RE: planned obsolescence rules

Tom. Chill. I was just kidding. I use my friend's dual cpu Mac and it is
very very sweet. The OS and hardware is engineered like a BMW as compared
to my Mustang GT which is fast but clunky.

You might be surprised at how easy it is to build a PC these days. The
motherboard manufatureres supply glossy well-illustrated fold out
instructions that are very simple to follow. No setting jumpers and
tweaking the BIOS anymore. Anyone that can follow instruction to make a
platinum print (or, god forbid, a gum) can put one together these days.

The other day I put together a system for my wife: 1 gig of memory on a 2.6
ghz processor for $315. Asus motherboard: $50. Two strips 512 strips of
DDR: $160. AMD 2600 processor: $105. It took me twenty minutes, and I'm no
wiz at this stuff. She's got a very fast system with 1280 screen
resolution, 6 USB slots, firewire, Serial ATA, RAID , and great sound and
there's not a single card in it.

Yes, I love Macs. I've got a PowerBook on my Christmas wish list (oh
pleeeese, Santa..), and I love my iPod. But I'm curious as to what a Mac
system comparable to the one above would cost. Any idea?

 -----Original Message-----
From: Tom Ferguson [mailto:tomf2468@pipeline.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2004 8:41 AM
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: Re: planned obsolescence rules

  Now, Now, Stop That!... platform wars came be soooooo unpleasant. I've had
to work with and maintain a few PCs for clients.

  Cheaper, well yes you can buy poor quality PCs very cheaply. Apple has
resisted the temptation to put out low quality cheap boxes (a good thing in
my mind). Buy a well made PC with equal to Mac quality components and the
price difference is small (yes, PCs are slightly cheaper). Build it yourself
PC, you will easily beat the Apple price (assuming you don't add a value for
your time). But, that is something most folks don't want to (or can't) do. I
think it could be fun. I wish it was more do-able on the Mac side!

  Drivers for everything, yes they are "available" for PC but with too many
conflicts. The PC side is a far more "open" hardware system than Mac. That
leads to far more hardware/driver conflicts than I've ever seen on a Mac. Of
course that can be argued as an "advantage". One could try and convince
folks that the number of conflicts are higher primarily because the number
of options are higher (more "stuff" is made for PC than Mac).

  We won't go into PC worms, viruses, spyware, endless security updates
issued after problems have already been exploited........

  Could I be biased, yep. I've never gotten to buy and set up a PC on my
own. I've always gotten "thrown at" a problem PC by a client ("hey Tom knows
computers, let see if Tom can fix it").

  Me, I will happily stay with the Mac. I like it, I know it, it works. I
like the interface better, I like color management being part of the OS.
I'll live with some limited choices being the "minority" market.

  Others, know and like the PC. They will work with add on color management
(just how difficult is Adobe Gamma?), they will guard against viruses, they
will enjoy more hardware and software choices than I have.

  Set up and maintained correctly, we will do the same computer work :-)

  Anyone want to argue Nikon versus Canon?

  On Sunday, November 21, 2004, at 12:25 AM, Keith Gerling wrote:

    It saddens me to hear grumbling in the Apple community. Maybe it's time
for
    you to consider Windows? The hardware is dirt cheap and lightning fast.
    There are drivers for everything. Stable, too: I've got one machine that
    hasn't been rebooted in months.

  --------------
  Tom Ferguson
  http://www.ferguson-photo-design.com
Received on Sun Nov 21 13:22:35 2004