On the other hand, the Apple II was expensive, and in comparison the C64 was cheap. I knew lots of people who had C64's and gamed on them quite a bit. Some of them even bought the computer primarly as a gaming machine. Sure, some of the people who had bought Apple II's also played games, but no one back then bought an Apple II just to play games - it was too expensive.
His point still stands. The Mighty Mouse is flawed because you can't press more than one of the "buttons" at once, which makes it just as useless as any other Apple branded mouse in most games.
Point Two: The small case. I can easily carry my computer in my backpack, along with keyboard, mouse, iPod, and Ministack. It's not even noticable. YOU try doing that with any non-apple desktop computer. Remember, it must fit an external drive and all power supplied required.
That's hardly unique to the Mac Mini. I can easily build a small form factor PC (or buy one already assembled), that can easily fit into my backpack. The reason I don't is because I'd rather trade the small size for cheaper, more powerful components and upgradability.
Besides, I do have a FlexATX computer here. Sure, it's certainly larger than the Mini, but I wouldn't have to haul around a power brick (integrated power supply), or an external drive (since it wouldn't be crippled with a small, slow notebook drive like the Mini). I could cram it, a small keyboard, mouse, iPod, and power cable into a normal backpack.
Given your requirements, I suggest you get an old PII computer (free), put a 60GB drive in it ($50), install Linux (free), get one of those FM transmitters and glue it to the case ($25), and spend the rest on stack of lead acid batteries in an attempt to get it to run 10 hours unplugged from the wall. You can probably get an old Radio Flyer at a garage sale to haul it around with. If you are resourceful enough, you might be able to pull it off for $200.
...so much for being a rebel against the iPod hegemony if you use a Mac or a Linux box. Apparently, you can only be a Rebel(tm) against the iSheep(tm) if you run Windows.
It's kind of like rebelling against the boy racer and the riceboy crowd by driving a Ford Taurus. I know, it's strange.
I've never seen a Windows 2000/XP box suddenly stop working right for no reason at all. The reasons why I have to reinstall are usually because I did something stupid (like installed a Norton product), or a major upgrade. I have had an occasional botched Windows update, and I have had a bad harddrive corrupt the Windows install. Things like installing an unstable driver I can usually recover from without a reinstall. Some of these computers have been running Windows 2000 since it came out.
On the other hand, if you are talking about Windows 95/98/ME, then I would agree with you. I have had countless Windows 95/98 boxes suddenly crap themselves for no apparent reason requiring a complete reinstall. Atleast those days are over.
The candidate with the most positive total or lease negative total wins.
The problem with that would be that some nobody that no one cares about would attract very few +1/-1 votes would end up winning the election with a score of near zero, as both of the major parties would be certain to get some huge negative score. I'm not saying that this would be a bad thing though.
When is the last time you had to use the CLI on a Modern Windows Box?
The last time I had to run ipconfig.exe.
Really, that's the number one reason I *have* to use the CLI in Windows. I've even had to walk novice computer users through running it when they had some problem with their networking.
What ever happened to winipcfg.exe found in Windows 95/98/ME?
The only problem is that is the lower and mid range Macs are crippled (by gaming standards) with weak, integrated and non upgradable video adapters. The Macs that don't have that problem cost considerably more and are easily outclassed by a dedicated gaming rig built from commodity hardware.
Oh, and the idea that people are going to install Linux on a Mac to play games is about one of the most absurd things I have ever heard.
I once tried to intentionally damage an old harddrive with one of those magnetic flashlights, and the harddrive and data managed to survive just fine. I did manage to render some floppy disks unreadable with it though. But as with all things, your mileage may vary.
One of the best functions of the insurance industry is that they work to reduce their loss rates so that they can offer lower rates to their customers.
You misspelled "increase profit margins". Seriously, when was the last time an auto insurance company ever passed savings back to their policy holders?
Actually, the stat is just fine. Note that they just state "number of votes", and leave it to the reader to assume (incorrectly) that one vote equals one person.
Sure, the MacOS pre-OS X was pretty unstable, but it was almost always more stable than whatever the current shipping version of Windows was.
I had the opposite experience. I could usually get a week out of Windows 95b/98SE (the two versions I used the most) before I was either forced to reboot it, or it bluescreened/froze up. Often I could get 2-3 weeks out of Windows back then before a restart.
On the other hand, it was a miracle if the Apple Performas would last a day. Usually their uptime was measured in hours.
And don't forget Windows 2000. At the time Windows 2000 was released, nothing Apple had even came close.
I knew lots of people who bought a Packard Bell computer. I knew no one that bought a second one. I remember mine, a 486SX2-50 (the only place I have seen this oddball chip), with no L2 cache, a motherboard with a built in 2400baud modem and 4MB of ram directly soldered onto it. I remember it was really hard to upgrade and work with - finding compatible SIMMs for it were tough due do to them having to work with built in memory. I did manage to overclock it to a 486SX2-66 with no real loss in reliability though.
It also amuses me that the crappy Packard Bell monitor that came with it was being rebranded as an Apple monitor at the time, only with a higher price tag and several of the adjustment knobs removed.
Windows ME really was a disaster at release. However, a couple of years later Microsoft had managed to patch it to the point that it was pretty stable (atleast by Windows 95/98 standards). Most of us geeks missed out on that though, as we were either using Windows 2000 by that time, or decided to stick with 98SE (that is, if we using Windows in the first place).
Though I would have to agree that Windows ME should of never been released in the state that it was.
Strangely enough, there are also more rich people in the country, and the number of millionares (not the fortunes of the existing ones, but the shear number of people with over a million dollars) is much higher than in anytime in history.
Which is simply more evidence of the dissappearing middle class, unless you want to attribute it all to inflation.
I just ran the search for the terms "screaming mexicans" and "kill an american" in Google, MSN, Yahoo, Altavista, and Alltheweb and none of those search engines yielded a single result. Which says to me that either you are making stuff up, there is some conspiracy involving all the major search engines, or you encountered some weird hiccup with Google.
No, that is called news commentary. Attend a basic journalism class for a semester and you'll understand how revolting your claim is.
And maybe you might want to enlighten us on what basic journalism classes teach that allows you to dismiss every blog so easily? Granted, there are quite a few blogs that are nothing but random people rambling on and on, but they aren't all like that.
I know this is a talking point, but it's absolutely false. In fact, the more educated and well-paid people are, the tendency is that they become more conservative.
The more educated someone becomes, the more conservative they become is only one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is that more conservative people tend to pursue higher levels of education (for whatever reasons).
I have found "whitebox" systems to be no more less reliable than OEM systems. You're kidding yourself if you think that the major OEMs do a whole lot of testing of their configurations. Heck, go and open up a bunch of Dells that are an identical model - chances are you'll find they have different video cards, different brands of harddrives - even different motherboards. I'm pretty sure that Dell just buys whatever is cheap that week, slaps it into a box, and out the door it goes.
With that said though, I have had a fair share of problems with AMD based systems - mostly due to shitty chipsets and crappy motherboards (especially on the Athlon XP line). Since many whiteboxes are AMD, and most OEMs are Intel, that undoubtably leads to the perception that whiteboxes are less reliable. But the Intel PIII/P4 whitebox computers I deal with have been extremely reliable and problem free machines.
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On the other hand, the Apple II was expensive, and in comparison the C64 was cheap. I knew lots of people who had C64's and gamed on them quite a bit. Some of them even bought the computer primarly as a gaming machine. Sure, some of the people who had bought Apple II's also played games, but no one back then bought an Apple II just to play games - it was too expensive.
His point still stands. The Mighty Mouse is flawed because you can't press more than one of the "buttons" at once, which makes it just as useless as any other Apple branded mouse in most games.
Yes, because when I think games, I think Microsoft Office!
Point Two: The small case. I can easily carry my computer in my backpack, along with keyboard, mouse, iPod, and Ministack. It's not even noticable. YOU try doing that with any non-apple desktop computer. Remember, it must fit an external drive and all power supplied required.
That's hardly unique to the Mac Mini. I can easily build a small form factor PC (or buy one already assembled), that can easily fit into my backpack. The reason I don't is because I'd rather trade the small size for cheaper, more powerful components and upgradability.
Besides, I do have a FlexATX computer here. Sure, it's certainly larger than the Mini, but I wouldn't have to haul around a power brick (integrated power supply), or an external drive (since it wouldn't be crippled with a small, slow notebook drive like the Mini). I could cram it, a small keyboard, mouse, iPod, and power cable into a normal backpack.
Given your requirements, I suggest you get an old PII computer (free), put a 60GB drive in it ($50), install Linux (free), get one of those FM transmitters and glue it to the case ($25), and spend the rest on stack of lead acid batteries in an attempt to get it to run 10 hours unplugged from the wall. You can probably get an old Radio Flyer at a garage sale to haul it around with. If you are resourceful enough, you might be able to pull it off for $200.
...so much for being a rebel against the iPod hegemony if you use a Mac or a Linux box. Apparently, you can only be a Rebel(tm) against the iSheep(tm) if you run Windows.
It's kind of like rebelling against the boy racer and the riceboy crowd by driving a Ford Taurus. I know, it's strange.
Worked real well last presidential election I heard
It worked well for one of the two sides, but not so well for the other.
I've never seen a Windows 2000/XP box suddenly stop working right for no reason at all. The reasons why I have to reinstall are usually because I did something stupid (like installed a Norton product), or a major upgrade. I have had an occasional botched Windows update, and I have had a bad harddrive corrupt the Windows install. Things like installing an unstable driver I can usually recover from without a reinstall. Some of these computers have been running Windows 2000 since it came out.
On the other hand, if you are talking about Windows 95/98/ME, then I would agree with you. I have had countless Windows 95/98 boxes suddenly crap themselves for no apparent reason requiring a complete reinstall. Atleast those days are over.
The candidate with the most positive total or lease negative total wins.
The problem with that would be that some nobody that no one cares about would attract very few +1/-1 votes would end up winning the election with a score of near zero, as both of the major parties would be certain to get some huge negative score. I'm not saying that this would be a bad thing though.
When is the last time you had to use the CLI on a Modern Windows Box?
The last time I had to run ipconfig.exe.
Really, that's the number one reason I *have* to use the CLI in Windows. I've even had to walk novice computer users through running it when they had some problem with their networking.
What ever happened to winipcfg.exe found in Windows 95/98/ME?
The only problem is that is the lower and mid range Macs are crippled (by gaming standards) with weak, integrated and non upgradable video adapters. The Macs that don't have that problem cost considerably more and are easily outclassed by a dedicated gaming rig built from commodity hardware.
Oh, and the idea that people are going to install Linux on a Mac to play games is about one of the most absurd things I have ever heard.
We don't have any evidence that the author is male, either.
Furthermore, we are assuming that their family has two breadwinners and not just one.
I once tried to intentionally damage an old harddrive with one of those magnetic flashlights, and the harddrive and data managed to survive just fine. I did manage to render some floppy disks unreadable with it though. But as with all things, your mileage may vary.
One of the best functions of the insurance industry is that they work to reduce their loss rates so that they can offer lower rates to their customers.
You misspelled "increase profit margins". Seriously, when was the last time an auto insurance company ever passed savings back to their policy holders?
Don't worry. I'll assume that emacs has a built in PDF viewer.
Actually, the stat is just fine. Note that they just state "number of votes", and leave it to the reader to assume (incorrectly) that one vote equals one person.
If Apple is proprietary, what does that make MSFT technology?
Proprietary. Who said it wasn't?
Sure, the MacOS pre-OS X was pretty unstable, but it was almost always more stable than whatever the current shipping version of Windows was.
I had the opposite experience. I could usually get a week out of Windows 95b/98SE (the two versions I used the most) before I was either forced to reboot it, or it bluescreened/froze up. Often I could get 2-3 weeks out of Windows back then before a restart.
On the other hand, it was a miracle if the Apple Performas would last a day. Usually their uptime was measured in hours.
And don't forget Windows 2000. At the time Windows 2000 was released, nothing Apple had even came close.
I knew lots of people who bought a Packard Bell computer. I knew no one that bought a second one. I remember mine, a 486SX2-50 (the only place I have seen this oddball chip), with no L2 cache, a motherboard with a built in 2400baud modem and 4MB of ram directly soldered onto it. I remember it was really hard to upgrade and work with - finding compatible SIMMs for it were tough due do to them having to work with built in memory. I did manage to overclock it to a 486SX2-66 with no real loss in reliability though.
It also amuses me that the crappy Packard Bell monitor that came with it was being rebranded as an Apple monitor at the time, only with a higher price tag and several of the adjustment knobs removed.
Windows ME really was a disaster at release. However, a couple of years later Microsoft had managed to patch it to the point that it was pretty stable (atleast by Windows 95/98 standards). Most of us geeks missed out on that though, as we were either using Windows 2000 by that time, or decided to stick with 98SE (that is, if we using Windows in the first place).
Though I would have to agree that Windows ME should of never been released in the state that it was.
Strangely enough, there are also more rich people in the country, and the number of millionares (not the fortunes of the existing ones, but the shear number of people with over a million dollars) is much higher than in anytime in history.
Which is simply more evidence of the dissappearing middle class, unless you want to attribute it all to inflation.
I just ran the search for the terms "screaming mexicans" and "kill an american" in Google, MSN, Yahoo, Altavista, and Alltheweb and none of those search engines yielded a single result. Which says to me that either you are making stuff up, there is some conspiracy involving all the major search engines, or you encountered some weird hiccup with Google.
No, that is called news commentary. Attend a basic journalism class for a semester and you'll understand how revolting your claim is.
And maybe you might want to enlighten us on what basic journalism classes teach that allows you to dismiss every blog so easily? Granted, there are quite a few blogs that are nothing but random people rambling on and on, but they aren't all like that.
I know this is a talking point, but it's absolutely false. In fact, the more educated and well-paid people are, the tendency is that they become more conservative.
The more educated someone becomes, the more conservative they become is only one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is that more conservative people tend to pursue higher levels of education (for whatever reasons).
I have found "whitebox" systems to be no more less reliable than OEM systems. You're kidding yourself if you think that the major OEMs do a whole lot of testing of their configurations. Heck, go and open up a bunch of Dells that are an identical model - chances are you'll find they have different video cards, different brands of harddrives - even different motherboards. I'm pretty sure that Dell just buys whatever is cheap that week, slaps it into a box, and out the door it goes.
With that said though, I have had a fair share of problems with AMD based systems - mostly due to shitty chipsets and crappy motherboards (especially on the Athlon XP line). Since many whiteboxes are AMD, and most OEMs are Intel, that undoubtably leads to the perception that whiteboxes are less reliable. But the Intel PIII/P4 whitebox computers I deal with have been extremely reliable and problem free machines.