New PC/Mac.......which?

[airshifter]

Personally, I'll wait for Windows 7. Past experience with Vista (from Beta & RTDs to Home Premium/Business) has brought me to this point.

In some ways, it reminds me of Millenium Edition (ME), except that this took 6 years to develop, only to become the resources hog stemming from the basic problem: too much code.

7 will be to Vista what XP was to 2000/ME; the product that should've came forth in the first place, but was pushed aside for loftier reasons.

Bloated code is exactly why it needs the prefetch. So even though memory is cheap, thank the once against tossed together software for creating a need for more or faster hardware.

[Daniel]

Bloated code is exactly why it needs the prefetch. So even though memory is cheap, thank the once against tossed together software for creating a need for more or faster hardware.

And the n00b of the day award goes to...... airshifter for not realising that crappy slow hard drives which have increased in performance at a snails pace in the last 10 years are the reason why Prefetch/Superfetch is around. Back years ago hard drives didn't really have that much trouble keeping up to speed with the RAM but now RAM is waaaay faster than any hard drive out on the market at the moment so prefetch takes advantage of the time your PC is sitting idle and preloads your commonly used programs into the RAM so they can load quickly when you need them.

No matter what OS you run your computer would benefit from Prefetch.

If OSX is so damned good then why doesn't it support the millions upon millions of different bits of hardware Vista and XP do? Why can't I go and build myself a computer with off the shelf components and run OSX? Why am I forced to use such a small cross section of the available hardware out there? Why oh why?

Tune in tomorrow when Daniel shows yet another person's ill conceived, illogical and poorly thought out posts for what they are .... which is total crapola

[christophulus]

If you're set on a laptop then a Mac might not be too bad an idea.. depends on how knowledgeable you are with computers. In my experience a Windows laptop needs a lot of optimising and general TLC to stay speedy, not to mention the large amount of crap that comes pre-installed.

As for a desktop - well, nothing beats the frustration, despair yet eventual joy of building your own... with Vista 64 and 4GB of RAM of course :

[airshifter]

And the n00b of the day award goes to...... airshifter for not realising that crappy slow hard drives which have increased in performance at a snails pace in the last 10 years are the reason why Prefetch/Superfetch is around. Back years ago hard drives didn't really have that much trouble keeping up to speed with the RAM but now RAM is waaaay faster than any hard drive out on the market at the moment so prefetch takes advantage of the time your PC is sitting idle and preloads your commonly used programs into the RAM so they can load quickly when you need them.

No matter what OS you run your computer would benefit from Prefetch.

If OSX is so damned good then why doesn't it support the millions upon millions of different bits of hardware Vista and XP do? Why can't I go and build myself a computer with off the shelf components and run OSX? Why am I forced to use such a small cross section of the available hardware out there? Why oh why?

Tune in tomorrow when Daniel shows yet another person's ill conceived, illogical and poorly thought out posts for what they are .... which is total crapola

Noob of the day. If not for the fact that I've been around computers since they hit the consumer market, you might have a point.

But which takes longer to load, a small efficient program or bloatware? Prefetch exists because the software is crap bloatware.

I haven't mentioned OSX myself, just the shortcomings of Microbloat. You might want to bring that argument up with someone making it.

Tune in tomorrow to learn how one persons experience with real, efficient software proved to him that multitasking environments, true performance, and hosts of other windows features were had well back into the DOS days, with resources all kept at a minimum.

You may be able to fool some of the younger people or those inexperienced in such things. Neither your claimed superior information or your crappy attitude will convince me that facts I know as true are outweighed by someone that loves Microsoft despite their flaws.

[Andrewmcm]

I do tend to agree with airshifter - if any OS is efficient it should be able to do things quickly without the need for caching. Small programs load into memory faster than big ones so minimising the fluff in a program will make it quicker. I'm not sure that this is something that Microsoft have done very well since the release of Windows 95.

Daniel, Apple have been very clever in keeping their hardware supply strictly internal to that provided by the company - they can optimise all their software to work on specific sets of hardware without having to worry about compatibility issues with hardware from 3rd-party vendors. The very reason OS X works so well is because it doesn't support millions and millions of different types of hardware... Of course that means that they can charge a premium for their computers, but it does mean that any software bought for the machines will work straight out of the box.

[Daniel]

I do tend to agree with airshifter - if any OS is efficient it should be able to do things quickly without the need for caching. Small programs load into memory faster than big ones so minimising the fluff in a program will make it quicker. I'm not sure that this is something that Microsoft have done very well since the release of Windows 95.

I have a very long post at home written out at home to answer this. Will post it when I get home

Daniel, Apple have been very clever in keeping their hardware supply strictly internal to that provided by the company - they can optimise all their software to work on specific sets of hardware without having to worry about compatibility issues with hardware from 3rd-party vendors. The very reason OS X works so well is because it doesn't support millions and millions of different types of hardware... Of course that means that they can charge a premium for their computers, but it does mean that any software bought for the machines will work straight out of the box.

This is all true but we're starting to talk about different things. There's a big distinction to be made between OS and platform. Apple has complete control from platform to OS, Microsoft doesn't. That's why there are crap PC's and good PC's. This however is not Microsoft's fault though. You would be better of comparing Mac's with Dell's, HP's and so on. If you build a Mac on crap hardware it'll suffer the same issues that a badly thought out Windows PC. Apples and oranges

[veeten]

This is all true but we're starting to talk about different things. There's a big distinction to be made between OS and platform. Apple has complete control from platform to OS, Microsoft doesn't. That's why there are crap PC's and good PC's. This however is not Microsoft's fault though. You would be better of comparing Mac's with Dell's, HP's and so on. If you build a Mac on crap hardware it'll suffer the same issues that a badly thought out Windows PC. Apples and oranges

Actually, Daniel, it is Microsoft at fault, and, specifically, for the reasons that we've been stating: software bloat.

In your comparison of Macs with HPs and Dells, the difference is that OS-X is specifically tailored to the hardware installed. HP, Gateway & Dell are stuck with an 'all or nothing' approach with Windows installs, meaning that for an HP or Dell that has an Intell build sheet (M-board, Processor, chipset, onboard graphics/sound) you also get drivers and programs that are totally unecessesary, outside of the 'features pack' that manufacturers like to include.

[Garry Walker]

Macs MUST be AVOIDED.

[Dave B]

Macs MUST be AVOIDED.

Is that a late entry for Constructive Post of the Year?