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Frank Stearns Frank Stearns is offline
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Les Cargill writes:

Meindert Sprang wrote:
"Frank wrote in message

snip

Yet, there is a world of difference in stability in favour of the OS X.....
With the difference in revenues and market share between Microsoft and Apple
in favour of MS, one should expect that Windows would be more stable than OS
X.


Money cannot buy stability. This being said, I've had XP systems that
showed stability comparable to Linux.


Part of the issue -- and I'm sympathetic to a point -- is that everybody (SW/HW
product makers) and their duck and their duck's duck can plug something into a PC,
where the Mac is a bit more restrictive. Linux seems to invite folks willing to get
under the hood and tinker. So if something blows up, they don't mind; they just try
to figure out what went wrong and fix it.

With a wide open Windows system, and many vendors either not understanding the OS
internal rules or not playing by the rules, things go haywire. At the same time, I
fault MS for not making such a wide-open environment more bullet proof/idiot proof
when it comes to 3rd party HW/SW development. They've made some major improvements
in recent OS versions but jeez, some of that stuff should have been done from the
very beginning.

The four XP systems here are pretty stable, but from the beginning each had been
gone through and lots of start-up crapola was disabled. The DAW platform has really
been stripped down, and it (not surprisingly) is the best of the bunch.

Never used Vista, but heard it was a major step backward, whereas supposedly Win 7
is better than XP and way better than Vista.

Never used Linux but spent a lot of time on true UNIX (both major flavors). Amazing
stability.

Frank
Mobile Audio
--
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Neil Gould Neil Gould is offline
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Frank Stearns wrote:

Never used Vista, but heard it was a major step backward, whereas
supposedly Win 7 is better than XP and way better than Vista.

Technologically, Win 7 is Vista version 2, and neither is even remotely
similar to XP under the hood. The Vista systems that we have are as stable
and functional as the Win 7, but both Vista and Win 7 are very fat,
comparatively slow, and more restrictive than any Windows before them.

--
best,

Neil


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Les Cargill[_4_] Les Cargill[_4_] is offline
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Meindert Sprang wrote:
"Frank wrote in message

snip

Yet, there is a world of difference in stability in favour of the OS X.....
With the difference in revenues and market share between Microsoft and Apple
in favour of MS, one should expect that Windows would be more stable than OS
X.


Money cannot buy stability. This being said, I've had XP systems that
showed stability comparable to Linux.

Meindert



--
Les Cargill
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William Sommerwerck William Sommerwerck is offline
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To Frank...

I learned on a manual Olympia (what a great typewriter!) and typed on my
father's Smith-Corona portable electric. Interestingly, Consumer Report's
testers considered these as having the best feel.

Men seem to like typewriters with a long keythrow (pound, pound, pound!),
while women like the short throw of the Selectric. (I'm surprised some
dislike it.) It took me years to get accustomed to the Selectric.

The original IBM PC keyboard is the greatest typing keyboard ever (manual,
electric, or computer). The long throw and strong feedback from the "bending
spring" mechanism let me type faster and more-accurately. There are at least
two companies making such keyboards, identical (or nearly so) to the IBM.

I keep meaning to buy one, but they run around $100 and there are no
cordless versions.


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Arny Krueger Arny Krueger is offline
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"Neil Gould" wrote in message

Frank Stearns wrote:

Never used Vista, but heard it was a major step
backward, whereas supposedly Win 7 is better than XP and
way better than Vista.

Technologically, Win 7 is Vista version 2, and neither is
even remotely similar to XP under the hood. The Vista
systems that we have are as stable and functional as the
Win 7, but both Vista and Win 7 are very fat,
comparatively slow, and more restrictive than any Windows
before them.


I loaded up a Celeron laptop with 1.5 GB of RAM and a 40 GB hard drive with
win 7, and then with a 120 GB hard drive and XP. Pretty much the same
performance, even though XP had the advantage.




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William Sommerwerck William Sommerwerck is offline
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"Soundhaspriority" wrote in message
...

This one is very nice: http://techreport.com/articles.x/5054


I doubt that it's "zippy" in any sense of the word (other than cosmetic).

Once you've typed on an IBM computer keyboard, you're never really happy
with anything else.


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On 18 touko, 11:17, John Williamson
wrote:

While I might not be able to get a Mac to fall over, I have definitely
broken Linux and Windows in interesting ways just by using them.

Apparently all you need to do to get a mac to jam proper is stick in
some piece of USB gear that isn't quite standard or wrongly formatted.
I used a mac at work for a year and it was most infuriating, sometimes
the bugger would lose the mouse or something, and had to be booted
before it reappeared, or would halt completely upon putting in an USB
stick or something. Never had so many IT issues as with that damned
mac.

As for windoze's hibernate...it works well if the machine is made of
fully MS compliant parts. Very few machines are, or at least there are
some 3rd party drivers installed almost always. I write this on a
Samsung notebook and while it's not even MS compliant, hibernate works
perfectly. Sometimes it can go months without a reboot, but I tend to
reboot it sometimes anyway just in case.
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On 19 touko, 18:02, "Arny Krueger" wrote:

I loaded up a Celeron laptop with 1.5 GB of RAM and a 40 GB hard drive with
win 7, and then with a 120 GB hard drive and XP. *Pretty much the same
performance, even though XP had the advantage.


If the hardware is modern enough, w7 can use it much more efficiently
and usually at least seem faster than Xp on same hardware.

I have a 3,7GHz dualcore (overclocked) w/1066Mhz (overclocked)
dualchannel ram & a 1G ATI (overclocked) displaycard...and changing xp
to w7 made it so much faster and more stable it's hard to believe. It
has not crashed once except due to the displaycard starting to be on
the fringe and acting up when cold...but, am upgrading the entire PC
soon to something a bit faster&modern.

I think the biggest difference, however is not in w7 / Xp difference
in general although w7 clearly boots much faster - the overall
greatest change probably came from the old system being 32bit and the
new OS is 64bit.
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Neil Gould Neil Gould is offline
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DeeAa wrote:

I think the biggest difference, however is not in w7 / Xp difference
in general although w7 clearly boots much faster - the overall
greatest change probably came from the old system being 32bit and the
new OS is 64bit.

I think the biggest difference is that Vista & w7 take better advantage of
multi-core processors than XP or earlier, so some OS-level tasks run much
faster.

--
Neil



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geoff geoff is offline
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Meindert Sprang wrote:

Yet, there is a world of difference in stability in favour of the OS
X..... With the difference in revenues and market share between
Microsoft and Apple in favour of MS, one should expect that Windows
would be more stable than OS X.


No - it's relative "openness" compromises that, both PC hardware and WIn
software-wise.

There was a mactime when you had to buy pretty much everything from Apple.

geoff




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Bill Graham Bill Graham is offline
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William Sommerwerck wrote:
"Soundhaspriority" wrote in message
...

This one is very nice: http://techreport.com/articles.x/5054


I doubt that it's "zippy" in any sense of the word (other than
cosmetic).

Once you've typed on an IBM computer keyboard, you're never really
happy with anything else.


The old electric typewriter keyboards had what they called a, "restoring
bail", that came up as soon as you hit a key and pushed that key (and all
the other keys) back up where they relatched. The operator felt this restore
action, and it gave their keyboards a feel that they liked. Part of the
reason for this was that they had a good positive feedback that they had
actually hit a key and the machine knew it and responded to it. Also, it was
impossible to hit more than one key at a time. The keyboards they have
today, (like the one I am typing on right now) do not have this, "action". I
can hit two keys at the same time, and it frequently types both characters
when I do so......

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Bill Graham Bill Graham is offline
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Scott Dorsey wrote:
In article ,
William Sommerwerck wrote:
"Soundhaspriority" wrote in message
...

This one is very nice: http://techreport.com/articles.x/5054


I doubt that it's "zippy" in any sense of the word (other than
cosmetic).

Once you've typed on an IBM computer keyboard, you're never really
happy with anything else.


And see, the sad thing is that when the IBM PC came out, everybody
made fun of the crappy keyboard on it. The key feel was not very
good, and
a lot of the keys (like the control key) were in weird places. Jerry
Pournelle wrote in Byte complaining about "how can the people who
came up with the Selectric make something so lousy?" Everyone
compared it to the (much nicer) IBM 3270 and IBM 3101 terminal
keyboards.

What is sad is how much lower our standards for keyboard quality have
dropped since then.
--scott


Yes, but you could still take a selectric keyboard, with a restoring bail
and adapt it to a computer. Then you would have the best of both worlds.

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Bill Graham Bill Graham is offline
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Neil Gould wrote:
DeeAa wrote:

I think the biggest difference, however is not in w7 / Xp difference
in general although w7 clearly boots much faster - the overall
greatest change probably came from the old system being 32bit and the
new OS is 64bit.

I think the biggest difference is that Vista & w7 take better
advantage of multi-core processors than XP or earlier, so some
OS-level tasks run much faster.


I have a friend who is a software engineer who says that the Windows
operating system is defective because it has a, "single point of failure"
(as he puts it.) He says the "registry" is this point.



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William Sommerwerck William Sommerwerck is offline
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"Bill Graham" wrote in message
...

Yes, but you could still take a Selectric keyboard, with a restoring
bail and adapt it to a computer. Then you would have the best of both
worlds.


I don't know what you mean by a "restoring bail".

The IBM computer keyboards used a spring that moved fairly easily, then
developed higher resistance. The "feel" is utterly different from a
Selectric keyboard. The former gives a great deal of feedback, whereas the
Selectric has almost none.


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Bill Graham Bill Graham is offline
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William Sommerwerck wrote:
"Bill Graham" wrote in message
...

Yes, but you could still take a Selectric keyboard, with a restoring
bail and adapt it to a computer. Then you would have the best of both
worlds.


I don't know what you mean by a "restoring bail".

The IBM computer keyboards used a spring that moved fairly easily,
then developed higher resistance. The "feel" is utterly different
from a Selectric keyboard. The former gives a great deal of feedback,
whereas the Selectric has almost none.


The keyboards that I worked on back in the 60's, had keys that latched, and
tripped when you depressed a key. As soon as you did this, a restoring bail
came up (two solonoids at either end brought it up) and it relatched all the
keys on the keyboard, which would remain latched unless and until you
deporessed another key. All the electric typewriters that IBM made had this
restoring bail, so they all had this feel to them.

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bob[_5_] bob[_5_] is offline
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On Thu, 19 May 2011 10:58:30 +0200, "Meindert Sprang"
wrote:

A MacBook Pro is not even twice as expensive as a hi-end "windows" laptop.
OS X compares in price to Windows 7, although an OS X upgrade can be bought
for 1/5 of the price of a Windows upgrade.

Yet, there is a world of difference in stability in favour of the OS X.....
With the difference in revenues and market share between Microsoft and Apple
in favour of MS, one should expect that Windows would be more stable than OS
X.


i'm a total rookie hobbyist, but i've been involved in 4
computer-based recording sessions. 2 protools on macs and 2 windows
(plus my mostly successful windows tinkering for years...) and the
macs messed up big time both times (once losing an entire day somehow)
and the windows machines were perfect. i think that stability thing is
from machine to machine. not mac more than pc or necessarily vice
versa either... but i'm glad yours works well. i haven't been able to
crash my xp machine in almost 6 years now.

just my 2 cents... and also related have any other windoze pc types
tried mac keyboards? i bought a mac usb keyboard and absolutely love
it. it works perfectly with the winxp machine... definitely my
favourite thing about macs.

just an observation, one really odd thing about macs is that whenever
people have problems with them, they update twitter and facebook about
it. i've never seen a facebook update about someone's pc hardrive
failing. is it just me? or have others noticed this?
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david correia david correia is offline
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In article ,
"Arny Krueger" wrote:

"Trevor" wrote in message
u
"Meindert Sprang" wrote in
message ...
A MacBook Pro is not even twice as expensive as a hi-end
"windows" laptop.


Considering they are almost identical hardware wise, that
is a complete rip off however. And the Mac die-hards
can't even say how much better their Motorola CPU's are
than Intel any more! :-)


Yes, at this point a Mac is just a PC with a very limited amount of options
for hardware, particularly on the system board.



You're conveniently omitting what's always made a Mac a Mac: the OS.

It's like comparing Android Pads with iPads. The hardware ain't that
different. But the OS sure is.

And speaking of limited options, is there a PC vendor shipping
Thunderbolt I/O, FireWire 800 & USB 2 standard or who's portable case is
milled from a solid piece of aluminum?

These are standard in current MacBooks, except for the previous gen
white Macbook still shipping. And the audio in and out is both digital
and analog. Standard.

Limited indeed.

(Even the tiny MacBook Air will be adding a Thunderbolt port next month.
The Air doesn't have digital audio in/out or FW 'tho. It's made to be
tiny.)


You guys are welcome to rub each other on the back and together sing
your songs of love for your PC's. But don't try and say that today, all
computers are the same. They are the same the way all cars are the same.

I personally know more than a few long-time Window's users who are
buying Macs. I bet you guys do too. The reason is simple: well made
computers, the local Apple Store, and OS X.

My brother in law, who makes his living installing huge PC networks all
over the country, a guy who always hated Macs, **** canned the HP's &
Dells and bought his wife and kids MacBooks. Something I would have
*never* imagined a few years ago.

Another brother in law, who also is a networking nerd, finally broke
down and bought his kids iPod Touches for Christmas. But he still hates
Apple & Macs ; Said he won't buy an iPad until MSFT ships one.

We'll see ...




David Correia
www.Celebrationsound.com




p.s. If I may - for decades now, I've wondered about some PC user's near
obsession with Macs. Cuz personally, I don't give a **** about PC's. I'm
happy with what I got. I don't care about a tons of things I don't own.
I don't care about boats. I don't care about European soccer, Arena
Football. I don't care about Behringer gear. Who's got the time?

It's always kinda reminded me of the famous Hindu story, the Ramayana.
In it, the enemy of Rama, a bad dude called Ravana, is always thinking
about Rama. Which of course makes him, in a bizarre way, a great devotee
of Rama.
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"david correia" wrote in message
...
You're conveniently omitting what's always made a Mac a Mac: the OS.


Right a VERY expensive flavour of Unix then.

Personally I don't give a **** about the operating system as long as the
software I need to use runs on it OK. The fact there is far more available
for Windows is a plus, as is the much lower hardware cost. What others
choose to pay for some notion of convenience to them is their own business
however.

Trevor.






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Peter Larsen[_3_] Peter Larsen[_3_] is offline
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William Sommerwerck wrote:

[restart required on some installations]

This is, in my view, one of the few legitimate "major gripes" about
Windows.


Much reduced, only driver updates and "run before log-on" services require
reboots now.

Its memory management is atrocious.


There is a nifty lil' util that can tweak it to force unloading unused
..dll's, they are usually allowed to hang rouund after used because most
systems does tend to use them again, but if you are ram starved they DO clog
the system up.

Though I can sometimes
go two or three weeks before having to restart it, the system
gradually slows down as the swapfile expands to an unreasonable size,


? - set it to no more than ram x 120% - or less even, with "enough ram"
disable or set to 512 megs.

and memory becomes so "clogged" that programs will crash for no
obvious reason.


Programs that crash may in fact be an error of the program, and not of the
OS.

Would that a restart were required only once a year.


Had a guest engineeer @work yesterday, he told me about a NT4 server he had
been servicing, it had been running constantly without restart for 7 years
and had never been rebooted nor turned off since original installation.
Admittedly hobbyists boxes are a different ballgame, because they click on
web icons and install stuff they really know only the salestalk about.

The designers either didn't/don't care, or assume all users shut down
at night and restart in the morning. My machine is on all the time.


The last windows version that needed a daily reboot was win9x, the end of
the "95 and derivatives range". The NT range never did and all models are NT
derivatives now. It did suffer from annoying reboot requirements after any
install that necessitated re-reading the registry, but that is about fixed
by now, possibly because they learned from how the way their webserver
adjusts to changes in setup.

What problem do you solve by letting the box run 24-7? - are you on the low
side of the required CO2 release or something? - it has a lot of merit to
hibernate a box, but some boxes should indeed be turned off or left running,
but leaving them running requires that it solves a problem, otherwise it is
just senseless pollution.


Kind regards

Peter Larsen




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Peter Larsen[_3_] Peter Larsen[_3_] is offline
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Bill Graham wrote:

Neil Gould wrote:


DeeAa wrote:


I think the biggest difference, however is not in w7 / Xp difference
in general although w7 clearly boots much faster - the overall
greatest change probably came from the old system being 32bit and
the new OS is 64bit.


I think the biggest difference is that Vista & w7 take better
advantage of multi-core processors than XP or earlier, so some
OS-level tasks run much faster.


I have a friend who is a software engineer who says that the Windows
operating system is defective because it has a, "single point of
failure" (as he puts it.) He says the "registry" is this point.


It is fairly well protected so it is not really a "single point", it has
backup-versions, but yes, for a neat example of how to handle software
installation and setup AmigaOS comes to mind and yes, a win-box that has
registry corruption is not always recoverable unless you have what is
technically known as "A backup", at least of the "System Data".

Kind regards

Peter Larsen



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William Sommerwerck William Sommerwerck is offline
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"Bill Graham" wrote in message
...

The keyboards that I worked on back in the 60's, had keys that latched,

and
tripped when you depressed a key. As soon as you did this, a restoring

bail
came up (two solonoids at either end brought it up) and it relatched all

the
keys on the keyboard, which would remain latched unless and until you
deporessed another key. All the electric typewriters that IBM made had

this
restoring bail, so they all had this feel to them.


Interesting. That's new to me.

I assume that mechanism was needed to prevent the mechanism from moving the
"golf ball" until the previous character had been printed.


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William Sommerwerck William Sommerwerck is offline
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"Peter Larsen" wrote in message
k...

The last Windows version that needed a daily reboot was win9x, the end of
the "95 and derivatives range". The NT range never did and all models are

NT
derivatives now. It did suffer from annoying reboot requirements after any
install that necessitated re-reading the registry, but that is about fixed
by now, possibly because they learned from how the way their webserver
adjusts to changes in setup.


I'm running 2000 Pro -- which is an NT4 derivative. It's highly stable,
suffering only from a slot swap file enlargement that slows things down.

I normally have many applications running. Yesterday I so "abused" the OS
with heavy graphics processing that multiple programs hung and I had to
restart.

Microsoft has never paid sufficient attention to the problems of producing a
"crash-proof" machine that never (well, hardly ever) needs to be restarted.


What problem do you solve by letting the box run 24-7? - are you
on the low side of the required CO2 release or something?


It solves three problems. I never have to wait for the computer to boot. The
internal temperature is more stable. The hard drives do not have to start
and stop.

I am working on the assumption that (more-) constant temperature = better
reliability. The machine is nearly 11 years old, and I've no problems. (ASUS
P4T motherboard, by the way. My next motherboard will be ASUS.)


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"Trevor" wrote in message
u...

"Meindert Sprang" wrote in message
...
A MacBook Pro is not even twice as expensive as a hi-end "windows"

laptop.

Considering they are almost identical hardware wise, that is a complete

rip
off however. And the Mac die-hards can't even say how much better their
Motorola CPU's are than Intel any more! :-)


I don't know if it is a real rip-off, but I do know that the mechanical
construction of a MacBook is far better than the average high-end laptop.
And of course, you pay for the style of the beast. They are flatter, last
longer and better build quality. So although they're more expensive, it's a
good investment. I'm not a Mac die-hard, I use Windows PC's as well, but
comparing both worlds on a day to day basis makes me believe Macs *are* of
better quality.

OS X compares in price to Windows 7, although an OS X upgrade can be
bought
for 1/5 of the price of a Windows upgrade.


And a dozen other flavours of Linux for the PC are free!


I know, but think of the price of Linux when all developers were paid...
therefore I deliberately left Linux out of this comparison.

But hey, we all get to spend our own money
however we want, no need to convince yourself that you made the best

choice
unless you really think you might not have :-)


True. To each his own truth :-)

Meindert




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"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
IME Windows XP and 7 are utterly reliable provided that you have decent
hardware software and drivers runing on or under them.


Might be true... In my experience (my kids laptops), XP was crap and Win &
is much better. Same hardware. Wether that may be caused by a better driver
set in Win 7, I don't know. But the fact is, they're not complaining anymore
about windows grinding to a halt after a few months which I saw a lot with
XP. Not on every PC but very often on laptops.

I have friends and relatives with Macs and they seem to spend at last as
much time, but a lot more money on broken hardware as I do.


Mmm... different experience here. I just replaced my battery after 4 years
of every day use. No other faults.

Meindert


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"Les Cargill" wrote in message
...
Meindert Sprang wrote:
"Frank wrote in message

snip

Yet, there is a world of difference in stability in favour of the OS

X.....
With the difference in revenues and market share between Microsoft and

Apple
in favour of MS, one should expect that Windows would be more stable

than OS
X.


Money cannot buy stability. This being said, I've had XP systems that
showed stability comparable to Linux.


True. But money well spent on decent software engineers can. It's just where
you put your priorities as a company. Time-to-market and biggest market
share or good quality... If your PHB says: ship this code and you know
there are bugs, what do you do?

Meindert


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Mike Rivers Mike Rivers is offline
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On 5/19/2011 2:26 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:

And see, the sad thing is that when the IBM PC came out, everybody made
fun of the crappy keyboard on it. The key feel was not very good, and
a lot of the keys (like the control key) were in weird places.


The high end word processor at the time was the IBM Displaywriter and
the original PC keyboard was designed to feel like the one n the
Displaywriter.

Pournelle wrote in Byte complaining about "how can the people who came up
with the Selectric make something so lousy?"


Remember that the QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow down typists so
the mechanism of a mechanical typewriter could keep up.

--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be operated without
a passing knowledge of computing, although it seems that it can be
operated without a passing knowledge of audio" - John Watkinson

Drop by http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com now and then
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"david correia" wrote in message

In article
, "Arny
Krueger" wrote:

"Trevor" wrote in message
u
"Meindert Sprang" wrote
in message
...
A MacBook Pro is not even twice as expensive as a
hi-end "windows" laptop.

Considering they are almost identical hardware wise,
that is a complete rip off however. And the Mac
die-hards can't even say how much better their Motorola
CPU's are than Intel any more! :-)


Yes, at this point a Mac is just a PC with a very
limited amount of options for hardware, particularly on
the system board.


You're conveniently omitting what's always made a Mac a
Mac: the OS.


OS's are only really important to people who basically know only one.

Many of us who have been forced to wean themselves from their first love,
take 'em all with a grain of salt. They are not the same, but what really
matters is the apps.

It's like comparing Android Pads with iPads. The hardware
ain't that different. But the OS sure is.


Different, but how different and in which important ways?

And speaking of limited options, is there a PC vendor
shipping Thunderbolt I/O, FireWire 800 & USB 2 standard
or who's portable case is milled from a solid piece of
aluminum?


Who cares? Obviously, you've got one or more MacIntosh IVs plugged into
both arms. Once a Mac true believer, always a true believer, guess.

No USB3 support? Send it back!

These are standard in current MacBooks, except for the
previous gen white Macbook still shipping. And the audio
in and out is both digital and analog. Standard.


They are probably all 2-channel, except maybe the digital output, right?

Limited indeed.


Unlike many people I still count my change when I break a $20. One doesn't
get a lot of change back at the Mac store.

If you want to go the high end route, be my guest. Not my gig in life.

(Even the tiny MacBook Air will be adding a Thunderbolt
port next month. The Air doesn't have digital audio
in/out or FW 'tho. It's made to be tiny.)


If you haven't noticed, Thunderbolt ports are Apple's new proprietary
gimmick. How long before M-Audio supports them?

The first question about Thundebolt on this forum is, how does it relate to
audio? I can't its speed having any audio purpose for audio as we now know
it.

You guys are welcome to rub each other on the back and
together sing your songs of love for your PC's. But don't
try and say that today, all computers are the same. They
are the same the way all cars are the same.


I've never said that all computers are the same, I'll leave you to burn with
that straw man. They are all different.

I personally know more than a few long-time Window's
users who are buying Macs. I bet you guys do too. The
reason is simple: well made computers, the local Apple
Store, and OS X.


My brother in law, who makes his living installing huge
PC networks all over the country, a guy who always hated
Macs, **** canned the HP's & Dells and bought his wife
and kids MacBooks. Something I would have *never*
imagined a few years ago.


He must be rolling in the cash. Good for him.

Another brother in law, who also is a networking nerd,
finally broke down and bought his kids iPod Touches for
Christmas. But he still hates Apple & Macs ; Said he
won't buy an iPad until MSFT ships one.


We'll see ...



We've been through Apple crazes before. There was a big one after the
introduction of the Mac. Like many such things, it passed.

Apple has a good chance of being a one horse show, and that one horse's name
is Steve Jobs. Anybody looked at his medical records lately?


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Arny Krueger Arny Krueger is offline
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Default Another PC Oddity

"Bill Graham" wrote in message

Neil Gould wrote:
DeeAa wrote:

I think the biggest difference, however is not in w7 /
Xp difference in general although w7 clearly boots much
faster - the overall greatest change probably came from
the old system being 32bit and the new OS is 64bit.


I think the biggest difference is that Vista & w7 take
better advantage of multi-core processors than XP or
earlier, so some OS-level tasks run much faster.


I have a friend who is a software engineer who says that
the Windows operating system is defective because it has
a, "single point of failure" (as he puts it.) He says the
"registry" is this point.


I'm trying to figure out what he wants. Does he want multiple, redundant
in-RAM registries? Why?

If you don't know, the registry on a Windows system that has been
operational for any amount of time has been backed up on disk many, many
times. The backups are mostly a little different, but only a little.

Redundant disk is readily available for windows, if that is what you want.

Is your friend really aware of his options?




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Neil Gould Neil Gould is offline
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Default Another PC Oddity

Bill Graham wrote:
Neil Gould wrote:
DeeAa wrote:

I think the biggest difference, however is not in w7 / Xp difference
in general although w7 clearly boots much faster - the overall
greatest change probably came from the old system being 32bit and
the new OS is 64bit.

I think the biggest difference is that Vista & w7 take better
advantage of multi-core processors than XP or earlier, so some
OS-level tasks run much faster.


I have a friend who is a software engineer who says that the Windows
operating system is defective because it has a, "single point of
failure" (as he puts it.) He says the "registry" is this point.

Considering that any component of hardware or software can fail at any given
time, the real "single point of failure" is the person that doesn't create a
backup. The registry is very easy to back up, as is the system configuration
and all relevant data. Doing so eliminates your friend's issue altogether.

--
Neil



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Scott Dorsey Scott Dorsey is offline
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Default Another PC Oddity

Bill Graham wrote:
Neil Gould wrote:
DeeAa wrote:

I think the biggest difference, however is not in w7 / Xp difference
in general although w7 clearly boots much faster - the overall
greatest change probably came from the old system being 32bit and the
new OS is 64bit.

I think the biggest difference is that Vista & w7 take better
advantage of multi-core processors than XP or earlier, so some
OS-level tasks run much faster.


I have a friend who is a software engineer who says that the Windows
operating system is defective because it has a, "single point of failure"
(as he puts it.) He says the "registry" is this point.


That's an odd way of looking at it.

The real issue with using the registry to store the machine state is that
it duplicates other information which is also stored in the filesystem.
When they get out of synch, all kinds of evil things happen.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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William Sommerwerck William Sommerwerck is offline
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Default illuminated Zippy keyboard

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
...

Pournelle wrote in Byte complaining "How can the people
who came up with the Selectric make something so lousy?"


Jerry must have been a "sissy-Selectric" typist -- not a real man, who used
a Smith-Corona.


Remember that the QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow
down typists so the mechanism of a mechanical typewriter could
keep up.


I'm not sure I understand your response. But...

1. You used to be able to get Dvorak keyboards. Or the OS would permit
remapping your existing keyboard's output.

2. A Selectric /is/ a mechanical typewriter. So are electric typewriters. So
are daisy-wheel typewriters.

3. A Selectric has different mechanical limitations than a typebar
typewriter. The principal one is that the ball has to return to its "home"
position before it can move again.
One would assume that, if the keys are "unlocked" as soon as the ball
returns, then the optimum design of the ball's layout would put the
most-used letters as close as possible (in combined rotation and tilt) from
the home position.


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Neil Gould Neil Gould is offline
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Default Another PC Oddity

Scott Dorsey wrote:
Bill Graham wrote:
Neil Gould wrote:
DeeAa wrote:

I think the biggest difference, however is not in w7 / Xp
difference in general although w7 clearly boots much faster - the
overall greatest change probably came from the old system being
32bit and the new OS is 64bit.

I think the biggest difference is that Vista & w7 take better
advantage of multi-core processors than XP or earlier, so some
OS-level tasks run much faster.


I have a friend who is a software engineer who says that the Windows
operating system is defective because it has a, "single point of
failure" (as he puts it.) He says the "registry" is this point.


That's an odd way of looking at it.

The real issue with using the registry to store the machine state is
that it duplicates other information which is also stored in the
filesystem. When they get out of synch, all kinds of evil things
happen. --scott

I don't see any evidence that Windows' registry stores the machine state,
i.e. the transitory status of RAM contents or app functioning. Also, the
filesystem takes precedence over the registry for information that might be
considered duplicated, for example where things actually are located on a
disc.

As I see it, the biggest problem with the registry is that everybody's app
can write crap into it that doesn't get maintained or cleaned up when the
app is updated or uninstalled. The better PC makers know this, and provide a
way to back up the registry and create restore points every time a new app
is installed, but the savvy user can do this whenever they want.

--
best,

Neil


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William Sommerwerck William Sommerwerck is offline
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Default Another PC Oddity

"Soundhaspriority" wrote in message
...
"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...


What problem do you solve by letting the box run 24-7? - are you
on the low side of the required CO2 release or something?


It solves three problems. I never have to wait for the computer to boot.
The internal temperature is more stable. The hard drives do not have
to start and stop.


I am working on the assumption that (more-) constant temperature =
better reliability. The machine is nearly 11 years old, and I've no
problems. (ASUS P4T motherboard, by the way. My next motherboard
will be ASUS.)


William,
You should treat yourself to a new system. ASUS has an "upper class"
of desktop motherboard that use all-organic electros. Win7 has a new
low power state that it wakes up from in ~8 seconds.


I need a new machine, if only to run newer software that doesn't run under
W2K. * Alas, I have no money. I'm doing contract work right now, and if my
condo association is willing to hold off foreclosing for unpaid fees,
perhaps I'll get a new one.

What do you mean by "all-organic electros"? Regardless, I intend to get a
machine with an SSD for the operating system. (The rest can be conventional
disk drives.)

* I considered installing W7 on this machine, but decided that the general
obsolescence of the hardware didn't justify it. And it can't hurt to have a
backup machine.


Different component parts of the computer respond differently to your
strategy:
1. The solder joints love it.
2. The semiconductor junctions in the CPU and RAM slowly diffuse.
At one point, power-on life of RAM was thought to be 7 years.
3. The hard drives are happy.
4. The electrolytics hate it. Many of the bypass capacitors on the boards
are redundant, so if you inspect the motherboard, you might be surprised

to
find some of them are already bulging.


Just looked. (I leave the side cover off, for easy access to the backup hard
drive.) Don't see any bulges.

I never intended to keep the computer more than about 10 years. I got a lot
of good service out of this motherboard.




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Les Cargill[_4_] Les Cargill[_4_] is offline
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Default Another PC Oddity

Meindert Sprang wrote:
"Les wrote in message
...
Meindert Sprang wrote:
"Frank wrote in message

snip

Yet, there is a world of difference in stability in favour of the OS

X.....
With the difference in revenues and market share between Microsoft and

Apple
in favour of MS, one should expect that Windows would be more stable

than OS
X.


Money cannot buy stability. This being said, I've had XP systems that
showed stability comparable to Linux.


True. But money well spent on decent software engineers can.


Emphasis "can". SFAIK, Brook's "Mythical Man Month" still holds, and
most software defects of any account have little to do with programming
per se. They have more to do with the ... political economy of things.

It's just where
you put your priorities as a company. Time-to-market and biggest market
share or good quality... If your PHB says: ship this code and you know
there are bugs, what do you do?


That depends on the bugs, you, the customer and the PHB.

Meindert



--
Les Cargill
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Scott Dorsey Scott Dorsey is offline
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Default Another PC Oddity

Neil Gould wrote:
The real issue with using the registry to store the machine state is
that it duplicates other information which is also stored in the
filesystem. When they get out of synch, all kinds of evil things
happen.

I don't see any evidence that Windows' registry stores the machine state,
i.e. the transitory status of RAM contents or app functioning. Also, the
filesystem takes precedence over the registry for information that might be
considered duplicated, for example where things actually are located on a
disc.


The machine state is everything persistent about the machine. Not just
the CPU state, not just the data in memory, but all parts of the machine
including the disks.

When you store stuff in two places at once, the chance for synchronization
issues exists, and that often happens.

As I see it, the biggest problem with the registry is that everybody's app
can write crap into it that doesn't get maintained or cleaned up when the
app is updated or uninstalled. The better PC makers know this, and provide a
way to back up the registry and create restore points every time a new app
is installed, but the savvy user can do this whenever they want.


That's also a problem, but that's a problem with exists with filesystems as
well if you don't watch out.
--scott


"If you don't know what is wrong with the machine, tell them that it has
registry corruption. Because you'll never be wrong if you say that, and
it might actually have some bearing on the problem, you never know."
-- dave the IT guy
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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Neil Gould Neil Gould is offline
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Default Another PC Oddity

Scott Dorsey wrote:
Neil Gould wrote:
The real issue with using the registry to store the machine state is
that it duplicates other information which is also stored in the
filesystem. When they get out of synch, all kinds of evil things
happen.

I don't see any evidence that Windows' registry stores the machine
state, i.e. the transitory status of RAM contents or app
functioning. Also, the filesystem takes precedence over the registry
for information that might be considered duplicated, for example
where things actually are located on a disc.


The machine state is everything persistent about the machine. Not
just the CPU state, not just the data in memory, but all parts of the
machine including the disks.

Yes, I know that, I also know that Windows' registry doesn't store the CPU
state, data in memory, or hardware status info.

When you store stuff in two places at once, the chance for
synchronization issues exists, and that often happens.

While that is a generically true statement, I've not seen that problem occur
as a result of registry vs. filesystem information. OTOH, I have seen it as
a result of registry vs. application information, where the root of the
problem is that the application information is out of sync with the
registry. But, in such cases, it is usually the application or some action
by the user such as moving critical files that has screwed up. So, I'd add
that there are *more* than two places that critical information is kept,
since apps still use .ini files or the equivalent to store operational data.

--

Neil


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hank alrich hank alrich is offline
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Default Another PC Oddity

david correia wrote:

In article ,
"Arny Krueger" wrote:

"Trevor" wrote in message
u
"Meindert Sprang" wrote in
message ...
A MacBook Pro is not even twice as expensive as a hi-end
"windows" laptop.

Considering they are almost identical hardware wise, that
is a complete rip off however. And the Mac die-hards
can't even say how much better their Motorola CPU's are
than Intel any more! :-)


Yes, at this point a Mac is just a PC with a very limited amount of options
for hardware, particularly on the system board.



You're conveniently omitting what's always made a Mac a Mac: the OS.

It's like comparing Android Pads with iPads. The hardware ain't that
different. But the OS sure is.

And speaking of limited options, is there a PC vendor shipping
Thunderbolt I/O, FireWire 800 & USB 2 standard or who's portable case is
milled from a solid piece of aluminum?


Not to metnion that current Macs run Windows well, according to a
son-in-law who had his company get him the fastest Mac available last
year, because it ran Windows faster than any of the other PC's they'd
assembled for his work. (His company has little customers like Google,
Amazon, etc.)

These are standard in current MacBooks, except for the previous gen
white Macbook still shipping. And the audio in and out is both digital
and analog. Standard.

Limited indeed.

(Even the tiny MacBook Air will be adding a Thunderbolt port next month.
The Air doesn't have digital audio in/out or FW 'tho. It's made to be
tiny.)


You guys are welcome to rub each other on the back and together sing
your songs of love for your PC's. But don't try and say that today, all
computers are the same. They are the same the way all cars are the same.

I personally know more than a few long-time Window's users who are
buying Macs. I bet you guys do too. The reason is simple: well made
computers, the local Apple Store, and OS X.

My brother in law, who makes his living installing huge PC networks all
over the country, a guy who always hated Macs, **** canned the HP's &
Dells and bought his wife and kids MacBooks. Something I would have
*never* imagined a few years ago.

Another brother in law, who also is a networking nerd, finally broke
down and bought his kids iPod Touches for Christmas. But he still hates
Apple & Macs ; Said he won't buy an iPad until MSFT ships one.

We'll see ...




David Correia
www.Celebrationsound.com




p.s. If I may - for decades now, I've wondered about some PC user's near
obsession with Macs. Cuz personally, I don't give a **** about PC's. I'm
happy with what I got. I don't care about a tons of things I don't own.
I don't care about boats. I don't care about European soccer, Arena
Football. I don't care about Behringer gear. Who's got the time?

It's always kinda reminded me of the famous Hindu story, the Ramayana.
In it, the enemy of Rama, a bad dude called Ravana, is always thinking
about Rama. Which of course makes him, in a bizarre way, a great devotee
of Rama.



--
shut up and play your guitar * http://hankalrich.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpqXcV9DYAc
http://www.sonicbids.com/HankandShaidri
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hank alrich hank alrich is offline
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Default Another PC Oddity

Trevor wrote:

"david correia" wrote in message
...
You're conveniently omitting what's always made a Mac a Mac: the OS.


Right a VERY expensive flavour of Unix then.

Personally I don't give a **** about the operating system as long as the
software I need to use runs on it OK. The fact there is far more available
for Windows is a plus, as is the much lower hardware cost. What others
choose to pay for some notion of convenience to them is their own business
however.

Trevor.


As has been said, on the Windows side there are fifty thousand apps
you'll never use, while on the Mac side there are only ten thousand apps
you'll never use.

Since Macs now run Windows much of what applied to thoughts of app
shortages on the Mac side is no longer apt.

--
shut up and play your guitar * http://hankalrich.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpqXcV9DYAc
http://www.sonicbids.com/HankandShaidri
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