I want a mac

Stewsburntmonkey · Postby **Stewsburntmonkey** » Thu Aug 14, 2003 9:44 pm

Yea, thats a bit of a problem. It can actually be cheaper to fly to the US to buy the Mac which is rather silly. Here is an interesting site about the problem. :)

FieldDoc · Postby **FieldDoc** » Thu Aug 14, 2003 10:29 pm

Amazing, simply amazing!

I have thought long and hard about switching to Apple (we're talking several months here) and the main deterrent had been the cost. Sometimes I do think that Apple are deliberately making it hard for themselves.......

tabasco boy · Postby **tabasco boy** » Thu Aug 14, 2003 10:46 pm

FieldDoc why not fly from london to newyork you could pick up a plane ticket for $320.00 return. and they have a mac store in new york.

i done it once flew from london to chicago to get a sony vaio laptop picked one up at best buy for about $1800 compared to 2500 pounds at PCWorld at BATH somerset. just be carefull at heathrow on not going at the "SOMETHING TO DECLARE" line as one of my friend stupidly went on that line and had to pay 450 pounds import tax. when you can just go just go straight out while looking inocent *wistle *wistle. but now i don't have to do it because i just moved to chicago last january.

bwa ha ha.

FieldDoc · Postby **FieldDoc** » Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:08 am

Only problem with that idea I guess is the power supply (and getting time of work to fly to NYC!)

tabasco boy · Postby **tabasco boy** » Fri Aug 15, 2003 2:14 pm

mostly all computers today are dual voltage. there a switches at the back which has to be unlocked by simply uncsrewing a screw and flicking it to 220V if your in UK or flicking it to 110V in US. but for laptops no prblem most of the power supply of laptops are switching transfromers rated 100V-240V.

(Edited by tabasco boy at 2:18 pm on Aug. 15, 2003)

Uriel · Postby **Uriel** » Mon Sep 15, 2003 6:29 pm

FieldDoc:

One important point in performance disscusion PC vs. Mac - as there has been said, do not look just at processor frequency, there are more factors in the game. The most important by my point of view is that Mac is monolithic piece of hardware and OS. Macs do not have to solve compatibility and introductory internal hadrware component communication issues.
Anyway, PC still beats Mac in ratio performance/price (100% true outside US - maybe I am not only one who do not understand Apple's double sided prices), while Macs are favored for their bigger stability (which in fact has nothing to do with hardware architecture, but simply in different user-power policies of their most common OSs).
Apple does a very clever thing - MacOS X, which is Unix (BSD) with Debian layer and grafic GUI, so you are able to run on such system almost all UNIX programs if you have source code (well, you will need some experience to do so, but as it is said: nothing valuable comes without pain :-)

I ended up using both PC and Mac (MacOSX) - each has its own pros and cons.

Right now I am looking forward to see "a battle" between G5 and AMD Opteron 64, but just from distance - I am not that rich to experience it by myself .-)

Postby **NeoThermic** » Tue Sep 23, 2003 7:58 am

Quote: from Woelf on 12:21 pm on Aug. 11, 2003[br]A Cycle has a 1 and 0
PC CPU's do calculations on the 1 (or the 0(one of the 2 anyway))
Mac CPU's do calculations at both the 1 and the 0
ergo twice as many calculations in the same amount of cycles

Uh nearly...
If a computer does calculations based on a bit being both 1 and 0, then it is by definition a quantum computer, because by normal standers, you can't have a bit be both, since they have a definitive state, they are either 1 or 0, no question about it.

Now, in a qunatum computer, you wouldn't even use bits, you use QBits, or quantum bits... but that is put of scope here.

Plus, although a computer can get the result it wants from either 1 or 0, it cant use both to mean correct, or else the CPU is wrong 100% of the time [no, not 50%, because after the first mistake, then its impossible for that continuing calculation to be correct.]

NeoThermic

Stewsburntmonkey · Postby **Stewsburntmonkey** » Tue Sep 23, 2003 10:22 am

I believe he is talking (or attempting to) about the RISC-like superscalar architecture of the PowerPC chips. That means they are able to execute two instructions per cycle as opposed to the single instruction the PC chips are limited to.

As for Uriel's comments I think he would be surprised by the effect the hardware uniformity has on the stability of a system. While the OS's permission structure is a large part of that stability as well the hardware standardization is not to be overlooked. :)

Redbaron · Postby **Redbaron** » Thu Sep 25, 2003 4:43 pm

Now I'm am new to this so I was having a browse but being careful after seeing all the links of newbie flaming. However this is a thread I can try to contribute to. I'm an Apple Engineer so on home ground.
Macs run RISC processors rather than CISC which tend to be in the consumer normal PC this means that the MHz comparison isn't really applicable in raw number comparison alone. If you want to compare like for like on that, compare with a PC server or so (of course those PCs cost more than the Macs) The Mac versus PC debate will go on for the life of the 2 pieces of kit but my take is that it's horses for courses, if you want a good community that shares info and has many fanatical followers (excellent for FAQs and stuff) and you want HW that's compatible with your SW and a useable GUI then a Mac is your baby. If you want to play the up to date games and be able to get software off your mates not to mention get cheap HW and SW then a PC is for you.
As regards an Apple Powerbook a good tip is the Apple refurb store -only open on Wed. from 10am GMT you can get up to 45% reduction on new price and with it coming from Apple you have a decent fall back should anything go wrong, shipping free usually takes 24hrs BTO.
As regards the G5 ooh, suit you Sir! I have had the pleasure of test driving a 1.6GHz for the last 10 days & it is damn quick I can give times of functions for any fellow anoraks on request!
Anyone who wants to buy a Mac is welcome to come and help me clear out my loft!!!
I am very pleased with my Mac Uplink although a little manual for us newbies might be nice. I haven't got the hang of the Elliptical doo-dah yet so I'm hoping to hack some banks soon, any link on the InterNIC to transfer any credits to the HSBC!

Trust · Postby **Trust** » Mon Sep 29, 2003 12:41 am

Just a simple thought on the pricing argument, what alternative hardware is there for a mac?
ie: You can shop around for PC components and build one a lot cheaper than a pre-built one, but in all of my time on the internet and other searching methods, I've never seen any individual MAC components...

That's my contribution.

Redbaron · Postby **Redbaron** » Mon Sep 29, 2003 12:00 pm

This is an area to watch. It's true we don't have vast arrays of HW manufacturers making Mac internal stuff. Having said that we have the advantage therefore that as it is all manufactured by Apple originally you can therefore guarantee that it is compatible when it says it is. You can get all the upgrade cards etc. & you can buy components for older machines all over the place so that you could manufacture your own G3 with ebay bits for around £100. Getting hold of parts for machines in warranty is a nightmare and best forgotten you have to go thru' a recognised dealer. Obviously we have the advantage with peripherals that we have PCI and now PCI-X slots as well as USB/USB2/ Firewire & Firewire 800 which opens up a large selection of PC and Mac things to use. Bearing in mind USB 2 is close to full bandwidth at 480 Mbps Firewire can go up to 3200 Mbps and is likely to become the new networking standard to take over from Ethernet in the not too distant future, I think Mac users are to a degree ahead of the game. And for the record I like OSX I think it's much better and far more stable & I don't care who knows it! With any machine it's down to what you know & who you know. If you're not a complete tech head a mac is pretty idiot proof and you can't get caught out. Having tried to work on Compaqs I found that the idea that you can use generic HW doesn't always appear to be the case and after trying to install a Token Ring card once and lost all my data to the blue screen of death I gave up. At least on the Mac if all goes horribly wrong you can boot off your OS CD and copy your data off via network or FW HD then wipe & start again.

Stewsburntmonkey · Postby **Stewsburntmonkey** » Mon Sep 29, 2003 1:46 pm

You can boot off your windows CD and recover data just like a Mac. . . :)

Redbaron · Postby **Redbaron** » Mon Sep 29, 2003 3:39 pm

Do they do that now then, that's reasonably new isn't it? I thought they had problems because there wasn't enough space on the CD for all the assorted drivers that may be in the PC itself. Still not enough to sway me to the Dark Side tho', I like being a Jedi!

Trust · Postby **Trust** » Mon Sep 29, 2003 4:10 pm

Drivers? You need drivers for a hard drive?

Stewsburntmonkey · Postby **Stewsburntmonkey** » Mon Sep 29, 2003 6:02 pm

You need some kind of driver, but you can create enough generic drivers to (along with the bios and the like) to run a system in a limited mode. This makes sense because you need to be able to install the OS at some point so all OS distributions have to have some basic drivers for operation. :)

I want a mac

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