Sure, USB2 works, but damnit, every IEEE1394 case I have has two ports, for daisy chaining... I'm yet to see that on a USB2 case.
That's because USB2 isn't built for that. It can be done, but it essentially means putting a USB2 hub in the drive enclosure, then internally wiring the USB harddrive to to the USB hub. It adds to the cost, which is likely why enclosures like that are rare.
I am a bit surprised that floppy ports are still a standard feature. We've already lost one of the PATA ports but that useless floppy port still hangs on.
Well, how else are you supposed to install Windows XP now that you can only get SATA drives? (yeah, I know about slipstreaming. It's a joke, laugh)
In a social peer environment where everybody else is either plump or really fat, being slim means getting teased at every social event, every family gathering, every "social networking" event.
I don't know how often these kind of events happen for you, but for most people they are a rare enough occurance that they can just go and eat whatever they want for that one afternoon or whatever and it's not going to make them fat. Besides, nowadays you can just claim you're allergic to dairy products or something and people aren't going to really question it.
That won't do squat to stop terrorism. At best, it would just keep them from targeting America. Of course, most people would consider that good enough.
Your central argument is that Bush's low approval ratings translate into hoards of conservatives and moderate republicans ideologically buying into what the Democrats are offering, and that's just absurd.
Actually, that would be *your* argument, since it seems you're the only one who likes to bring it up. Around here, that's generally known as a strawman. Right now, both Bush's and the Democrat-controlled Congress's approval ratings are rather dismal. It's not really a red vs. blue thing any more, people are just getting fed up with all the bullshit, lies, and broken promises.
I wasn't counting the early developer systems. Those were leased and had to be returned anyway if I remember right - are there actually any of them still out there? The first iMacs/Macbook Pros for purchase were out early 2006.
"I want to buy a computer. What should I get?" "What are you going to do with it?" "I dunno, email, surf the net, word processor... Is Dual COre 3GHz with a 500GB hard drive enough?" "You could do that on my kids PIII-400."
I wouldn't be so sure. We're always thinking of new new ways to use things. If I told myself back in 1995 that I would have a 2Ghz processor with 1.25GB of ram and 1TB of storage, I would be like "What do you need all that for?", and the response would be "For things you haven't imagined yet".
That 400Mhz machine isn't going to cut it for what most people consider web browsing. It's going to choke on Ajax, fancy CSS tricks, Flash, Youtube, etc - things that I take for granted on a 2Ghz machine. I ultimately got rid of my old K6-3 450Mhz because it struggled on mpeg4 encoded videos. The predecessor, a 6x86 system, got replaced because it skipped if I did anything else while playing a 128kbps MP3 file (granted, the FPU was terrible on the Cyrix CPUs, it it was a Pentium I would have kept it longer). The replacement Socket A system might ultimately get replaced because it's a little choppy on HD content.
On the other hand, things do seem to be slowing down. A Dual Core 3Ghz *is* overkill for most people, and would likely last someone a long time, barring any new demanding killer apps someone comes up with that I haven't imagined yet.
Apple is the only computer manufacturer whose low end PC's actually perform tolerably.
That would be because Apple's low-end is everyone else's midrange. The $300 PC and $400 PC laptop may be a bit sluggish, but the $600 PC and $1100 PC laptop perform nicely.
On the other hand, yesterday's high-end machines do always repurpose themselves well. They still suck down the same amount of power, require the same fans, produce the same amount of heat and noise, and for all of that they'll perform worse than today's budget hardware. He may still be better off getting rid of it when the getting is still good and buying something more suitable for a secondary computer/server/living room computer/give to mom/whatever than to try to use an old gaming rig for the same thing.
The problem is that for the most part, people don't want to use old technology. If they standardized on 1995 technology, for example, would you be happy with serial and parallel ports for connectivity, poor plug and play support, harddrives limited to 8GB (or whatever the limit was back then)? Bus speeds top out at 66Mhz, L2 cache on the motherboard? No power management? And I'm being generous here, 1995 technology we still have PCI and CD-ROM drives and VGA - Be happy I'm not standardizing on 1987 technology. People simply wouldn't use it. It would have a niche for specialized equipment, industrial PCs, and the military that like tried-and-true tech, but for the most part the public would reject it in favor of the newer, shinier tech.
You've just described OS X... only 2 versions (supporting both 32 and 64 bit),and no client restrictions.
That's hardly the case. There are 4 different versions of OSX out there just to support all the hardware:
PPC 32 bit PPC 64 bit x86 32 bit x86 64 bit
Double that number once you count in the server additions. Also, just like Microsoft, Apple limits the number of clients on the $499 version of OSX Server, or get the unlimited version for $999.
I see the same thing, especially with the x86 switchover. All the hardcore Mac users I knew aren't using anything older than 1.5 years old right now. The PC users - some of them are using newer machines, a lot of them are not. Right now, a 3 year old PC can do almost everything a new PC can, while support for PPC Macs is dropping fast.
It really has nothing to do with the hardware, both PCs and Macs are generally very reliable - though to someone who knows computers PCs have a slight edge. An old PII system is repairable, while a broken G3 iMac is pretty much trash.
Actually I would put the blame squarely on it being a propriety Sony format. If Sony had played their cards right and opened the thing up some, they could have had both the MP3 player market and the Zip drive market long before the current players entered it.
The failures I've seen with rewritables is that they won't erase and rewrite anymore. Which essentially makes the disk a CDR with whatever was last burned on it. However, I prefer to just use CDR's and DVDR's for backup, and just keep on stacking the backups up. Suddenly need that file from 1998 that you deleted in 2003 thinking that you would never, ever, possibly need that file again? No problem!
On the other hand, some things on Windows are pretty consistent. The concept of bringing up a context menu with a right click. Copy and paste works really well, and you can ctrl-c and ctrl-v all kinds of things. The ALT key brings up the menu(s). Home and End keys are well behaved. A lot of things I don't notice until I'm using something else, when I discover I can't copy and paste because it's broken *cough*Linux*cough*, or that the Home and End keys are hopeless broken and useless *cough*Apple*cough*.
Because they believe that if they tempt users with little OSX morsels on windows it will prompt people to take a look at "the real thing"
As far as I'm concerned, it's a failure. The last thing I would want is an entire computer that runs as poorly as Apple's Windows software. Actually, I had one of those - it was called System 7. Anyway, the general crappiness of Quicktime, iTunes, and Safari for Windows certainly goes a long way towards reinforcing the idea amonst the typical Windows user that the Mac still sucks.
The 80386 was introduced in 1985, but the transition to 32 bits in software was really only done in 1995. Windows 3.1, released seven years after the 386, still ran on the 286. Word 6.0 for DOS, released in 1993, still could run on an original 8086.
Windows 3.1 had protected mode, which only ran on the 386DX and later processors. This allowed Windows 3.1 to do things like address more than 16MB of memory, and took advantage of other features of the 386. While it's true that Windows 3.1 also ran on the 286, it's much the same how how Vista also has a 32bit version to support older processors. You would be more correct to say that in 1995, Microsoft had finally phased out support for the older stuff with Windows 95.
If you think the "Firefox cult" is bad, you've obviously never seen the Opera one. Most of them still pretend their browser invented tabs.
It's actually funny how people consider Opera to be tabbed, when in fact it has a MDI interface which is a pretty old idea (take a look at Program Manager in Windows 3.0). While the basic functionality is the same as tabs, Opera allows tabs to be individually resized and moved around while inside the main window, which I find a whole lot more useful than the much simplier tab scheme that everyone else uses.
This post is being written on a machine with a 633 MHz processor. It's fairly ancient. It runs the full version of Firefox just fine. Mind you, it isn't running Windows, it's running DamnSmallLinux.
633Mhz is ancient? Kids these days. If the machine has PCI slots, USB ports, and can boot from CD, it's not ancient. Not even close.
VM's don't count, as the host OS will use the disk cache to cache the virtualized system's disk image, so when the virtualized OS hits the swap/pagefile, it's not always grinding the physical disk like a real machine will. As a matter of fact, most of the time when I make a VM I only give it a barebones amount of memory because it doesn't need it as much for this very reason.
However, your point still stands. Windows XP runs mostly fine in 256MB of ram so long as you don't push it hard. As a basic Office/email/internet station it's enough. What really kills Windows XP with 256MB of ram is a ton of crap running in the background, especially Symantic products.
On the other side, Firefox is open source so it's not the same as Microsoft cutting off Windows 98 from IE7. You can always create your own Windows 98 compatible fork, or wait and see if someone else does the same thing.
Even so, there is a decent chance that Firefox 3 may still run on Windows 98 anyway, just not supported.
My experience is that they will generally work, but you only get to use the first 127GB or so of the drive. Which is probably ok for the few people putting brand new drives in 9-11 year old computers. Otherwise, you can buy a $20 SATA/PATA PCI card and use the whole thing.
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Sure, USB2 works, but damnit, every IEEE1394 case I have has two ports, for daisy chaining ... I'm yet to see that on a USB2 case.
That's because USB2 isn't built for that. It can be done, but it essentially means putting a USB2 hub in the drive enclosure, then internally wiring the USB harddrive to to the USB hub. It adds to the cost, which is likely why enclosures like that are rare.
I am a bit surprised that floppy ports are still a standard feature. We've already lost one of the PATA ports but that useless floppy port still hangs on.
Well, how else are you supposed to install Windows XP now that you can only get SATA drives? (yeah, I know about slipstreaming. It's a joke, laugh)
In a social peer environment where everybody else is either plump or really fat, being slim means getting teased at every social event, every family gathering, every "social networking" event.
I don't know how often these kind of events happen for you, but for most people they are a rare enough occurance that they can just go and eat whatever they want for that one afternoon or whatever and it's not going to make them fat. Besides, nowadays you can just claim you're allergic to dairy products or something and people aren't going to really question it.
Damn, I'm going to have to find something else nice to say about Ford products...drawing a blank.
Anybody got any ideas?
They aren't Dodges?
Stop fucking the middle east.
That won't do squat to stop terrorism. At best, it would just keep them from targeting America. Of course, most people would consider that good enough.
Your central argument is that Bush's low approval ratings translate into hoards of conservatives and moderate republicans ideologically buying into what the Democrats are offering, and that's just absurd.
Actually, that would be *your* argument, since it seems you're the only one who likes to bring it up. Around here, that's generally known as a strawman. Right now, both Bush's and the Democrat-controlled Congress's approval ratings are rather dismal. It's not really a red vs. blue thing any more, people are just getting fed up with all the bullshit, lies, and broken promises.
I wasn't counting the early developer systems. Those were leased and had to be returned anyway if I remember right - are there actually any of them still out there? The first iMacs/Macbook Pros for purchase were out early 2006.
"I want to buy a computer. What should I get?"
"What are you going to do with it?"
"I dunno, email, surf the net, word processor... Is Dual COre 3GHz with a 500GB hard drive enough?"
"You could do that on my kids PIII-400."
I wouldn't be so sure. We're always thinking of new new ways to use things. If I told myself back in 1995 that I would have a 2Ghz processor with 1.25GB of ram and 1TB of storage, I would be like "What do you need all that for?", and the response would be "For things you haven't imagined yet".
That 400Mhz machine isn't going to cut it for what most people consider web browsing. It's going to choke on Ajax, fancy CSS tricks, Flash, Youtube, etc - things that I take for granted on a 2Ghz machine. I ultimately got rid of my old K6-3 450Mhz because it struggled on mpeg4 encoded videos. The predecessor, a 6x86 system, got replaced because it skipped if I did anything else while playing a 128kbps MP3 file (granted, the FPU was terrible on the Cyrix CPUs, it it was a Pentium I would have kept it longer). The replacement Socket A system might ultimately get replaced because it's a little choppy on HD content.
On the other hand, things do seem to be slowing down. A Dual Core 3Ghz *is* overkill for most people, and would likely last someone a long time, barring any new demanding killer apps someone comes up with that I haven't imagined yet.
Apple is the only computer manufacturer whose low end PC's actually perform tolerably.
That would be because Apple's low-end is everyone else's midrange. The $300 PC and $400 PC laptop may be a bit sluggish, but the $600 PC and $1100 PC laptop perform nicely.
On the other hand, yesterday's high-end machines do always repurpose themselves well. They still suck down the same amount of power, require the same fans, produce the same amount of heat and noise, and for all of that they'll perform worse than today's budget hardware. He may still be better off getting rid of it when the getting is still good and buying something more suitable for a secondary computer/server/living room computer/give to mom/whatever than to try to use an old gaming rig for the same thing.
The problem is that for the most part, people don't want to use old technology. If they standardized on 1995 technology, for example, would you be happy with serial and parallel ports for connectivity, poor plug and play support, harddrives limited to 8GB (or whatever the limit was back then)? Bus speeds top out at 66Mhz, L2 cache on the motherboard? No power management? And I'm being generous here, 1995 technology we still have PCI and CD-ROM drives and VGA - Be happy I'm not standardizing on 1987 technology. People simply wouldn't use it. It would have a niche for specialized equipment, industrial PCs, and the military that like tried-and-true tech, but for the most part the public would reject it in favor of the newer, shinier tech.
You've just described OS X... only 2 versions (supporting both 32 and 64 bit),and no client restrictions.
That's hardly the case. There are 4 different versions of OSX out there just to support all the hardware:
PPC 32 bit
PPC 64 bit
x86 32 bit
x86 64 bit
Double that number once you count in the server additions. Also, just like Microsoft, Apple limits the number of clients on the $499 version of OSX Server, or get the unlimited version for $999.
I wouldn't be so sure. 2010 is a mere 2.5 years away, and you can buy 32bit hardware brand new right now.
I see the same thing, especially with the x86 switchover. All the hardcore Mac users I knew aren't using anything older than 1.5 years old right now. The PC users - some of them are using newer machines, a lot of them are not. Right now, a 3 year old PC can do almost everything a new PC can, while support for PPC Macs is dropping fast.
It really has nothing to do with the hardware, both PCs and Macs are generally very reliable - though to someone who knows computers PCs have a slight edge. An old PII system is repairable, while a broken G3 iMac is pretty much trash.
Actually I would put the blame squarely on it being a propriety Sony format. If Sony had played their cards right and opened the thing up some, they could have had both the MP3 player market and the Zip drive market long before the current players entered it.
The failures I've seen with rewritables is that they won't erase and rewrite anymore. Which essentially makes the disk a CDR with whatever was last burned on it. However, I prefer to just use CDR's and DVDR's for backup, and just keep on stacking the backups up. Suddenly need that file from 1998 that you deleted in 2003 thinking that you would never, ever, possibly need that file again? No problem!
On the other hand, some things on Windows are pretty consistent. The concept of bringing up a context menu with a right click. Copy and paste works really well, and you can ctrl-c and ctrl-v all kinds of things. The ALT key brings up the menu(s). Home and End keys are well behaved. A lot of things I don't notice until I'm using something else, when I discover I can't copy and paste because it's broken *cough*Linux*cough*, or that the Home and End keys are hopeless broken and useless *cough*Apple*cough*.
Because they believe that if they tempt users with little OSX morsels on windows it will prompt people to take a look at "the real thing"
As far as I'm concerned, it's a failure. The last thing I would want is an entire computer that runs as poorly as Apple's Windows software. Actually, I had one of those - it was called System 7. Anyway, the general crappiness of Quicktime, iTunes, and Safari for Windows certainly goes a long way towards reinforcing the idea amonst the typical Windows user that the Mac still sucks.
The 80386 was introduced in 1985, but the transition to 32 bits in software was really only done in 1995. Windows 3.1, released seven years after the 386, still ran on the 286. Word 6.0 for DOS, released in 1993, still could run on an original 8086.
Windows 3.1 had protected mode, which only ran on the 386DX and later processors. This allowed Windows 3.1 to do things like address more than 16MB of memory, and took advantage of other features of the 386. While it's true that Windows 3.1 also ran on the 286, it's much the same how how Vista also has a 32bit version to support older processors. You would be more correct to say that in 1995, Microsoft had finally phased out support for the older stuff with Windows 95.
If you think the "Firefox cult" is bad, you've obviously never seen the Opera one. Most of them still pretend their browser invented tabs.
It's actually funny how people consider Opera to be tabbed, when in fact it has a MDI interface which is a pretty old idea (take a look at Program Manager in Windows 3.0). While the basic functionality is the same as tabs, Opera allows tabs to be individually resized and moved around while inside the main window, which I find a whole lot more useful than the much simplier tab scheme that everyone else uses.
This post is being written on a machine with a 633 MHz processor. It's fairly ancient. It runs the full version of Firefox just fine. Mind you, it isn't running Windows, it's running DamnSmallLinux.
633Mhz is ancient? Kids these days. If the machine has PCI slots, USB ports, and can boot from CD, it's not ancient. Not even close.
VM's don't count, as the host OS will use the disk cache to cache the virtualized system's disk image, so when the virtualized OS hits the swap/pagefile, it's not always grinding the physical disk like a real machine will. As a matter of fact, most of the time when I make a VM I only give it a barebones amount of memory because it doesn't need it as much for this very reason.
However, your point still stands. Windows XP runs mostly fine in 256MB of ram so long as you don't push it hard. As a basic Office/email/internet station it's enough. What really kills Windows XP with 256MB of ram is a ton of crap running in the background, especially Symantic products.
On the other side, Firefox is open source so it's not the same as Microsoft cutting off Windows 98 from IE7. You can always create your own Windows 98 compatible fork, or wait and see if someone else does the same thing.
Even so, there is a decent chance that Firefox 3 may still run on Windows 98 anyway, just not supported.
My experience is that they will generally work, but you only get to use the first 127GB or so of the drive. Which is probably ok for the few people putting brand new drives in 9-11 year old computers. Otherwise, you can buy a $20 SATA/PATA PCI card and use the whole thing.
Even in a well lit room, I still prefer light on dark as opposed to the other way around.