They may also need or want the general benefits of a simple and stable general purpose OS. That's the category I fit into - and increasingly my family. Windows where I've no choice through a VM, Mac OS for everything else.
And 10 years later, technically still fine so long as you've stockpiled spares.
It's still (admittedly only for a few more months) on the critical path of a line of business / point of sale app my places depends on. It's only the lack of TR support under VMWare that finally forced me to start removing it.
That's how I saw it. I 'remediated' in 1997 but by 1999 our parent company sent in a 3rd party (Unisys) with 4 full time 'consultants' and endless ability to use other ad-hoc staff. The result of their 9 months of these backpackers...sorry, consultants surfing porn and checking the premier leage tables was.....no remediation required but a 7 figure bill.
However, I did get to replace all my 486 PCs and put in new Proliants on what was then the new NetWare 5. I know these servers are are still running that business unit to this day so in the long run at least the unnecessary upgrades paid off.
I was just insulted at the time that my work and findings 18 months prior weren't accepted as good enough.
What I see going on here, as others have touched on, is someone who doesn't realise that he's dealing with a small environment, even by my (Australian) standards where I'm frequently in awe of the kinds of scale that the US and Europe consider commonplace.
If the current system has been acceptable for 7 years, I'm guessing the users needs aren't something so mindbogglingly critical that risk must be removed at any cost. Equally, if that was the case, the business would be either bringing in an experienced team or writing a blank cheque to an external party, not giving it to the guy who changes passwords and has spent the last week putting together a jigsaw of every enterprise option out there, and getting an "n+1" tattoo inside his eyelids.
Finally, 7 years isn't exactly old. We've got a subsidiary company of just that size (150 users, 10 branches) running on Proliant 1600/2500/5500 gear (ie 90's) which we consider capable for the job, which includes Oracle 8, Citrix MF plus a dozen or so more apps and users on current hardware. We have the occasional hardware fault which a maintenance provider can address same day, bill us at ad-hoc rates yet we still see only a couple of thousand dollars a year in maintenance leaving us content that this old junk is still appropriate no matter which we we look at it.
This isn't suggesting the ISP's make any decisions, just to apply a new set of rules and have a procedure for disconnection. I suffered for weeks some years back from what looked like DoS attacks and masses of Spam which was largely coming from a single Internet Cafe on George St Sydney. I first spoke to the owner, who basically told me to get stuffed with what I assume were Chinese profanities chucked in for good measure. I appealed to him a few more times to at least try and clean up his machines, he told me to get stuffed. I think the closest he came to acknowledging he had a responsibility was "How am I meant to know what people put on the machines?"
I got him cut off, problem went away, but this was only because he was using a major telco who I had some business with. Ordinarily I doubt I'd been able to have done anything and I'd have had to suffer and pay for all the wasted bandwidth / load on my relatively small connection. Many people must have been in just that situation so I'm glad there is even a suggestion that the offenders will now have their plug pulled.
I seriously can't believe that it took this far down the comments to see what I thought any sane person in the world already did.
The service tag is the answer. The fact that it's printed and your reimaging can pull from BIOS being the main benefits. In my experience they are unique even if you use multiple manufacturers - certainly Dell, HP/COmpaq and IBM are all different styles and in 15 years I've got no overlaps.
There are some fairly funny replies elsewhere, pity so many are unintentional...
Films at the cinema *are* jittery as hell but it's accepted and part of the feel. I'm always conscious of it but don't consider it to be unacceptable. Directors go to alot of effort to try and work around this. Watching a film is one thing but something you are actively controlling is painful when it's not as smooth as it should be.
). If a machine three years more modern and costing twice as much wasn't better then the designers would have some explaining to do.
Absolutely, no argument there, the BBC crammed a lot in, especially given it was in many ways a rush job too. My post was purely on the subject of the BBC having the 8 digital IOs and 2 Analogue which schools seemed to think was a unique features... apparently right into the 90's. IN 1981 I was given a Vic-20 and thereafter was extremely jealous of those that got BBC's...to the point that I even used to POKE the VICs screen and border black, text white, type an underscore and cursor back over it to make it blink;) in fact, I think I went as far as ruining the fantasy by typing "CHAIN "KILLER" (or whatever it was) and getting a syntax error;)
Now, I'm not sure if it's a direct equivalent, but the Zorro slot on the Amigas did allow for the addition of both regular CPUs and/or an FPU. On my A500 I had a card with an 8086 in the trapdoor to enable 'native' DOS compatibility. Anyway...as you say, different vintage.
The real power of the BBC was the I/O capability. We used to plug all sorts of things into the 'user port,' and 8-bit I/O interface. You wrote an 8-bit value to a specific address and it would set the line voltages up or down for 8 wires, and you could get 8 one-bit inputs by reading from another address.
My 'technology' teacher in school was in love with the BBC right through to the early 90's and used to rave about the IO. I was into my Amigas those days so for a school project I wrote an IO toolbox called "Amitrol" (using AMOS, remember that?) which gave you a fairly nice GUI to control and monitor the 8 digital IO ports and 2 * 8-bit analogue ports on the Amiga. As well as plotting real time graphs for the analogue ports, it included a primitive macro language which with conditional loops etc to enable 'intelligent' devices reacting to their surroundings. I built hardware for it to, but PCB design using a pencil, dining room table and photocopier to scale it down made a mess of that part...although the software did then get bundled by an English company who happened to have made a reasonable box but had no software.
Anyway, point really was (which i was determined to make to that teacher) that those 8 digital IO ports were just a regular parallel interface, and the 2 analogue were just additional pins on the mouse ports...the BBC didn't have anything special over the Amiga in these areas. Since then, I've decided I do like the BBC anyway so have a Modem B, Master 128 and a Compact in my collection:)
If anyone happens to have a copy of Amitrol, I'd love to see it but have long lost both the source and builds....and the school refused to give me back my hard copy;)
In 2000 I had a tiny $800 Sony which I chucked in a drawer because the god-awfull software drove me to despair and with only 64MB storage I had to use the software everytime I wanted to switch album. Oh, you mean something like the Hard Disk based Compaq PJB-100? That unit deserves some respect, but it was never going to be mass market. It was far too big and with USB 1, it took an age to copy data.
The iPod was a consumer friendly item. Intuitive controls and good software which was nice to use, fast Firewire until they switched to USB2 and the unit was relativly small. I say relativly because I look at an original 5G iPod now and can't believe I thought it was tiny! But it was small enough.
I'm not going to continue this thread, because you've clearly resigned yourself to the idea that Apple products are all gloss and clearly I'm not going to say anything to change your mind and, well, there isn't really any reason I should be doing that anyway!
Actually, in response to that I'd accept only that they have the best *taste* when prioritising that cool factor.
I'm frequently horrified by people buying garish crap, (think plastic 'chrome' bezels, pointless and abundant LEDs, LEATHER exteriors and now even GLITTER on these new Acers) and thinking it looks awesome. This isn't the mod crowd going for the the most outrageous extream look...this is normal end users. It really is tacky shit but it sells millions.
Design aesthetics come into anything an end user is going for (in fact, even enterprise equipment sometimes gets some thought...I've some pretty cool looking little Brocade switches) but in all but a few cases, it's a secondary consideration. That's where it fits in for the bulk of Apple users.
Bu don't you see my point - those aren't "Apple people" they are just "stupid people". I would be willing to bet that the proportion of the people going for "flash and bang and whizz" (as you put it) who use Apples goods is directly proportional to Apples market share. Our company is 99.99% Windows only, yet all staff outside of IT want everything cool opened up.
So I'm trying to tell YOU that you're mistaking Apple users as people who ONLY value cool....we don't, we value function. I doubt ANYONE parts with cash on an inferior product just because it looks better. And I know that doesn't apply to people buying Macs because, well, they aren't inferior.
Reminds you of 'Apple people'? What is that supposed to mean? Every second day I'm having to get our execs (who, like 90%+ of execs, are committed Windows people) to see the problems with just jumping onto the next cool technology...and in email form, I do it from my Mac. For better or for worse, I consider myself an 'Apple person'.
Sorry, your post is valid but how you managed to drop in a connection to 'Apple' is beyond me. The only type of person fairly represented by that aspect of your comment is those who can't see that "good utility + high dependability + wrapped in a good form factor" is a valid alternative to "good utility + reasonable reliability + bloody ugly"!
Re:Where are the 72 Hz TVs?
on
Blue Blu-ray
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· Score: 1
Some do, but it's been uncommon in LCD/Plasmas so far. Why don't they all support it? Same reason any TV is missing a feature...because it wasn't included;)
Re:Where are the 72 Hz TVs?
on
Blue Blu-ray
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· Score: 1
You're talking refresh rates, not discrete frames per second. Naturally any TV which supports 24 fps actually runs it at a higher multiple - if it didn't it would be flickery. Cinemas are the same, showing the same frame multiple times at a fast rate so that the blank spots in between each frame are shorter.
Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H
on
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· Score: 1
I have a PS3 and started buying BR discs until I investigated that while nicely detailed, they were juddery as hell to the point I couldn't keep my mind on the movie (and these were *not* the type of movie the thread's about!).
Seems my TV doesn't do 24fps which is needed more than ever on the HD formats as they aren't tweaked the way DVD is to approximate the 25/30fps we normally see at home.
That means I remain a DVD buyer despite having a decent (12 month old) TV and HD player.
People can build their own computers but they often have an application in mind that they want to use. I have YET to see a dumb terminal with a web + mail gui (except the mac mini) that meets people's "needs".
That comment makes no sense whatsoever. I suspect you don't know what a 'dumb terminal' is and that's the reason why you've yet to see one which meets peoples needs.
You'll generally find that through history, anyone who paid for a 'dumb terminal' (be it a plain start/stop terminal, or a slightly less dumb 3270, or an X-Term, or a Winterm) decided it met their needs before paying for it. I can tell you that my organisation meets it's business needs on thousands of what I suspect you mean by 'dumb terminals' without resorting to just using them to get to a remote Windows session.
As for calling the Mac Mini a dumb terminal...it's as full a computer as you get...local HD, Local OS, Full featured productivity apps, user access to install more.
While I don't expect everyone to know the details of their MS licencing, at 50k seat you won't be on a volume license - you'll be on enterprise. Volume is for fairly small business...think 40 or 50 seats...anything that's only just too big for retail boxes.
The terms of that that basically give you pretty much everything you *might* need on an average desktop (and you get to negotiate what's included and the terms), plus stuff you don't, for a discounted flat price per seat so long as you agree to keep paying. The fact that you have a wasted OEM is insignificant.
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They may also need or want the general benefits of a simple and stable general purpose OS. That's the category I fit into - and increasingly my family. Windows where I've no choice through a VM, Mac OS for everything else.
And 10 years later, technically still fine so long as you've stockpiled spares. It's still (admittedly only for a few more months) on the critical path of a line of business / point of sale app my places depends on. It's only the lack of TR support under VMWare that finally forced me to start removing it.
I was going with "Give 'er Joey" but that may not be a global term...
That's how I saw it. I 'remediated' in 1997 but by 1999 our parent company sent in a 3rd party (Unisys) with 4 full time 'consultants' and endless ability to use other ad-hoc staff. The result of their 9 months of these backpackers...sorry, consultants surfing porn and checking the premier leage tables was.....no remediation required but a 7 figure bill. However, I did get to replace all my 486 PCs and put in new Proliants on what was then the new NetWare 5. I know these servers are are still running that business unit to this day so in the long run at least the unnecessary upgrades paid off. I was just insulted at the time that my work and findings 18 months prior weren't accepted as good enough.
If the current system has been acceptable for 7 years, I'm guessing the users needs aren't something so mindbogglingly critical that risk must be removed at any cost. Equally, if that was the case, the business would be either bringing in an experienced team or writing a blank cheque to an external party, not giving it to the guy who changes passwords and has spent the last week putting together a jigsaw of every enterprise option out there, and getting an "n+1" tattoo inside his eyelids.
Finally, 7 years isn't exactly old. We've got a subsidiary company of just that size (150 users, 10 branches) running on Proliant 1600/2500/5500 gear (ie 90's) which we consider capable for the job, which includes Oracle 8, Citrix MF plus a dozen or so more apps and users on current hardware. We have the occasional hardware fault which a maintenance provider can address same day, bill us at ad-hoc rates yet we still see only a couple of thousand dollars a year in maintenance leaving us content that this old junk is still appropriate no matter which we we look at it.
This isn't suggesting the ISP's make any decisions, just to apply a new set of rules and have a procedure for disconnection. I suffered for weeks some years back from what looked like DoS attacks and masses of Spam which was largely coming from a single Internet Cafe on George St Sydney. I first spoke to the owner, who basically told me to get stuffed with what I assume were Chinese profanities chucked in for good measure. I appealed to him a few more times to at least try and clean up his machines, he told me to get stuffed. I think the closest he came to acknowledging he had a responsibility was "How am I meant to know what people put on the machines?" I got him cut off, problem went away, but this was only because he was using a major telco who I had some business with. Ordinarily I doubt I'd been able to have done anything and I'd have had to suffer and pay for all the wasted bandwidth / load on my relatively small connection. Many people must have been in just that situation so I'm glad there is even a suggestion that the offenders will now have their plug pulled.
I seriously can't believe that it took this far down the comments to see what I thought any sane person in the world already did. The service tag is the answer. The fact that it's printed and your reimaging can pull from BIOS being the main benefits. In my experience they are unique even if you use multiple manufacturers - certainly Dell, HP/COmpaq and IBM are all different styles and in 15 years I've got no overlaps. There are some fairly funny replies elsewhere, pity so many are unintentional...
Films at the cinema *are* jittery as hell but it's accepted and part of the feel. I'm always conscious of it but don't consider it to be unacceptable. Directors go to alot of effort to try and work around this. Watching a film is one thing but something you are actively controlling is painful when it's not as smooth as it should be.
RAID isn't a backup / data protection measure so it's irrelevant. It contributes too high availably, nothing more.
Absolutely, no argument there, the BBC crammed a lot in, especially given it was in many ways a rush job too. My post was purely on the subject of the BBC having the 8 digital IOs and 2 Analogue which schools seemed to think was a unique features... apparently right into the 90's. IN 1981 I was given a Vic-20 and thereafter was extremely jealous of those that got BBC's...to the point that I even used to POKE the VICs screen and border black, text white, type an underscore and cursor back over it to make it blink ;) in fact, I think I went as far as ruining the fantasy by typing "CHAIN "KILLER" (or whatever it was) and getting a syntax error ;)
Now, I'm not sure if it's a direct equivalent, but the Zorro slot on the Amigas did allow for the addition of both regular CPUs and/or an FPU. On my A500 I had a card with an 8086 in the trapdoor to enable 'native' DOS compatibility. Anyway...as you say, different vintage.
My 'technology' teacher in school was in love with the BBC right through to the early 90's and used to rave about the IO. I was into my Amigas those days so for a school project I wrote an IO toolbox called "Amitrol" (using AMOS, remember that?) which gave you a fairly nice GUI to control and monitor the 8 digital IO ports and 2 * 8-bit analogue ports on the Amiga. As well as plotting real time graphs for the analogue ports, it included a primitive macro language which with conditional loops etc to enable 'intelligent' devices reacting to their surroundings. I built hardware for it to, but PCB design using a pencil, dining room table and photocopier to scale it down made a mess of that part...although the software did then get bundled by an English company who happened to have made a reasonable box but had no software.
Anyway, point really was (which i was determined to make to that teacher) that those 8 digital IO ports were just a regular parallel interface, and the 2 analogue were just additional pins on the mouse ports...the BBC didn't have anything special over the Amiga in these areas. Since then, I've decided I do like the BBC anyway so have a Modem B, Master 128 and a Compact in my collection :)
If anyone happens to have a copy of Amitrol, I'd love to see it but have long lost both the source and builds....and the school refused to give me back my hard copy ;)
Australia gets screwed over again. Even New Zealand got ONE localised MySpace site and Austria got TWO!!!
In 2000 I had a tiny $800 Sony which I chucked in a drawer because the god-awfull software drove me to despair and with only 64MB storage I had to use the software everytime I wanted to switch album. Oh, you mean something like the Hard Disk based Compaq PJB-100? That unit deserves some respect, but it was never going to be mass market. It was far too big and with USB 1, it took an age to copy data.
The iPod was a consumer friendly item. Intuitive controls and good software which was nice to use, fast Firewire until they switched to USB2 and the unit was relativly small. I say relativly because I look at an original 5G iPod now and can't believe I thought it was tiny! But it was small enough.
I'm not going to continue this thread, because you've clearly resigned yourself to the idea that Apple products are all gloss and clearly I'm not going to say anything to change your mind and, well, there isn't really any reason I should be doing that anyway!
I'm frequently horrified by people buying garish crap, (think plastic 'chrome' bezels, pointless and abundant LEDs, LEATHER exteriors and now even GLITTER on these new Acers) and thinking it looks awesome. This isn't the mod crowd going for the the most outrageous extream look...this is normal end users. It really is tacky shit but it sells millions.
Design aesthetics come into anything an end user is going for (in fact, even enterprise equipment sometimes gets some thought...I've some pretty cool looking little Brocade switches) but in all but a few cases, it's a secondary consideration. That's where it fits in for the bulk of Apple users.
So I'm trying to tell YOU that you're mistaking Apple users as people who ONLY value cool....we don't, we value function. I doubt ANYONE parts with cash on an inferior product just because it looks better. And I know that doesn't apply to people buying Macs because, well, they aren't inferior.
Sorry, your post is valid but how you managed to drop in a connection to 'Apple' is beyond me. The only type of person fairly represented by that aspect of your comment is those who can't see that "good utility + high dependability + wrapped in a good form factor" is a valid alternative to "good utility + reasonable reliability + bloody ugly"!
Some do, but it's been uncommon in LCD/Plasmas so far. Why don't they all support it? Same reason any TV is missing a feature...because it wasn't included ;)
You're talking refresh rates, not discrete frames per second. Naturally any TV which supports 24 fps actually runs it at a higher multiple - if it didn't it would be flickery. Cinemas are the same, showing the same frame multiple times at a fast rate so that the blank spots in between each frame are shorter.
Seems my TV doesn't do 24fps which is needed more than ever on the HD formats as they aren't tweaked the way DVD is to approximate the 25/30fps we normally see at home.
That means I remain a DVD buyer despite having a decent (12 month old) TV and HD player.
Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't rely on a Bible for facts either!
Honestly...please, I want to know!
(echo?)
That comment makes no sense whatsoever. I suspect you don't know what a 'dumb terminal' is and that's the reason why you've yet to see one which meets peoples needs.
You'll generally find that through history, anyone who paid for a 'dumb terminal' (be it a plain start/stop terminal, or a slightly less dumb 3270, or an X-Term, or a Winterm) decided it met their needs before paying for it. I can tell you that my organisation meets it's business needs on thousands of what I suspect you mean by 'dumb terminals' without resorting to just using them to get to a remote Windows session.
As for calling the Mac Mini a dumb terminal...it's as full a computer as you get...local HD, Local OS, Full featured productivity apps, user access to install more.
While I don't expect everyone to know the details of their MS licencing, at 50k seat you won't be on a volume license - you'll be on enterprise. Volume is for fairly small business...think 40 or 50 seats...anything that's only just too big for retail boxes.
The terms of that that basically give you pretty much everything you *might* need on an average desktop (and you get to negotiate what's included and the terms), plus stuff you don't, for a discounted flat price per seat so long as you agree to keep paying. The fact that you have a wasted OEM is insignificant.