Does anyone else find it incredibly ironic to have so many people who pride themselves on tinkering with and building cars from scratch, say they hate a piece of machinery because it might require some occasional maintenance?
DrBoost wrote: I can buy a new MoBo for about $400...
Where does one do this? It would be nifty to be able to buy just the MoBo, to home-build a machine. Make it easier, and less ethically gray, to play with an inexpensive dual-boot machine.
If you're willing to pay 400 for a MoBo, why not just buy a 400 Mac Mini? It's like gettting everything else free with the motherboard.
Tim Baxter wrote: If you're willing to pay 400 for a MoBo, why not just buy a 400 Mac Mini? It's like gettting everything else free with the motherboard.
I hate the Mac Mini. I've used them plenty and do not like them, they absolutely wouldn't meet what I'm looking to do: expandable dual-boot performance/gaming rig. I want to see what would be involved in building a Mockintosh (as opposed to a Hackintosh), and what the cost would be.
Hehehe... TrueNufftv has the best Mac comercial spoofs I've seen yet (actually not crass or insulting): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7WYbLctfZg
Salanis wrote: Does anyone else find it incredibly ironic to have so many people who pride themselves on tinkering with and building cars from scratch, say they hate a piece of machinery because it might require some occasional maintenance?
Not at all.
I got fed up, and bought a Mac about a year ago. There isn't much I can't do on a car, but I'm not real good on the computer. I got frustrated with spyware, viruses, and all kinds of stupid little glitches that nobody could fix, or explain. I'm as cheap as they come, but I don't regret spending the money.
If you're good with computers, good for you, but understand that some aren't. I don't see why you have such a big problem with Mac.
suprf1y wrote: If you're good with computers, good for you, but understand that some aren't. I don't see why you have such a big problem with Mac.
Pretty much the standard arguments against them. Primarily they're too expensive, especially since the hardware is the same as what's in a good PC. I can understanding preferring MacOS, but think it's BS that they design it to only run on the hardware they charge a premium for.
I view buying a Mac much like the standard view on this board of buying a brand new luxury car: it's fine to want one, they are nice, but it's almost never the best value for your money.
One reason that Macs have a better reputation is that they have control of ever product that carries their name. Any piece of junk can run windows at the price of the licensing fee. I never really used Macs until a little over a year ago, but their user interface just seems so much more intuitive. There's a much smoother dialogue between the desktop, dock, and open program(s). Windows still feels confined to the rectangular borders of the program windows.
MitchellC wrote: I never really used Macs until a little over a year ago, but their user interface just seems so much more intuitive. There's a much smoother dialogue between the desktop, dock, and open program(s). Windows still feels confined to the rectangular borders of the program windows.
I actually dislike the MacOS UI. I don't like the application tray popping up and getting in the way or the screen showing every window at once. Configuring everything to work exactly how I want would probably be about as much effort as what it takes to set up Windows correctly.
I have a pretty nice dual processor HP workstation that I traded two 6 packs of beer (good beer) for. It runs a bootlegged copy of XP with alarming reliability. I rock a 24" LCD monitor I got on super duper clearance at OfficeMax. The keyboard is older than I am (IBM Model M) and the mouse is a Microsoft Intellimouse from 2000.
Grassroots computers are PCs. The guys with the trailer, Porsche, trophy wife, mechanic, etc are the Macs
A quick hijack here on the topic of power supplies. The expensive power supply isn't always the best choice, it can be more sensitive to fluctuations in power. If you buy an expensive machine, it can be assumed by the manufacturer of said machine that you will have things in place such as power filters to protect it and they therefore spec a "higher quality" power supply with that in mind. Use it without a power filter, especilly out where I am where people have a tendancey to get really smashed and take out power poles, and you experience enough fluctuation in power to make the power supply fail "before it's time", even when you have a nice quality UPS in place. /hijack
EastCoastMojo wrote: A quick hijack here on the topic of power supplies. The expensive power supply isn't always the best choice, it can be more sensitive to fluctuations in power. If you buy an expensive machine, it can be assumed by the manufacturer of said machine that you will have things in place such as power filters to protect it and they therefore spec a "higher quality" power supply with that in mind. /hijack
I know there are ratings for how stable and consistent of power a PSU provides. It's not just the total power, it's the number of leads and their tolerances. I'm a big fan of Antec's "Tru" series of power supplies. Really consistent delivery. I've had nothing but good luck with those.
Amusingly, the only thing that has completely borked a PC of mine, was my girlfriend's cat. I didn't clean out the case enough, and the CPU fan got clogged with cat fur. The CPU proceeded to fry itself and the FSB.
I view buying a Mac much like the standard view on this board of buying a brand new luxury car: it's fine to want one, they are nice, but it's almost never the best value for your money.
More like a Corolla. The computer is an appliance to me, and nothing more. If it's easy, and works that way all the time, its money well spent.
suprf1y wrote:I view buying a Mac much like the standard view on this board of buying a brand new luxury car: it's fine to want one, they are nice, but it's almost never the best value for your money.More like a Corolla. The computer is an appliance to me, and nothing more. If it's easy, and works that way all the time, its money well spent.
No, more like a Lexus, complete with price premium.
And yeah, saying a Mac is better than my PC is like saying that a stock Lexus SC 430 is better than my Miata.
It's like comparing Apples and oranges. One is juicy, sweet, and delicious. The other is a fruit.
confuZion3 wrote: It's like comparing Apples and oranges. One is juicy, sweet, and delicious. The other is a fruit.
Defiante 'Say What?' material right there. 
In reply to 93gsxturbo:
I love IBM M keyboards... I had a similar one in my last job. I find keyswitch keyboards to always be more rewarding to type on than membranes...
I've seen plenty of Mac failures, particularly the new-gen iMacs before they switched to Intel chips. They'd last about 6 months to a year and then burn out their power supplies. And if we had a nickel for every time we had to re-install OSX due to pervasive wonkiness of operation, we'd have a hell of a lot of nickels.
If only all hardware were as reliable as Nintendo's.
Yeah, but then you'd have to blow in the computer every time you wanted to use it.
The problem with the iPhone is that they do not come equipped with caller iQ.
When I got my current job, IT asked what I wanted in a computer. I told them what I did (graphic design, photos, video, number crunching...pretty much everything) and I got this killer Dell PC. At my first meeting, the other guys asked why I didn't go for a Mac. Wait, I was allowed to get a Mac? Doh!
Salanis wrote: Does anyone else find it incredibly ironic to have so many people who pride themselves on tinkering with and building cars from scratch, say they hate a piece of machinery because it might require some occasional maintenance?DrBoost wrote: I can buy a new MoBo for about $400...Where does one do this? It would be nifty to be able to buy just the MoBo, to home-build a machine. Make it easier, and less ethically gray, to play with an inexpensive dual-boot machine.
My comment about not wanting to pay extra for the good stuff is still valid. To whit: My pro-built PC was $1200, and lasted about 24 months. 4 years AFTER that purchase (4 years and TWO PC's later, I might ad) I spend less than that on a e-mac, it lasts for 6 years. I spent the extra money for the top quality stuff in the PC because I wanted it to last a long time. I didn't have to listen to the salesman telling me, "well, if you want this to be able to run more than one program, you should really double or triple your memory and/or buy a better MoBo. Oh, you want to do video stuff too? We're going to need to buy this and this to make it work." At the Apple store I just said, I'll take this one. I was as happy as a GRM'er in the garage for 6 years. so, let's take the first "real" pc purchase I made. $1200 in 1998 vs. the $1100 in 2002. That make the mac about $300 cheaper when inflation is taken into account. So, for $300 LESS money I got 300% more usage out of it. The way I see it, I got the "good stuff" for less money and no headaches. And the MoBo is available through Apple.
I don't recall anyone making the point "they look better," which is kind of important, too.
93gsxturbo wrote: Grassroots computers are PCs. The guys with the trailer, Porsche, trophy wife, mechanic, etc are the Macs
The Mac is the guy with the stock class Mini Cooper who drives up with the race tires in the hatch, wins G-Stock, paxes right near the top, then drives it home, and enjoys driving it to work all week too. Maybe it costs more and goes a little slower than the cobbled together DSP E30 parked next to him in the paddock, but it does everything he needs it to do, he rarely has to think about anything but driving it, and he doesn't regret the monthly payment one bit. But hey, that sort of thing is not for everyone.
Josh wrote: The Mac is the guy with the stock class Mini Cooper who drives up with the race tires in the hatch, wins G-Stock, paxes right near the top, then drives it home, and enjoys driving it to work all week too. Maybe it costs more and goes a little slower than the cobbled together DSP E30 parked next to him in the paddock, but it does everything he needs it to do, he rarely has to think about anything but driving it, and he doesn't regret the monthly payment one bit. But hey, that sort of thing is not for everyone.
The problem with that analogy is, Auto-X/Track would be equivalent to playing games, which your Mac doesn't do.
Salanis wrote: The problem with that analogy is, Auto-X/Track would be equivalent to playing games, which your Mac doesn't do.
Like hell it doesn't! You just have to switch OSes, just like the Mini Cooper driver switches his tires. A nice thing about the Cooper (mac) is that you can quite easily bring another set (OS) along with you 
.
Disclaimer: in real life I am not a gamer and if I were I would do it on a console anyway, so this argument is irrelevant to my interests.
Josh wrote: Like hell it doesn't! You just have to switch OSes, just like the Mini Cooper driver switches his tires. A nice thing about the Cooper (mac) is that you can quite easily bring another set (OS) along with you
So... in order to run cool software on a Mac... it needs to be a PC. I don't know about you, but I call a machine with an Intel CPU, NVidia graphics card, running windows, a PC.
Only (as I already demonstrated), the Mac is not built with the latest technology, and costs substantially more than a top-of-the-line custom machine that is.
I mean... really... argue that Mac OS is better all you want. But PC hardware is the better. Apple's hardware development has not been spurred on by the same sort of competition as Intel vs. AMD and NVidia vs. ATI. The superiority of these components is only further demonstrated by the fact that Apple now uses them.
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