I know it sounds bizzar. This was one of those all in one computers - kinda pre imac power macintosh. This was a couple of years ago, but as I recall the system was unusable because it would either jack the volume all the way out or completely silence it - and you couldn't controll the sound. The part that was bad was a little circut board that had a couple of buttons on it (sat just below the monitor and above the cdrom and floppy drive). I tried cleaning it out, and a bunch of other things. So we decided to replace it - and at the time we were apple service centre so we could order parts for the systems we had.
The company I worked for was Koalas computers - when I left the company the system was still there waiting for parts - that was like a year and two months waiting and I'm not BS'ing you in the slightest.
It wasn't too uncommon to wait months for specific powerbook parts either.
However like everyone and their sister has pointed out that was a while back (couple of years) and that apple uses standard this and that, and that they have fixed their service problems.
I don't hate macs - I've got one at home I use all the time - a Powermac 6100/60 with a 210 MHz G3 turbo board inside with a 21" monitor and 72 megs of ram. Yes it has broke down a lot, but I've been able to repair it every time (so far).
From a pallette of 262,144 colours according to the A3000 manual:). And OCS is pretty much the same as ECS except ECS can do vga modes (without a hardware mode promoter) at 4 colours.
Man it sounds like you copied this out of a Apple sales brochure.
Can the Mac play half-life and run counter-strike? I use both mouse buttons while playing games - what about that?
I like macs too, but they are lousy for games. Similiar prephials on macs cost twice as much as they do on the PC, repairing them is an absolute bitch. Few years back when I serviced macs it was not too uncommon to wait over a year (that meant the user had no computer for over a year) for simple parts like volume buttons, disk drives (superdrives), and other things like that.
Until the disk eject mechanism breaks:(. Ever price an apple super-drive? Last time I had to replace one (on a Quadra 700 - Apple has some of the cummiest warrenties - or at least did - 6 months...)
Some apple machines are not elegant underneath. I was one of those suckers that bought a 4000$+ Powermac 6100/60. Its got a 200 MHz G3 now.
Its got to be one of the most hairbrained designed machines ever built. Out of the box it has 8 megs of system ram (I don't even think when it came out it was capable of running anything in addition to System 7.x) and 640k of video ram. 640k of video ram? What were they thinking? Even my Amiga 1200 - which cost like 450$ (in 93) came with 2 megs of video ram.
I think thats what the original poster is getting at. Sure they look great, but they have rotten specs - usually requiring the user to upgrade everything (and they do - I used to do mac sales...).
When the Commodore 64 came out the Apple II cost $1530. The commodore 64 cost 595$. This was in 1982. I think Commodore did more to make computing affordable and acessable to more people then Apple or IBM.
Well he may have been talking about the Xerox Star - which had a GUI and was a computer you could purchase before the mac came out. Mind you it cost like 15,000+ dollars.
Heh - the first GUI I ever used was on the Atari ST (and it wasn't even my machine). I think the second GUI I used was on an Apple II GS. I don't recall it blowing me away at the time - because there were graphics and mouse's for computers like the Commodore 64 - plus I was just a kid then.
Then you have robert cringley interviewing Steve Jobs himself - where he revealed that the GUI he saw at Xerox Parc during a tour of the facility was and I quote "the most fantastics thing I had ever seen" - so if they were going to go GUI the whole time why was it so fantastic?
Nonsense - I work at a company in the US that has a few Japanese Windows 2000 machines (I set them up!) and they have been on for the last year and a half without the slightest crash.
These aren't name brand machines either - mostly just ATX systems with Asus CUBX boards in them.
You don't know how many times I've been up that path.
No cisco support has already told me that the 67x series was not designed for what were using it for. The solution is to get a dslam card for a 6100 series router, but alas were a struggling.com...
I've had cisco routers crash (usually their cheaper 67x series or the 1600 series) where rebooting does bring the router back online. Usually because were trying to cram to many sessions down them or something (did you know that if you open more then 1200 sessions on a 675 or a 678 it'll probably crash in a few hours?)
You know whats funny is when I got DSL I had to use a seperate ISP because they admited they had run out of circuts. I didn't use covad, but someone else.
And they gave me a set date like on the end of friday. Any you know what? A technician actually showed up and got it running on time.
Once I had a complaint too - and they even gave me my own personal rep - who gave me his cell number.
Maybe this is just the Portland Oregon area though:).
I've got a Sony R90 (about a year ago it was top of the line) - its okay and it sounds great, but it has a few problems compared to a real mp3 player.
First you have to record all your songs to it - one at a time, and if you don't have a digital sound card heaven help you because you have to adjust the line level for each song.
Second the R90 (I don't know about the MZR900) has some of the slowest seek times in the world - it takes over 10 seconds just to skip tracks. And if you close the door with no disk in it - it takes about 15 seconds to tell you that.
With a real mp3 player its all just drap and drop. I've got an ipaq and a mp3 cd player (phillips) - if you want to listen to mp3 files get an mp3 player. The Phillips mp3 cd player lasts about 8-10 hours and thats over 200+ tracks per disk - plus it has a 100 second esp - I've never had the thing skip. My only complain is the size (cds are kinda bulky!)
I think the mini-disc recorders are best suited for recording tapes, live stuff, and cds to md.
If you need a website to figure out how to hook an ipaq up to your stereo you probably shouldn't use one...
Seriously though - I've got a Phillips MP3 CD player which I highly recomend - first it lasts longer then the Ipaq (I don't know about the travelstar, but the IBM Microdrive you can listen to about 2 hours of music with the built in batteries and the external battery in the pcmcia sleeve) but you can get it for 125$ and it comes with a car kit so all you have to do is plug it all in. And it works like a top - and it lasts about 8-10 hours on two AA batteries.
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The company I worked for was Koalas computers - when I left the company the system was still there waiting for parts - that was like a year and two months waiting and I'm not BS'ing you in the slightest.
It wasn't too uncommon to wait months for specific powerbook parts either.
However like everyone and their sister has pointed out that was a while back (couple of years) and that apple uses standard this and that, and that they have fixed their service problems.
I don't hate macs - I've got one at home I use all the time - a Powermac 6100/60 with a 210 MHz G3 turbo board inside with a 21" monitor and 72 megs of ram. Yes it has broke down a lot, but I've been able to repair it every time (so far).
From a pallette of 262,144 colours according to the A3000 manual :). And OCS is pretty much the same as ECS except ECS can do vga modes (without a hardware mode promoter) at 4 colours.
The C=64 specs were 4 colours - but you could do 16 by changing the pallette every 8 pixels.
Also 320x200 graphics was considered "High Res" mode - and you could only do 2 colours.
Can the Mac play half-life and run counter-strike? I use both mouse buttons while playing games - what about that?
I like macs too, but they are lousy for games. Similiar prephials on macs cost twice as much as they do on the PC, repairing them is an absolute bitch. Few years back when I serviced macs it was not too uncommon to wait over a year (that meant the user had no computer for over a year) for simple parts like volume buttons, disk drives (superdrives), and other things like that.
150$ part...
Its got to be one of the most hairbrained designed machines ever built. Out of the box it has 8 megs of system ram (I don't even think when it came out it was capable of running anything in addition to System 7.x) and 640k of video ram. 640k of video ram? What were they thinking? Even my Amiga 1200 - which cost like 450$ (in 93) came with 2 megs of video ram.
I think thats what the original poster is getting at. Sure they look great, but they have rotten specs - usually requiring the user to upgrade everything (and they do - I used to do mac sales...).
When the Commodore 64 came out the Apple II cost $1530. The commodore 64 cost 595$. This was in 1982. I think Commodore did more to make computing affordable and acessable to more people then Apple or IBM.
Well he may have been talking about the Xerox Star - which had a GUI and was a computer you could purchase before the mac came out. Mind you it cost like 15,000+ dollars.
Heh - the first GUI I ever used was on the Atari ST (and it wasn't even my machine). I think the second GUI I used was on an Apple II GS. I don't recall it blowing me away at the time - because there were graphics and mouse's for computers like the Commodore 64 - plus I was just a kid then.
Then you have robert cringley interviewing Steve Jobs himself - where he revealed that the GUI he saw at Xerox Parc during a tour of the facility was and I quote "the most fantastics thing I had ever seen" - so if they were going to go GUI the whole time why was it so fantastic?
These aren't name brand machines either - mostly just ATX systems with Asus CUBX boards in them.
Things like executive softwares disk-keeper, or norton (symantec) ghost, or norton anti-virus.
Just because it doesn't run on linux doesn't mean its innovative.
No cisco support has already told me that the 67x series was not designed for what were using it for. The solution is to get a dslam card for a 6100 series router, but alas were a struggling .com...
Programs like emm386 allow you to use extended memory, but only on a 386 or above. Without that your just another XT :).
A lot of people were really pissed off that like one week before our ceo stood in front of the entire company and said everything was just fine.
Some cisco routers are really pieces of junk.
And they gave me a set date like on the end of friday. Any you know what? A technician actually showed up and got it running on time.
Once I had a complaint too - and they even gave me my own personal rep - who gave me his cell number.
Maybe this is just the Portland Oregon area though :).
First you have to record all your songs to it - one at a time, and if you don't have a digital sound card heaven help you because you have to adjust the line level for each song.
Second the R90 (I don't know about the MZR900) has some of the slowest seek times in the world - it takes over 10 seconds just to skip tracks. And if you close the door with no disk in it - it takes about 15 seconds to tell you that.
With a real mp3 player its all just drap and drop. I've got an ipaq and a mp3 cd player (phillips) - if you want to listen to mp3 files get an mp3 player. The Phillips mp3 cd player lasts about 8-10 hours and thats over 200+ tracks per disk - plus it has a 100 second esp - I've never had the thing skip. My only complain is the size (cds are kinda bulky!)
I think the mini-disc recorders are best suited for recording tapes, live stuff, and cds to md.
Seriously though - I've got a Phillips MP3 CD player which I highly recomend - first it lasts longer then the Ipaq (I don't know about the travelstar, but the IBM Microdrive you can listen to about 2 hours of music with the built in batteries and the external battery in the pcmcia sleeve) but you can get it for 125$ and it comes with a car kit so all you have to do is plug it all in. And it works like a top - and it lasts about 8-10 hours on two AA batteries.
Mac OS X doesn't run on a lot of Power Macs :).
Er mflops. Mplops is funny though :).
Any my Duron 650 (now like a 30$ cpu) does 846.50 mplops according to your little benchmark :).
The guy who developed the Amiga video chipset was none other then Jay Miner - who used to design chipsets for Atari.
Besides the Amiga is kinda slow at browsing the web. I can't imagine what it would be like on the C64 :).
The time to decode the layout of the website is something that is rather cpu intensive.
I've got a wavelan card (lucent 802.11 card) for my Ipaq - which is very similar in hardware to this little beast. Its actually pretty fun.