
"But Apple holds a certain market share, a share of people who don't give a damn what the hardware (or software) costs, they want their Mac."
You assume that a Mac with a Pentium isn't going to be a Mac. That's bull. People like Macs because the hardware is well designed and it integrates well with the (also well-designed) OS. When was the last time you saw the CPU in your Mac? For most people, it was *never*.
"Macintoshes are built like computers SHOULD be built."
Often they are not. Apple's iBook series was plagued with logic-board issues for *years*. The PowerBook G4s make your lap toasty. The G4 towers were damned noisy. Early G5s were far noisier than many PCs (bad fan firmware). The G5 can be a nightmare to upgrade. The Mac Mini is damned hard to open/upgrade.
If you want to look at a well designed computer, take a look at the HP XW8200. It may not have the "wow" factor of the G5, but it has *tons* of engineering touches inside that make it easy to work with. Things like tool-less PCI/PCIe card retention. Like a drive cage that holds 5 disks without screws. Like a drive cage that dampens vibration. Like a 90-degree rotated header on the motherboard for neater cable routing.
The XW8200 is clean inside, it's fast, and it's quiet. That's engineering at work.
Apple produces some nice computers. But so does HP.