I have something that's as rugged as the iBook (magnesium case), just a bit bigger, and $350 on eBay. Dell CSX. 500mhz PIII, 20GB HDD, 256M PC100, Windows 2000 Included, DVD/CD burner included.
If you are on a budget, the $1000 iBook is a lame deal compared to the $350 CSX. The CSX is plenty fast to surf the net or run Word. Yes, the iBook is better. But is it 2.85x better? Probably not.
(Sidenote: I'm not just criticizing the iBook - $1000 PC notebooks are too expensive as well)
Itanium isn't like any other CPU out there. It uses an instruction set called EPIC, or Explicitly Paralell Instruction Computing. EPIC was Intel's answer to a major problem: current CPU architectures are spending more and more of their transistors trying to figure out what instructions can be executed in paralell.
With EPIC, that logic is moved into the compiler. This raises the real problems with Itanium:
1: It's hot. This has nothing to do with the architecture; it has to do with the fact that Itanium has tons of cache (3 or 6MB), or isn't manufactured on a modern process (the 1.5MB variant uses a 180nm process). EPIC actually has fewer transistors and runs at a lower clock speed, meaning that it should be *cooler* than a comparable CPU. The Itanium at 1.5Ghz beats the 3.2Ghz P4 at integer and kills it in FP. If Intel were to make an Itanium with a good process (e.g. 90nm) and a sane amount of cache (1MB), it wouldn't be the hot chip that it is today. 2: It's expensive. See above. Intel doesn't want to sell the Itanium for cheap. That's why they give it huge cache - to justfiy the $1500 price tag. If it had Pentium-size cache and were produced in Pentium-like quantities, it would be cheaper to produce than the Pentium. 3: It requires good compilers. GCC ain't gonna cut it.
Not particularly. NTFS and FAT both are case-preserving but case-insenstitive. NTFS even has a metadata system (similar to the resource/data fork, but you can have more than two forks).
"If some no-name company rushes an Opteron box out the door a few days before Apple's announcement, can you really gloat about it? I mean, fuck dude, get a life! While Apple is out there mass-producing killer machines, these jokers are niggling about whether it's the first one or not. This is not a patent application, loser--it's marketing. Get it through your thick head."
Marketing doesn't mean lying. Apple claims the "world's fastest PC", yet they haven't even tested an Athlon 64 based machine. They claim the "world's first 64 bit PC", but BOXX had a system before they did.
This is Apple lying and getting away with it. It's false advertising and it's illegal.
Try the AMD Athlon FX. 6.4 Gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth (with the controller right on the CPU for lower latency), plus 6.4 Gigabytes per second of I/O bandwidth. Even the G5's 1Ghz bus isn't as fast.
"the fastest interconnects"
Hmmm... Wrong again. That would go to... AMD Athlon FX. 12.8GByes/sec of total bandwidth.
"the best peripheral support"
Don't know what you're smoking here, but you can get *way more* peripherals for PCs.
"and the best (in my opinion) Operating System."
You're entitled to your opinion. I personally prefer Linux.
"StarOffice is just as good if not superior to Office"
Are you just making that statement up or do you have facts? From my experience, Office is head and shoulders above *any* other office suite.
"Mozilla renders pages faster than IE."
My anecdotal and scientific evidence says otherwise. IE is *still* almost twice as fast at rendering nested tables, and IE loads pages faster than Firebird on my school's old computers.
"It's to the point where I keep a copy of Firebird on my USB drive so I can quickly copy it to another computer I happen to be using, because IE is just so clunky and horrible to use."
IE really isn't so bad. Heck, when you switch IE into "standards" mode (by specifiying the DOCTYPE as XHTML in the first line of the file), it is actually reasonably CSS compliant.
People who say they can't design standards-based websites that work in IE and Mozilla are full of bull. IE doesn't have any problem rendering my CSS. No, it's probably not as compliant as Mozilla, but it supports enough of the standard that you can design an attractive XHTML 1.1 compliant website that renders pixel perfect in Internet Explorer, Konqueror, Opera, and Mozilla.
Three things that I do wish IE had:
- Tabs - Popup blocking - Disabling of that stupid "Security Features May Prevent This Page From Working..." dialog
By the way, on the older systems at my school (Pentium 166; win2000), IE is way faster than Firebird.
I restate my point: Why don't Europeans have five types of phones? Because they standardized on one system. Why don't people in the US speek five languages? Because they standardized on one language.
We can "get away" with English because everyone in the US, as well as anyone who wants to deal with US businesses, speeks English. If the US were an island of 10,000 with an oddball language, we wouldn't be able to "get away" with it.
My point was this: Europe doesn't need ten types of cellphones or ten types of currencies because they created and followed a standard. The US doesn't need 10 languages because one has become the de facto standard. And if you were going to choose a standard language for a coutnry today, you couldn't pick a much better language than the most spoken language on the planet*.
"And, pray tell, which 'features' are those? If I purchase though iTunes, i can play the original AAC files (of arguably better compression quality) on as many as 3 Macs, i can also play them on as many iPods as I want. I can also also burn them to CD, thereby vanquishing all DRM, so I can copy the CD or re-rip to MP3"
Funny. The parent talked about how PressPlay offers the same $.99 non-DRM downloads.
"So tell me, why is a WMA file that I can only play on one machine (and no iPods) better?"
You get unlimited downloading, but, as the parent said, it only works on one computer. You can stream to any other system if you want to listen to music at work.
Advantages of iTMS: - No Monthly Fee
Advantages of PressPlay: - Download as much as you want (DRM; Non-DRM costs same as iTMS) - Stream as much as you want
"But I have a friend with a 700 MHz laptop with XP, and I have an identical machine with Linux, Gnome 2.4 and so forth. My friend has had to admit that my machine is a lot snappier in both loading and operation of the apps the two machines have in common (OpenOffice and the GIMP) and the Linux machine is a lot more consistent with smooth audio output when the machine is under I/O and CPU load."
That has not been my experience. My Linux system (Gnome 2.4; 2.4.22; ReiserFS) is quite a bit more laggy than my Windows 2000 system.
XP flies on my low-end notebook. It's that simple. I have no complaints about the speed. The PowerBook G4s that my friends have are noticably less responsive.
I was referring to "Sprint PCS", which most people think of when they think Sprint. Sprint Spectrum did offer GSM for a time, however, that network has been shut down for quite some time.
Your example about the car wreck supports the Windows side. Not driving would be akin to using an Apple. Driving defensively would be akin to using a Windows box and administering it properly.
Your own example contradicts your point.
Here's another example:
What's the best way to prevent burns? a) Don't cook b) Cook Safely
Not cooking works flawlessly every time. But is it the best answer? No.
There's this thing that's called risk. Everything we do involves risk. Managing that risk is the secret to living a normal life.
There are lots of ATX power supplies that take 100-240 volts, 50/60Hz. Nearly every ATX power supply made takes 100-240 volts, and many of the newer ones don't even have the voltage selector switch.
Who uses anything lower than 100V or higher than 240V anyway?
Europe is extremely proud of it's phone system. They standardized on GSM early and it has paid off with near universal coverage and compatibility. Europe is now proud to be unifying their currency to enable more open commerce between countries. Europe is also proud of the EU, which unifies regulations and law (to a degree), also allowing greater trade and unity between all of the nations in Europe.
Wonder why people never learn more than 1 language in the US? It's because they don't really need to. The US has a standardized language. A nation the size of the EU with one language. You don't need to know French and German and English in the US. You only need one language. Just like the same phones and the same currency work everywhere in Europe, the same language works everywhere in the US.
"Yeah, after all, if you learn another language all you get is a whole new area of literature to read, a whole different culture that opens itself to you, and a new and different way of thinking. Not worth the trouble, eh?"
Man. You sound like my Spanish teacher. Come on. This is why we have translations. There is a *huge* range of thoughts and ideas in English. No one has enough time to capture the whole range of ideas in their own language, let alone another ten.
Spanish is an interesting language with a huge diverse history and culture. That doesn't mean that it's a "new way of thinking".
" Just about everyone in Europe seems to speak multiple languages."
That's because you need at least two languages to effectively communicate in Europe (at least your nation's language and English). Here in the US, we can go anywhere in a nation the size of the EU, as well as most of Canada, without having to speek any other language than English.
In Europe, you need French and Italian and German and Spanish and English if you want to be able to communicate fluently. Yes, English has become the language of business, but many people in European nations still don't speek anything but their native language. That's not an issue in the US - everybody speeks English (although Spanish is becoming more commonplace every day).
"Dell Computer, Intel, and UCLA have found that multiple processors can increase productivity."
Not as much as you might think. A processor that is twice as fast is always better than two processors. That's why, so far, graphics cards and PCs have stuck to one chip. Yes, there are exceptions (Vodoo5, Opteron/Xeon/G4/G5), but they never sell as well as the cheaper 1p systems.
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"US cell systems are not as good as GSM"
Oh. GSM isn't as good as GSM?
AT&T Wireless, Cingular, and T-Mobile all have extensive GSM 1900 systems in the US.
I have something that's as rugged as the iBook (magnesium case), just a bit bigger, and $350 on eBay. Dell CSX. 500mhz PIII, 20GB HDD, 256M PC100, Windows 2000 Included, DVD/CD burner included.
If you are on a budget, the $1000 iBook is a lame deal compared to the $350 CSX. The CSX is plenty fast to surf the net or run Word. Yes, the iBook is better. But is it 2.85x better? Probably not.
(Sidenote: I'm not just criticizing the iBook - $1000 PC notebooks are too expensive as well)
Right. Taiwan wouldn't do aything like that. Oh. Wait. They did. It's called the Taipei 101.
Itanium isn't like any other CPU out there. It uses an instruction set called EPIC, or Explicitly Paralell Instruction Computing. EPIC was Intel's answer to a major problem: current CPU architectures are spending more and more of their transistors trying to figure out what instructions can be executed in paralell.
With EPIC, that logic is moved into the compiler. This raises the real problems with Itanium:
1: It's hot. This has nothing to do with the architecture; it has to do with the fact that Itanium has tons of cache (3 or 6MB), or isn't manufactured on a modern process (the 1.5MB variant uses a 180nm process). EPIC actually has fewer transistors and runs at a lower clock speed, meaning that it should be *cooler* than a comparable CPU. The Itanium at 1.5Ghz beats the 3.2Ghz P4 at integer and kills it in FP. If Intel were to make an Itanium with a good process (e.g. 90nm) and a sane amount of cache (1MB), it wouldn't be the hot chip that it is today.
2: It's expensive. See above. Intel doesn't want to sell the Itanium for cheap. That's why they give it huge cache - to justfiy the $1500 price tag. If it had Pentium-size cache and were produced in Pentium-like quantities, it would be cheaper to produce than the Pentium.
3: It requires good compilers. GCC ain't gonna cut it.
Not particularly. NTFS and FAT both are case-preserving but case-insenstitive. NTFS even has a metadata system (similar to the resource/data fork, but you can have more than two forks).
Microsoft Software Update Services is what you're looking for.
"If some no-name company rushes an Opteron box out the door a few days before Apple's announcement, can you really gloat about it? I mean, fuck dude, get a life! While Apple is out there mass-producing killer machines, these jokers are niggling about whether it's the first one or not. This is not a patent application, loser--it's marketing. Get it through your thick head."
Marketing doesn't mean lying. Apple claims the "world's fastest PC", yet they haven't even tested an Athlon 64 based machine. They claim the "world's first 64 bit PC", but BOXX had a system before they did.
This is Apple lying and getting away with it. It's false advertising and it's illegal.
"The G5 is not compatible with the G4, not by a long shot."
Actually, it is. It's fully PowerPC compatible, including all of the old 32-bit instructions.
That's the Itanium version of Windows XP 64. Itanium isn't 32-bit compatible (except through emulation), so Microsoft left out quite a few features.
The AMD64 version of Windows XP 64 bit should be far closer to the retail version of Windows XP. You can also run 32-bit Windows XP without problem.
"The Dual G5 has the best bus"
Try the AMD Athlon FX. 6.4 Gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth (with the controller right on the CPU for lower latency), plus 6.4 Gigabytes per second of I/O bandwidth. Even the G5's 1Ghz bus isn't as fast.
"the fastest interconnects"
Hmmm... Wrong again. That would go to... AMD Athlon FX. 12.8GByes/sec of total bandwidth.
"the best peripheral support"
Don't know what you're smoking here, but you can get *way more* peripherals for PCs.
"and the best (in my opinion) Operating System."
You're entitled to your opinion. I personally prefer Linux.
"StarOffice is just as good if not superior to Office"
Are you just making that statement up or do you have facts? From my experience, Office is head and shoulders above *any* other office suite.
"Mozilla renders pages faster than IE."
My anecdotal and scientific evidence says otherwise. IE is *still* almost twice as fast at rendering nested tables, and IE loads pages faster than Firebird on my school's old computers.
"It's to the point where I keep a copy of Firebird on my USB drive so I can quickly copy it to another computer I happen to be using, because IE is just so clunky and horrible to use."
IE really isn't so bad. Heck, when you switch IE into "standards" mode (by specifiying the DOCTYPE as XHTML in the first line of the file), it is actually reasonably CSS compliant.
People who say they can't design standards-based websites that work in IE and Mozilla are full of bull. IE doesn't have any problem rendering my CSS. No, it's probably not as compliant as Mozilla, but it supports enough of the standard that you can design an attractive XHTML 1.1 compliant website that renders pixel perfect in Internet Explorer, Konqueror, Opera, and Mozilla.
Three things that I do wish IE had:
- Tabs
- Popup blocking
- Disabling of that stupid "Security Features May Prevent This Page From Working..." dialog
By the way, on the older systems at my school (Pentium 166; win2000), IE is way faster than Firebird.
I restate my point: Why don't Europeans have five types of phones? Because they standardized on one system. Why don't people in the US speek five languages? Because they standardized on one language.
We can "get away" with English because everyone in the US, as well as anyone who wants to deal with US businesses, speeks English. If the US were an island of 10,000 with an oddball language, we wouldn't be able to "get away" with it.
My point was this: Europe doesn't need ten types of cellphones or ten types of currencies because they created and followed a standard. The US doesn't need 10 languages because one has become the de facto standard. And if you were going to choose a standard language for a coutnry today, you couldn't pick a much better language than the most spoken language on the planet*.
* 1st and 2nd language speekers
"and it's taking forever on my 56K modem! On iTunes, the same transfer only takes 3 minutes!"
Wow! Amazing! iTunes has turned your 56k modem into an 800k DSL connection! Wow! That "Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field" sure is effective.
"And, pray tell, which 'features' are those? If I purchase though iTunes, i can play the original AAC files (of arguably better compression quality) on as many as 3 Macs, i can also play them on as many iPods as I want. I can also also burn them to CD, thereby vanquishing all DRM, so I can copy the CD or re-rip to MP3"
Funny. The parent talked about how PressPlay offers the same $.99 non-DRM downloads.
"So tell me, why is a WMA file that I can only play on one machine (and no iPods) better?"
You get unlimited downloading, but, as the parent said, it only works on one computer. You can stream to any other system if you want to listen to music at work.
Advantages of iTMS:
- No Monthly Fee
Advantages of PressPlay:
- Download as much as you want (DRM; Non-DRM costs same as iTMS)
- Stream as much as you want
Any questions?
"But I have a friend with a 700 MHz laptop with XP, and I have an identical machine with Linux, Gnome 2.4 and so forth. My friend has had to admit that my machine is a lot snappier in both loading and operation of the apps the two machines have in common (OpenOffice and the GIMP) and the Linux machine is a lot more consistent with smooth audio output when the machine is under I/O and CPU load."
That has not been my experience. My Linux system (Gnome 2.4; 2.4.22; ReiserFS) is quite a bit more laggy than my Windows 2000 system.
No. I don't drive or bike.
XP flies on my low-end notebook. It's that simple. I have no complaints about the speed. The PowerBook G4s that my friends have are noticably less responsive.
I was referring to "Sprint PCS", which most people think of when they think Sprint. Sprint Spectrum did offer GSM for a time, however, that network has been shut down for quite some time.
Your example about the car wreck supports the Windows side. Not driving would be akin to using an Apple. Driving defensively would be akin to using a Windows box and administering it properly.
Your own example contradicts your point.
Here's another example:
What's the best way to prevent burns?
a) Don't cook
b) Cook Safely
Not cooking works flawlessly every time. But is it the best answer? No.
There's this thing that's called risk. Everything we do involves risk. Managing that risk is the secret to living a normal life.
What are you smoking?
There are lots of ATX power supplies that take 100-240 volts, 50/60Hz. Nearly every ATX power supply made takes 100-240 volts, and many of the newer ones don't even have the voltage selector switch.
Who uses anything lower than 100V or higher than 240V anyway?
Here's the funny part:
Europe is extremely proud of it's phone system. They standardized on GSM early and it has paid off with near universal coverage and compatibility. Europe is now proud to be unifying their currency to enable more open commerce between countries. Europe is also proud of the EU, which unifies regulations and law (to a degree), also allowing greater trade and unity between all of the nations in Europe.
Wonder why people never learn more than 1 language in the US? It's because they don't really need to. The US has a standardized language. A nation the size of the EU with one language. You don't need to know French and German and English in the US. You only need one language. Just like the same phones and the same currency work everywhere in Europe, the same language works everywhere in the US.
"Yeah, after all, if you learn another language all you get is a whole new area of literature to read, a whole different culture that opens itself to you, and a new and different way of thinking. Not worth the trouble, eh?"
Man. You sound like my Spanish teacher. Come on. This is why we have translations. There is a *huge* range of thoughts and ideas in English. No one has enough time to capture the whole range of ideas in their own language, let alone another ten.
Spanish is an interesting language with a huge diverse history and culture. That doesn't mean that it's a "new way of thinking".
" Just about everyone in Europe seems to speak multiple languages."
That's because you need at least two languages to effectively communicate in Europe (at least your nation's language and English). Here in the US, we can go anywhere in a nation the size of the EU, as well as most of Canada, without having to speek any other language than English.
In Europe, you need French and Italian and German and Spanish and English if you want to be able to communicate fluently. Yes, English has become the language of business, but many people in European nations still don't speek anything but their native language. That's not an issue in the US - everybody speeks English (although Spanish is becoming more commonplace every day).
OK, so windows has smaller print (it's unreadable at 1280x1024); Linux has larger print (indeed, GNOME does set the default font size to 10pt).
So, how exactly can you have more windows open under Linux? Windows should allow more windows at a given size because of the smaller text size.
I have no problem with Windows at 1600x1200 on my 19" CRT.
"Dell Computer, Intel, and UCLA have found that multiple processors can increase productivity."
Not as much as you might think. A processor that is twice as fast is always better than two processors. That's why, so far, graphics cards and PCs have stuck to one chip. Yes, there are exceptions (Vodoo5, Opteron/Xeon/G4/G5), but they never sell as well as the cheaper 1p systems.