I've seen (and repaired) plenty of Thinkpads from the inside and outside. I agree they have great build quality, akin to that of a tank in some respects, but they're no match for the Powerbook and iBook visually. More of a tatse thing I guess, but that's how I see it.
Thinkpads look the same as most other PC laptops. I didn't comment on whether they actually/were/ cheap and nasty, just that they looked it.
If I was forced to use a PC laptop, I'd be looking at IBM.
I think the ideal size for a laptop is the 15" Powerbook (or the 12" iBook/Powerbook if you want extra portability).
The 17" one is just too big for daily use, and is more suited as a mobile desktop as people have mentioned.
This 19" thing is going to be huge. It's just a desktop with a handle.
There's no doubt it will be a pile of plasticy crap too - I've yet to see a PC laptop that doesn't look cheap and tacky. Even the fancy Sny Vaios (which also carry the hefty price premium) look cheap.
The funniest part of TFA in my opinion, was the part about the red strobe light obstructing the PSU fan and "that it might be a good idea to add an extra 80mm fan to push air over the cpu and into the psu" to compensate for that.
Who needs a red strobe light inside the case anyway!
Besides, adding/another/ fan into that case will turn it into a veritable hoover - there are a couple of fans in there already that turn at 6000 rpm (the chipset fan and the graphics card fan I believe). What's more fan noise between friends?
It's at times like this I really appeciate the near-silence afforded me by my 15" Powerbook and my Dual 2Ghz G5.
One of the most frequent referrer hits on my domain name is "milton keynes prostitutes" or "red light district milton keynes" and I live nowhere near there (obviously I've mentioned it on my journal somewhere in the past.
I get these hits, or variations on them, multiple times every month.
I think someone in the Milton Keynes area really needs to learn how to masturbate.
When you start pushing those multiple layer videos at different sizes at HD sizes then the render time really does start to go up.
Throw in a few LiveFonts (the fire explode one is excellent for fading out standard text when you run it really slowly), chuck in some distortions, tweak the colour of the sky to match your pervious shot...
The processing really adds up!
Re:Windows - Linux - Mac? - Lock in
on
Return of the Mac
·
· Score: 1
What crack are you smoking?
Mac desktops are simple to upgrade, since the Blue and White G3, right up to the current generation Powermac.
G3 and G4 Powermacs had a little handle on the top of one side that released a latch. The side was hinged at the bottom and opened out easily with the logic board fixed to it. The hard drives (standard IDE btw) were connected with a perfectly sized IDE cable with a planned path (no cable mayhem inside the case). You didn't have to disconnect any cables to open the case up.
In its open state, you could power it on and use it normally (just watch that CPU load since the heatsinks were cooled by a large, slow fan that was mounted in the case and was thus nowhere near the heatsinks when the thing was open.
This design made adding RAM a snap (standard DIMMs btw), or adding new hard drives (four bays in the Sawtooth models) or changing the optical drive, or putting in a PCI card (standard PCI slots btw). It was like having the logic board out on the desk, not cramped away in an awkward case.
I know not all PCs are badly designed, but my experience has ranged from "a bastard to work on" to "annoying to work on" with PCs (both desktops, towers and laptops).
The Macs I have worked on (and that's several generations from the 9600 onwards are a peach to deal with. So well planned out.
Even iBooks and Powerbooks are simple to work on compared to the PC laptops I've had to take apart.
Plus, since Macs now use (and have used for many, many years) standard PC parts with exception of the logic board, CPU and graphics card (can use a PC GPU, but you need to flash it with a Mac ROM) you can pick the parts up as if you were buying for a PC - same hard drives, RAM, optical drives, mice, tablets, scanners, printers, network cards, monitors etc.
My G3 iBook was bombproof, and still runs just as well today as it did when I bought it, although in the capable hands of my sister who is using it at college (I bought myself a 15" PB a few months ago).
My iBook was a 600Mhz version, with the 8Mb graphics card - the last model made that didn't have the logic board issue, which has been confined to G3 iBooks with 16Mb graphics and above.
I too am having trouble finding this Dell the original poster is on about that is just as small, just as quiet and runs cool enough, and draws little enough power not to worry about the 12V DC > 230V AC power inversion.
It's been said before, but we really need a moderation system for the summaries.
There's no way someone could be that ignorant that they don't know the details of the Apple lawsuit they're referencing. The only conclusion is blatant trolling.
Although, this is/. Just when you think there can't possibly be a more stupid person, you find yet another.
I have seen a smilar boom in Nottingham - my local Apple reseller, who I'm very friendly with given the amount of business that my business puts through them (commercial video maker), has just moved to new premises in a more prominent location in the local shopping centre.
The store is bigger, redesigned, and with more products on show. It's always full of customers.
The manager says business has never been so good. Top sellers: iPod mini, G5 iMac, iBook, 12" Powerbook.
I have edited broadcast shows for TV on a PowerMac 9600/300 back in the day. That's pre-G3 hardware, a 300Mhz CPU.
I have also used Final Cut Pro on a 12" Powerbook during an emergency edit when we were nowhere near our main edit suite (DP G5s). The 12" Powerbook was an 867Mhz G4 with 384MB of RAM, 32MB GeForce and 4200rpm HD and it was more than adequate to not only capture video via firewire, but to edit and export back to tape.
The Mac mini has a 1.25Ghz CPU and the same speed HD and graphics card. It is far, far more than is needed to edit movies in iMovie.
You really should only talk about things that you understand.
For the future, cd.. will go up one directory, so out of home and into users.
The shell is bash (by default in 10.3) or tcsh in 10.2, but you can change it to whatever you're comfortable with.
As an experiment I just typed cd / and lo and behold, it went straight to / as I expected it to. I checked to make sure it did this from my home folder too, and of course it does.
I don't know what's going on with the system you tried if cd / doesn't do anything.
Motion is part of the Production Suite of Pro apps. Expecting it to run on the consumer hardware just because it's sold by the same company is a bit much.
You're saying they shouls top selling things like Xsan, Motion, Shake, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Logic Pro and other apps because they won't install on a Mac mini (or an iBook for that matter)?
You thought even for 5 seconds that you could get Motion to install on a Mac mini?
Can I have some of that crack you're smoking?
Motion chugs on our DP G5, and we have shitloads of RAM and a disk array. Then again, we do push it to the limit of what it's capable of, at least until we can afford Shake.
I suggest you read his post again properly, then use that dictionary of yours to look up the words "joke", "humour" and "pun" before making such silly anonymous comments.
Of course, you run the risk of being sent to prison under terrorism charges if you use Lynx, since the clueless web admin doesn't recognise the user agent and assumes you are hacking their site.
Adverts of Prison....
hmm, I'll take the risk, I can't stand web adverts.
You'll be hard pressed to find quieter laptops with similar performance.
If you don't like OS X, you can stick Linux on there.
While it's true the first gen Tibooks had hair-dryer-loud fans, the newer Albooks have near silent fans that only come on when the temp is high.
The iBooks have a fan, but in 2 years I've never heard it come on. The G3 only puts out 6 watts at 900Mhz - ideal for cool running. I've only worked with a few G4 iBooks, but these have also been very quiet in my experience.
Apple really has worked hard to ensure the quietest machines possible.
The downside, of course, is that you need to buy a new laptop. I think this would be easier than making extensive cooling modifications to an old laptop that hasn't been designed with that in mind. Taking apart a laptop isn't hard; making extensive modifications inside is another matter entirely.
You could replace the hard drive with a quieter, cooler HD, and the optical drive too, but there's not much else I'd be happy doing (like putting variable resistors inline with the fan power connectors which you can get away with more easily on a desktop).
Any player can have compatibility with the iTMS if it wants, they just need to licence the DRM from Apple.
This would allow in-car players to access the DRMed tunes just like the iPod does.
However, most companies licence the WMA playback, mp3 (obviously) and so on, but not the AAC (which is open) and DRM AAC formats. Whether it's Apple saying no to people or not, I have no idea, but there it is.
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen (and repaired) plenty of Thinkpads from the inside and outside. I agree they have great build quality, akin to that of a tank in some respects, but they're no match for the Powerbook and iBook visually. More of a tatse thing I guess, but that's how I see it.
/were/ cheap and nasty, just that they looked it.
Thinkpads look the same as most other PC laptops. I didn't comment on whether they actually
If I was forced to use a PC laptop, I'd be looking at IBM.
I think the ideal size for a laptop is the 15" Powerbook (or the 12" iBook/Powerbook if you want extra portability).
The 17" one is just too big for daily use, and is more suited as a mobile desktop as people have mentioned.
This 19" thing is going to be huge. It's just a desktop with a handle.
There's no doubt it will be a pile of plasticy crap too - I've yet to see a PC laptop that doesn't look cheap and tacky. Even the fancy Sny Vaios (which also carry the hefty price premium) look cheap.
He can use iTunes without a problem with pretty much any player, what he won't be able to do is use the iTunes Music Store.
That's no different to using pretty much any of the other online music stores (napster, music match etc) - those don't work with the iPod.
You can add a new HD to an iMac, and upgrade the RAM. Both are user installable parts. As is the airport card if you don't already have one.
And yes, the HD and RAM are standard parts, not proprietary Apple stuff. The Airport card is proprietary though.
I assume from your post that you use Windows (since the Mac Quicktime installer doesn't have iTunes included).
/can/ turn off the iTunes install y'know. You can instal Quicktime on its own in Windows.
You
Maybe, but look at Apache vs IIS.
Apache is the major player here, but I know which one has the most vulnerabilities and is responsible for most major net outages through malware.
The funniest part of TFA in my opinion, was the part about the red strobe light obstructing the PSU fan and "that it might be a good idea to add an extra 80mm fan to push air over the cpu and into the psu" to compensate for that.
/another/ fan into that case will turn it into a veritable hoover - there are a couple of fans in there already that turn at 6000 rpm (the chipset fan and the graphics card fan I believe). What's more fan noise between friends?
Who needs a red strobe light inside the case anyway!
Besides, adding
It's at times like this I really appeciate the near-silence afforded me by my 15" Powerbook and my Dual 2Ghz G5.
One of the most frequent referrer hits on my domain name is "milton keynes prostitutes" or "red light district milton keynes" and I live nowhere near there (obviously I've mentioned it on my journal somewhere in the past.
I get these hits, or variations on them, multiple times every month.
I think someone in the Milton Keynes area really needs to learn how to masturbate.
It mentions on Apple's site that a DVD drive is required and that CDs will be available for $10 plus shipping if you have a Mac without a DVD drive.
You're not kidding.
When you start pushing those multiple layer videos at different sizes at HD sizes then the render time really does start to go up.
Throw in a few LiveFonts (the fire explode one is excellent for fading out standard text when you run it really slowly), chuck in some distortions, tweak the colour of the sky to match your pervious shot...
The processing really adds up!
What crack are you smoking?
Mac desktops are simple to upgrade, since the Blue and White G3, right up to the current generation Powermac.
G3 and G4 Powermacs had a little handle on the top of one side that released a latch. The side was hinged at the bottom and opened out easily with the logic board fixed to it. The hard drives (standard IDE btw) were connected with a perfectly sized IDE cable with a planned path (no cable mayhem inside the case). You didn't have to disconnect any cables to open the case up.
In its open state, you could power it on and use it normally (just watch that CPU load since the heatsinks were cooled by a large, slow fan that was mounted in the case and was thus nowhere near the heatsinks when the thing was open.
This design made adding RAM a snap (standard DIMMs btw), or adding new hard drives (four bays in the Sawtooth models) or changing the optical drive, or putting in a PCI card (standard PCI slots btw). It was like having the logic board out on the desk, not cramped away in an awkward case.
I know not all PCs are badly designed, but my experience has ranged from "a bastard to work on" to "annoying to work on" with PCs (both desktops, towers and laptops).
The Macs I have worked on (and that's several generations from the 9600 onwards are a peach to deal with. So well planned out.
Even iBooks and Powerbooks are simple to work on compared to the PC laptops I've had to take apart.
Plus, since Macs now use (and have used for many, many years) standard PC parts with exception of the logic board, CPU and graphics card (can use a PC GPU, but you need to flash it with a Mac ROM) you can pick the parts up as if you were buying for a PC - same hard drives, RAM, optical drives, mice, tablets, scanners, printers, network cards, monitors etc.
My G3 iBook was bombproof, and still runs just as well today as it did when I bought it, although in the capable hands of my sister who is using it at college (I bought myself a 15" PB a few months ago).
My iBook was a 600Mhz version, with the 8Mb graphics card - the last model made that didn't have the logic board issue, which has been confined to G3 iBooks with 16Mb graphics and above.
Excellent post, but one small correction: the term is spelt "per se" not "persay"
And you'd think all WMV files would play in Windows Media Player, since they are Windows Media files....
I too am having trouble finding this Dell the original poster is on about that is just as small, just as quiet and runs cool enough, and draws little enough power not to worry about the 12V DC > 230V AC power inversion.
It's been said before, but we really need a moderation system for the summaries.
/. Just when you think there can't possibly be a more stupid person, you find yet another.
There's no way someone could be that ignorant that they don't know the details of the Apple lawsuit they're referencing. The only conclusion is blatant trolling.
Although, this is
I have seen a smilar boom in Nottingham - my local Apple reseller, who I'm very friendly with given the amount of business that my business puts through them (commercial video maker), has just moved to new premises in a more prominent location in the local shopping centre.
The store is bigger, redesigned, and with more products on show. It's always full of customers.
The manager says business has never been so good. Top sellers: iPod mini, G5 iMac, iBook, 12" Powerbook.
I have edited broadcast shows for TV on a PowerMac 9600/300 back in the day. That's pre-G3 hardware, a 300Mhz CPU.
I have also used Final Cut Pro on a 12" Powerbook during an emergency edit when we were nowhere near our main edit suite (DP G5s). The 12" Powerbook was an 867Mhz G4 with 384MB of RAM, 32MB GeForce and 4200rpm HD and it was more than adequate to not only capture video via firewire, but to edit and export back to tape.
The Mac mini has a 1.25Ghz CPU and the same speed HD and graphics card. It is far, far more than is needed to edit movies in iMovie.
You really should only talk about things that you understand.
For the future, cd .. will go up one directory, so out of home and into users.
The shell is bash (by default in 10.3) or tcsh in 10.2, but you can change it to whatever you're comfortable with.
As an experiment I just typed cd / and lo and behold, it went straight to / as I expected it to. I checked to make sure it did this from my home folder too, and of course it does.
I don't know what's going on with the system you tried if cd / doesn't do anything.
Motion is part of the Production Suite of Pro apps. Expecting it to run on the consumer hardware just because it's sold by the same company is a bit much.
You're saying they shouls top selling things like Xsan, Motion, Shake, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Logic Pro and other apps because they won't install on a Mac mini (or an iBook for that matter)?
Plain silly.
You thought even for 5 seconds that you could get Motion to install on a Mac mini?
Can I have some of that crack you're smoking?
Motion chugs on our DP G5, and we have shitloads of RAM and a disk array. Then again, we do push it to the limit of what it's capable of, at least until we can afford Shake.
I suggest you read his post again properly, then use that dictionary of yours to look up the words "joke", "humour" and "pun" before making such silly anonymous comments.
Of course, you run the risk of being sent to prison under terrorism charges if you use Lynx, since the clueless web admin doesn't recognise the user agent and assumes you are hacking their site.
Adverts of Prison....
hmm, I'll take the risk, I can't stand web adverts.
Buy a Powerbook or iBook.
You'll be hard pressed to find quieter laptops with similar performance.
If you don't like OS X, you can stick Linux on there.
While it's true the first gen Tibooks had hair-dryer-loud fans, the newer Albooks have near silent fans that only come on when the temp is high.
The iBooks have a fan, but in 2 years I've never heard it come on. The G3 only puts out 6 watts at 900Mhz - ideal for cool running. I've only worked with a few G4 iBooks, but these have also been very quiet in my experience.
Apple really has worked hard to ensure the quietest machines possible.
The downside, of course, is that you need to buy a new laptop. I think this would be easier than making extensive cooling modifications to an old laptop that hasn't been designed with that in mind. Taking apart a laptop isn't hard; making extensive modifications inside is another matter entirely.
You could replace the hard drive with a quieter, cooler HD, and the optical drive too, but there's not much else I'd be happy doing (like putting variable resistors inline with the fan power connectors which you can get away with more easily on a desktop).
Any player can have compatibility with the iTMS if it wants, they just need to licence the DRM from Apple.
This would allow in-car players to access the DRMed tunes just like the iPod does.
However, most companies licence the WMA playback, mp3 (obviously) and so on, but not the AAC (which is open) and DRM AAC formats. Whether it's Apple saying no to people or not, I have no idea, but there it is.