Mac or PC?

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Thats okay cuz this house stuff has taken too much energy away from me to continue on this tit for tat.

I think we're about to devolve to "Oh yeah?" and "SEZ YOU!".

[ladelfina]

Quote:

Steve Jobs is a proponent of closed systems. Think iPod/iTunes for example.

John Tuttle: Yes!

I alluded to that.

I said I like the Apple OS more than I like Apple the company and (as I also said) I think that DRM will be the newer, vaster, battleground. Coming down on people that leak trade secrets I don't see as beyond the pale; that's a completely different kettle of fish.

I came upon this w/r/t Vista and HD content. Fantastic!
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...ista_cost.html
Just a sample:

Quote:

Windows allows you to make a small number of system hardware changes after which you need to renew your Windows license (the exact details of what you can and can't get away with changing has been the subject of much debate). If a particular piece of hardware is affected by a driver revocation (even just temporarily while waiting for an updated driver to work around a content leak) and you swap in a different video card or sound card to avoid the problem, you risk triggering Windows' anti-piracy measures, landing you in even more hot water. If you're forced to swap out a major system component like a motherboard, you've instantly failed WGA validation. Revocation of any kind of motherboard-integrated device (practically every motherboard has some form of onboard audio, and all of the cheaper ones have integrated video) would appear to have a serious negative interaction with Windows' anti-piracy measures.

I don't pretend to understand more than 25% of the above article [AGAIN.. who wants to have to figure this *%$^# out] but it's clear that it's not an Apple-only phenomenon.. to the contrary! The content producers are certainly engaged in a constant war over this with the content pipelines--meaning not just Apple and Microsoft but also Google, YouTube, etc.

I saw recently that C-SPAN slapped a copyright-protection suit on some Democrats that put up C-SPAN footage of Congessional debate on their web sites.

Welcome to the New World Order, everyone!

The long-term winner won't necessarily be who is most lax in this regard, but who is able to make whatever 'controls' (which now seem unavoidable) less onerous, and optimally near-transparent for the end user. Will M$ be able to do that, given their multi-stage licensing and free-for-all market for peripherals? Or will it be Apple (perhaps equally obnoxious theoretically, but less obnoxious in a day-to-day sense)? Or will someone else come along with something better? Or will hackers win? Boh!? I wouldn't know where to put my money, but I would put "hackers" or "Brand X" over M$ definitely (and over Apple quite possibly).

---
Ahh, CFB, you're getting me where it hurts! My sis, who has a PC, owns Apple stock.
I don't! I was insufficiently faithful/partisan/drunk-on-the-Apple-Kool-Aid and lost out bigtime!

If they start planning a "surge", however, should I buy in?

--
And, if I get the little Alfa, how will I remember where to insert the key?
.. and will it have the seatwarmers, the ones that make you feel like you've pissed yourself?

[cute fuzzy bunny]

The author of what you quoted above is floating somewhere between ignorant and fearmongering. Only very major changes to a system will trigger the windows antipiracy stuff...a motherboard MIGHT if its hugely different...a video card will not. It takes one 30 second telephone call to resolve the matter.

As far as the seatwarmers...

[John Tuttle]

ladelfina, you can't believe everything you read. While hardly a testament to Dell reliability, my Dell Desktop is on its third motherboard and second hard drive and I haven't heard anything from Bill revoking my Windows License. For what it's worth, this all happened in the warranty period and the hard drive didn't really fail.

[youbet]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cute Fuzzy Bunny It takes one 30 second telephone call to resolve the matter.

[JB]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ladelfina I came upon this w/r/t Vista and HD content. Fantastic! http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...ista_cost.html

This article is full of conjecture. It's unfortunate that the media industry is pushing end to end encryption for digital content. Microsoft implemented (and licenced) technology so that windows users can playback HD content using Windows Vista. How do you play back HD DVD on a Macintosh? I don't think you can! I don't know what their plans are but I expect that Apple will implement similar technology so that the Mac can playback content that's protected using HdcP.

This reminds me of the recent Apple commercial where the PC guy complains about Vista's authorization features. The sad truth is that OS-X does the same thing (which is a good thing).

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Quote:

Originally Posted by youbet

Well...30 seconds from when they finally get you off of hold and you finish explaining what you want in pigeon english

Actually I had to make the call once when I was tearing up a homebrew machine a couple of years ago, and I actually got a guy on the phone immediately after I hit the "press 5 for activation problems" and the dude fixed it in just a minute or so.

Nobody was more surprised than I was.

[BUM]

New lappie a Toshiba Tecra A6-EZ6311 arrived yesterday WOOHOO. I'm a happy guy, so far.

First impressions:

First impression HAS to be the money spent right? $839 big ones , free shipping , no tax .

The 14.1" screen size really rocks! DW has the 15.something and its just too big IMO. The 14" size and XP was the MUST HAVE part of my purchase decision.

Windows XPPro is more than I wanted but no way I was signing up for Guinea-Pig-Vista-Boy (but I got the upgrade coupon for later).

WiFi worked right out of the box.

Making my own Recovery CD's is a small pain... its a nine CD set.

My lap isn't as hot as it used to be (pro or con?).

After reading all the above posts, I'm not sure if this lappie will get me more chicks, but hey, who needs them? psssst... the salesman told me THIS machine gets the really good porn 8)

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Yours is similar to mine, albeit a newer model.

So far absolutely no problems in over a year of use. Mine came with a recovery disk but I can make my own onto dvd rather than cd.

Only thing I did was add another 512MB of decent inexpensive RAM, which did make the area where the RAM sits a bit warm to the touch.

[BUM]

I hear ya on that one CFB. Prolly add the RAM when its time to (shudder) add vista.

Now for a really dumb question: I have a few dead VAIO laptops that likely have good hard drives. Can't I remove those drives and buy a USB thingy that will connect to my laptop allow to get that precious old crap back?

[cute fuzzy bunny]

You absolutely positively can do that. You need an external 2.5" external drive bay. Fish the old drives out, screw them into the bay, plug it into the USB port and it'll come up as an external drive. You can copy all the stuff over, then format the largest of the batch and use it for an external backup drive or a way to move lots of files from one place to another.

You'd want something like this:

http://www.microcenter.com/byos/byos...duct_id=224044

Make sure any enclosure supports usb 2.0, firewire is nice to have as its a bit faster and a bit less CPU load on the computer..if you have a firewire port, and its a good idea to get one with a small fan and/or an aluminum case that makes contact with the drive so it can act as a heatsink.

[yelnad]

I was reading the recent issue of some PC magazine last night (although I can't remember which one) and they recommended a Mac over the PCs listed, IF you have the money and don't mind spending it. I think the PCs only beat the Mac in one of the 4-5 categories listed. I'll have to dig it up.

[whitestick]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cute Fuzzy Bunny You absolutely positively can do that.

One thing to watch out for, and I confess that I don't know Sony Vaios, is that many of the newer laptops are using SATA drives, rather then IDE drives. If the Sony uses those, then you may have to find an external "thingy" that supports the SATA drives. I haven't found one yet, myself, but I haven't been looking too hard. I recently ran into this issue with an HP/Compaq Laptop.
No need to mention standardized hardware from the Mac side is there ?

[cute fuzzy bunny]

True that many newer laptops are using sata disks. I was guessing that the dead sony laptops with 'precious old stuff' werent a newer generation system.

There are external drive units that take sata drives and present either an esata or firewire/usb connection option.

Whats standardized on the mac that isnt available on almost any PC made in the last 5 years? Most PC's have USB 2.0 ports and many, especially laptops, come with firewire/1394 ports.

[whitestick]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cute Fuzzy Bunny Whats standardized on the mac that isnt available on almost any PC made in the last 5 years? Most PC's have USB 2.0 ports and many, especially laptops, come with firewire/1394 ports.

I was speaking of the SATA drives that they have been using for, I believe, the last 5 years. No proof, as I'm going off of memory.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

imacs got sata as of around mid 2004, some powermacs got them mid 2003, the ibook/powerbook never had them, but the newer macbooks got them in 2006.

Pretty much the same roadmap/timeframe as the windows machines.