If the GIMP acted more like...well, any other image editor, it might be an easier sell. Even Photopaint and Paint Shop Pro are reasonably similar to Photoshop. Painter is also adopting the Photoshop-like interface.
To me, the GIMP might have features and capabilities close to Photoshop (in my experience it doesn't...unusable files and strange stuff like blur also darkening images), but I know how to use Photoshop. Other programs import layered Photoshop documents (After Effects anyone?). Subjectively, I think the interface is *terrible*. That's me, other folks may like it. But it keeps me from using the program, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
Don't get me wrong, it's an admirable project. I can't see using it professionally though. Some do (film GIMP, or whatever it's called now), but I don't.
As for the cost of Photoshop...it's reasonable. It's a professional tool that's pretty standard. Buy it in a bundle for $1000 (or $500 educational). If you can't afford that, get Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop Elements. Considering it's pretty much a one time major expense coupled with $150 upgrades every 18-24 months, it's not a bad professional or serious hobby use cost. If all you want is to resize a pic for a background or something, obviously you don't need Photoshop. If you stand to make several thousand dollars from a project, $150 for that Photoshop 7 upgrade isn't much...having the right tools is worth quite a bit.
It's not just games though. Pretty much every software genre is pretty lean, except perhaps development stuff.
No Adobe apps, no Final Cut, no Macromedia...
What media apps do exist for Linux are commercial apps costing several times what a typical home or office PC would.
That's of course, assuming that you can get things installed correctly...
Ease of use here is pretty skewed anyway. KDE doesn't even cover everything that should be considered for ease of use. Installation of anything and everything, system maintenance, configuration, etc...
As long as Linux has the by geeks for geeks mantra, it won't be on the desktop. It's that simple.
Then you should find eMusic.com to your liking. Plain ol' MP3, "We Trust You" policy. Not many huge-name artists, but then, MP3 is great for finding new stuff.
Of course, burning iTunes Music Store (or I guess any other CD-burning-allowed music) to CD would allow you to rip it and do whatever you want too.
Final Cut Pro is more expensive. Final Cut Pro Express http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/ is not (at $299), while still offering much of the low end relevant functionality. I'd think that between that and the full-on version of FCP, Premiere would struggle to find a real market.
I do agree though, when I think video editing and Mac (being a graphic designer I do use them), I think FCP. Not Premiere. After Effects is a different story, and hopefully Adobe will put some of the old Premiere programmers on that project to get it up to par in terms of speed.
That's basically what happened to me. I liked ICQ more, and still do. Too bad basically everyone I knew switched over to AIM. I eventually stopped loading it at all...
Some 26 episode series are released as cheaper sets as well. Nadesico is available now for about $70. Slayers for around $80 online. Cost of other box sets is actually coming down to $150 or $120 many times now.
While I don't *want* to pay as much as anime costs, I look at it in terms of entertainment per hour. It's not really any different than buying Hollywood movies...only you "need" 6-8 DVDs usually to see the whole story. To me, it'd make sense to do more box sets prices at $50-60 than sell single DVDs.
I agree, there's no reason to buy bootlegs. I download fansubs when the series isn't available in the U.S., but I have been buying DVDs of series I've already seen this way (Noir,.hack, etc). I enjoy having a collection that's not just a bunch of CD-Rs (and soon to be DVD+Rs), even if it means spending $$$ to have it.
I do agree with the original post too though. With some of the larger series (like Inuyasha or Kenshin), selling the discs at $25 a pop with 3 episodes apiece is just bad when the series has around or over 100 episodes. There's no reason we can't get Buffy or Simpsons style box sets for $50 each with 26 episodes each. They'll still get at least $200 out of each of us. Ranma is close to this on with the DVD release. $80 or so with only as many discs as needed for each season's box.
If anything else, one could assume that an anime has already recouped *original* production costs in Japan. International release could reflect only (or mostly) the localization costs, which by contrast would be quite small.
For things that the article was talking about, yes, it's *far* easier. The author mentioned installing/uninstalling programs. In OSX, many apps are abstracted to a single icon (which is really a package containing however many files). You can use it from whatever location, move it, use it again, put in the trash, pull it back out to a different location...still works. No.dlls, no libraries you haven't installed yet. Just works.
Even Office v.X installs by dragging and dropping the application folder. Sure, some apps use installers...but they still work fine after wiping the system. You can't say that about many apps under Windows, since.dlls get wiped out. I haven't tried it in OSX, but in OS9, some apps you could move while they were running with no ill effects. Other apps could have the executable moved (say to the desktop) and work fine.
There are other things still that are simpler. Network access in OSX is a simple Go->Connect to Server... command. One click. Windows XP (default setup) is what, Start Button->My Computer->My Network Place (on the sidebar)->Entire Network->Microsoft Windows Network (or something like that, I won't put XP on my machine). You're correct abuot basically, the MacOS tends to be better though out. Windows got *more* complicated from 2k. Their UI people should be shot for stuff like that.
Or the start bar vs. the dock. Now, I like certain aspects of the start bar better myself, however, the dock is simpler and "easier". On the start bar, I can potentially have an app in 4 "unique" places. In the quicklaunch, in the system tray (for some apps anyway), in the start menu itself, and if it's running, on the start bar. In the dock, it's one icon, running or not. Either OS can have desktop shortcuts or whatever.
Anyway, point is that I see plenty of things where the MacOS is easier to use than Windows for the end user. Honestly, there are things in Windows that I find more convenient because I'm used to them working that way or because there are more options, but still, that's because of experience, not the OS.
Not according to Carmack's.plan from February...
"
Doom has dropped support for vendor-specific vertex programs
(NV_vertex_program and EXT_vertex_shader), in favor of using
ARB_vertex_program for all rendering paths. This has been a pleasant thing to
do, and both ATI and Nvidia supported the move."
Same deal with Tom's Hardware. They did some pretty extensive benchmarking and comparison, and the 5900 did very well in real world games (to include the preview DOOM III benchmark). I'm inclined to believe the driver problem nVidia claims. Especially since it's nVidia and not ATI, they'll likely fix it quickly (not wait 3 months until a new card comes out...not that I'm still bitter about my Rage Fury).
Agreed. OSX is a dog with 128MB, which is what most lower end Macs came/come with. My Powerbook G4 400Mhz is quite usable with 512MB, and my dual 450 at work runs decent with 384.
See, the thing is, with OSX, there *is* a jump in responsiveness because of the GUI design. Even basic things like moving and resizing were slower than mouse movements (on some machines) because of the way the graphics layer was designed.
You can read about it here if you're interested.
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q3/macosx-10.2/ ma cosx-10.2-8.html
You keep harping on this...yeesh. 2D acceleration is good for certain windowing systems and methods.
3D works better in some cases.
Have you used OSX? Have you used a newer Mac with Quartz Extreme (interface is drawn with OpenGL)? If so...did you notice the jump in speed and responsiveness? Font smoothing, window scaling and warping, transparency...all this stuff is done using highly optimized routines in a Transform and Lighting capable GPU (required to use it). Partly this is needed because of the way the GUI was designed...but it *does* help.
This is something that people here have already seen in action. We've already seen the improvement it can bring to "modern" GUIs. It's no suprise that MS is copying it.
If you can buy computers educationally, then yes. An eMac is $699. If that's not what you want, then investigate the Student Developer program. The savings on a (one time) Mac purchase can nullify the membership fee and still get you a better price on a system (sometimes...vs. normal educational discounts).
For non-education, they've got a couple $999 computers, but nothing cheaper.
PC compatabilty cards were basically PCs on an expansion card, with extra drivers to allow them to share some of the Mac resources (floppy, HD, etc). Orange Micro made plenty for adding on after Apple stopped trying to use them.
You can see specs here http://www.orangemicro.com/productarchive.html
The main problem with these was really the expense. Despite a few tradeoffs, they worked pretty well. Added bonuses like easy file sharing between the "PC" and Mac made life easier if all you were doing was say, testing a web page in Windows. When PCs started becoming cheaper for a whole machine than and OrangePC card, it was merely the space saving that kept them around. Slot based CPUs didn't help either. Nowdays there's no real point. Get yourself a $400 Dell and a VGA switcher.
There's nothing "new" about dragging and dropping files and folders, but Apple will add one little thing (like make a folder open after you've held a file over it for a few seconds) and it's just...better.
Also, it's very Apple to take things that would otherwise be "complicated" and wrap them in an interface or paradigm that general users can understand. Or just make things convenient.
Whenever I see this sort of "translation" going on for anime, I wonder why. I mean, Cameron especially has helmed (and written) some good sci-fi movies (T2, Aliens, The Abyss). Though Battle Angel/Gunm/Battle Angel Alita is probably more doable as a good sci-fi movie than say...Akira (also announced) or Dragonball Z (shudder), why does it have to be redone? It's not particularly old, and it's already a moving picture medium. Book/comic translations are different, since you essentially see the book as one person imagines it.
Does having an American director redo a movie in live action somehow honor the original work(s), or rather say that the original is not good enough? I don't think so. We don't see (for instance) anime remakes of Hollywood movies for Japanese audiences. We do see American remakes of foriegn live action films though.
Perhaps it's simply that American directors feel it's the only way to get the masses to see and appreciate what they consider outstanding works of fiction. In some cases, I feel it should be left as the audience's loss. There are libraries of books I haven't read, films I haven't seen, anime I haven't watched, etc. Do I need someone to go through and retranslate their favorites to more suite my taste? I don't think so.
Could perhaps Cameron use his influence to instead get more anime that he likes (he has a quote on the Ghost in the Shell DVD case too, so I assume he watches it) shown more? For instance, the Cowboy Bebop movie was released not too long ago...great movie, and one that most people could enjoy. Except many didn't even get a chance to, since it didn't get a wide release. He could also helm a "director's choice" type program showcasing anime or foriegn films. After all, how many Joe Sixpacks are going to go look up the other Alita media after seeing the live action version? It's not doing much for the public's opinion of anime, or getting them to watch it, which means there will still be that library of entertainment that they won't even consider.
I guess the main point is, does remaking stuff into live action show the opinion that anime is somehow a lesser format for telling a story? Or that Hollywood has a low opinion of the average viewer, figuring they just wouldn't "get it"? (which is probably somewhat accurate...there are many people that lack a certain open-mindedness when it comes to anime or non-American film). With all the great stories that could be told, why choose one that's already been shown?
That being said, of course I'm curious to see what he does with it, since it *is* a great story.
True, but Postscript is the professional standard for printing (at least in the minds of many designers). There are many people that won't take this font seriously unless it's Postscript (since there are so many low quality TT fonts available already, many designers simply ignore the format for print).
For technical limitations, there aren't as many...though I've been told that there are issues printing TT fonts more than PS. Admittedly, this isn't as big a thing now as it was a few years ago, however, if this font is intended to be a new standard font, it should be available in PS as well. If it's just supposed to be a web/onscreen font, well, leave it TT only. Bitstream has put out quality PS fonts in the past, so I simply thought they might post it in that format too. Free TT fonts abound...free quality PS fonts are rare.
Didn't SNES CD also fall through because Sony wanted profits from CD games whereas Nintendo got Cart based games? I dunno that it was branding of the machine so much.
Most of these big companies have made some pretty big (and stupid) mistakes along the way. Plus they're basically all greed fueled corporations.
Agreed though, MS seems to take abuse that other companies more than deserve as well. Console wars aside.
I run Windows and Mac (and occasionally Linux). My Mac I use for graphics work (mainly), for a few reasons. One, I'm a graphic designer (at least that's what my degree says). I have a significant investment in software for that platform, which was the required one at school. Switching to Windows for graphics work would cost $1500 in software crossgrades alone (at least). Second, it just plain friggin' works. I think those that like to mess with their computers hold that against the Mac. They want things to break so there's something to do. The Mac is "boring" to them. You install things, they work, you use them. To me, I use a Mac, I get *work* done. Windows, sure, there's a billion little apps to mess with or download...which aren't all there for Mac. That's why I have a PC, to dink around with and play games. It's a toy. My Mac is a tool, and an effective one at that. Sure I wish I could pay less for it...but that's why the old adage "the customer is always right" is BS. If the customer was always right *we'd never pay for anything*
I used to work in Software Etc and saw many PS2s come back with problems with either CDs or DVDs. I think nearly every employee wound up swapping their system in for a new one (Product Replacement Plan thing) because of DVD playback. My PS2 basically won't play the 2nd layer of most DVDs, though games don't seem to have problem. I know other people with the same issue.
That's besides the amount discs the early revisions scratched (which people of course tried to return as defective). Do not put PS2s vertical, no matter how cool it looks in all those Sony ads.
I've heard of plenty of people whose PS2s work flawlessly. Great, good for them. I know for a fact though that many of them have problems, *especially* with DVD playback.
Blacksburg did something like that way back when..
on
Building a Town-Wide LAN?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Years ago Blacksburg (home of Virginia Tech) did something sorta like this (except it was mid 90's, so internet access period, not broadband). Perhaps a little ambitious, and honestly I can't say I can see any real difference from other towns. But it relates.
http://www.bev.net is the still existing homepage
http://www.cni.org/tfms/1995b.fall/BEV.html has some other info...
Slashdot Mirror
If the GIMP acted more like...well, any other image editor, it might be an easier sell.
Even Photopaint and Paint Shop Pro are reasonably similar to Photoshop. Painter is also adopting the Photoshop-like interface.
To me, the GIMP might have features and capabilities close to Photoshop (in my experience it doesn't...unusable files and strange stuff like blur also darkening images), but I know how to use Photoshop. Other programs import layered Photoshop documents (After Effects anyone?). Subjectively, I think the interface is *terrible*. That's me, other folks may like it. But it keeps me from using the program, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
Don't get me wrong, it's an admirable project. I can't see using it professionally though. Some do (film GIMP, or whatever it's called now), but I don't.
As for the cost of Photoshop...it's reasonable. It's a professional tool that's pretty standard. Buy it in a bundle for $1000 (or $500 educational). If you can't afford that, get Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop Elements. Considering it's pretty much a one time major expense coupled with $150 upgrades every 18-24 months, it's not a bad professional or serious hobby use cost. If all you want is to resize a pic for a background or something, obviously you don't need Photoshop. If you stand to make several thousand dollars from a project, $150 for that Photoshop 7 upgrade isn't much...having the right tools is worth quite a bit.
It's not just games though. Pretty much every software genre is pretty lean, except perhaps development stuff. No Adobe apps, no Final Cut, no Macromedia... What media apps do exist for Linux are commercial apps costing several times what a typical home or office PC would. That's of course, assuming that you can get things installed correctly... Ease of use here is pretty skewed anyway. KDE doesn't even cover everything that should be considered for ease of use. Installation of anything and everything, system maintenance, configuration, etc... As long as Linux has the by geeks for geeks mantra, it won't be on the desktop. It's that simple.
Then you should find eMusic.com to your liking. Plain ol' MP3, "We Trust You" policy. Not many huge-name artists, but then, MP3 is great for finding new stuff.
Of course, burning iTunes Music Store (or I guess any other CD-burning-allowed music) to CD would allow you to rip it and do whatever you want too.
Final Cut Pro is more expensive. Final Cut Pro Express http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/
is not (at $299), while still offering much of the low end relevant functionality. I'd think that between that and the full-on version of FCP, Premiere would struggle to find a real market.
I do agree though, when I think video editing and Mac (being a graphic designer I do use them), I think FCP. Not Premiere. After Effects is a different story, and hopefully Adobe will put some of the old Premiere programmers on that project to get it up to par in terms of speed.
That's basically what happened to me. I liked ICQ more, and still do. Too bad basically everyone I knew switched over to AIM. I eventually stopped loading it at all...
Some 26 episode series are released as cheaper sets as well. Nadesico is available now for about $70. Slayers for around $80 online. Cost of other box sets is actually coming down to $150 or $120 many times now.
.hack, etc). I enjoy having a collection that's not just a bunch of CD-Rs (and soon to be DVD+Rs), even if it means spending $$$ to have it.
While I don't *want* to pay as much as anime costs, I look at it in terms of entertainment per hour. It's not really any different than buying Hollywood movies...only you "need" 6-8 DVDs usually to see the whole story. To me, it'd make sense to do more box sets prices at $50-60 than sell single DVDs.
I agree, there's no reason to buy bootlegs. I download fansubs when the series isn't available in the U.S., but I have been buying DVDs of series I've already seen this way (Noir,
I do agree with the original post too though. With some of the larger series (like Inuyasha or Kenshin), selling the discs at $25 a pop with 3 episodes apiece is just bad when the series has around or over 100 episodes. There's no reason we can't get Buffy or Simpsons style box sets for $50 each with 26 episodes each. They'll still get at least $200 out of each of us. Ranma is close to this on with the DVD release. $80 or so with only as many discs as needed for each season's box.
If anything else, one could assume that an anime has already recouped *original* production costs in Japan. International release could reflect only (or mostly) the localization costs, which by contrast would be quite small.
Will they all soon say "Made on the Moon" ? ;p
Someone found the Key of the Twilight eh?
For things that the article was talking about, yes, it's *far* easier. The author mentioned installing/uninstalling programs. In OSX, many apps are abstracted to a single icon (which is really a package containing however many files). You can use it from whatever location, move it, use it again, put in the trash, pull it back out to a different location...still works. No .dlls, no libraries you haven't installed yet. Just works.
Even Office v.X installs by dragging and dropping the application folder. Sure, some apps use installers...but they still work fine after wiping the system. You can't say that about many apps under Windows, since .dlls get wiped out. I haven't tried it in OSX, but in OS9, some apps you could move while they were running with no ill effects. Other apps could have the executable moved (say to the desktop) and work fine.
There are other things still that are simpler. Network access in OSX is a simple Go->Connect to Server... command. One click. Windows XP (default setup) is what, Start Button->My Computer->My Network Place (on the sidebar)->Entire Network->Microsoft Windows Network (or something like that, I won't put XP on my machine). You're correct abuot basically, the MacOS tends to be better though out. Windows got *more* complicated from 2k. Their UI people should be shot for stuff like that.
Or the start bar vs. the dock. Now, I like certain aspects of the start bar better myself, however, the dock is simpler and "easier". On the start bar, I can potentially have an app in 4 "unique" places. In the quicklaunch, in the system tray (for some apps anyway), in the start menu itself, and if it's running, on the start bar. In the dock, it's one icon, running or not. Either OS can have desktop shortcuts or whatever.
Anyway, point is that I see plenty of things where the MacOS is easier to use than Windows for the end user. Honestly, there are things in Windows that I find more convenient because I'm used to them working that way or because there are more options, but still, that's because of experience, not the OS.
Not according to Carmack's .plan from February...
"
Doom has dropped support for vendor-specific vertex programs
(NV_vertex_program and EXT_vertex_shader), in favor of using
ARB_vertex_program for all rendering paths. This has been a pleasant thing to
do, and both ATI and Nvidia supported the move."
Same deal with Tom's Hardware. They did some pretty extensive benchmarking and comparison, and the 5900 did very well in real world games (to include the preview DOOM III benchmark). I'm inclined to believe the driver problem nVidia claims. Especially since it's nVidia and not ATI, they'll likely fix it quickly (not wait 3 months until a new card comes out...not that I'm still bitter about my Rage Fury).
Agreed. OSX is a dog with 128MB, which is what most lower end Macs came/come with.
My Powerbook G4 400Mhz is quite usable with 512MB, and my dual 450 at work runs decent with 384.
AFAIK the iBook's max is 640MB anyway.
I remember seeing AMD processors listed as being inside Apple laser printers a while back too.
See, the thing is, with OSX, there *is* a jump in responsiveness because of the GUI design. Even basic things like moving and resizing were slower than mouse movements (on some machines) because of the way the graphics layer was designed.
/ ma cosx-10.2-8.html
You can read about it here if you're interested.
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q3/macosx-10.2
You keep harping on this...yeesh. 2D acceleration is good for certain windowing systems and methods. 3D works better in some cases. Have you used OSX? Have you used a newer Mac with Quartz Extreme (interface is drawn with OpenGL)? If so...did you notice the jump in speed and responsiveness? Font smoothing, window scaling and warping, transparency...all this stuff is done using highly optimized routines in a Transform and Lighting capable GPU (required to use it). Partly this is needed because of the way the GUI was designed...but it *does* help. This is something that people here have already seen in action. We've already seen the improvement it can bring to "modern" GUIs. It's no suprise that MS is copying it.
If you can buy computers educationally, then yes. An eMac is $699. If that's not what you want, then investigate the Student Developer program. The savings on a (one time) Mac purchase can nullify the membership fee and still get you a better price on a system (sometimes...vs. normal educational discounts). For non-education, they've got a couple $999 computers, but nothing cheaper.
PC compatabilty cards were basically PCs on an expansion card, with extra drivers to allow them to share some of the Mac resources (floppy, HD, etc). Orange Micro made plenty for adding on after Apple stopped trying to use them.
You can see specs here http://www.orangemicro.com/productarchive.html
The main problem with these was really the expense. Despite a few tradeoffs, they worked pretty well. Added bonuses like easy file sharing between the "PC" and Mac made life easier if all you were doing was say, testing a web page in Windows. When PCs started becoming cheaper for a whole machine than and OrangePC card, it was merely the space saving that kept them around. Slot based CPUs didn't help either.
Nowdays there's no real point. Get yourself a $400 Dell and a VGA switcher.
There's nothing "new" about dragging and dropping files and folders, but Apple will add one little thing (like make a folder open after you've held a file over it for a few seconds) and it's just...better. Also, it's very Apple to take things that would otherwise be "complicated" and wrap them in an interface or paradigm that general users can understand. Or just make things convenient.
Whenever I see this sort of "translation" going on for anime, I wonder why. I mean, Cameron especially has helmed (and written) some good sci-fi movies (T2, Aliens, The Abyss). Though Battle Angel/Gunm/Battle Angel Alita is probably more doable as a good sci-fi movie than say...Akira (also announced) or Dragonball Z (shudder), why does it have to be redone? It's not particularly old, and it's already a moving picture medium. Book/comic translations are different, since you essentially see the book as one person imagines it. Does having an American director redo a movie in live action somehow honor the original work(s), or rather say that the original is not good enough? I don't think so. We don't see (for instance) anime remakes of Hollywood movies for Japanese audiences. We do see American remakes of foriegn live action films though. Perhaps it's simply that American directors feel it's the only way to get the masses to see and appreciate what they consider outstanding works of fiction. In some cases, I feel it should be left as the audience's loss. There are libraries of books I haven't read, films I haven't seen, anime I haven't watched, etc. Do I need someone to go through and retranslate their favorites to more suite my taste? I don't think so. Could perhaps Cameron use his influence to instead get more anime that he likes (he has a quote on the Ghost in the Shell DVD case too, so I assume he watches it) shown more? For instance, the Cowboy Bebop movie was released not too long ago...great movie, and one that most people could enjoy. Except many didn't even get a chance to, since it didn't get a wide release. He could also helm a "director's choice" type program showcasing anime or foriegn films. After all, how many Joe Sixpacks are going to go look up the other Alita media after seeing the live action version? It's not doing much for the public's opinion of anime, or getting them to watch it, which means there will still be that library of entertainment that they won't even consider. I guess the main point is, does remaking stuff into live action show the opinion that anime is somehow a lesser format for telling a story? Or that Hollywood has a low opinion of the average viewer, figuring they just wouldn't "get it"? (which is probably somewhat accurate...there are many people that lack a certain open-mindedness when it comes to anime or non-American film). With all the great stories that could be told, why choose one that's already been shown? That being said, of course I'm curious to see what he does with it, since it *is* a great story.
True, but Postscript is the professional standard for printing (at least in the minds of many designers). There are many people that won't take this font seriously unless it's Postscript (since there are so many low quality TT fonts available already, many designers simply ignore the format for print). For technical limitations, there aren't as many...though I've been told that there are issues printing TT fonts more than PS. Admittedly, this isn't as big a thing now as it was a few years ago, however, if this font is intended to be a new standard font, it should be available in PS as well. If it's just supposed to be a web/onscreen font, well, leave it TT only. Bitstream has put out quality PS fonts in the past, so I simply thought they might post it in that format too. Free TT fonts abound...free quality PS fonts are rare.
Any chance for Postscript versions of the font too in case someone wants to use it for serious printing?
Didn't SNES CD also fall through because Sony wanted profits from CD games whereas Nintendo got Cart based games? I dunno that it was branding of the machine so much. Most of these big companies have made some pretty big (and stupid) mistakes along the way. Plus they're basically all greed fueled corporations. Agreed though, MS seems to take abuse that other companies more than deserve as well. Console wars aside.
I run Windows and Mac (and occasionally Linux). My Mac I use for graphics work (mainly), for a few reasons. One, I'm a graphic designer (at least that's what my degree says). I have a significant investment in software for that platform, which was the required one at school. Switching to Windows for graphics work would cost $1500 in software crossgrades alone (at least). Second, it just plain friggin' works. I think those that like to mess with their computers hold that against the Mac. They want things to break so there's something to do. The Mac is "boring" to them. You install things, they work, you use them. To me, I use a Mac, I get *work* done. Windows, sure, there's a billion little apps to mess with or download...which aren't all there for Mac. That's why I have a PC, to dink around with and play games. It's a toy. My Mac is a tool, and an effective one at that. Sure I wish I could pay less for it...but that's why the old adage "the customer is always right" is BS. If the customer was always right *we'd never pay for anything*
I used to work in Software Etc and saw many PS2s come back with problems with either CDs or DVDs. I think nearly every employee wound up swapping their system in for a new one (Product Replacement Plan thing) because of DVD playback. My PS2 basically won't play the 2nd layer of most DVDs, though games don't seem to have problem. I know other people with the same issue. That's besides the amount discs the early revisions scratched (which people of course tried to return as defective). Do not put PS2s vertical, no matter how cool it looks in all those Sony ads. I've heard of plenty of people whose PS2s work flawlessly. Great, good for them. I know for a fact though that many of them have problems, *especially* with DVD playback.
Years ago Blacksburg (home of Virginia Tech) did something sorta like this (except it was mid 90's, so internet access period, not broadband). Perhaps a little ambitious, and honestly I can't say I can see any real difference from other towns. But it relates. http://www.bev.net is the still existing homepage http://www.cni.org/tfms/1995b.fall/BEV.html has some other info...