What sort of computer do you use?

[Veerzigzag]

they got one because they're shiny!

That's as good a reason as any !!!
Apple have been quite clever:
The original Bill Gates operating system was a cheap copy of Unix, but not as reliable or efficient in processor usage
A while later, Apple switched to proper Unix (OSX) and then to Intel chips.
So every time the inefficient and wasteful Microsoft OS pushes Intel into making a higher performance chip, Apple get the benefit. It will always run faster than Microsoft on any given CPU, and Apple don't even have to pay for chip development.
Macs are designed for users, Microsoft OS is designed for IT departments.

And today I took my nice clean 944 for a burn-up with it's new noisy ASBO exhaust - lovely burbbly !!

 

[944s2]

ORIGINAL: andy watson

3 I swear at .......Often!! []

Thought that was a prerequisite of PC ownership?

[][][][]

 

[944 man]

ORIGINAL: Veerzigzag

they got one because they're shiny!

That's as good a reason as any !!!
Apple have been quite clever:
The original Bill Gates operating system was a cheap copy of Unix, but not as reliable or efficient in processor usage
A while later, Apple switched to proper Unix (OSX) and then to Intel chips.
So every time the inefficient and wasteful Microsoft OS pushes Intel into making a higher performance chip, Apple get the benefit. It will always run faster than Microsoft on any given CPU, and Apple don't even have to pay for chip development.
Macs are designed for users, Microsoft OS is designed for IT departments.

DOS was a bastardised version of DEC CP/M and nothing to do with UNIX.

 

[vitesse]

Samsung laptop running Win7 for office & home-also PC running dual Win 98/XP professional at home-office 2 PCs all running XP professional networked with laptop-

Used to run Win98-now have stayed with XP-only problem-can't find driver for our Cannon A4/A3 colour printer 4500 on XP so redundant!

 

[Veerzigzag]

DOS was a bastardised version of DEC CP/M and nothing to do with UNIX.

Thanks for setting me straight. We used to use Unix control machines to auto-restart Microsoft ones that had frozen, I think that's where my idea came from.
I am sure Darth Vader prefers Microsoft and Blackberries to Macs and iPhones. Probably drives an Audi too. (Oh no, I forgot, we drive Audis).

 

[944 man]

Reading back, that sounds rather blunt: not how I intended it to read.

 

[Veerzigzag]

Reading back, that sounds rather blunt: not how I intended it to read.

Not a problem - I had always thought that Bill Gates had, er, "referred to.." Unix, so it is good to know the truth.
Aaaah, I remember DEC; the PDP11, now that was a PROPER computer. Standard RAM as I recall was 64k, which could be upgraded to a massive 128k!

 

[J4CKO]

Its from 1991, a bit crank, need loads of attention, not that fast by modern standards and costs a fortune to keep going but I just cant part with it.

Oh, PC you say....

 

[zcacogp]

ORIGINAL: 944psi

I'm assuming Oli isn;t collecting all of this info for nefarious reasons ....

Just keep talking my pretties, just keep talking ....

>CacklesEvillyToMyself< []


Oli.

 

[zcacogp]

Desktop machine at home, 4-core AMD processor running Ubuntu Linux.
Google Nexus 7 Tablet for away from home, Android.
Google Nexus 4 Phone for on the go.
Gave up on Windoze after XP, which was ok -just.
My daughter has a Macbook. It's shiny. She likes it.

 

[944 man]

No Linux distro can match XP, let alone Win7 and I say that as a Linux user with over 15yrs experience.

 

[zcacogp]

Interesting - from what point of view is XP ahead?

I swapped from XP to Ubuntu about four years ago and thought I had taken a step forward then, and it's become even better since.


Oli.

 

[944 man]

Usability.

 

[zcacogp]

Ah, thanks.


Oli.

 

[944 man]

Oli, I believe that you know better. Linux is far from user friendly and if you want to do much more than browse the internet of use Star Office or similar, then it is a massive pain in the arse.

Even after you have found drivers and fixes and workarounds for your machine, you are still faced with very little software support from your first choice applications - no one chooses to use GIMP do they? They use it because they cant use Photoshop.

 

[zcacogp]

Simon,

I happen to find Linux (or Ubuntu-Gnome, more precisely) to be pretty good on the user-friendly stakes actually. It's very different to XP in many ways, and I spent a LOT of time getting used to it, but think it's been well worthwhile. Admittedly the earlier versions were a bit of a pain to get running properly, but the last few ones (probably from Ubuntu 11.04 Natty onwards) have required just about no setting up at all to get running well. Having said that, any *nix system will always allow a huge amount of personalisation and hence my machine is quite sharply tweaked such that it behaves precisely as I want it to. Setting this up takes some time, but it involves a latitude of customisation that simply is not available in any mainstream OS I have come across. (I am very picky about the way my desktop behaves - the sort of work I do involves having several windows open on screen at once and moving between them. I therefore find sloppy focus to be an essential tool, always used with raise-on-click disabled. It may sound trivial, but having a desktop that is able to do this is a BIG requirement of mine, and I am not aware of any MS release that is able to do this. You could do some of this with XP and Power toys, but not all of it.) The side-effects of stability, virus-resistance and fault tolerance are also way ahead of anything that XP had.

As a side point, yes, I do use GIMP and think it's pretty good. Having said that, I only use it a little bit and have never really used Photoshop so I don't know what I am missing there.


Oli.

 

[944 man]

Really, I wanted to reply: 'easy-usability', but that was a made-up word.

I was extremely enthusiastic about Linux in 1997-2000 but I jumped out as soon as I realised that it was always going to be a niche platform without real and reliable support from software companies. Yes it certainly is a good deal more friendly now that it used to be, but for anything more involved that browsing I believe that it needs far more effort putting in than Im prepared to give to a desktop OS now.

Applications are the real problem of course, with virtually eveything that I use being WinX only. Had there been Linux versions of the applications that I needed in 2001 then Id probably have perservered with Linux, but there werent and I dont think that the situation is that much better now, even though the distros are certainly more user-friendly.

Now had we been talking about AIX...

 

[zcacogp]

It sounds like you are talking about incompatibility of applications. It's entirely true that exchanging things like Word documents and Excel spreadsheets is a pain when the documents are more complex, but this is getting better and better with later versions of Libreoffice and Openoffice. It's still not great with things like embedded comments and track changes (and graphs in Excel often break as well), but if you are exchanging documents rather than collaborating cross-platform and you know what you are doing then things are fine.

In terms of applications which are lacking in Debian, I have yet to find anything that I could do in XP but can't do in Ubuntu. It is a different world, and it does take time to work out what's what, but there is nothing lacking. One person put it quite well when they said that Linux does a job that is similar in some respects to Windows but is not a direct replacement for it; each has their strengths and weaknesses. For me, the strengths of rock-solid stability, no virus problems and a totally customisable interface make Linux the winner every time. The fact that it is free is good, but not the deal-breaker. I re-built an XP machine last month and marvelled at how primitive everything was in comparison with Ubuntu (you have to set the screen resolution? How quaint!) However my wife always chooses XP because it works much better with documentation she brings home from work ... each to their own!


Oli.

 

[Mike_Pollock]

I've messed about with Ubuntu and Suse, had my laptop dual booting etc and running from separate hard drives (it has 2 HD slots) but maybe because I only started playing with computers in 1995 with Win95 at the age of 35 and have only in the last year used one for work, I found that to do anything other than basic tasks required too much "code", the workarounds etc you mention just too much like hard work!

My wife had a Macbook Pro which is a lovely piece of engineering and I understand why it Macs will always make better use of the hardware, but again because it is very different from the MS kit she's grown up with, it was sold 12 months on.

I certainly accept the virus advantages with Linux systems though!