I just made a dell laptop and an iBook with all the options listed, making sure to add all the software WindowsXP doesn't have.
I added Office v.X to the apple, other options were untouched.
I was unable to get a similar CPU, so I have to sacrafice battery life to a fan with my Dell.
I recieve a "Free" lexmark printer with my Dell, as this printer appears to be worth about the cost of a ink cartridge, I worry not.
I chose Windows Professional Plus! as that is the most similar operating system to OS X microsoft offers (not to mention she supports getting it in her article).
I upgraded to 256MB ram (one stick) as that compares to the iBook.
I upgraded to a 30GB hard drive as that compares to the iBook.
I added Office XP to the Dell, to compare to my Office v.X on my Mac (which I also added).
I had to get 6 moths of AOL service with the Dell, no way out of it.
I upgraded to " 24X CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive with Roxio's Easy CD Creator® [add $179]" to compare to the iBook.
I added norton AntiVirus because your average windows user will get that. A subscription to.Mac gives you a free AntiVirus program I should mention.
I upgraded the Dell to USB2.0, it's inexcusable that that wasn't the default.
I added Dell Jukebox (some garbage) to compare to Apples iTunes.
I now have a dell at $2272.00 and an iBook at $1998.00. I should mention your average Apple user will probably get a.Mac subscription, so you can add 99$ to that cost.
Clearly in the world of "portable computers" the best of the best still comes from apple, both price wise and performance wise.
Dell laptop is still missing several things in comparison to the Apple laptop, which I would personally value at over $300, but no money can provide me with those things from Dell(read the other comments on why to get an apple laptop if you don't know what I'm talking about).
The fact that every component in a mac laptop except the CPU is superior to my windows laptop, DOES NOT MATTER!
The fact that the networking makes Windows XP look like it's from the 80's DOES NOT MATTER!
The fact that apple has had a connection faster than USB2.0 for the past three years, DOES NOT MATTER!
The fact the LCD is clearly better, and the fonts on a mac are arguably better, DOES NOT MATTER!
The fact the OS seamlessly supports every component on the laptop with no quirks, DOES NOT MATTER!
The fact the laptops are silent except for the hard drive, DOES NOT MATTER!
When will you apple dorks realize the only important possession a man has is the MHZ of his CPU. Everything else comes second, even when the CPU speed causes me to sacrafice something from every other component on the system.
There is a prety large market for a word processor there, someone else would step up almost imediatly.
You would be suprized how simple Word et. all really are, a staff capable of releasing a first tier game could easilly beat office (to explain the number of coders required). You have to remember the average MS coder is about 26yrs old, they would be a Jr. Coder anywhere else, throw some experienced guys at it to come up with competition would leave them scrambling for a few months..
If MS takes off from the apple market, they may never get that market back. It would be a huge blow to them as apple is doing nothing but gaining marketshare at the present.
Removing IE dosen't even cause steve to flinch anymore, Chimenera with a little help from Apple/AOL easily beats IE. The most recent version of AOL for mac uses Gecko itself (no not the beta version, it's gold). IE only has it's marketshare" on windows anymore, and that isn't as iron hard as it has been for the past two years either.
MS has tough times ahead, I wonder how bill will handle them.
Often the actual coding stage for me is simply writing out a paragraph of compilable code from the docs I've spent the last few hours hours making perfect (in english). I do admit I often don't code at nearly 120 wpm, but 55wmp would definatly hinder me.
About as hard as it is to develop for windows, except the compiler and IDE is included with the OS (the IDE is roughly VisualStudio quality, not shabby but no borland).
I'd say the API is more readily avadiable, and the developer docs are much easier to read. Also the API seems cleaner to me (then again I don't know W32 api well, I always get stuck asking why it's so retarded every time I need to code a windows app)
Do you have any more information on these? I did a quick google but couldn't find much.
Are the legal for a consumer, do you need to clear a flight plan? Can you just land anywhere? What speeds are we talking about? Is there anyplace it's illegal to fly? What altitude?
I would say in the air you have an infinite number of possible paths, on ground you only have very expensive roads.
I doubt the type of problems we have currently would be that major, also consider you can have *multiple* levels of traffic without overly expensive bridges.
As for collision avoidance, I'm almost positive that a consumer vehicle in the range of $10k-$30k is capable of surviving a 10 story fall without any bodily harm, in fact the driver might be better off due to the delay before the "big crash". I think if we were to take to personal aircraft, it would probably be completly computerized control anyway (it *is* possible if you remove the pedestrian problem), so the only errors that could cause accidents would be mechanical failure.
1: some highly unethical buisness practices when their marketshare was in the balance (pre 1996) 2: the proliferation of x86 hardware (that if was cloned today, would actually be illegal under the DMCA) 3: the fact they had backwords compatability with DOS, and the "only" viable OS for x86 hardware to most people post 1998.
You will notice that since they took the market over in 1998 their innovation has been skin deep. The only real technology I see coming out of them since then is.NET and that's designed with two things in mind.
1: Some very smart people at MS realize their monopoly is bullshit, and can vaporize rather quickly. They provide nothing to the average corperate desktop user that a few (closer to 100) million capital couldn't develop from scratch, and they really only sell "integration" on the server side, no one in their right mind would choose NT over the alternatives if everything else was equal. 2: They want to be able to be viable in tomorows enviroment with a single press release..Net is microsofts baby (instead of sun's) for a few reasons
1: If sun controlls the bytecode, sun can toy with MS horribly, ditto the other way 2: MS can maintain a monopoly over.Net applications until they decide to release the reins for buisness reasons
Consider the following:
1: MS has already developed at least a basic interpreter for FreeBSD, this means they could have a full version out for Linux *bsd and OS X out within 6 months if they wanted to. 2: All future applications from MS are probably going to run under.Net, or the industry won't even pretend to adopt it.
It appears to me someone at MS is well aware they are going to face tough times in the near future. In fact their biggest challenge will probably be the fact x86 hardware is open. It becomes very costly to test an OS in a "standard testing enviroment" when you have to test several thousand hardware configurations, most of them rather big piles of junk. Alternatively testing in the Open Source world is much easier, as ("elite") end users are volunteer testers . MS would love nothing more than to be able to switch to an "Apple" style tomorow, but they see no way to do so. This will place them behind the ball as linux becomes more mature, and with more and more companies backing it, there is no way for it to get worse. I'd venture to say the active linux developer base (for everything except UI) is actually probably larger *right now* than the active developers really working on "windows", and that gap can only widen.
It makes perfect sense for a corperation to pay a few tens of thousands to get a feature developed in linux (especially ones like IBM), and if/when someone like AOL jumps on board, a "standard" interface will be no longer a dream. All of this can be done in the "open source" way, as these companies don't actually make a profit selling the software itself. It seems rather pecular to me that AOL has funded Netscape development on linux for so long if they don't find it tempting, and Im sure they do.
I guess this reply has drifted totally away from my origional point, and into random wanderings. I shall stop now.
How about visual basic? Click to select a control, drag to move it. Oops, looks like you did that too fast: it got counted as a double-click, and now you've opened a code-editing window.
oh god, I HATE this. They really should make it a triple click or something, or cause the first mouse click to not count for the double click, ANYTHING.
I'll start by saying things like unix *must* exist for the people who live in computers, no matter how "easy" all the other interfaces are.
One cannot compare the productivity of a unix wiz to anything in a current GUI, it's just not a comparison. Someday there might be GUI that is flexible enough and easy enough to manipulate that it can replace the CLI, but that will be quite a ways. Remember your dealing with 100+ diffrent input types, and 10 input points when you use a keyboard instead of a mouse. A mouse is capable of one selection and at most 5 inputs, that is horrible in comparison.
I would like to point out we still read (sorry couldn't think of better example) instead of watching movies, when movies are obviously the "easier" interface.
As for touch screens, they are a very nasty input device if the screen is also the display. I am never productive with one (YMMV). I personally think the future input device will be a combination of the keyboard-mouse in one that was posted a few days ago. It obviously has several iterations left, but my main complaint about current interfaces is they often require you to do one of the following:
1: limit your actions and use a mouse 2: not limit your actions, but double your time by using a mouse 3: speed yourself up significantly by using a few keyboard shortcuts, but hit a major speed bump when you have to move back into "mouse" mode 4: use all keyboard shortcuts (requires alot of effort to learn all keystrokes) and avoid mouse completly
If the transition between keyboard and mouse became cheaper, todays interfaces would be alot better off. Perhaps it won't be as easy for someone who has never seen a computer before, but I'm almost positive everyone is capable of understanding the "cursor" metaphor by now (if not it's a very easy one to explain).
The two mouse button (and a WHEEL?!?) problem is something that is hard for novice users though, I actually find the "right click - left click" interface ackward at moments, and I've been using computers since 1981!
You mean IE has a problem rendering lots of animated gif's?
I've seen IE bring my system to a crawl with one browser of ~100 diffrent animated gif's open, I've never seen the same from mozilla. Perhaps your talking about a diffrent situation?
Try opening the prefrence window on the NS based browsers sometime, you might be suprized.
You might be shocked how horribly ugly IE is at everything (from navigation to rendering) after you get mozilla tweaked to your needs, I can hardly browse in IE anymore w/o getting mad at the slow clunky interface.
That didn't even make sense. Are you saying the only reason companies won't switch is because they jumped onto a scam from MS that allows them to sell more servers? To say linux is harder to adminster than windows is a joke, and if it really is there are alot of companies with a vested interest in making it not so.
I do hope more CTO's have more intelligence than yourself.
I would like to point one thing out, due to the nature of linux, the more companies that support it, the better it gets. Windows on the other hand is only as good as MS makes it, which do you think will win in the long run?
Actually most of the switch add's I've actually seen on the air recently hit home the points.
The fact is, I am a computer geek, and I have no clue where I would find a grandma-level video editing software for windows that "just works". For graphics gimp doesn't fit that bill, and photoshop yeah right.
iMail puts Outlook to shame, and I've never seen spam filtering my grandma could grasp, this is that magical filter.
to be quite honest, you should't be required to know alot to use your computer. How much do you know about the internal workings of your lawnmower? Do you expect it to "just work", or do you expect to baby it around the yard?
I know w32 (most systems) inside and out, yet I still find a Mac more productive, I think alot of people are that way. The thing is, you can beat a mac until the kernel is choking, and it keeps on "just working", I know all the things to avoid doing to make the same thing happen in w32, but I have to specifically limit my actions to as not to crash explorer or something annoying like that. Throw the iTools on top of that and it's not even a comparison.
You missed it though, his computer is apparently unable to be booted from a floppy to fix this situation. Thats a prety serious grevance to me, but then again I understand whats going on better than a judge would.
And explain your situation, see what they suggest.
Quite simply that is not an acceptable state for a piece of hardware you paid a good chunk of cash to be in, without any hardware problems (eg it was that way when it left the factory), with no recorse offered. I would go so far as to say you could sue them the cost of a comparable laptop if worst came to worst.
Whats the user of corperation rights (Copyright anyone?) if the consumer is hindered to the point no one has any money left to spend?
It's all a balance, most of the "rights" corperations enjoy today are artifical, therefore must carefully be goverened in scope as their goal is to make money, not help the consumer or anything else.
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I just made a dell laptop and an iBook with all the options listed, making sure to add all the software WindowsXP doesn't have.
.Mac gives you a free AntiVirus program I should mention.
.Mac subscription, so you can add 99$ to that cost.
I added Office v.X to the apple, other options were untouched.
I was unable to get a similar CPU, so I have to sacrafice battery life to a fan with my Dell.
I recieve a "Free" lexmark printer with my Dell, as this printer appears to be worth about the cost of a ink cartridge, I worry not.
I chose Windows Professional Plus! as that is the most similar operating system to OS X microsoft offers (not to mention she supports getting it in her article).
I upgraded to 256MB ram (one stick) as that compares to the iBook.
I upgraded to a 30GB hard drive as that compares to the iBook.
I added Office XP to the Dell, to compare to my Office v.X on my Mac (which I also added).
I had to get 6 moths of AOL service with the Dell, no way out of it.
I upgraded to " 24X CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive with Roxio's Easy CD Creator® [add $179]" to compare to the iBook.
I added norton AntiVirus because your average windows user will get that. A subscription to
I upgraded the Dell to USB2.0, it's inexcusable that that wasn't the default.
I added Dell Jukebox (some garbage) to compare to Apples iTunes.
I now have a dell at $2272.00 and an iBook at $1998.00. I should mention your average Apple user will probably get a
Clearly in the world of "portable computers" the best of the best still comes from apple, both price wise and performance wise.
Dell laptop is still missing several things in comparison to the Apple laptop, which I would personally value at over $300, but no money can provide me with those things from Dell(read the other comments on why to get an apple laptop if you don't know what I'm talking about).
Well Dj. Q-bert and Tony Hawk definatly aern't fabricated. If they are thats one big huge media conspiracy!!!
The fact that every component in a mac laptop except the CPU is superior to my windows laptop, DOES NOT MATTER!
The fact that the networking makes Windows XP look like it's from the 80's DOES NOT MATTER!
The fact that apple has had a connection faster than USB2.0 for the past three years, DOES NOT MATTER!
The fact the LCD is clearly better, and the fonts on a mac are arguably better, DOES NOT MATTER!
The fact the OS seamlessly supports every component on the laptop with no quirks, DOES NOT MATTER!
The fact the laptops are silent except for the hard drive, DOES NOT MATTER!
When will you apple dorks realize the only important possession a man has is the MHZ of his CPU. Everything else comes second, even when the CPU speed causes me to sacrafice something from every other component on the system.
CPU MHZ IS GOD!!!!~~~~
There is a prety large market for a word processor there, someone else would step up almost imediatly.
You would be suprized how simple Word et. all really are, a staff capable of releasing a first tier game could easilly beat office (to explain the number of coders required). You have to remember the average MS coder is about 26yrs old, they would be a Jr. Coder anywhere else, throw some experienced guys at it to come up with competition would leave them scrambling for a few months..
If MS takes off from the apple market, they may never get that market back. It would be a huge blow to them as apple is doing nothing but gaining marketshare at the present.
Removing IE dosen't even cause steve to flinch anymore, Chimenera with a little help from Apple/AOL easily beats IE. The most recent version of AOL for mac uses Gecko itself (no not the beta version, it's gold). IE only has it's marketshare" on windows anymore, and that isn't as iron hard as it has been for the past two years either.
MS has tough times ahead, I wonder how bill will handle them.
Yes this is all possible, but you have to sacrafice a mode to get it done.
Often the actual coding stage for me is simply writing out a paragraph of compilable code from the docs I've spent the last few hours hours making perfect (in english). I do admit I often don't code at nearly 120 wpm, but 55wmp would definatly hinder me.
yeah that was a prety bad one
:)
*hangs his head in shame*
why do we have to have so damn many 3 letter acronyms anyway??
Actually PC clones are illegal under the DMCA, thats the point I run into the ground on every single mailing to my congress critters
About as hard as it is to develop for windows, except the compiler and IDE is included with the OS (the IDE is roughly VisualStudio quality, not shabby but no borland).
I'd say the API is more readily avadiable, and the developer docs are much easier to read. Also the API seems cleaner to me (then again I don't know W32 api well, I always get stuck asking why it's so retarded every time I need to code a windows app)
if there was demand for millions of helicopters per year we all couldn't have personal helicopters instead of cars?
If the FCC wasn't in the pockets of the air industry, we would already have lots more air travel than we do.
You would be suprized how hard it is to use even a glider in public airspace.
Do you have any more information on these? I did a quick google but couldn't find much.
Are the legal for a consumer, do you need to clear a flight plan? Can you just land anywhere? What speeds are we talking about? Is there anyplace it's illegal to fly? What altitude?
I would say in the air you have an infinite number of possible paths, on ground you only have very expensive roads.
I doubt the type of problems we have currently would be that major, also consider you can have *multiple* levels of traffic without overly expensive bridges.
As for collision avoidance, I'm almost positive that a consumer vehicle in the range of $10k-$30k is capable of surviving a 10 story fall without any bodily harm, in fact the driver might be better off due to the delay before the "big crash". I think if we were to take to personal aircraft, it would probably be completly computerized control anyway (it *is* possible if you remove the pedestrian problem), so the only errors that could cause accidents would be mechanical failure.
Was that a troll? I noticed your on my friends, just wanted to make sure.
1: some highly unethical buisness practices when their marketshare was in the balance (pre 1996)
.NET and that's designed with two things in mind.
.Net is microsofts baby (instead of sun's) for a few reasons
.Net applications until they decide to release the reins for buisness reasons
.Net, or the industry won't even pretend to adopt it.
2: the proliferation of x86 hardware (that if was cloned today, would actually be illegal under the DMCA)
3: the fact they had backwords compatability with DOS, and the "only" viable OS for x86 hardware to most people post 1998.
You will notice that since they took the market over in 1998 their innovation has been skin deep. The only real technology I see coming out of them since then is
1: Some very smart people at MS realize their monopoly is bullshit, and can vaporize rather quickly. They provide nothing to the average corperate desktop user that a few (closer to 100) million capital couldn't develop from scratch, and they really only sell "integration" on the server side, no one in their right mind would choose NT over the alternatives if everything else was equal.
2: They want to be able to be viable in tomorows enviroment with a single press release.
1: If sun controlls the bytecode, sun can toy with MS horribly, ditto the other way
2: MS can maintain a monopoly over
Consider the following:
1: MS has already developed at least a basic interpreter for FreeBSD, this means they could have a full version out for Linux *bsd and OS X out within 6 months if they wanted to.
2: All future applications from MS are probably going to run under
It appears to me someone at MS is well aware they are going to face tough times in the near future. In fact their biggest challenge will probably be the fact x86 hardware is open. It becomes very costly to test an OS in a "standard testing enviroment" when you have to test several thousand hardware configurations, most of them rather big piles of junk. Alternatively testing in the Open Source world is much easier, as ("elite") end users are volunteer testers . MS would love nothing more than to be able to switch to an "Apple" style tomorow, but they see no way to do so. This will place them behind the ball as linux becomes more mature, and with more and more companies backing it, there is no way for it to get worse. I'd venture to say the active linux developer base (for everything except UI) is actually probably larger *right now* than the active developers really working on "windows", and that gap can only widen.
It makes perfect sense for a corperation to pay a few tens of thousands to get a feature developed in linux (especially ones like IBM), and if/when someone like AOL jumps on board, a "standard" interface will be no longer a dream. All of this can be done in the "open source" way, as these companies don't actually make a profit selling the software itself. It seems rather pecular to me that AOL has funded Netscape development on linux for so long if they don't find it tempting, and Im sure they do.
I guess this reply has drifted totally away from my origional point, and into random wanderings. I shall stop now.
oh god, I HATE this. They really should make it a triple click or something, or cause the first mouse click to not count for the double click, ANYTHING.
I'll start by saying things like unix *must* exist for the people who live in computers, no matter how "easy" all the other interfaces are.
One cannot compare the productivity of a unix wiz to anything in a current GUI, it's just not a comparison. Someday there might be GUI that is flexible enough and easy enough to manipulate that it can replace the CLI, but that will be quite a ways. Remember your dealing with 100+ diffrent input types, and 10 input points when you use a keyboard instead of a mouse. A mouse is capable of one selection and at most 5 inputs, that is horrible in comparison.
I would like to point out we still read (sorry couldn't think of better example) instead of watching movies, when movies are obviously the "easier" interface.
As for touch screens, they are a very nasty input device if the screen is also the display. I am never productive with one (YMMV). I personally think the future input device will be a combination of the keyboard-mouse in one that was posted a few days ago. It obviously has several iterations left, but my main complaint about current interfaces is they often require you to do one of the following:
1: limit your actions and use a mouse
2: not limit your actions, but double your time by using a mouse
3: speed yourself up significantly by using a few keyboard shortcuts, but hit a major speed bump when you have to move back into "mouse" mode
4: use all keyboard shortcuts (requires alot of effort to learn all keystrokes) and avoid mouse completly
If the transition between keyboard and mouse became cheaper, todays interfaces would be alot better off. Perhaps it won't be as easy for someone who has never seen a computer before, but I'm almost positive everyone is capable of understanding the "cursor" metaphor by now (if not it's a very easy one to explain).
The two mouse button (and a WHEEL?!?) problem is something that is hard for novice users though, I actually find the "right click - left click" interface ackward at moments, and I've been using computers since 1981!
You mean IE has a problem rendering lots of animated gif's?
I've seen IE bring my system to a crawl with one browser of ~100 diffrent animated gif's open, I've never seen the same from mozilla. Perhaps your talking about a diffrent situation?
Try opening the prefrence window on the NS based browsers sometime, you might be suprized.
You might be shocked how horribly ugly IE is at everything (from navigation to rendering) after you get mozilla tweaked to your needs, I can hardly browse in IE anymore w/o getting mad at the slow clunky interface.
TechTV: Comedy central for the tech elite.
And no, they don't try to be funny.
I'm sorry what?
That didn't even make sense. Are you saying the only reason companies won't switch is because they jumped onto a scam from MS that allows them to sell more servers? To say linux is harder to adminster than windows is a joke, and if it really is there are alot of companies with a vested interest in making it not so.
I do hope more CTO's have more intelligence than yourself.
I would like to point one thing out, due to the nature of linux, the more companies that support it, the better it gets. Windows on the other hand is only as good as MS makes it, which do you think will win in the long run?
Actually most of the switch add's I've actually seen on the air recently hit home the points.
The fact is, I am a computer geek, and I have no clue where I would find a grandma-level video editing software for windows that "just works". For graphics gimp doesn't fit that bill, and photoshop yeah right.
iMail puts Outlook to shame, and I've never seen spam filtering my grandma could grasp, this is that magical filter.
to be quite honest, you should't be required to know alot to use your computer. How much do you know about the internal workings of your lawnmower? Do you expect it to "just work", or do you expect to baby it around the yard?
I know w32 (most systems) inside and out, yet I still find a Mac more productive, I think alot of people are that way. The thing is, you can beat a mac until the kernel is choking, and it keeps on "just working", I know all the things to avoid doing to make the same thing happen in w32, but I have to specifically limit my actions to as not to crash explorer or something annoying like that. Throw the iTools on top of that and it's not even a comparison.
You missed it though, his computer is apparently unable to be booted from a floppy to fix this situation. Thats a prety serious grevance to me, but then again I understand whats going on better than a judge would.
And explain your situation, see what they suggest.
Quite simply that is not an acceptable state for a piece of hardware you paid a good chunk of cash to be in, without any hardware problems (eg it was that way when it left the factory), with no recorse offered. I would go so far as to say you could sue them the cost of a comparable laptop if worst came to worst.
Whats the user of corperation rights (Copyright anyone?) if the consumer is hindered to the point no one has any money left to spend?
It's all a balance, most of the "rights" corperations enjoy today are artifical, therefore must carefully be goverened in scope as their goal is to make money, not help the consumer or anything else.
You sig.. makes no sense.