Our town actually has a petition going around for Comcast. Their internet service has been going down town-wide quite a lot this past year. When they first started offering it around here they promised the town they'd pay restitution for downtime.
They've apparently stopped keeping their promise. Their cable tv is pretty bad in many parts of town as well.
They have no problem taking our money, but when it comes time to put up they're nowhere to be found.
I know if Verizon's phone service was doing this poorly the town would probably sue them.
Has anyone here actually tried this, and what were the results?
Me.
At the height of my "City of Heroes" addiction, I paid like 30 or 40 USD for "influence" (it's version of Gold).
Now that I've "quit the habit" I feel rather stupid for doing it. It mean, for the cost of a new game I simply upgraded my experience on an MMORPG. It made sense at the time, as the extra influence made gaming a lot more efficient (could boost my powers considerably). But now...
God, I gotta make sure I don't get hooked on another MMORPG again.
Lock those machines down! Put in a good corporate firewall! Don't allow users to run as admin (never)! Don't allow users to install software, active-x or other junk.
Ah, that works ok in theory.
For example, a place I know of does this. It's fine for the 75% of the employees that are scientists and administrative assistants who don't use that much on the PC. Maybe they just run a small set of software (Word, Excel, and some lab software).
But then there's that 25%, those who's jobs rely on their computer a lot more. Software developers for one, another example are the scientists who's jobs/software require them to have more control over their machines.
Don't get me wrong, locking out users helps A LOT, but at some point it starts to cause only slightly fewer problems than it prevents.
I don't see any such fine print with Beyond Wireless. They very clearly say, and my experience so far seems to support "Your Minutes NEVER EXPIRE" (their gratuitous exclamation points omitted).
Well, one thing is, they'll never expire so long as you keep buying minutes. So, after 3 or 4 months if you haven't "recharged" your minutes they'll usually terminate your service.
However, if you pay the bare minimum every 2 or 3 months, your minutes just keep accumulating. At one point I had like $220 worth of minutes accumulated on my old prepaid service, but their coverage sucked where I worked so I cancelled it.
The thought that someone could wipe me out financially by cracking an online system got me worried enough that I opened a checking account at a local bank where I now keep a majority of my funds. I move enough into the Wachovia account for paying bills and stuff that are connected to it, but there's never enough in there to completely wipe me out anymore.
About a block from my house there's a small bank. It had a recognizable name, but not a major one. The building was small and it was run by locals. I had a small account in there to save up for college spending.
Anyway, about 2 years after I opened my account there was a small scandal. One of the owners was caught skimming funds from a number accounts; not wiping them out perse, but $100 here, $50, %300 there (depending on how big the account was).
So, there's no gaurantee. However, what you're doing should provide some comfort, as if someone got to your check card or whatever you wouldn't lose everything.
I really hope they all decide on a standard soon (unless they have and I'm just out of the loop).
I want High Def Discs now! I just recently purchased a HDTV and am in love with the resolution. I long for having them release DVD's at 720p or 1080i instead of the meager 480 lines they're at now.
I used to think it didn't make a difference and was totally content with 480, but I've seen the light.
Decide already and start releasing! At least some TV shows were shot and presumably stored in their High Def format somewhere so those should be out pretty quick once the industry has chosen a format.
I'm french and I never heard about this guy, the world's authority you quote.
I don't blame you. I'm American, and while I know who he is and what-not I never ever ever considered him the "world's authority" on anything. At most, he's just a big name in the critic-business, and only really in the US.
Personally I don't place much faith in critics and I NEVER simply accept their rating system (especially his). What I'll do is read 1 or 2 reviews of a movie (usualyl on rotten tomatoes) and even then I decide myself if the movie is good or not by seeing it.
The only things that keep me from seeing a specific movie are time (I work), bad storyline, or a genre I don't like.
Yeh, I really couldn't stand him in Episode 2. He was acting like a whiney brat through the whole thing; thinking the world was against him. "They keep holding me back... blah blah blah"
Even if they were trying to go the "troubled youth trying to be good but fails" route, Episode 2 didn't cut it. It was either bad writing, bad acting, or both.
So, if the kid gets sued when he's 18, then lives to be 80, that's 62 years * 12 mo/yr * $5 = $3720.
This seems comparable to their current settlement amount.
But you fail to take both interest and inflation into account. That $5USD you payed 62 years ago would be worth more than $5USD now due to the interest you'd earn from (say) a savings account. Not to mention how the US dollar has is in a constant state of inflation; $3700 today is probably gonna be worth less than $3700 60 years from now..
To "settle" for thousands of dollars at an early age like that sucks (unless you come from money).
By the way, there it's very unlikely there will be quicksand on Mars. Quicksand requires flowing water.
I know.
However if you read the thread I started and the entire article you'll see a lot of people were mentioning it. I only used the phrase "quicksand" to set them at ease.
As for the rest, that's true. I knew someone that off-roaded a Wranger for a few years and even though like 90% of the time she could get herself out a lot of times she would need substantial help.
add that to your efficiency calculations, and get back to me...
I concede that the cost of sending people to Mars and keeping them alive is high. And we're still a little "fuzzy" on how to do it. But.
1) How much time went into designing the rover and what-not.
2) How much info have we gained over MONTHS of use?
3) How much can saidd rover actually accomplish.
4) How many different rovers will we send to accomplish what a person (or team) can do in one shot.
5) A person can do a lot more a lot quicker than the rover. Example, want to dig a hole? Use a shovel and maybe pick-axe. In a very short time you can get a couple meters down as opposed to waiting for our rover to spin its wheels just to see a few cm.
I'm not saying we shouldn't use these drones for now. They're an obvious stepping stone to learn what we need to. But at some point we have to say "These things are only doing so much. Let's send some people there."
I think we should start looking into the sending of people more seriously, instead of some people (that I know) whine and moan that it's not worth their tax dollars.
Precisely. What would have happened to the people, if their Mars rover they were in, became trapped in sand 3km away from their base?
Find a nearby boulder. Tie cable from rover to boulder. Use either electronic motor to retract cable OR hand-powered lever. This is used now-a-days with 4x4 offroaders.
Place planks under the wheels. Use them to "back out" the rover. Maybe you'll need to keep re-placing the planks when the rover goes too far, maybe not.
This is assuming of course that the sand isn't "quicksand."
Lastly, I doubt the entire team would go out at once just in case something like this happened. In which case, have 2 rovers; the second one go out as far as they safely can and coordinate rescue.
Obviously there are more complications involved, but on the other hand our rover is pretty much S.O.L where as people could have better luck.
This is why we should send people to Mars. While more expensive and potentially dangerous, we won't have to deal with bonehead stuff like this.
Instead of wasting a month because their toy truck got stuck in the sand, a person could just keep walking. If their big rover gets stuck, then use cables and a pully like the owner of a Jeep Wrangler would do. Or maybe cary a set of planks around with them to place under the tires.
A person could also simply dig a hole with a shovel instead of the neat little tricks Nasa has tried with sprinning a tire in place to see if there's water 2cm underground.
Human beings can do 100x more than a rover can and more efficiently. They can also easily handle unexpected events (such as this) a lot easier since they're not limited to 4 wheels and a camera.
The 2 things holding us back are price and safety.
and then when the electronics in Enterprise looked more sophisticated than in the Original Series
I see where you're coming from. But still, to make the set of Enterprise look less sophisticated than the Original Series would require them drawing on the walls with crayons or perhaps using vacuum tubes.
They expect to fill a 25+ GB Blu-Ray disc? With what, hours and hours of MPEG-2 HD cutscenes? Textures? Half-Life 2, with all of its better-than-HD textures, fit easily on a standard DVD.
Not entirely true.
Half-Life install (assuming all of the files were on the DVD and not Steam) would fit on a DVD but at that point the files are compressed. Half-Life 2 uncompressed (ie, what's on the hard drive) is fairly big (more than a DVD).
Take "Far Cry" for example: that thing requires an insane amount of hard drive space for a full install (much more than 4.75GB).
If they want games to be more complex and what-not to take advantage of the more powerful system then they're going to need a) more content b) larger content c) have it uncompressed. (to a degree)
They may not take up an entire Blue Ray disc, but from a marketing standpoint people aren't going to want to swap 2 (maybe 3) DVD's back and forth to play a game.
Personally, I think overall the DS has the best library-- not because of the native DS titles, which I consider to be disappointing, but because of the machine's ability to run GBA titles very well.... Though I will agree with you that the native PSP titles are better than the native DS titles.
True, the IMMENSE game library the DS inherited from the GB, GBC, and GBA is rather astounding, but personally I don't care so much about that.
I had a GBA with 1 or 2 games but it got old really fast. I had most of those games on my SNES (which still worked) and the old GB games bored me (except Tetris).
But I can't blame someone for still being hooked on those golden classics. They're pretty cool.
And I, for one, welcome our new Mexican overlords!
I was laughing my ass off at that part in the movie. It was so ironic that after years of trying to turn back Mexicans (and other southern-country citizens) that Mexico was closing their borders to stop the influx of Americans fleeing to avoid freezing (and thus Americans cutting fences and crossing rivers).
For what it's worth, I didn't mod you down as Flamebait. Personally I didn't think it really qualified as flamebait.
But I'm sure some Sony fan didn't like your "\I am a bitter Nintendo fan who wants the PSP to burn in flames..." People on either side of this whole DS / PSP fiasco are rather emotional.
Personally, I think the market is ready to have 2 mobile gaming systems as opposed to years past when anything other than Nintendo would get squashed immediately.
I think it is pretty telling that fans would need this additional library...
Actually, the PSP library is pretty darn good. In fact, at the risk of starting a flame war, I'd say their library for the first few weeks/month is far better than the DS's library for the same initial amount of time.
As for being a bitter Nintendo fan... my condolences.
Yeh, there are a lot of "all-in-one" motherboards out there but a lot of highend ones aren't that bad. Personally I was in a similar boat, I had a great soundcard, video card, network card, etc. I settled on an ASUS who's only integrated component was sound.
Finding one without integrated video is pretty easy, just look at the companies websites, reviews, etc. However most are the high-end boards, but they're at most $30 or $50 more than the cheaper modes.
Ethernet, SATA, and in some cases sound are a little tough to avoid, but it's not big deal. You can disable the components you don't want, but SATA is nice (if you want/need it) and the Ethernet is just nice to have in general.
In any case, it's not that bad. I'm sure by now people have posted a lot of models.
It's not running slow, but to be frank I hadn't used my Powerbook about a month before Tiger was released. I had to do too much stuff for work which unfortunately requires I use a Windows machine. So if it did get a speed bump I wouldn't notice it (not just didn't).
However I have no complaints. Tiger's pretty kick-ass. Thankfully I'm back to using it as my fulltime computer again so all is right with the world:)
I can't say I'm dissapointed with Tiger. It doesn't feel "sluggish," but as for "snappy" I can't really comment because I'm running on a Powerbook anyway.
Panther was my first version of OS X (only converted last year) so I haven't really "experienced" the ever-increasing speed of OSX.
However I like the fact that it may get even faster once they work the kinks out of Quartz 2D Extreme... that would just be icing on the cake.
There's built-in application. It's very lite and is run from the top menu.
When it starts it checks for new updates and you can cherry-pick which ones you want. Some updates include drivers, security, or just basic software updates. It also doesn't just cover the core OS but applications that come with it too (iChat, Mail, etc).
Usually a bunch of things are bootstrapped into the same update though I don't recall this many being a common occurence. Usually the only big ones are the point updades (ie 10.3.8 to 10.3.9) and even those aren't that big.
I like it's method a lot more than Microsoft's method.
Has anyone had a chance to compare the PSP with the other gaming systems out there?
This is just a light opinion post...
My brother bought a Nintendo DS the day it came out. I've had a lot of opportunities to play it including a flight to Switzerland and 2 round trip train rides to Boston (4 hours each way).
The battery life was pretty good and it felt really solid. However it was hard getting used to the "thumb" attachment which lets you use the touchpad for directional-control instead of the directional pads.
The experience was alright but not that great; I grew tired of it pretty quickly. Mario 64 was cool (as were the mini games) but his 2 other games weren't that captivating. After a while I was only playing it because I was bored and forgot to bring a book.
I bought a PSP a week or 2 after they came out since I was travelling again and didn't want to bring my brother's DS. I now have Lumines, Wipeout, and Mercury.
Before getting to the "experience," I will give 2 words of warning. I had to exchange my first unit because it had about 15 dead pixels, the store people were shocked and helped me out ASAP. My replacement now has none. Also it "feels" flimsy, but only where the mini-disc compartment is. It flips out like a book (almost like a top-loading VCR from the 80's) and that "door" has a little play. But everything else feels really sturdy.
The battery life is pretty good too. My experience is it lasts only a little less (maybe 20%) than a Nintendo DS.
The games are pretty fun. Lumines has become my new "Tetris," and I play it constantly. It started slow but I'm addicted. Wipeout is like F-Zero (for SNES users), it's a hoot. Mercury is great... frustrating... but a great puzzle game.
For pure fun both my brother and I recommend the PSP. In fact he now regrets getting the DS and wants a PSP. However it's more expensive than the DS and the games usually cost $10USD more than Nintendo DS games.
Personally I'm quite pleased with my purchase. But your mileage may vary.
They still support the older OSX's. However Tiger now comes standard on new machines. It's not like the old days where Dell would let you choose between Windows Me and Windows 2000. When Apple releases a new OS then their machines either come with it installed or they give you the new OS DVD with your purchase.
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Agreed.
In fact, my town is getting fed up with Comcast.
Our town actually has a petition going around for Comcast. Their internet service has been going down town-wide quite a lot this past year. When they first started offering it around here they promised the town they'd pay restitution for downtime.
They've apparently stopped keeping their promise. Their cable tv is pretty bad in many parts of town as well.
They have no problem taking our money, but when it comes time to put up they're nowhere to be found.
I know if Verizon's phone service was doing this poorly the town would probably sue them.
Me.
At the height of my "City of Heroes" addiction, I paid like 30 or 40 USD for "influence" (it's version of Gold).
Now that I've "quit the habit" I feel rather stupid for doing it. It mean, for the cost of a new game I simply upgraded my experience on an MMORPG. It made sense at the time, as the extra influence made gaming a lot more efficient (could boost my powers considerably). But now...
God, I gotta make sure I don't get hooked on another MMORPG again.
Ah, that works ok in theory.
For example, a place I know of does this. It's fine for the 75% of the employees that are scientists and administrative assistants who don't use that much on the PC. Maybe they just run a small set of software (Word, Excel, and some lab software).
But then there's that 25%, those who's jobs rely on their computer a lot more. Software developers for one, another example are the scientists who's jobs/software require them to have more control over their machines.
Don't get me wrong, locking out users helps A LOT, but at some point it starts to cause only slightly fewer problems than it prevents.
Well, one thing is, they'll never expire so long as you keep buying minutes. So, after 3 or 4 months if you haven't "recharged" your minutes they'll usually terminate your service.
However, if you pay the bare minimum every 2 or 3 months, your minutes just keep accumulating. At one point I had like $220 worth of minutes accumulated on my old prepaid service, but their coverage sucked where I worked so I cancelled it.
Damn, I had a lot of minutes on there...
About a block from my house there's a small bank. It had a recognizable name, but not a major one. The building was small and it was run by locals. I had a small account in there to save up for college spending.
Anyway, about 2 years after I opened my account there was a small scandal. One of the owners was caught skimming funds from a number accounts; not wiping them out perse, but $100 here, $50, %300 there (depending on how big the account was).
So, there's no gaurantee. However, what you're doing should provide some comfort, as if someone got to your check card or whatever you wouldn't lose everything.
I really hope they all decide on a standard soon (unless they have and I'm just out of the loop).
I want High Def Discs now! I just recently purchased a HDTV and am in love with the resolution. I long for having them release DVD's at 720p or 1080i instead of the meager 480 lines they're at now.
I used to think it didn't make a difference and was totally content with 480, but I've seen the light.
Decide already and start releasing! At least some TV shows were shot and presumably stored in their High Def format somewhere so those should be out pretty quick once the industry has chosen a format.
I don't blame you. I'm American, and while I know who he is and what-not I never ever ever considered him the "world's authority" on anything. At most, he's just a big name in the critic-business, and only really in the US.
Personally I don't place much faith in critics and I NEVER simply accept their rating system (especially his). What I'll do is read 1 or 2 reviews of a movie (usualyl on rotten tomatoes) and even then I decide myself if the movie is good or not by seeing it.
The only things that keep me from seeing a specific movie are time (I work), bad storyline, or a genre I don't like.
Yeh, I really couldn't stand him in Episode 2. He was acting like a whiney brat through the whole thing; thinking the world was against him. "They keep holding me back... blah blah blah"
Even if they were trying to go the "troubled youth trying to be good but fails" route, Episode 2 didn't cut it. It was either bad writing, bad acting, or both.
But you fail to take both interest and inflation into account. That $5USD you payed 62 years ago would be worth more than $5USD now due to the interest you'd earn from (say) a savings account. Not to mention how the US dollar has is in a constant state of inflation; $3700 today is probably gonna be worth less than $3700 60 years from now..
To "settle" for thousands of dollars at an early age like that sucks (unless you come from money).
I know.
However if you read the thread I started and the entire article you'll see a lot of people were mentioning it. I only used the phrase "quicksand" to set them at ease.
As for the rest, that's true. I knew someone that off-roaded a Wranger for a few years and even though like 90% of the time she could get herself out a lot of times she would need substantial help.
I concede that the cost of sending people to Mars and keeping them alive is high. And we're still a little "fuzzy" on how to do it. But.
1) How much time went into designing the rover and what-not.
2) How much info have we gained over MONTHS of use?
3) How much can saidd rover actually accomplish.
4) How many different rovers will we send to accomplish what a person (or team) can do in one shot.
5) A person can do a lot more a lot quicker than the rover. Example, want to dig a hole? Use a shovel and maybe pick-axe. In a very short time you can get a couple meters down as opposed to waiting for our rover to spin its wheels just to see a few cm.
I'm not saying we shouldn't use these drones for now. They're an obvious stepping stone to learn what we need to. But at some point we have to say "These things are only doing so much. Let's send some people there."
I think we should start looking into the sending of people more seriously, instead of some people (that I know) whine and moan that it's not worth their tax dollars.
Find a nearby boulder. Tie cable from rover to boulder. Use either electronic motor to retract cable OR hand-powered lever. This is used now-a-days with 4x4 offroaders.
Place planks under the wheels. Use them to "back out" the rover. Maybe you'll need to keep re-placing the planks when the rover goes too far, maybe not.
This is assuming of course that the sand isn't "quicksand."
Lastly, I doubt the entire team would go out at once just in case something like this happened. In which case, have 2 rovers; the second one go out as far as they safely can and coordinate rescue.
Obviously there are more complications involved, but on the other hand our rover is pretty much S.O.L where as people could have better luck.
This is why we should send people to Mars. While more expensive and potentially dangerous, we won't have to deal with bonehead stuff like this.
Instead of wasting a month because their toy truck got stuck in the sand, a person could just keep walking. If their big rover gets stuck, then use cables and a pully like the owner of a Jeep Wrangler would do. Or maybe cary a set of planks around with them to place under the tires.
A person could also simply dig a hole with a shovel instead of the neat little tricks Nasa has tried with sprinning a tire in place to see if there's water 2cm underground.
Human beings can do 100x more than a rover can and more efficiently. They can also easily handle unexpected events (such as this) a lot easier since they're not limited to 4 wheels and a camera.
The 2 things holding us back are price and safety.
I see where you're coming from. But still, to make the set of Enterprise look less sophisticated than the Original Series would require them drawing on the walls with crayons or perhaps using vacuum tubes.
Not entirely true.
Half-Life install (assuming all of the files were on the DVD and not Steam) would fit on a DVD but at that point the files are compressed. Half-Life 2 uncompressed (ie, what's on the hard drive) is fairly big (more than a DVD).
Take "Far Cry" for example: that thing requires an insane amount of hard drive space for a full install (much more than 4.75GB).
If they want games to be more complex and what-not to take advantage of the more powerful system then they're going to need
a) more content
b) larger content
c) have it uncompressed. (to a degree)
They may not take up an entire Blue Ray disc, but from a marketing standpoint people aren't going to want to swap 2 (maybe 3) DVD's back and forth to play a game.
True, the IMMENSE game library the DS inherited from the GB, GBC, and GBA is rather astounding, but personally I don't care so much about that.
I had a GBA with 1 or 2 games but it got old really fast. I had most of those games on my SNES (which still worked) and the old GB games bored me (except Tetris).
But I can't blame someone for still being hooked on those golden classics. They're pretty cool.
I was laughing my ass off at that part in the movie. It was so ironic that after years of trying to turn back Mexicans (and other southern-country citizens) that Mexico was closing their borders to stop the influx of Americans fleeing to avoid freezing (and thus Americans cutting fences and crossing rivers).
For what it's worth, I didn't mod you down as Flamebait. Personally I didn't think it really qualified as flamebait.
But I'm sure some Sony fan didn't like your "\I am a bitter Nintendo fan who wants the PSP to burn in flames..." People on either side of this whole DS / PSP fiasco are rather emotional.
Personally, I think the market is ready to have 2 mobile gaming systems as opposed to years past when anything other than Nintendo would get squashed immediately.
Actually, the PSP library is pretty darn good. In fact, at the risk of starting a flame war, I'd say their library for the first few weeks/month is far better than the DS's library for the same initial amount of time.
As for being a bitter Nintendo fan... my condolences.
Yeh, there are a lot of "all-in-one" motherboards out there but a lot of highend ones aren't that bad. Personally I was in a similar boat, I had a great soundcard, video card, network card, etc. I settled on an ASUS who's only integrated component was sound. Finding one without integrated video is pretty easy, just look at the companies websites, reviews, etc. However most are the high-end boards, but they're at most $30 or $50 more than the cheaper modes. Ethernet, SATA, and in some cases sound are a little tough to avoid, but it's not big deal. You can disable the components you don't want, but SATA is nice (if you want/need it) and the Ethernet is just nice to have in general. In any case, it's not that bad. I'm sure by now people have posted a lot of models.
It's not running slow, but to be frank I hadn't used my Powerbook about a month before Tiger was released. I had to do too much stuff for work which unfortunately requires I use a Windows machine. So if it did get a speed bump I wouldn't notice it (not just didn't).
:)
However I have no complaints. Tiger's pretty kick-ass. Thankfully I'm back to using it as my fulltime computer again so all is right with the world
I can't say I'm dissapointed with Tiger. It doesn't feel "sluggish," but as for "snappy" I can't really comment because I'm running on a Powerbook anyway.
Panther was my first version of OS X (only converted last year) so I haven't really "experienced" the ever-increasing speed of OSX.
However I like the fact that it may get even faster once they work the kinks out of Quartz 2D Extreme... that would just be icing on the cake.
There's built-in application. It's very lite and is run from the top menu.
When it starts it checks for new updates and you can cherry-pick which ones you want. Some updates include drivers, security, or just basic software updates. It also doesn't just cover the core OS but applications that come with it too (iChat, Mail, etc).
Usually a bunch of things are bootstrapped into the same update though I don't recall this many being a common occurence. Usually the only big ones are the point updades (ie 10.3.8 to 10.3.9) and even those aren't that big.
I like it's method a lot more than Microsoft's method.
This is just a light opinion post...
My brother bought a Nintendo DS the day it came out. I've had a lot of opportunities to play it including a flight to Switzerland and 2 round trip train rides to Boston (4 hours each way).
The battery life was pretty good and it felt really solid. However it was hard getting used to the "thumb" attachment which lets you use the touchpad for directional-control instead of the directional pads.
The experience was alright but not that great; I grew tired of it pretty quickly. Mario 64 was cool (as were the mini games) but his 2 other games weren't that captivating. After a while I was only playing it because I was bored and forgot to bring a book.
I bought a PSP a week or 2 after they came out since I was travelling again and didn't want to bring my brother's DS. I now have Lumines, Wipeout, and Mercury.
Before getting to the "experience," I will give 2 words of warning. I had to exchange my first unit because it had about 15 dead pixels, the store people were shocked and helped me out ASAP. My replacement now has none. Also it "feels" flimsy, but only where the mini-disc compartment is. It flips out like a book (almost like a top-loading VCR from the 80's) and that "door" has a little play. But everything else feels really sturdy.
The battery life is pretty good too. My experience is it lasts only a little less (maybe 20%) than a Nintendo DS.
The games are pretty fun. Lumines has become my new "Tetris," and I play it constantly. It started slow but I'm addicted. Wipeout is like F-Zero (for SNES users), it's a hoot. Mercury is great... frustrating... but a great puzzle game.
For pure fun both my brother and I recommend the PSP. In fact he now regrets getting the DS and wants a PSP. However it's more expensive than the DS and the games usually cost $10USD more than Nintendo DS games.
Personally I'm quite pleased with my purchase. But your mileage may vary.
They still support the older OSX's. However Tiger now comes standard on new machines. It's not like the old days where Dell would let you choose between Windows Me and Windows 2000. When Apple releases a new OS then their machines either come with it installed or they give you the new OS DVD with your purchase.