Didn't MS charge for the point upgrade from 2000 Pro to XP Pro (5.0-5.1)? Version numbering is completely arbitrary and is not a way to measure whether a version is a major upgrade or not.
I work in software development and sometimes version number increases are done for versioning reasons rather than by the amount of features.
One thing I've noticed about "official" benchmarks is they are not very "data heavy". When you run a test with a really large dataset, the G5 seems to outperform the competition by a wide margin even with poorly optimized GCC compiled code versus optimized Intel compiler code.
That's because the "official" SPEC numbers use an optimized compile with the Intel compiler versus the GCC compiler on the PPC. GCC has very few PPC optimizations and the project seems unwilling to receive contributions regarding correction of this deficiency even though it already contains way more optimized code for the X86.
I'd like to see official SPEC numbers with code compiled on the IBM PPC compiler with full optimization turn on like they do for the X86 numbers.
Regardless, the temperature of a medium can affect it's ability to conduct current. Certain elements degrade in this ability as their temperature goes past a certain point.
To put it simply, the increase in temperature caused the medium to start behaving like a resister rather than an efficient conductor.
Yeah, I have used PC's since the IBM PCl. I have some bloody idea what a shitbox X86 is compared to other platforms that have existed beside it (Motorola 68K,PPC,Alpha). I've programmed Assembly for all those and X86.
I don't care if you have done driver development on "other" platforms and OSes. That does not mean you can make a sweeping statement like "it would be easy".
So here we have it, new motherboard drivers would have to be written using the Darwin/OS X model, new soundcard drivers, video card driver etc... VESA may be good enough for linux but it would not cut the mustard with OSX. Ever heard of Quartz or Quartz Extreme?
Frameworks which rely on Altivec and or features of the PPC ( registers, PPC specific functions) would have to be rewritten. Do you really think it would be as simple a recompile? ROFLMAO.
Simply stated, Altivec will not map one to one with SSE/SSE2.
If you look at Darwin for X86, all you have there is a limited subset of motherboards, Intel CPU support, the mach kernel and the init command and ps basically. That is not a starting point for an x86 version.
Why can't you get it through your scull that all software for OS X would have to be rewritten and a platform without software would die?
I don't have a G5 and you don't have an ff'ing clue about what makes the difference between a shitbox and a G5. First of all, compare a Dual Xeon on Dual AMD 64bit CPU with a high quality motherboard/chipset with similar features against a G5 and tell me which one is cheaper. My one condition is that you compare against a retail price for one, not one you build your own.
Screws? Listen man, what makes most x86 boxes shitboxes is the motherboard and the chipset. I'm well aware that the RAM, HD's and other components are also available for PCs but I also know that you will not find that quality in a $499 Dell special either.
Go ahead and use your dumpster special with a VIA or SIS chipset with broken USB or firewire and I'll use my mac that just works.
The X86 CPU architecture is flawed and inefficient.
-lack of general registers
-lack of VPU for SIMD
-lack of enough SSE registers
-slow FSB (intel)
-longer pipeline
-pipeline flush for every context switch
In case you have not noticed, Intel can no longer push for faster and faster clock speeds to push its hunk of junk up the hill.
X86 is dead along with the floppy, serial port and parallel ports. AMD's 64bit platform has a possibly bright future along with PPC but throw away/recycle your shitbox with technology from the 20th century and get something more modern.
Steve Jobs has been there, done that. They had to price it at 400USD IIRC to turn a profit. Still think it's a good idea?
I'm curious, how much do you think the average salary of a developer is? How many people do you think are involved in production of commercial software/OSes from design/analysis to the store shelves?
If you think it goes from the PHB to the programmer, to the QA department and straight to the factory, then I laugh in your general direction.
Look who's talking "fanboy". There is nothing inherently superior about the X86 platform. The only thing it has going for it is price on the low end and you can build your own shitbox out of parts from a dumpster.
I converted a 1U server board into a desktop just for kicks that I had picked up at a dot com firesale. I sold it after I switched.
You must be too young to remember NeXTStep. Go read up on NeXT and then tell me OSX is not NeXTStep 5.x. Steve Jobs had it ported to X86 and it failed miserable because it could not compete on hardware compatibility and price with windows (forgetting that MS blocked it from inclusion by OEMs with new PCs).
You don't have an fucking clue about writing software let alone how hard it is to write an OS and drivers. How many example do you fanboys need before you get a fucking clue?
Be Inc. died because MSFT blocked it from being installed by OEMs and it also had poor compatibility with hardware.
To recap, Be Inc. could not deal with OEMs and compete on price/compatibility so it died.
NeXT also died (being bought out by Apple) because not enough people bought the X86 version due to price and hardware compatibility.
A port of OS X to X86 would have no commercial software outside of Apple themselves.
Here is the real truth, you sad fuckers want Apple to die so you can pirate OS X in peace and pretend your shitbox is a mac. I bet you hang out at aqua-soft looking for aqua programs and skins for your windows PCs. I know how you guys think because I used to be one of you.
Just to clarify, personal use of a product whether purchased or not is not copyright infringement but attempting to resell a product without compensation is.
The only time use of a product or service is theft is when you did not pay for it and should have. It does not matter if it is a service (such as a haircut) or a meal or a piece of software.
No, copyright infringement is when you resell something which is copyright without permission. This is similar to patent "infringement".
Using a song without permission of the copyright owner in a work for profit, is also copyright infringement.
Software piracy is intellectual property theft, not copyright infringement since you are not knowingly infringing on the copyright of another for profit or promotion of your product but rather taking that which you did not "pay" for and using it.
Why should all the companies be force to offer exactly the same service? I thought the free market should be allowed to decide the standard people want buy voting with their wallets.
You know what this means, the labels want to force restrictive WMA DRM on everyone.
Ok, you are assuming that criminals at airports are looking specifically for laptops. I'm sure laptops are one of many items they might want to steal. What they are looking for is an easy mark.
Honestly, I don't give a fuck what you think of my answers. I'm not suggesting anywhere that what I say is somehow novel or unique. It is basic criminology and psychology my friend.
One of the problems with laptops is that they are harder to get rid of on the black market than other stolen items. You see, laptops have various identifying marks and have a tendency to break down. Do you think a criminal or someone who knowingly purchased a stolen laptop would take it in to get fixed? Not to mention theft prevention software that calls home on the net.
Thieves are looking for more liquid items such as watches, digital cameras, wallets and purses.
Practice looking mean in the mirror? WTF? Go look up any self defense course and you will see what I mean. Damn you are thick.
Flamebait? I was offering some constructive criticism.
If people go out of their way to change what the wear or pack their stuff in out of fear, then the bad guys have already won.
Never leave your bags unattended (use common sense) but don't alter your plans out of fear.
Sun Tzu's The Art of War is required reading in the police academy, West Point and other military/law enforcement/intelligence agency training centers around the world. I suggest arming yourself with knowledge of how to avoid being an easy target. Size matters not but rather knowing how to handle yourself.
Or you could just grow a backbone. Thieves only go for easy targets. If you look like a victim, you will become one.
Going out of your way to hide what you have will either:
1. Make you stick out like a sore thumb.
2. Put your laptop at risk to damage or just dampen your trip experience (especially if the backpack you choose is less functional).
How do you know thieves don't read slashdot?
How do you know thieves have not read Sun-tzu's The Art of War? Know your enemy.
Yes I do remember. Do you know how much it costs to develop and "test" an application, let alone and Operating System? There is also the silly thing called "profit" that companies have to earn on their products to make their share holders happy.
What makes you think Apple could get away with charging less given the rampant piracy in the industry, the even more diverse hardware configurations on the x86 platform and higher developer cost (wages) of today?
Development/bug fixing and QA cost time and money and Apple could not afford to use the public as their beta testers like MSFT does.
Stop living in your GNU fantasy land and realize that software "costs" money to develop and test and linux would "cost" money if the programmers did not have regular jobs outside of the time they donate. Perhaps MS and linux can get away with hardware compatibility issues (MS because of it's market dominance and linux because of the hacker mentality in the userbase) but Apple would get crucified by customers if it did not work with their XYZ motherboard with the ABC chipset and EFG CPU combination.
I recall that even back then, NeXT had limited hardware compatibility.
Even if we assume none of these problems exists (including piracy), there would be no software for the platform and no incentive to develop for it since it would be just another non-free OS on X86. If you believe the developers would just to a recompile, you don't have a clue about mac hardware/software. All Altivec code would have to be rewritten and there would be a performance penalty (it would run much slower).
Face it, X86 is crap from a technical point of view. The only thing it has going for it are: games and you can DIY a machine from parts but that last thing is not something the average joe would care about anyway.
If you really believe the X86 platform is superior from a technical point of view, go tell that to the top 500 list, VT and COLSA. I'd suggest looking up info on the Vector Processing Unit in the G5 and Altivec in general as it goes way beyond what SSE and SSE2 does on X86.
PS. X86 has a longer pipeline and a flush of the pipeline is required for each context switch whereas the pipeline is not flushed on the PPC on a context switch.
His "prediction" did not come true and was made around the time the G5 came out. How can you take what he says seriously? He has been predicting Apple's death for almost two decades.
Given that Intel is having trouble with with 90nm process and IBM is starting to do fine with it, why switch? Look around you, Sony (PS3), MSFT (Xbox2) are switching to PPC chips from IBM. MS even bought G5s from Apple as development boxes for the Xbox2.
The US military and academia is switching to OSX (COLSA cluster, VT cluster).
Wake up. X86 might be cheap but it's not good and once economies of scale kick in with PPC, IBM 970 based motherboards will be cheap and good.
Yeah and a lot of you bought NeXTStep for your X86 boxes right? Oh wait, now you did not even though windows sucked even more back then than it does now. NeXT was run by Steve Jobs and if you look at the Cocoa API, bundled apps and development tools, OS X is NeXTStep 5.x+.
Yeah sure, you would switch. Bullshit, you would not. Steve Jobs already tried OS X on X86 (in the form of NeXTStep) but you bastards did not want to play the price for it.
I'm a switcher as of two years ago at home but i develop widows apps for a living. I built my last PC a couple years ago so I know what X86 is all about (since the XT). The X86 platform is crap.
Come look for work up here in Canada then. Data centric industries such as the financial industry or the intelligence community have enough budgeted for hardware replacement every 2-3 years.
There is nothing wrong with fiscal responsibility but being cheap is a bad idea if it hinders productivity and cash flow.
I don't know what it's like in the US but 2.8 Ghz is considered a standard machine for business these days considering it's a mid-range processor in Intel's current P4 desktop lineup (compared to 3.0,2.2,3.4,3.4EE or Xeon CPUs). Buying anything below that is foolishness considering it will be obsolete that much faster.
We also don't suffer with slow net access either (fiber).
To put things in prospective, all the things people on here questioned are less than 3/4 of the payroll cost of an IT worker in Canada for one day of work. FYI. It cost a company roughly twice of what they pay you to keep you employed as they have to pay workers comp. and other payroll "taxes" on top of your wages.
Guys, I did not even suggest a Xeon workstation or suggest a DVD-ROM/CDRW combo drive or a Gib of ram and you are jumping down my throat? Don't blame me if you have unreasonably cheap bosses. Do a business case for how faster hardware would increase your productivity and show how the hardware upgrade costs would be minimal compared to what they are paying to employ you.
Put it this way, the faster you can get work done, the more value for their dollar they get from paying you your wages.
Re:A bit underwhelmed by the review...
on
The Ultimate MacDate
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Fine, stick with the the integrated gfx but the price is still over over 1150USD.
As for your other comments... do you really expect to be taken seriously? Come on. We are talking about corporate workstations here. I configured the 2.8Ghz base model for that series of "workstation" which is the low end for a small to medium sized business workstations these days.
Gigabit is cheap these days and not out of line for business users requiring a lot of network bandwidth for multiple data sources with low latency.
That is the ram IBM provides for this workstation. Are you suggesting cheaping out and taking the risk of buying third party ram to save a few cents and risk spending money on IT troubleshooting and lost productivity?
Even if I removed the gigabit, it will still be over 1100 USD. I'm not removing the RAM since 512MB is reasonable and "business" users would not nickel and dime things like you are doing.
You are grasping at straws and trying to compare hobbyist's computers with "corporate" level machines.
PS. If you suggest XP Home is satifactory for "business" use, I will laugh my ass off.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't MS charge for the point upgrade from 2000 Pro to XP Pro (5.0-5.1)? Version numbering is completely arbitrary and is not a way to measure whether a version is a major upgrade or not.
I work in software development and sometimes version number increases are done for versioning reasons rather than by the amount of features.
One thing I've noticed about "official" benchmarks is they are not very "data heavy". When you run a test with a really large dataset, the G5 seems to outperform the competition by a wide margin even with poorly optimized GCC compiled code versus optimized Intel compiler code.
I'd like to see official SPEC numbers with code compiled on the IBM PPC compiler with full optimization turn on like they do for the X86 numbers.
Software developers look at more than hardware marketshare.
To put it simply, the increase in temperature caused the medium to start behaving like a resister rather than an efficient conductor.
I think the parent was talking about regular conducting materials above room temperature.
I don't care if you have done driver development on "other" platforms and OSes. That does not mean you can make a sweeping statement like "it would be easy".
So here we have it, new motherboard drivers would have to be written using the Darwin/OS X model, new soundcard drivers, video card driver etc... VESA may be good enough for linux but it would not cut the mustard with OSX. Ever heard of Quartz or Quartz Extreme?
Frameworks which rely on Altivec and or features of the PPC ( registers, PPC specific functions) would have to be rewritten. Do you really think it would be as simple a recompile? ROFLMAO. Simply stated, Altivec will not map one to one with SSE/SSE2.
If you look at Darwin for X86, all you have there is a limited subset of motherboards, Intel CPU support, the mach kernel and the init command and ps basically. That is not a starting point for an x86 version.
Why can't you get it through your scull that all software for OS X would have to be rewritten and a platform without software would die?
I don't have a G5 and you don't have an ff'ing clue about what makes the difference between a shitbox and a G5. First of all, compare a Dual Xeon on Dual AMD 64bit CPU with a high quality motherboard/chipset with similar features against a G5 and tell me which one is cheaper. My one condition is that you compare against a retail price for one, not one you build your own.
Screws? Listen man, what makes most x86 boxes shitboxes is the motherboard and the chipset. I'm well aware that the RAM, HD's and other components are also available for PCs but I also know that you will not find that quality in a $499 Dell special either.
Go ahead and use your dumpster special with a VIA or SIS chipset with broken USB or firewire and I'll use my mac that just works.
The X86 CPU architecture is flawed and inefficient.
-lack of general registers
-lack of VPU for SIMD
-lack of enough SSE registers
-slow FSB (intel)
-longer pipeline
-pipeline flush for every context switch
In case you have not noticed, Intel can no longer push for faster and faster clock speeds to push its hunk of junk up the hill.
X86 is dead along with the floppy, serial port and parallel ports. AMD's 64bit platform has a possibly bright future along with PPC but throw away/recycle your shitbox with technology from the 20th century and get something more modern.
I'm curious, how much do you think the average salary of a developer is? How many people do you think are involved in production of commercial software/OSes from design/analysis to the store shelves?
If you think it goes from the PHB to the programmer, to the QA department and straight to the factory, then I laugh in your general direction.
I converted a 1U server board into a desktop just for kicks that I had picked up at a dot com firesale. I sold it after I switched.
You must be too young to remember NeXTStep. Go read up on NeXT and then tell me OSX is not NeXTStep 5.x. Steve Jobs had it ported to X86 and it failed miserable because it could not compete on hardware compatibility and price with windows (forgetting that MS blocked it from inclusion by OEMs with new PCs).
You don't have an fucking clue about writing software let alone how hard it is to write an OS and drivers. How many example do you fanboys need before you get a fucking clue?
Be Inc. died because MSFT blocked it from being installed by OEMs and it also had poor compatibility with hardware.
To recap, Be Inc. could not deal with OEMs and compete on price/compatibility so it died.
NeXT also died (being bought out by Apple) because not enough people bought the X86 version due to price and hardware compatibility.
A port of OS X to X86 would have no commercial software outside of Apple themselves.
Here is the real truth, you sad fuckers want Apple to die so you can pirate OS X in peace and pretend your shitbox is a mac. I bet you hang out at aqua-soft looking for aqua programs and skins for your windows PCs. I know how you guys think because I used to be one of you.
It does not matter if a product can be mass produced. Theft is theft. Stop living in denial and admit it.
The only time use of a product or service is theft is when you did not pay for it and should have. It does not matter if it is a service (such as a haircut) or a meal or a piece of software.
Using a song without permission of the copyright owner in a work for profit, is also copyright infringement.
Software piracy is intellectual property theft, not copyright infringement since you are not knowingly infringing on the copyright of another for profit or promotion of your product but rather taking that which you did not "pay" for and using it.
You know what this means, the labels want to force restrictive WMA DRM on everyone.
If they were, as some suggested, taken at the top of a volcano, the results are totally garbage.
Honestly, I don't give a fuck what you think of my answers. I'm not suggesting anywhere that what I say is somehow novel or unique. It is basic criminology and psychology my friend.
One of the problems with laptops is that they are harder to get rid of on the black market than other stolen items. You see, laptops have various identifying marks and have a tendency to break down. Do you think a criminal or someone who knowingly purchased a stolen laptop would take it in to get fixed? Not to mention theft prevention software that calls home on the net.
Thieves are looking for more liquid items such as watches, digital cameras, wallets and purses.
Practice looking mean in the mirror? WTF? Go look up any self defense course and you will see what I mean. Damn you are thick.
I don't worry about it and just make sure not to leave it unattended or at least not out of sight.
The targus is nice because it has more padding but it's a lot heavier/more awkward to carry.
If people go out of their way to change what the wear or pack their stuff in out of fear, then the bad guys have already won.
Never leave your bags unattended (use common sense) but don't alter your plans out of fear.
Sun Tzu's The Art of War is required reading in the police academy, West Point and other military/law enforcement/intelligence agency training centers around the world. I suggest arming yourself with knowledge of how to avoid being an easy target. Size matters not but rather knowing how to handle yourself.
There is no need to take along a laptop on a vacation.
Leaving a regular backpack in the back seat can still be a tempting target.
Common sense is a better defense.
Going out of your way to hide what you have will either:
1. Make you stick out like a sore thumb.
2. Put your laptop at risk to damage or just dampen your trip experience (especially if the backpack you choose is less functional).
How do you know thieves don't read slashdot?
How do you know thieves have not read Sun-tzu's The Art of War? Know your enemy.
What makes you think Apple could get away with charging less given the rampant piracy in the industry, the even more diverse hardware configurations on the x86 platform and higher developer cost (wages) of today?
Development/bug fixing and QA cost time and money and Apple could not afford to use the public as their beta testers like MSFT does.
Stop living in your GNU fantasy land and realize that software "costs" money to develop and test and linux would "cost" money if the programmers did not have regular jobs outside of the time they donate. Perhaps MS and linux can get away with hardware compatibility issues (MS because of it's market dominance and linux because of the hacker mentality in the userbase) but Apple would get crucified by customers if it did not work with their XYZ motherboard with the ABC chipset and EFG CPU combination.
I recall that even back then, NeXT had limited hardware compatibility.
Even if we assume none of these problems exists (including piracy), there would be no software for the platform and no incentive to develop for it since it would be just another non-free OS on X86. If you believe the developers would just to a recompile, you don't have a clue about mac hardware/software. All Altivec code would have to be rewritten and there would be a performance penalty (it would run much slower).
Face it, X86 is crap from a technical point of view. The only thing it has going for it are: games and you can DIY a machine from parts but that last thing is not something the average joe would care about anyway.
If you really believe the X86 platform is superior from a technical point of view, go tell that to the top 500 list, VT and COLSA. I'd suggest looking up info on the Vector Processing Unit in the G5 and Altivec in general as it goes way beyond what SSE and SSE2 does on X86.
PS. X86 has a longer pipeline and a flush of the pipeline is required for each context switch whereas the pipeline is not flushed on the PPC on a context switch.
His "prediction" did not come true and was made around the time the G5 came out. How can you take what he says seriously? He has been predicting Apple's death for almost two decades.
Given that Intel is having trouble with with 90nm process and IBM is starting to do fine with it, why switch? Look around you, Sony (PS3), MSFT (Xbox2) are switching to PPC chips from IBM. MS even bought G5s from Apple as development boxes for the Xbox2.
The US military and academia is switching to OSX (COLSA cluster, VT cluster).
Wake up. X86 might be cheap but it's not good and once economies of scale kick in with PPC, IBM 970 based motherboards will be cheap and good.
Yeah sure, you would switch. Bullshit, you would not. Steve Jobs already tried OS X on X86 (in the form of NeXTStep) but you bastards did not want to play the price for it.
I'm a switcher as of two years ago at home but i develop widows apps for a living. I built my last PC a couple years ago so I know what X86 is all about (since the XT). The X86 platform is crap.
There is nothing wrong with fiscal responsibility but being cheap is a bad idea if it hinders productivity and cash flow.
I don't know what it's like in the US but 2.8 Ghz is considered a standard machine for business these days considering it's a mid-range processor in Intel's current P4 desktop lineup (compared to 3.0,2.2,3.4,3.4EE or Xeon CPUs). Buying anything below that is foolishness considering it will be obsolete that much faster.
We also don't suffer with slow net access either (fiber).
To put things in prospective, all the things people on here questioned are less than 3/4 of the payroll cost of an IT worker in Canada for one day of work. FYI. It cost a company roughly twice of what they pay you to keep you employed as they have to pay workers comp. and other payroll "taxes" on top of your wages.
Guys, I did not even suggest a Xeon workstation or suggest a DVD-ROM/CDRW combo drive or a Gib of ram and you are jumping down my throat? Don't blame me if you have unreasonably cheap bosses. Do a business case for how faster hardware would increase your productivity and show how the hardware upgrade costs would be minimal compared to what they are paying to employ you.
Put it this way, the faster you can get work done, the more value for their dollar they get from paying you your wages.
As for your other comments... do you really expect to be taken seriously? Come on. We are talking about corporate workstations here. I configured the 2.8Ghz base model for that series of "workstation" which is the low end for a small to medium sized business workstations these days.
Gigabit is cheap these days and not out of line for business users requiring a lot of network bandwidth for multiple data sources with low latency.
That is the ram IBM provides for this workstation. Are you suggesting cheaping out and taking the risk of buying third party ram to save a few cents and risk spending money on IT troubleshooting and lost productivity?
Even if I removed the gigabit, it will still be over 1100 USD. I'm not removing the RAM since 512MB is reasonable and "business" users would not nickel and dime things like you are doing.
You are grasping at straws and trying to compare hobbyist's computers with "corporate" level machines.
PS. If you suggest XP Home is satifactory for "business" use, I will laugh my ass off.