why dont you just get an old iMac off ebay and put iTunes on it. Im pretty sure that would do everything you want it to-easy GUI and automation for the parents and a command line for you.:)
fry's/outpost.com has had some good rebates on big seagate drives lately. I got a 200gb for like $70.
I dont have any particular desire to run windows on any platform, but it would probably mean much better hardware would be available for mac users within a generation or two. Currently, the PPC makes up a small percentage of IBM's income, but x86 IS intel's income. It has surprised people that the outdated CISC architecture has remained competitive over the years, but if IBM were putting anywhere near the R&D dollars into the PPC that Intel sinks into their 20 year old POS, it would become an amazing processor. If PPC had a large marketshare, IBM would give it much more priority than they do currently.
Id venture it could well spell the end for Intel as well. No great loss.
Ive looked at a lot of laptop bags, but none really impress me. They are fine for carrying your puter to and from school or work, but are hardly fit for long term travel.
I am a big fan of modularity and I already have nice old school Mountainsmith gear: a tour pack, a Bugaboo daypack, and a full sized Frostfire 3 for long camping/hiking trips. They also have built in loops and buckles that allow them to clip together, if you need a bit more room, and are all constructed of cordura. (Mountainsmith has since moved operations to Korea and theyre current rip-stop based stuff is no better than Nike or North Face-so ebay is the way to go.)
Ive been using the bugaboo practically daily since I bought it about 8 years ago-its made it through high school, college, and seen over 15 countries-not a single thread has come unstitched. It has a comfortable internal fram and I can carry 25+ pounds a full day of wallking without becoming sore. There is no way Im going to shelve a pack of that quality and use a flimsy, overpriced Jansport just so I can have a special pocket for my powerbook.
So here's the plan. I got one of these Sumdex pouches <URL:http://www.sumdex.com/pon310.htm> which i currrently just stick in the pack with whatever else is going. But I called REI and got the names of some people that do custom mods and repairs for packs/goretex/camping gear/etc and am going to get something a bit more elegant made. stitch some webbing to the backside edge of the sumdex pouch with some snaptops inserted. the matching snap-bottoms are inserted in a piece of webbing stiched to the interior wall of the pack. This keeps the weight of the puter close to your center of gravity, so its easy to carry, and it keeps it well away from the extremities of the bag, so it wont get damaged when you drop your pack on the ground.
When youre camping and dont need the puter, just unsnap and you have the full space for clothes, sleeping bag-strap a snowboard to the outside--whatever.
While Im at it, Im going to put in an iPod pouch and a headphone nipple, and it will cost me less than the prrice of a new bag, not to mention save closet space and my back.
I have a powerbook 12 inch, and have never so loved a computer since the the Mac 512 my dad brough home nearly 20 years ago. There isnt a x86 based laptop on the market, at any pricepoint, that I would prefer except for the purpose of resale. I would be sad indeed were Apple to turn the design and manufacture of OS X based computers to anyone less exacting.
Having written assembly for both PPC and x86, I cannot imagine why anyone would prefer the latter architecture.
Im also a bit confused by sluggishness that is being reported. My laptop is nearly a year old, with a single 1GHz G4 and 768mb or ram, and is hardly sluggish. Perhaps once every 10 minutes a window shows some lag when opening, or the scaling animation jumps when minimizing something, but thats all-even with TexMaker, Photoshop, XEmacs, MatLab, iTunes, and a half dozen smalller xApps and iApps going. None of the PCs (or Suns) I use perform so well.
As for software availability, i really dont think its an issue, unless you are a gamer. I dont have much time for games, and prefer a console anyway. I recall the difficulty in finding decent shareware in the OS 8-9 days, but now I cant think of any software category that doesnt have atleast one elegant solution available. Most basic users' needs are met by apps that ship with the computer, the whole world of Unix apps are availible, and many commercial products are better implemented than their windows counterpart.
I suspect that most users, if they had the opportunity to run X as their primary OS for a few weeks-long enough to really see all Apple has put into the user experience, customize it, and make it their own, would find themselves quite reluctant to go back to using their current OS.
Of the 5183 songs on my iPod, about 300 CDs worth are mine. 40 songs are from the iTunes Music store. 3 came from kazaa...radio mixes I cant find elsewhere. the rest came from CDs owned by 4 or 5 of my friends.
kazaa is too much work.
yeah, apple seems not to be in the habit of buying what they can cheaply make themselves. Motion or Shake? they will buy that. im guessing Logic is going the same route, given its prominent display on apple's web site. and all the better...the apps work together seamlessly now. but toast doesnt have much technology that isnt redundant with what apple already has. between dvd studio pro, the Finder's burn functionality, garageband, iTunes, iMovie, and ostensibly Logic, apple should damn near be able to cut and paste together an app with most of the Toast+Jam functionality. Not to mention that roxios user interface-though reasonably functional-is a far cry from apple's standard of elegance. I don't think apple would get anywhere near $80 million worth out of the investment.
Burning cds and dvds from the finder is convenient, but thats all it is intended to be. Apple needs to release CD/DVD Studio Express, or better yet iBurn... something in that vein. Full blown functionality, apple ease of use, $50 price tag.
Slashdot Mirror
why dont you just get an old iMac off ebay and put iTunes on it. Im pretty sure that would do everything you want it to-easy GUI and automation for the parents and a command line for you. :)
fry's/outpost.com has had some good rebates on big seagate drives lately. I got a 200gb for like $70.
...you shoulda thoughta that before you deepened your pipeline. Idiots.
I dont have any particular desire to run windows on any platform, but it would probably mean much better hardware would be available for mac users within a generation or two. Currently, the PPC makes up a small percentage of IBM's income, but x86 IS intel's income. It has surprised people that the outdated CISC architecture has remained competitive over the years, but if IBM were putting anywhere near the R&D dollars into the PPC that Intel sinks into their 20 year old POS, it would become an amazing processor. If PPC had a large marketshare, IBM would give it much more priority than they do currently. Id venture it could well spell the end for Intel as well. No great loss.
Ive looked at a lot of laptop bags, but none really impress me. They are fine for carrying your puter to and from school or work, but are hardly fit for long term travel.
I am a big fan of modularity and I already have nice old school Mountainsmith gear: a tour pack, a Bugaboo daypack, and a full sized Frostfire 3 for long camping/hiking trips. They also have built in loops and buckles that allow them to clip together, if you need a bit more room, and are all constructed of cordura. (Mountainsmith has since moved operations to Korea and theyre current rip-stop based stuff is no better than Nike or North Face-so ebay is the way to go.)
Ive been using the bugaboo practically daily since I bought it about 8 years ago-its made it through high school, college, and seen over 15 countries-not a single thread has come unstitched. It has a comfortable internal fram and I can carry 25+ pounds a full day of wallking without becoming sore. There is no way Im going to shelve a pack of that quality and use a flimsy, overpriced Jansport just so I can have a special pocket for my powerbook.
So here's the plan. I got one of these Sumdex pouches <URL:http://www.sumdex.com/pon310.htm> which i currrently just stick in the pack with whatever else is going. But I called REI and got the names of some people that do custom mods and repairs for packs/goretex/camping gear/etc and am going to get something a bit more elegant made. stitch some webbing to the backside edge of the sumdex pouch with some snaptops inserted. the matching snap-bottoms are inserted in a piece of webbing stiched to the interior wall of the pack. This keeps the weight of the puter close to your center of gravity, so its easy to carry, and it keeps it well away from the extremities of the bag, so it wont get damaged when you drop your pack on the ground.
When youre camping and dont need the puter, just unsnap and you have the full space for clothes, sleeping bag-strap a snowboard to the outside--whatever.
While Im at it, Im going to put in an iPod pouch and a headphone nipple, and it will cost me less than the prrice of a new bag, not to mention save closet space and my back.
I have a powerbook 12 inch, and have never so loved a computer since the the Mac 512 my dad brough home nearly 20 years ago. There isnt a x86 based laptop on the market, at any pricepoint, that I would prefer except for the purpose of resale. I would be sad indeed were Apple to turn the design and manufacture of OS X based computers to anyone less exacting. Having written assembly for both PPC and x86, I cannot imagine why anyone would prefer the latter architecture. Im also a bit confused by sluggishness that is being reported. My laptop is nearly a year old, with a single 1GHz G4 and 768mb or ram, and is hardly sluggish. Perhaps once every 10 minutes a window shows some lag when opening, or the scaling animation jumps when minimizing something, but thats all-even with TexMaker, Photoshop, XEmacs, MatLab, iTunes, and a half dozen smalller xApps and iApps going. None of the PCs (or Suns) I use perform so well. As for software availability, i really dont think its an issue, unless you are a gamer. I dont have much time for games, and prefer a console anyway. I recall the difficulty in finding decent shareware in the OS 8-9 days, but now I cant think of any software category that doesnt have atleast one elegant solution available. Most basic users' needs are met by apps that ship with the computer, the whole world of Unix apps are availible, and many commercial products are better implemented than their windows counterpart. I suspect that most users, if they had the opportunity to run X as their primary OS for a few weeks-long enough to really see all Apple has put into the user experience, customize it, and make it their own, would find themselves quite reluctant to go back to using their current OS.
Of the 5183 songs on my iPod, about 300 CDs worth are mine. 40 songs are from the iTunes Music store. 3 came from kazaa...radio mixes I cant find elsewhere. the rest came from CDs owned by 4 or 5 of my friends. kazaa is too much work.
Floppy? What is this floppy you speak of?
(Mac User)
iSync owns.
yeah, apple seems not to be in the habit of buying what they can cheaply make themselves. Motion or Shake? they will buy that. im guessing Logic is going the same route, given its prominent display on apple's web site. and all the better...the apps work together seamlessly now. but toast doesnt have much technology that isnt redundant with what apple already has. between dvd studio pro, the Finder's burn functionality, garageband, iTunes, iMovie, and ostensibly Logic, apple should damn near be able to cut and paste together an app with most of the Toast+Jam functionality. Not to mention that roxios user interface-though reasonably functional-is a far cry from apple's standard of elegance. I don't think apple would get anywhere near $80 million worth out of the investment. Burning cds and dvds from the finder is convenient, but thats all it is intended to be. Apple needs to release CD/DVD Studio Express, or better yet iBurn ... something in that vein. Full blown functionality, apple ease of use, $50 price tag.