Older laptops still have value since they are portable, and there isn't as many of them around (since many of them end up broken before they have a chance to get old). You would have no problems giving away your 600Mhz laptop. You can even give away (or sell on eBay) a working 300Mhz laptop without much problem.
Now, older PCs on the other hand, are nearly impossible to give away. It seems that everyone who wants a PC already has newish (1Ghz+) machine (plus an older one already sitting in a closet) so they aren't interested in that 800Mhz machine. The fact you generally have to pay to get rid of a PC also keeps people from taking them, because they don't want to be stuck with a $25-$75 disposal fee. Schools and charities generally aren't interested either. Usually because they don't want to deal with a bunch of different machines, licensing issues if they want them to run Windows/Office, and since most of them have been burned in the past from people unloading slow/obsolete/broken/useless hardware on them that they then have to pay to dispose of.
You also have to take into account that many people also consider anything under 1Ghz "slow", though these same people are amazed at how fast a midrange PIII system runs* when it isn't bogged down with crap.
*Which is usually considerably faster than their P4 systems that are bogged down with crap.
Just like PCs, which can be loud or quiet, Macs can be loud or quiet. Obviously you've never had a G4 "Windtunnel" PowerMac, or even the G5 PowerMac - which while quieter than the G4, is still far from silent. Plenty of people have also been complaining about the whine their MacBook Pro makes, though I haven't had a chance to hear how bad it is myself.
If you want a queit PC, I hate to say it - but many of the OEM machines are damn near silent now. I have worked with Dells, Gateways, HPs, and IBMs that I need to check to the power light to see if they are on.
and it's pretty annoying to see the Apple is Expensive meme continue long after they are not.
It will continue so long as Apple's cheapest computer is twice as much as the cheapest *complete* PC system, and so long as Apple's cheapest laptop is twice as much as the cheapest Dell laptop.
Very few started recording their vinyls into cassettes and then the cassettes into CD's. Consumers prefer to "refresh" their collection by adopting the format of the new recording devices with the promise of better quality and sound.
Actually, almost everyone I knew who had vinyl recorded it onto cassette. The reason was obvious - the cassettes were smaller and portable, and could be used in cars and Walkmans. They were also more convienent in the home, though many still used their records on their home stereo. The same thing continued into the CD era, until car CD players and Discmans were cheap and common enough that cassettes were no longer needed.
The same thing applies to CDs to MP3s. Most everyone I know with CDs has ripped atleast some of them to the more convienent format. Many people did this long before they had a MP3 player, as using a PC for a large jukebox was a lot simplier and easier than dealing the physical media.
The $150 difference comes from taking the 2.0Ghz white Macbook (which is $200 cheaper) and upgrading the harddrive (which costs $50 from Apple). All the extra $150 gets you is the different color/finish.
And hey! Don't forget those extra 20GB of hard drive space! Isn't that alone worth the extra $150, especially given the price of hard drive upgrades, and all three of those tedious confusing steps to install...yeah, ok, maybe not.
No one is forgetting the extra 20GB of drive space here. The price difference between a stock white 2.0Ghz Macbook and the black Macbook is $200. The only difference besides the case is the harddrive. The harddrive in the white Macbook can be upgraded to the same one in the black Macbook for $50 at Apple's store. The black case truly is a $150 upgrade.
Laptop hard drives last 2-3 years. That's just the way they're built. No vendor makes 'em significantly better than that.
What? I've seen plenty of laptops older than that with perfectly functioning harddrives. Many of which have seen heavy use. Unless you have a habit of dropping laptops while running, the harddrives in them should last for years.
Though in the new MacBook/MacBook Pros, I wouldn't be too surprised if the harddrives give out after a couple of years from being cooked to death.
Also, don't forget chipsets. I have found Intel chipsets to be pretty solid and stable (even if they weren't always fast), while I haven't had much luck with AMD chipsets at all.
Though I would argue though that the AMD did have the crown for a short while back in the 1.4-1.8Ghz days when Intel was busy messing around with Rambus on the early P4's, and AMD was kicking the crap out them with the early Athlon XP's.
The main reason I would be interested in a 64bit PC today would be so that the PC is a bit more future proof. Sure, the 64bit might not get you much in 2006, but it could be a big deal in 2009. And I generally try to make an attempt to buy a computer that I'll want to keep around for a while.
The key is to just bump the software versions up by one. For example:
Windows 95 would barely run a 386 with 4MB of ram (which could handle Windows 3.1 without problems), but ran fine on a 486DX2-66 with 8MB of ram (the requirements for Windows 98) Windows 98 ran pretty shitty on a 486, but would be fine a P150 with 32MB of ram (Windows ME requirements) Windows NT would run pretty shitty on 16MB of ram, but would be fine on a P133 with 64MB of ram. Windows 2000 runs pretty crappy on a P133 with 64MB of ram, but would run alright on a PII-233 with 64MB (just don't push it).
In other news, Microsoft just released the minimum specs for Windows XP today:)
What's funny is these are based on actual search statistics. I always knew a lot of people were up to no good, but it seems that the majority of people who type in office 2003 want to hack it.
Which makes it downright scary that the top suggestion for "goat" is goatse.
Anyway, when Bush actually breaks the law, then you can start up impeachment proceedings. Until then, it's just ranting.
How about the illegal wiretaps? The falsified intelligence leading up the Iraqi war? The intelligence leaks from the Whitehouse? The reason Bush isn't hanging right now sure isn't due to a lack of rope.
When your entire platform is based on "we're not them!", you'll fail either way. Howard Dean might have made better whooping sounds when he lost the election, but the Demos were damned because of their failure to create a compelling reason to vote for them other than "we're not them!"
It's pretty funny, because a lot of the fence-sitters I knew that ended up voting for Bush in the 2004 election did it mainly because "He wasn't John Kerry".
That has been true since the P54 Pentium hit the streets back around 1995. What's really happening is that some IT people and even members of the general public are finally beginning to realize down deep inside that there is very little difference for many applications between a P-100 running Windows 95 and the latest multi-GHz wonder-- I can't even tell you what it is -- running Windows XP, OSX, or the Open Source flavor of the month.
I think the big deal is that there is now little difference between a current machine and a three year old machine running the exact same applications and operating system. Even a 6 year old system with a memory upgrade can run today's applications and OS's with acceptable performance.
I also don't have the time to f*ck with a corrupted registry nor to format/reinstall the OS along with all the software/drivers every 6 months just because I decide to use the comuter.
I agree, I wouldn't want a laptop that runs Windows 98 either. But while we are on the subject of 8 year old computers, a Windows 98 laptop would still be a lot more useful than a crappy 8 year old Mac running classic.
It looks like PCI video is going to last longer than AGP at this rate. Right now, I have a ATI 9600Pro AGP and an old ATI 7000 PCI to run my monitors. It's kind of amusing to think in the next major upgrade, I'll probably still be using the ATI 7000 to run the 3rd monitor while the 9600Pro will end up in the useless-but-still-works parts pile.
That's not useless card, it's a great card for a Linux server that you plan on running headless. Though I guess my STB Lightspeed 128 would work equally as well.
I have found the 9600Pro to be a pretty decent chipset myself. I have one (128MB), and played Halflife 2 at 1600x1200 resolution on a Athlon XP 2000+ without problems. Someone I know wanted a cheap(ish) card to play WoW on a Athlon XP 1700+ so I recommended a 9600Pro 256MB since it seemed to be the best bang for the buck at about $70 and the game runs just fine at 1280x1024. But as with all things, YMMV.
A lot depends on your monitor's ability to scale the output from the video card. Some monitors have algorithms that are good at this, and some do very poorly. One monitor I have (20.1" Sony) seems to do very well at non-native resolutions, while another (19" Gateway) looks like crap. I have also used a 19" Viewsonic which seemed to do a decent job, and a 17" NEC which was kind of in the middle. I have also found that overall, most laptops look terrible at non-native resolutions. Some monitors (like the Sony) have multiple scaling algorithms and let the user choose which one works best for them, though I haven't messed around too much with it since the default seems to work good enough.
If this guy had googled "install.dmg OSX" or something simple like that, he wouldn't be posting about how confusing and counter-intuitive the OSX install process is--he'd have slapped his forehead with a "d'oh," and forgotten about the whole thing.
Why would that be? If you have to run to Google in order to figure out how to perform some operation, that alone would make a pretty good case for the process to be somewhat counter-intuitive to new users (in this case, the OSX install process). Add to that the fact that Firefox seemed to still run the way he did things, and I can see where the confusion comes from. If it runs, then it must be installed, right?
Everybody makes mistakes, especially with unfamiliar setups (and OS's). They don't all deserve to be teased. The ones who preface their question with a speech about their computer literacy/experience and postscript it with a rant about how it's the OS designer's fault DO deserve to be teased.
I would agree with that somewhat. As a more advanced user, he did notice something strange about how Firefox was running. His biggest mistake was going to Google or some other resource to try to get more information before whining about it here on slashdot. But I can easily see a less advanced user simply accepting that behavior as "The way it is", or not even noticing anything was amiss in the first place.
Apple doesn't make the user drag and drop. It allows it. It is the software developer that defines how the install process works.
Maybe someone should back the stupid train up to your house so you can climb on board.
Yes, that's right. The Mac OSX is absolutely perfect, and anyone who has any criticism of it is stupid. Unless, of course there is a third party involved, and then they can share some blame too. Ever wonder why people hate Macs? Hint: It's the users.
To bring this back on topic, this kind of asshatery is not limited to Apple fanboys, I have seen examples of this from Linux advocates. Insulting new or potential users is not going to get you converts, they'll just go back to Windows where the general attitude more along the lines of "Yeah, I know it's stupid, but that's way Windows does it so pay attention and I'll step you through how to do it."
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Older laptops still have value since they are portable, and there isn't as many of them around (since many of them end up broken before they have a chance to get old). You would have no problems giving away your 600Mhz laptop. You can even give away (or sell on eBay) a working 300Mhz laptop without much problem.
Now, older PCs on the other hand, are nearly impossible to give away. It seems that everyone who wants a PC already has newish (1Ghz+) machine (plus an older one already sitting in a closet) so they aren't interested in that 800Mhz machine. The fact you generally have to pay to get rid of a PC also keeps people from taking them, because they don't want to be stuck with a $25-$75 disposal fee. Schools and charities generally aren't interested either. Usually because they don't want to deal with a bunch of different machines, licensing issues if they want them to run Windows/Office, and since most of them have been burned in the past from people unloading slow/obsolete/broken/useless hardware on them that they then have to pay to dispose of.
You also have to take into account that many people also consider anything under 1Ghz "slow", though these same people are amazed at how fast a midrange PIII system runs* when it isn't bogged down with crap.
*Which is usually considerably faster than their P4 systems that are bogged down with crap.
Just like PCs, which can be loud or quiet, Macs can be loud or quiet. Obviously you've never had a G4 "Windtunnel" PowerMac, or even the G5 PowerMac - which while quieter than the G4, is still far from silent. Plenty of people have also been complaining about the whine their MacBook Pro makes, though I haven't had a chance to hear how bad it is myself.
If you want a queit PC, I hate to say it - but many of the OEM machines are damn near silent now. I have worked with Dells, Gateways, HPs, and IBMs that I need to check to the power light to see if they are on.
and it's pretty annoying to see the Apple is Expensive meme continue long after they are not.
It will continue so long as Apple's cheapest computer is twice as much as the cheapest *complete* PC system, and so long as Apple's cheapest laptop is twice as much as the cheapest Dell laptop.
Very few started recording their vinyls into cassettes and then the cassettes into CD's. Consumers prefer to "refresh" their collection by adopting the format of the new recording devices with the promise of better quality and sound.
Actually, almost everyone I knew who had vinyl recorded it onto cassette. The reason was obvious - the cassettes were smaller and portable, and could be used in cars and Walkmans. They were also more convienent in the home, though many still used their records on their home stereo. The same thing continued into the CD era, until car CD players and Discmans were cheap and common enough that cassettes were no longer needed.
The same thing applies to CDs to MP3s. Most everyone I know with CDs has ripped atleast some of them to the more convienent format. Many people did this long before they had a MP3 player, as using a PC for a large jukebox was a lot simplier and easier than dealing the physical media.
Why? The computer is just a tool, and has little to do on how good or bad a graphics designer is.
Please list something you can do on the MacBook Pro that you can't on the ordinary MacBook, other than play Quake 4.
Typing for any extended period of time?
Using it in a brightly lit room?
The $150 difference comes from taking the 2.0Ghz white Macbook (which is $200 cheaper) and upgrading the harddrive (which costs $50 from Apple). All the extra $150 gets you is the different color/finish.
And hey! Don't forget those extra 20GB of hard drive space! Isn't that alone worth the extra $150, especially given the price of hard drive upgrades, and all three of those tedious confusing steps to install...yeah, ok, maybe not.
No one is forgetting the extra 20GB of drive space here. The price difference between a stock white 2.0Ghz Macbook and the black Macbook is $200. The only difference besides the case is the harddrive. The harddrive in the white Macbook can be upgraded to the same one in the black Macbook for $50 at Apple's store. The black case truly is a $150 upgrade.
Laptop hard drives last 2-3 years. That's just the way they're built. No vendor makes 'em significantly better than that.
What? I've seen plenty of laptops older than that with perfectly functioning harddrives. Many of which have seen heavy use. Unless you have a habit of dropping laptops while running, the harddrives in them should last for years.
Though in the new MacBook/MacBook Pros, I wouldn't be too surprised if the harddrives give out after a couple of years from being cooked to death.
Also, don't forget chipsets. I have found Intel chipsets to be pretty solid and stable (even if they weren't always fast), while I haven't had much luck with AMD chipsets at all.
Though I would argue though that the AMD did have the crown for a short while back in the 1.4-1.8Ghz days when Intel was busy messing around with Rambus on the early P4's, and AMD was kicking the crap out them with the early Athlon XP's.
The main reason I would be interested in a 64bit PC today would be so that the PC is a bit more future proof. Sure, the 64bit might not get you much in 2006, but it could be a big deal in 2009. And I generally try to make an attempt to buy a computer that I'll want to keep around for a while.
The key is to just bump the software versions up by one. For example:
:)
Windows 95 would barely run a 386 with 4MB of ram (which could handle Windows 3.1 without problems), but ran fine on a 486DX2-66 with 8MB of ram (the requirements for Windows 98)
Windows 98 ran pretty shitty on a 486, but would be fine a P150 with 32MB of ram (Windows ME requirements)
Windows NT would run pretty shitty on 16MB of ram, but would be fine on a P133 with 64MB of ram.
Windows 2000 runs pretty crappy on a P133 with 64MB of ram, but would run alright on a PII-233 with 64MB (just don't push it).
In other news, Microsoft just released the minimum specs for Windows XP today
A quick search turns up the FAQ here. Perhaps they moved it and didn't update the link?
Yeap.
What's funny is these are based on actual search statistics. I always knew a lot of people were up to no good, but it seems that the majority of people who type in office 2003 want to hack it.
Which makes it downright scary that the top suggestion for "goat" is goatse.
Anyway, when Bush actually breaks the law, then you can start up impeachment proceedings. Until then, it's just ranting.
How about the illegal wiretaps? The falsified intelligence leading up the Iraqi war? The intelligence leaks from the Whitehouse? The reason Bush isn't hanging right now sure isn't due to a lack of rope.
When your entire platform is based on "we're not them!", you'll fail either way. Howard Dean might have made better whooping sounds when he lost the election, but the Demos were damned because of their failure to create a compelling reason to vote for them other than "we're not them!"
It's pretty funny, because a lot of the fence-sitters I knew that ended up voting for Bush in the 2004 election did it mainly because "He wasn't John Kerry".
That has been true since the P54 Pentium hit the streets back around 1995. What's really happening is that some IT people and even members of the general public are finally beginning to realize down deep inside that there is very little difference for many applications between a P-100 running Windows 95 and the latest multi-GHz wonder-- I can't even tell you what it is -- running Windows XP, OSX, or the Open Source flavor of the month.
I think the big deal is that there is now little difference between a current machine and a three year old machine running the exact same applications and operating system. Even a 6 year old system with a memory upgrade can run today's applications and OS's with acceptable performance.
That's Wright!
I also don't have the time to f*ck with a corrupted registry nor to format/reinstall the OS along with all the software/drivers every 6 months just because I decide to use the comuter.
I agree, I wouldn't want a laptop that runs Windows 98 either. But while we are on the subject of 8 year old computers, a Windows 98 laptop would still be a lot more useful than a crappy 8 year old Mac running classic.
It looks like PCI video is going to last longer than AGP at this rate. Right now, I have a ATI 9600Pro AGP and an old ATI 7000 PCI to run my monitors. It's kind of amusing to think in the next major upgrade, I'll probably still be using the ATI 7000 to run the 3rd monitor while the 9600Pro will end up in the useless-but-still-works parts pile.
That's not useless card, it's a great card for a Linux server that you plan on running headless. Though I guess my STB Lightspeed 128 would work equally as well.
I have found the 9600Pro to be a pretty decent chipset myself. I have one (128MB), and played Halflife 2 at 1600x1200 resolution on a Athlon XP 2000+ without problems. Someone I know wanted a cheap(ish) card to play WoW on a Athlon XP 1700+ so I recommended a 9600Pro 256MB since it seemed to be the best bang for the buck at about $70 and the game runs just fine at 1280x1024. But as with all things, YMMV.
A lot depends on your monitor's ability to scale the output from the video card. Some monitors have algorithms that are good at this, and some do very poorly. One monitor I have (20.1" Sony) seems to do very well at non-native resolutions, while another (19" Gateway) looks like crap. I have also used a 19" Viewsonic which seemed to do a decent job, and a 17" NEC which was kind of in the middle. I have also found that overall, most laptops look terrible at non-native resolutions. Some monitors (like the Sony) have multiple scaling algorithms and let the user choose which one works best for them, though I haven't messed around too much with it since the default seems to work good enough.
If this guy had googled "install .dmg OSX" or something simple like that, he wouldn't be posting about how confusing and counter-intuitive the OSX install process is--he'd have slapped his forehead with a "d'oh," and forgotten about the whole thing.
Why would that be? If you have to run to Google in order to figure out how to perform some operation, that alone would make a pretty good case for the process to be somewhat counter-intuitive to new users (in this case, the OSX install process). Add to that the fact that Firefox seemed to still run the way he did things, and I can see where the confusion comes from. If it runs, then it must be installed, right?
Everybody makes mistakes, especially with unfamiliar setups (and OS's). They don't all deserve to be teased. The ones who preface their question with a speech about their computer literacy/experience and postscript it with a rant about how it's the OS designer's fault DO deserve to be teased.
I would agree with that somewhat. As a more advanced user, he did notice something strange about how Firefox was running. His biggest mistake was going to Google or some other resource to try to get more information before whining about it here on slashdot. But I can easily see a less advanced user simply accepting that behavior as "The way it is", or not even noticing anything was amiss in the first place.
Apple doesn't make the user drag and drop. It allows it. It is the software developer that defines how the install process works.
Maybe someone should back the stupid train up to your house so you can climb on board.
Yes, that's right. The Mac OSX is absolutely perfect, and anyone who has any criticism of it is stupid. Unless, of course there is a third party involved, and then they can share some blame too. Ever wonder why people hate Macs? Hint: It's the users.
To bring this back on topic, this kind of asshatery is not limited to Apple fanboys, I have seen examples of this from Linux advocates. Insulting new or potential users is not going to get you converts, they'll just go back to Windows where the general attitude more along the lines of "Yeah, I know it's stupid, but that's way Windows does it so pay attention and I'll step you through how to do it."