A question for the 'Mac-ies' out there

[kjohnson]

Anyhoot.... I may just have to try and build a Mac for my next computer. Are they buildable(honest question, I really dont know), cause I build my own computers. I love doing that, kinda satisfying in a way...

search for hackintosh on your favorite search engine. it is doable, but since apple still is very controlling about their hardware, there is work that needs to be done. still proprietary, just have switched from using an ibm ppc processor and related chipset to something that was more economically feasible : Intel. Still technically supports only a few processors on a specific chipset. in all honesty, if you want the macish look, but want to build yourself, use kbuntu (ubuntu with kde gui)

for me, i'll stick with windows and linux and maybe play with doing a hackintosh. i grew up on apple/mac, and i had it crash way more than any windows machine.

[Ivan]

I have played with ubuntnu. Used to love linux for the tinkering around factor, and the free stuff that works better than M$. Now days, I have too many projects going, so I just use winxp. Havent even tried Vista yet.

Used to like Red Hat 6 and Mandrake as well. Tried some of the debian based stuff, but really didnt "get" it. Linux has changed soooo much. Do people still use the Gnome desktop, it used to be THE one to have, then KDE started coming up, and last time I messed with it was really slick.

Great... Now I am waxing nostalgic about running XFree86config on my little P200 toshiba laptop and partitioning "around" the bad spots in the hard drive, trying to keep that thing going for as long as possible before it crashed, since I didnt have any funds for another computer. hehe. those were the days....

[kjohnson]

gnome : kde
star trek : star wars
kirk : picard

you know how the battle goes,

[Jerry]

I started off with a WorkSlate, loaded programs from micro-cassettes. That was in 1977 or 1978 or so. Had 3 programs, a word processor, a spreadsheet, and I think a database. Nifty little device. When I say I have been at this since 1985, that is when I started making a living in the computer world. I had tinkered with it long before that.

Which has been my point from the start. Macs are limited. Period. They are great for people who do not need real computing power.

Absolutly false. For an unbiased evaluation of mac VS PC, see this article:
http://www.pc.com/learn/beforeyoubuy...rneeds/macvspc
In some areas the Mac ranks better, in some the PC has an edge. Note this is from PC magazine.

As far as raw power, here is another comparison:
Microprocessor MTOPS
Intel 3.66 GHz Xeon (or Pentium 4) 14,994
AMD dual 250 Opteron 16,400
AMD quad 850 Opteron 32,000
Apple 1.25 GHz G4 Power PC
(e.g. eMac) 17,917
Apple 1.67 GHz G4 Power PC
(e.g. PowerBook) 23,941
Apple dual 1.42 GHz G4 Power PC 38,340
Apple 1.8 GHz G5 Power PC
(e.g. iMac) 21,753
Apple dual 2.7 GHz G5 Power PC 60,750

Source: http://www.macvspc.info/pages/09.html
The G5 Mac dual-processor has almost twice the computing power of an Opteron quad 850.

Consider this May, 2008 performance report summary:

The Verdict: Apple
Mac: In both the laptop and desktop showdowns, Apple’s computers were the winners. Oddly, the big difference didn’t come in our user ratings, where we expected the famously friendly Mac interface to shine. Our respondents liked the look and feel of both operating systems but had a slight preference toward OS X. In our speed trials, however, Leopard OS trounced Vista in all-important tasks such as boot-up, shutdown and program-launch times. We even tested Vista on the Macs using Apple’s platform-switching Boot Camp software—and found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did.

PC: Simply put, Vista proved to be a more sluggish operating system than Leopard. Our PCs installed some software faster, but in general they were slower in our time trials. Plus, both PCs showed weaker performance on third-party benchmarks than the Macs. Our biggest surprise, however, was that PCs were not the relative bargains we expected them to be. The Asus M51sr costs the same as a MacBook, while the Gateway One actually costs $300 more than an iMac. That means for the price of the Gateway you could buy an iMac, boost its hard drive to match the Gateway’s, purchase a copy of Vista to boot—and still save $100.


Detailed Benchmark Scores: Desktops
Benchmark Test iMac 20-in screen; 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo; 1GB DDR2 Gateway One 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo; 3GB DDR2
Geekbench
Overall 3180 (2651) 1903
Integer 2766 (3398) 2324
Floating Point 4460 (2675) 1713
Memory 2299 (1720) 1597
Stream 1916 (1819) 1707
Cinebench
1 CPU 2619 (2429) 1979
2 CPUs 4840 (4641) 3739
Graphics 4819 (3834) 2913

*Scores in parentheses are for Macs running Vista in Boot Camp.


Detailed Benchmark Scores: Laptops
Benchmark Test MacBook 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo; 1GB DDR2 (Out of production) MacBook 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo (Penryn); 3GB DDR2 Asus M51 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo; 2GB DDR2
Geekbench
Overall 2885 (2465) 3156 (2657) 2445
Integer 2536 (3099) 2734 (3421) 3102
Floating Point 3959 (2429) 4395 (2660) 2444
Memory 2156 (1730) 2378 (1785) 1636
Stream 1809 (1850) 1853 (1717) 1772
Cinebench
1 CPU 2409 2741 (2561) 2214
2 CPUs 4468 5216 (4838) 4198
Graphics 2027 2040 (835) 2495

*Scores in parentheses are for Macs running Vista in Boot Camp.

Boot Camp is a Windows emulator package for Macs. Note that Macs running Boot Camp still ran Vista faster than the PCs did.
Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...25.html?page=1

But, to be fair, if you have any recent review showing that the Mac does not have "real comuting power" I would like to see it.

[Crazcnuk]

lol, I remember those.

My brother had a Commodore 64 and he was amzed at how the CoCo basic ran circles around C-basic.

I used to play P-51B FLight attack Simulator, over the phone at 300baud on a machine with 64k ram!

It said right on the front that there wasn't enough ram to calculate real bullet trajecotries, but the flight dynamics were very good!