Why do people get wanky about their choice of computer/operating system/console/etc?

[tom k&e]

Desktop: OS X or a locked down version of Xp...
Games: Playstation or Xbox. I've never had a Playstation crash or get viruses...

Yes, rather than spending £700 on a decent PC that can run games almost as well as the xbox 360 or as yet unreleased ps3, let's buy a £2000 mac & a £300 xbox 360 that overheats and has about 12 games in total, or a ps2 that's hopelessly outdated! What a genius soloution.

Not to mention that the pc gaming has the benefit of free games...

And if you've never had a console crash on you, you haven't played much.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Personally, I use a Difference Engine that I built out of Meccano.

 

[editor]

I'm using a Alan Turing OS Mk1.

 

[fractionMan]

I've got an 8bit abbacus.

 

[Robster970]

I'm using a Alan Turing OS Mk1.

So that would involve something that made a lot of noise and standing pipes that act as memory then........very good, it's certainly different.

 

[snadge]

So a brand new 3.2 Ghz PC was faster than a year old, proably 1.5 Ghz G4...? Oh, no say it isn't so...!

3.4 ghz p4 ( £1199 rrp) v 1.67ghz G4 ( £1850 rrp)

and that is the highest spec mac laptop you can get today, as I mentioned



the PC is well over twice as quick for 2/3rds the price.




to tell you the truth I feel a bit stupid for actually trying a powerbook now, especially when I look at those real time results again.

 

[gentlegreen]

My first computer which I soldered together in 1987 and didn't feel the need to upgrade until 1999
Note the (unsuccessful) user-defined graphics upgrade on the "mobo" (top left), the improved rainbow-coloured expansion bus carrying the massive 16k RAM pack (top right), the parallel port and eprom board (bottom left), and the all-weather user interface (bottom right)
Hopefully I haven't actually managed to lose the serial comms and phoneme speech board .....

 

[Iam]

All your computers are belong to me...

 

[Structaural]

Out of interest, can any one really defend Windows...? Does anyone really use a Windows PC through informed choice...?
.

Yeah they do - I like to have a decent graphics card with decent drivers.
I also like to play games that came out this year.
I use Studio Max (no Mac version available) and Cinema 4D (cross platform) and the viewport is quicker on my 2.8g Intel than on my work 1.8gh dual processor G5. Renderings are a different matter but the G5 was over 3 grand.

I use a Mac all day at work and go home to my nice warm PC which plays games and is actually worth the money I paid for it. I have all the same software I use on my mac on my PC and other than the annoying START button in place of the Command button there's not much between them - in fact the PC version of illustrator is far more stable.

Though I might get one of those dual core Mac minis - I do like the OS X a lot...or a Dual AMD Opteron...

 

[tarannau]

3.4 ghz p4 ( £1199 rrp) v 1.67ghz G4 ( £1850 rrp)

and that is the highest spec mac laptop you can get today, as I mentioned
.

Erm, the 2.16 dual core MacBooks are now on sale. Sound pretty zippy by all accounts; good battery life and a thinner form factor.

Powerbooks were definitely underpowered at the end of their lifespan though. Still nice kit and beautifully designed/feature packed, but the lack of progress on a PowerPC mobile/low power chip was a little too obvious. I guess that forced Apple's hand and prompted the Intel shift more than any other factor.

 

[editor]

So that would involve something that made a lot of noise and standing pipes that act as memory then........very good, it's certainly different.

People queue up to see my pipe collection.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

People queue up to see my pipe collection.

 

[tom k&e]

Srsly tho, as fun as mocking jaed is, I think I know why people get so agitated about this.

Choice of system is an investment. It's an investment of cash, not only in the computer itself, but also in the software and peripherals to go with it. And it's an investment of time, familiarising yourself with the user interface, and at a more advanced level, the hardware, administration troubleshooting, etc.

Changing to another system is expensive and complicated. Most people can't afford the time or money involved in owning & using multiple platforms. So they want to feel they've made the right choice, that they've not made an idiotic mistake. As such, they get involved in bun fights, convincing themselves of their own argument.

It's much the same with cameras - if you've got a 1Ds, and 5 grands worth of EF mount l glass, you certainly don't want to believe that Nikons are better. And as such Nikon v. Canon is an even more bitter holy war, despite the fact they offer very similar products.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Srsly tho, as fun as mocking jaed is, I think I know why people get so agitated about this.

Choice of system is an investment. It's an investment of cash, not only in the computer itself, but also in the software and peripherals to go with it. And it's an investment of time, familiarising yourself with the user interface, and at a more advanced level, the hardware, administration troubleshooting, etc.

Changing to another system is expensive and complicated. Most people can't afford the time or money involved in owning & using multiple platforms. So they want to feel they've made the right choice, that they've not made an idiotic mistake. As such, they get involved in bun fights, convincing themselves of their own argument.

It's much the same with cameras - if you've got a 1Ds, and 5 grands worth of EF mount l glass, you certainly don't want to believe that Nikons are better. And as such Nikon v. Canon is an even more bitter holy war, despite the fact they offer very similar products.

Good post!

 

[Robster970]

People queue up to see my pipe collection.

Ed's PC

 

[snadge]

Erm, the 2.16 dual core MacBooks are now on sale. Sound pretty zippy by all accounts; good battery life and a thinner form factor.

erm,, no they aren't.....6 weeks according to apple, which will translate to at least July in everyone elses time

 

[snadge]

Erm, the 2.16 dual core MacBooks are now on sale. Sound pretty zippy by all accounts; good battery life and a thinner form factor.

erm,, no they aren't.....6 weeks according to apple, which will translate to at least July in everyone elses time.

unless of course you mean give apple 2.5k now ( which they will happily accept) and wait like an idiot till they get their act together.

when I first looked into the macbook pro, an end of january shipping date was assured, now it's march and they are still saying 6 weeks.


that to me smells like teething issues.


so I decided not to bother with first batch.

and after my experience of the powerbook I'll be doing a LOT of research on the actual speed of these, cos' there is no way I'll believe apple benchmarks again.

 

[tarannau]

erm,, no they aren't.....6 weeks according to apple, which will translate to at least July in everyone elses time

Erm, the Uk Apple store's currently showing a shipping time of 3-4 weeks on new orders, which ain't bad for a new release under high demand.

A couple of boys at my old workplace got their hands on some. Certainly there are some review copies floating about, but I'm fairly sure that at least some Uk orders have been fulfilled.

 

[snadge]

Erm, the Uk Apple store's currently showing a shipping time of 3-4 weeks on new orders, which ain't bad for a new release under high demand.

A couple of boys at my old workplace got their hands on some. Certainly there are some review copies floating about, but I'm fairly sure that at least some Uk orders have been fulfilled.

well I must admit when I looked last week 6 weeks was the shipping time.

3-4 weeks is still absolutely no good to me.


any body put it through the paces in a review yet? If there have been shippings I would expect there to be reviews, I haven't come across any.


Aha, found one.......

 

[gentlegreen]

while on the subject of pipes ....

The Phillips Economic Analogue Computer

(liquid - based)

 

[jæd]

Srsly tho, as fun as mocking jaed is, I think I know why people get so agitated about this.

Choice of system is an investment. It's an investment of cash, not only in the computer itself, but also in the software and peripherals to go with it. And it's an investment of time, familiarising yourself with the user interface, and at a more advanced level, the hardware, administration troubleshooting, etc.

Changing to another system is expensive and complicated. Most people can't afford the time or money involved in owning & using multiple platforms. So they want to feel they've made the right choice, that they've not made an idiotic mistake. As such, they get involved in bun fights, convincing themselves of their own argument.

It's much the same with cameras - if you've got a 1Ds, and 5 grands worth of EF mount l glass, you certainly don't want to believe that Nikons are better. And as such Nikon v. Canon is an even more bitter holy war, despite the fact they offer very similar products.

Its a pity that I have Mr K&E on ignore -- one too many "Tom K&E 'Facts'"...

My opinions are through maintaining and developing on each the main platforms, not through some misplaced pride, "mac-hugging" or rabid dislike for Microsoft. I don't think Mr K&E can appreciate this...

If people want to use any one of the platforms then bully for them. If Xp works for you then use it. Its just its handy to know the pitfalls of all before you use it and I wouldn't recommend using Xp as an unsupported desktop, just as much as I wouldn't reccommend Linux on the desktop. And equally as much as I wouldn't reccommend using OS X as a server...

 

[tom k&e]

Ahhh the MONIAC! Crazy machine. Analouge computers are

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_MONIAC_Computer

 

[Iam]

I like the term "Holy War" for this.

However, a caveat...

If the zealots wipe each other out, and we're only left with bloody BBC Micros, there's gonna be trouble.

 

[fractionMan]

I like the term "Holy War" for this.

However, a caveat...

If the zealots wipe each other out, and we're only left with bloody BBC Micros, there's gonna be trouble.

Although you'll probably be able to run netBSD on it.

 

[cybertect]

If the zealots wipe each other out, and we're only left with bloody BBC Micros, there's gonna be trouble.

BBC Basic was way cooler than the poor apology for a Basic that was on the Spectrum.

I'm finding myself agreeing with tom k&e. Platform choice becomes an emotional investment along with all the money, which is why some people get very cranky about it.

I'm not going to get into a self-justification exercise about why I mostly use Macs or Linux, suffice to say that it works well enough for my purposes. YMMV

 

[gentlegreen]

BBC Micro project c. 1993

Before the days of decent PCs and Cool Edit, I used to have an irksome job which involved copying one language tape to another in real time, timing the speech passages and leaving a gap of time and a half between them on the target tape

Having the attention span of a newt, and only having achieved CSE grade 1 in sums, my mind was forever wandering at critical times when I was supposed to be doing calculations in base60 in my head ... so I soldered wires to the buttons inside the tape decks and wired up some TTL and relays to the parallel port of the long-suffering BBC Model B ......

I wrote the procedures to drive the tape recorders and my colleague wrote a nice little BBC BASIC / Mode7 program ... thereafter all I had to do was listen to the passage, hit the space bar and a gap of time x 1.5 was inserted

 

[Structaural]

 

[Hocus Eye.]

The only time I ever did any programming was on the BBC B. BBC Basic was better then other dialects of the language because it enabled structured programming thus avoiding the need to use GOTO.

Mostly I used to program in a variation of BASIC that was built into WordwisePlus the best word processing language for the Beeb. You could get it to automate writing tasks using that language in a similar way to Macros in Word. I can still recall the machine-gun sound of my 18 cpm daisywheel printer.

Later I used to Record Macros in Word when I eventually got hold of a PC, but recording actions is not really programming. As word went through its versions there was no longer need to record Macos for ordinary word processing.

Incidentally there was an automatic spell checker available as a sideways ROM for the BBC long before Microsoft had a 'live' check as you go spell checker.

As for XP, Microsoft finally produced something that worked. I just wish they would continue to support it after they bring out Vista. I don't want to be constantly upgrading and re-learning new versions of Windows - apart from the expense.

Hocus - (shakes out clay pipe onto mud floor, and wraps muffler around neck)

 

[lobster]

>> DIY minority operating systems like Linux -<<<

Linux is by no means DIY, the users are very vast, from hobbiest through to large corporations like IBM,HP,Novell,Redhat , heavily used in science,nsa and in universities.


http://news.com.com/2100-1001-963285.html
http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/
http://h10018.www1.hp.com/wwsolutions/linux/index.html
http://www.novell.com/linux/
http://www.slackware.com/
http://www.slamd64.com/

 

[Kid_Eternity]

What the fuck are you lot on about, if you want to get absurdly techy start your own thread dammit! This one is for taking the piss out of Maclovers-ahem-sad folk who defend their computer/OS/console etc.