Want To Buy My First Mac... Don't Know What I Need, trying to solve ignorance Options

[magness]

Hi Boze

I'm a new forum contributor, but by no means new to MacMusic.org - in other words, until now I suppose I've been what one might call "a listener". The thing is, Boze, I think that by now everyone pretty much understands your point of view about PC laptops. At least that's my opinion.

I might make just this one suggestion - If you could manage to keep your posts to the size of a short paperback novel you may not offend quite so many people... And Dixie, you needn't feel bad about words like, "... i'm not sure the 'feels snappier' type comments really mean much." because apparently (with all due respect) Boze gives the impression
[B] of being someone who believes that unless you talk like this, " ... below c. 1MByte/sec sustained throughput, i.e. roughly the 802.11g standard ..."[I] then you don't know diddly.

Sorry Boze, I honestly mean no offence.

Cheers,

magness

[boze]

i appreciate you trying to be light-hearted, but it still feels like you're trying to invalidate my thoughts on the subject. i'm talking about laptop value to somebody who's a newbie to electronic music and thinking about a mac laptop purchase. honestly, i don't know how active this board is and i doubt the original poster has even been back across. but still, it's unnecessary to act like you're the peacemaker while telling me sarcastically that my posts are too long and implying that i don't have respect for other peoples perspective.

the stuff i'm offering relates to the idea of buying a mac laptop to do electronic music. i think it's a well-intentioned thing to talk about pro's and con's of mac laptop ownership so that a new buyer goes in with their eyes open. i just think that value for your money is a con of mac laptop ownership because of the performance of single processor G4s in OSX.

if someone knew that lots of production ppl used protools setups and they were coming to the board with the false assumption that you needed to plunk down $2200 on a digi002 to do any serious music making on your computer- it would only be seen as lending a hand for somebody to come in with some info to the effect that you can spend way less and still get quality results from a home studio.

instead it's like nobody can bring up wintel without being taken to task as doing something profane. but then when the G5 towers get released all of the sudden speed and power are allowed to matter again? that's hypocritical i think.

This post has been edited by boze: Wed 17 Sep 2003, 16:49

[dixiechicken]

I'm not particularly interested in swaying peoples opinions in a "mac vs pc" battle.
If you ask me what I think I have to state what my 10 years experience as sysadmin at our dept tells me.
( some 250 computers mixed environment - 210 pc:s 30:macs & 10 *nix boxes )

I spend on average +40 hours a week supporting the PC:s, less than an hour for the macs,
for the *.nix boxes 5-8 minutes.

I have run just about all desktop os:es there is, on a variety of hardware and Mac OS X is the slowest.
Followed by Win2K, WinXP and Mac OS 8-9 tie for third position.
For speed and stability various *nix distros are in class by themself, windoze & mac os are simply pitiful in these respects.

The belief that various hardware developments - will result in any drastic speed-advances for common users - is plain bullshit.
( sorry - this is not meant to be a personal flaming ) This hasnt happened yet, it very likely never will.

Whatever hardware resources are avaliable will be used to the limits -
by bloated software & increasing user-demands for more network bandwith.

B.t.w I've just checked the new G5 1.6GHz machine out, at our computing department.
Yes it's nice to look at, is it fast??? Yes it is a little bit snappier than my old G4-400.
NOT impressively so.
It felt on par with my Redhat 7 distro on an old Celeron PC with 384MB ram.
( I use that one for special backup purposes )

Cheers: Dixiechicken

[boze]

jeez, i'm getting outflanked on the left here..

dixie, now that this thread is officially and irretrievably off topic i'd like to follow along with your ideas..

first, what does it matter how stable unix is? this is a mac audio board, so even me comparing pc laptop value to demonstrate how mac laptops are underpowered or overpriced is only relevant as a tangent. you think we should recommend that the newbie wanting to start recording on his comp should run linux and Ardour or something?

osx is really slow, that's true- but that line about a G5 1.6ghz being 'not impressively snappier' than a G4 400mhz is a bit of a foot-in-mouth i think, your sys admin career notwithstanding. i mean c'mon- feeling snappy is no kind of test. i think the count in last months Sound-on-Sound had the number of platinum verbs you can run from a 400mhz G4 and a bunch of other comparable models with or without processor upgrades. a dp 800mhz runs like three times as many reverb plugins and i'm sure with that crazy system bus even the sp G5s will go another good way past that.

do you do audio production yourself? i can't imagine a single music person i've ever met who'd fail to feel the difference between a G4/400 and a G5/1.6.

[dixiechicken]

I'll agree with you that the powerbooks are overpriced, underpowered depends on what you want to do with them.
You will always pay a premium prices for MAC:s because of small market share & higher developer costs.
( although the last years Apple have reduced their prices quite a bit - this is still the case )

However if you factor in support costs and life expectancy the TCO on Mac is much lower than for a PC.
These days in flattened organisational structures and the expectation that every employee should do everything themselves - ( this is typical of academic institutions, universitys and the like ) you'll find that the hidden costs for using PC:s in any company are substantial.
( by hidden cocst I'm talking about lost productivity time,
when users are sitting around asking themselves and workmates for help trying to figure things out )

I'll further agree that I would perhaps have to test-drive the G5 1,6 model on a regular basis for a week or so to back up my glib statement.
( I really dont think I'll have to retract it - hopefully I'll have one of the G5:s myself in Januari-2004 and we'll see )

However the fact that the "this Xeon server" or "that G5/G4 box" does fare well in benchmark tests or applaying phoshop-filters to giant graphics files, is just marketing hype.
I says precious little about how that same "box" will behave in everyday use.

That said I'll have to stick up for MAC OS X, in one respect,
it is actually very good at copying lods of files over the network.


Cheers: Dixiechicken

[boze]

thx gs-

hey, if anybody is reading this thread (unless i'm mistaken i don't think implodr has been around but anyway...) my gf just noticed that the applestore's deals section has 12" 867 refurbs in limited quantities for $1199.

i think that's the perfect newbie audio mac laptop.