Hev wrote:

Scott. I really value your opinion on a wide array of topics on r.a.p. But I
have to say with the latest versions of XP (ie XP Home and Pro) I have run
into few problems with the OS even after years of running the same
installation.

My opinion had nothing to do with how many problems you have. My opinion
had only to do with _what_ you do when you have problems.

No matter what you do, all systems fail sooner or later. The issue is
what happens when they do.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Logan Shaw wrote:


I could claim that until one day a few years ago when my laptop
decided to just spontaneously eat the registry for dinner and leave
no trace of it behind. I didn't do anything, install any software,
etc., etc., but one day I booted up and FWOOOM, no registry. I
ran regedit (just to view it, not to change anything), and it
was gone.

My wife's machine came with ME on it, so when it deleted all of its
device drivers one day, we put XP on it. That lasted until XP ate its
partition table. Now she has a Mac, and her old computer is serving our
web pages running Apache on 2000. It only freezes (not BSOD) sometimes
when dragging a scroll bar looking at text in Notepad. Good enough.

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
Hev wrote:

Scott. I really value your opinion on a wide array of topics on r.a.p. But
I
have to say with the latest versions of XP (ie XP Home and Pro) I have run
into few problems with the OS even after years of running the same
installation.

My opinion had nothing to do with how many problems you have. My opinion
had only to do with _what_ you do when you have problems.

No matter what you do, all systems fail sooner or later. The issue is
what happens when they do.


You showed me to give a complement! g


--

-Hev
remove your opinion to find me he
www.michaelYOURspringerOPINION.com
http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=14089013

"Jay Kadis" wrote in message
...
In article . com,
wrote:

[snip]


I know nothing about Macs and I don't conjecture about how reliable
they are. But I do know that PCs can be 100% reliable when deployed by
people who know what they are doing.

And Macs can be 100% reliable in the hands of people who don't know what
they're
doing. Maybe that's the difference?


So we should encourage people to continue not knowing what they're doing ?

geoff

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message


The problem, to be honest, is that nobody really knows very much about
Windows. Everything is a black box. If an application isn't working,
you can't single-step through it. You can't truss it and watch all the
system calls it makes. You can't do anything, really. You can't look
inside the operating system, you can't really see what is going on, you
just have to hope for the best, and, when in doubt, reinstall.

I think you are wrong on just about every count there Scott. Of course the
average user can't do these things, which is probbably just as well...

geoff

Scott Dorsey wrote:

In article znr1108584738k@trad, Mike Rivers wrote:

In article . com writes:


You obviously don't know as much about Windows as you do about Macs. I
know a lot about Windows, and therefore never have to reinstall it, let
alone eight times.

I don't know much about Windows, but I know that several times when
I've run into a little problem, the suggestion has been "reinstall
Windows." I've never done it, and I hope I never really have to. I
think this "remedy" is prescribed far too often.


The problem, to be honest, is that nobody really knows very much about
Windows. Everything is a black box. If an application isn't working,
you can't single-step through it. You can't truss it and watch all the
system calls it makes. You can't do anything, really. You can't look
inside the operating system, you can't really see what is going on, you
just have to hope for the best, and, when in doubt, reinstall.


Software developers can debug their own programs, including
single-stepping into Windows. I've been inside NTDLL.DLL countless
times, usually Wait(ing)ForSingleObjectEx.

I've looked at it from the inside, had to work around stuff it didn't do
as advertised, and, particularly troubling, seen lots of evidence of
just plain really sloppy coding and obviously untested "features". I
refuse to tolerate it any longer.

"S O'Neill" wrote ...
The Mac is still far more stable. I've been forced to reinstall
Windows about eight times to, ah, zero times for OSX. Lots
of little crap on Windows (I mean NT, XP, 2000, *and* 2003;
ME and 9x lose hands down) just plain doesn't work right, and
it varies what that may be from day to day or machine to machine;
I finally just learned to grin and call it "entertainment" when
Windows pulls some new stupid ****. I even got my parents a
Mac because I was tired of the weekly phone calls (their first
computer ran CP/M, never got support calls for that, either).

If you had to reinstall Windows 8 times, I agree, you should be
a Mac owner. I've never heard of anyone re-installing Windows
more than once and I have been involved with PCs since I built
my own CP/M machines. I currently run 150 PCs that get heavy
use by random users and I've NEVER had to re-install Windows
except when the hardware fails.

"Trevor de Clercq" wrote ...
What kind of application are you going to be doing that any
of this makes a difference? The average high-end PC and
the average high-end Mac are both going to be good enough
for almost anything if you know how to use the machine
properly (and someone's written a good piece of software
for it).

And all else being equal, you get more bang for your buck with
"Wintel" vs. Mac simply for the economic reasons of open-system
(i.e. free-market competition) vs. the closed-system, proprietary,
single-vendor Apple monoply.

It is fascinating how much rabid "progressives" are attracted
to such a big-corporation monopoly.

In article ,
(hank alrich) wrote:

That certainly can be a difference. A gal hereabouts ran the local arts
commission for almost _seven years_ on an SE30 with a grpahics card in
it. It started to slow down while printing and such and all her
potential "IT" folks told her it was because Macs were crap. Mind you,
not a one of them had ever _used_ a Mac. I asked her how long it had
been since she'd rebuilt the desktop directories. She replied, "What's
that?" Once done the SE30 went back to working as if it was new again.


I am pretty sure that the SE/30 I installed as an Appleshare fileserver
in 1989, was still running in Y2K, serving a casino entertainment
department.

I can't imagine a Wintel machine providing 10 years of 24/7 service.

I also used an SE/30 with Daystar upgrade and external 19" monitor as my
primary CAD and office machine for 6 or 7 years. Those were smokin little
Macs. Maybe the best of Apple's early machines.

Richard Crowley wrote:
"Trevor de Clercq" wrote ...

What kind of application are you going to be doing that any of this
makes a difference? The average high-end PC and the average
high-end Mac are both going to be good enough for almost anything
if you know how to use the machine properly (and someone's written
a good piece of software for it).

They are somewhat different or nobody would buy them. You're right.

And all else being equal, you get more bang for your buck with
"Wintel"

The point is that not all things ARE equal or there would be no
difference. Why buy a Lexus when there are Toyotas?

vs. Mac simply for the economic reasons of open-system (i.e.
free-market competition) vs. the closed-system, proprietary,
single-vendor Apple monoply.

Apple does monopolize the Apple market, but not the PC market in
general. And the USDOJ even knows what happened with that.

It is fascinating how much rabid "progressives" are attracted to such
a big-corporation monopoly.

So far, you're first. That's an important fact.

This is headed where I don't think we should go.

*snip*

just an aside, IME "mac people" tend to be very, let's say "defensive" of
their platform of choice, almost in a religious sense as if they have
something to prove..."don't question it! just have faith in it's supreme
dominance!".... anyone who dares question apple's superiority will incur the
wraith of a whole legion of mac geeks.....whereas "PC people" really don't
give a damn who agrees with them. Anyway, now that i've berated PT AND Mac
let the flames begin!

Thank you! I was just about to post something that said that exactly. I
also find Logic users to be a bit like that too. I never really hear
anyone who uses a PC getting defensive, but i often hear this crazy
overreaction about Logic/Mac use. Oh well.

Roach

Steven Sena wrote:
I have a Mac with Pro Tools and a PC with Cubase.
The PC with Cubase is a joke and the Mac with Pro Tools actually works...

I have a PC with Cubase that works, and use a Mac with Logic that
doesn't. Go figure. Too many variables...

Roach

Richard Crowley wrote:
And all else being equal, you get more bang for your buck with "Wintel"
vs. Mac simply for the economic reasons of open-system (i.e. free-market
competition) vs. the closed-system, proprietary,
single-vendor Apple monoply.

It is fascinating how much rabid "progressives" are attracted to such a
big-corporation monopoly.

Well, you basically get to choose between monopolies when you
choose Mac vs. Windows.

Mac:
* monopoly on making the final hardware product (the computer)
* mostly an OS monopoly (Apple), although the Unix part (Darwin;
see http://www.opendarwin.org/ ) is an open-source project
based on Unix (also pretty open).
* processor (PowerPC) made according to published, open standards
(as used to be used by the consortium of Apple, IBM, and Motorola),
but made by IBM. Although older ones were made by Motorola.
* firmware is OpenBoot, which is very open; used by Apple for
the Mac, but also used by Sun for the SPARCstations, etc., etc.

Windows:
* no monopoly on the final hardware product (the computer)
* total OS monopoly; the OS has very little connection to any
other OS, and all its interfaces are proprietary and unlike
anything not made by Microsoft (with the exception of
now-defunct IBM OS/2)
* processor (x86) was an Intel monopoly, and is only now not
a monopoly because AMD managed to make a truly-compatible
processor through reverse-engineering.
* firmware is the BIOS; this is open in the sense that the
interfaces are open, but there is no open implementation,
and as a practical matter, PC manufacturers must license a
BIOS from one of 2 or 3 BIOS manufacturers (AMI, Award,
Phoenix) unless they wish to write their own from scratch.

So basically, if you choose either, you have to put up with
some monopoly action. The closest thing to not having any
form of monopoly on your computer would be to run Linux or
a BSD (or some other open OS) on a PC. Or, build yourself
a project computer (maybe based on the ARM processor, which
is another open processor architecture like PowerPC) and run
Linux on that; that could actually be a truly open system.

- Logan

S O'Neill wrote:

Scott Dorsey wrote:

The problem, to be honest, is that nobody really knows very much about
Windows. Everything is a black box. If an application isn't working,
you can't single-step through it. You can't truss it and watch all the
system calls it makes. You can't do anything, really. You can't look
inside the operating system, you can't really see what is going on, you
just have to hope for the best, and, when in doubt, reinstall.

Software developers can debug their own programs, including
single-stepping into Windows. I've been inside NTDLL.DLL countless
times, usually Wait(ing)ForSingleObjectEx.

On most Unix systems (including Solaris, which is what I assume
Scott is referring to when he mentions "truss"), ANYONE can trace
the system calls any program makes, even if they are not the developer
and they don't have the source code to squat. And the tool to do it
comes with the OS.

Which is not to say it's impossible to look inside stuff on Windows,
but the attitude seems to be that only a developer would want to.
The assumption on Unix is that a user wants to know why something
went wrong when it did. Error messages are not simplified to avoid
confusing the user, etc., etc. It's sort of the Total Quality
Management approach to computing.

- Logan

Geoff Wood wrote:

So we should encourage people to continue not knowing what they're doing ?

Do I want to record something, or build computers? (I expect you already
know my own answer. g)

And honestly, in the mass market sense, most PC users have little idea
what's under the hood or how to keep it working, based on watching the
world around me.

--
ha

Mike Rocha wrote:

*snip*

just an aside, IME "mac people" tend to be very, let's say "defensive" of
their platform of choice, almost in a religious sense as if they have
something to prove..."don't question it! just have faith in it's supreme
dominance!".... anyone who dares question apple's superiority will incur the
wraith of a whole legion of mac geeks.....whereas "PC people" really don't
give a damn who agrees with them. Anyway, now that i've berated PT AND Mac
let the flames begin!

Thank you! I was just about to post something that said that exactly. I
also find Logic users to be a bit like that too. I never really hear
anyone who uses a PC getting defensive, but i often hear this crazy
overreaction about Logic/Mac use. Oh well.


I'm going to have to chalk that BS up to the company you guys choose. I
hang with folks who use whatever and could give a **** whatever else
somebody else uses.

--
ha

Vin ha scritto:
i can understand where macs had the obvious advantage in the win95/98/me
days of totally instablility and unreliability.. but windows 2000/xp are
extremely stable, pcs are cheaper.. is mac hardware more powerful for
audio processing? whats the story?

two people i know bought macs because they wanted to do some 'serious'
recording but neither of them can really explain why they couldn't
have done it with a pc.. seems silly to learn a whole new OS if there's
no actually benefit..


Just don't consider yourself "limited" in any way using a mac or a pc.
You can do EXACTLY the same things with both platforms.
Quality of audio is a matter of applications and audio hardware, not
platform.
If you are a pc user you don't have real reason to change.
If you are a mac user you don't have real reason to change.
If you plan to become a computer user from scratch, simply start with
the platform used by the peoples close to you, this will help a lot, for
tips, suggestions and explerience sharing.
Don't get blinded by the marketing statements of whom want to enslave
you as a "target user".
Refuse stupid assioms like "mac IS for audio" or "mac is for serious
recording".
Mind that most software houses involved in thick audio projects are
"porting" their apps on both platform, except those owned by microsoft
or apple.
Sadly, on the linux platform, great audio stuffs are not already done so
you have to choose between win and osx. May be in the future...

bye

J Paul wrote:

I am pretty sure that the SE/30 I installed as an Appleshare fileserver
in 1989, was still running in Y2K, serving a casino entertainment
department.

I know for sure that the SE/30 I installed as an Appleshare fileserver in 1990 was still running in 1999, serving a retail store and restaurant. To be fair, they did replace a couple of hard drives during that period--as much for capacity increases as anything else.



I can't imagine a Wintel machine providing 10 years of 24/7 service.

I know of a couple.

OTOH I know of *many* Intel systems running Banyan Vines or OS/2 1.x with 10+ years of reliable service (with similar hard drive upgrades in all but two cases.)




I also used an SE/30 ... Those were smokin little
Macs. Maybe the best of Apple's early machines.

Agreed.

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 06:00:33 GMT, (hank alrich)
wrote:

Geoff Wood wrote:

So we should encourage people to continue not knowing what they're doing ?

Do I want to record something, or build computers? (I expect you already
know my own answer. g)

And honestly, in the mass market sense, most PC users have little idea
what's under the hood or how to keep it working, based on watching the
world around me.

I dunno, I think most mac users have even less idea, which is why they
use macs. Wasn't that the whole point of the mac, computers for people
who don't know anything about computers? PCs are often owned by people
who like to tinker and configure their systems.

Since the introduction of Windows XP I really don't think Macs have
any edge on the PC as far as stability. They look cool but you pay a
lot for that.

Al

hank alrich wrote:
Kurt Albershardt wrote:


Pick the software that suits your needs and workflow pattern best. Pick
the OS that runs that SW. Pick the hardware that runs that OS.


And that's the totality of the story.

--
ha

YAY
End of discussion.....no?
That's why many have both platforms. I know which one I prefer, but they
are both useful.

Kurt Albershardt ha scritto:
J Paul wrote:


I am pretty sure that the SE/30 I installed as an Appleshare
fileserver in 1989, was still running in Y2K, serving a casino
entertainment department.


I know for sure that the SE/30 I installed as an Appleshare fileserver
in 1990 was still running in 1999, serving a retail store and
restaurant. To be fair, they did replace a couple of hard drives during
that period--as much for capacity increases as anything else.



I can't imagine a Wintel machine providing 10 years of 24/7 service.


I know of a couple.

OTOH I know of *many* Intel systems running Banyan Vines or OS/2 1.x
with 10+ years of reliable service (with similar hard drive upgrades in
all but two cases.)




I also used an SE/30 ... Those were smokin little
Macs. Maybe the best of Apple's early machines.


Agreed.




Yeees, may be.
But i don't know people using the same machine as daw for more than 4 or
5 years.
Computers get old very soon and perfectly woking ones are soon replaced
with newer ones.
this is the reason because computers don't break! The constructor
company will re-sell one new to you without the need of hardware
malfunction.
And in this very long life (for a computer) of 5 years, peoples replaced
many components as cd burner, ram, hd, monitor and so on.
A file server is much different as home computers, because on the latter
you continuosly install and remove thousands of programs and the server
just run as is. This will lead soon to system problems for home
computers but not for servers.
I got an intel P166 machine up 24 hours a day, 365 days per year,
running a linux server since 1998, seven years.
This machine is providing me with http server, smtp and imap server,
file server and, in the last 3 years, adsl connection and edonkey net
download service.
I replaced 2 disks and a fan during this seven years.
At the time i purchased, the cost was 1/4 as the contemporary mac!
matter of taste.

S O'Neill wrote:

The Mac is still far more stable.

LOL.


I've been forced to reinstall
Windows
about eight times to, ah, zero times for OSX. Lots of little
crap
on
Windows (I mean NT, XP, 2000, *and* 2003; ME and 9x lose hands
down)
just plain doesn't work right, and it varies what that may be from
day
to day or machine to machine;


Then you were using an internet machine.

I run PT on a Dell laptop flawlessly - because I use it for audio
only.

And, it didn't cost me a silly amount of money like a mac would.

We have a couple here at work. Right now, though, we have many more
Windows boxes for servers. That could change if our server admin
decided to take more of a UNIX slant instead of a Windows slant. I
think some of the license server stuff only runs on Windows, though....

Cheers,
Trevor de Clercq

wrote:
Trevor de Clercq wrote:

Apple doesn't make a server? What? Let me introduce to you to

X-Serve:

http://www.apple.com/xserve/


I never even knew that. Do they sell a lot of them? I've never heard of
anyone using them.


If you want a RAID array, they make that, too:

http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/

Cheers,
Trevor de Clercq


wrote:

dale wrote:


But I do know that PCs can be 100% reliable when deployed by
people who know what they are doing. There are many, many major

banks


and other institutions running on the Windows/Intel platform

providing


services far more financially important

get the machine for the job.
audio data is different from financial data


It's all 1's and 0's.



plus they have IT departments (there is more job security and

larger

workforce when running windows)

dale


So you're saying that:
(1) if we used Apple Mac's as servers for financial applications

we

would save on personnel costs; and
(2) the people running the financial institutions are not

interested

in saving money

(1) is simply wrong (Apple doesn't make a server and isn't even in

this

market)
(2) is risible.

In any case, a Unix box is more reliable than a PC or a Mac. But

PC's

are used for applications that the world considers far more

important

than anything that a Mac is used for.

This isn't to say that a PC is better than a Mac for recording

music.

My own advice, when asked, is:
(1) If you have the budget for full-blown ProTools, and music is

your

full-time profession, then get it, because you'll get more work by
being compatible with the major studios
(2) If you don't have this amount of investment, then buy the

computer

you know how to use, and buy software that will run on it.

hank alrich wrote:
huwgarethwrote:

I know a lot about Windows, and therefore never have to reinstall
it

I know quite a few IT folks who are beyond just Windows saavy, but I
have never heard one claim that!

--
ha

I can't reply to all the pro-Mac people in here, and I'm not going to
try to.

But I have Windows servers running applications that I have developed
that have run 24/7 for 5+ years without a rebuild (generally, the
turnover will be faster than that for business reasons). Out of the
dozens of servers that I have used, I haven't had one just fail on me,
though we do have procedures in place to deal with this situation if it
arises. I probably use higher quality machines than most of you do; my
typical server cost is over $10K.

I also have never had to rebuild my DAW, though I have only had it 3
years. It isn't connected to the internet - if I want to transfer files
to it I copy them to a CD. Most the people complaining about having to
rebuild their machines use them for net surfing as well, so it is easy
to see why they fail. My previous music computer (MIDI-only, used to
sync recorders and keyboards, and do some sequencing) was running
Windows 3.11 until I replaced it 3 years ago, which gives you some idea
of how long that machine ran without problems.

As far as the Apple server goes; good for them that they've got it. But
as far as I can see, for enterprise-level systems it has no penetration
whatsoever. I'm certainly not interested in it; I'm not going to change
my purchases, and go through the man-months or years of due diligence
just because yet another server manufacturer is on the market. I buy my
Wintel machines from IBM and Unix boxes from Sun; and as long as they
continue to work as well as they have I'm not going to change.

I think that, as usual in this debate, most people missed at least the
point that I was trying to make. I am not saying that PCs are more
reliable than Apples - I have no interest in that question. What I was
saying was that PCs can be perfectly reliable, and that my organization
and many others run businesses far larger than the music business based
on them.

In article writes:

Almost. First, decide exactly what it is that you're trying to do. You
may need a trombone instead of a computer.

I tried communicating with a trombone, but nobody would listen to me.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article writes:

I could claim that until one day a few years ago when my laptop
decided to just spontaneously eat the registry for dinner and leave
no trace of it behind. I didn't do anything, install any software,
etc., etc., but one day I booted up and FWOOOM, no registry. I
ran regedit (just to view it, not to change anything), and it
was gone.

Every once in a while, I get the feeling that my laptop is running
slower than it used to. The reality is that programs run just as fast
as ever, but it takes longer and longer to boot up, I guess as the
registry gets bigger and bigger. A couple of times a year, I check the
freeware web sites, try a "registry fixer" (which is usually a
registry problem detector and you have to buy the program to actually
fix what it finds) and it finds a hundred and some things that can be
fixed.

So I jot down a few of them, go to Regedit, and try to locate the real
entries and I usually can't find them. A lot of them are probably
leftovers from CD installations, references to something at d:\....
that can't be found. It puzzles me that Edit/Find in Regedit can't
locate what a program that wants me to buy it finds. Or maybe not.

Anyway, I leave it alone and just make a fresh pot of coffee or read
the newspaper while it's booting.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article writes:

The original Windows 95 install disc included *two* different
registry backup programs

Windows 98SE does some automagic registry backup, but I haven't
a clue how to save a copy of the registry or manually restore it.

Yeah, what ever happened to that? I remember being able to click on a
file and it would replace the registry with whatever version was
described by that file. XP Regedit has an export and import function,
so I guess you can export the current registry and import it to
replace whatever's there.

When you re-install Windows, does it build a new registry based on the
programs that are currently installed? My greatest fear about
re-installing Windows is that things that used to work will become
invisible or won't work.

Windows runs perfectly fine for my modest requirements and
antique machinery, but it's easy to cop an attitude about their
view of users' competence. Maybe justifiable in my case, but still..

Me, too. At least I admit incompetence and trust my caution about
opening files from unknown sources to keep things from getting too
bad. So far it's worked.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article writes:

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message

The problem, to be honest, is that nobody really knows very much about
Windows. Everything is a black box. If an application isn't working,
you can't single-step through it.

I think you are wrong on just about every count there Scott. Of course the
average user can't do these things, which is probbably just as well...

The average user shouldn't have to do this sort of thing. The average
user's computer shouldn't break down doing what average users do
(which often includes installing software willy-nilly). But ****
happens, often as a result of a malicious person but just as often due
to a well-meaning program that's incompatible) and the average user is
pretty helpless to track down the problem and restore normal operation.

There are also some just plain not-commonly-knowns, for example my
problem with using a Firewire audio device on my Dell laptop when it's
connected to the LAN. If it's an interrupt conflict, I should be able
to locate and change that, but I can't. If it's a hardware problem
internal to the computer (as I suspect) while I may not be able to fix
it, I should at least be able to convince myself that it is INDEED a
hardware problem. I've only been able to go as far as to conclude that
it's not related to a specific PCMCIA card. Would a different setting
somewhere in the networking parameters fix the problem? How about a
different setting on the router? What to look for? I've had lots of
suggestions but nothing that led me to a solution, or even a better
clue.

I'll stand behind Scott's contention that few people really know
what's going on. Those who do are not practically accessable to me. I
really don't want to spend $5K on a hotshot consultant for this job.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article .com,
wrote:

I think that, as usual in this debate, most people missed at least the
point that I was trying to make. I am not saying that PCs are more
reliable than Apples - I have no interest in that question. What I was
saying was that PCs can be perfectly reliable, and that my organization
and many others run businesses far larger than the music business based
on them.

And I was saying that _neither_ PCs nor Macs are perfectly reliable, but
they're getting better.

I suppose it all depends on what you consider reliable.

$ uptime
10:09am up 462 day(s), 1:44, 11 users, load average: 1.00, 1.01, 0.91
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article znr1108643102k@trad, Mike Rivers wrote:

I'll stand behind Scott's contention that few people really know
what's going on. Those who do are not practically accessable to me. I
really don't want to spend $5K on a hotshot consultant for this job.

My complaint is that I have talked with $5k hotshot consultants who didn't
know any more than I did about what was inside.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article , "Geoff Wood"
wrote:

"Jay Kadis" wrote in message
...
In article . com,
wrote:

[snip]


I know nothing about Macs and I don't conjecture about how reliable
they are. But I do know that PCs can be 100% reliable when deployed by
people who know what they are doing.

And Macs can be 100% reliable in the hands of people who don't know what
they're
doing. Maybe that's the difference?


So we should encourage people to continue not knowing what they're doing ?

geoff




Hey, it works for Bush!

-Jay
--
x------- Jay Kadis ------- x---- Jay's Attic Studio ------x
x Lecturer, Audio Engineer x Dexter Records x
x CCRMA, Stanford University x http://www.offbeats.com/ x
x---------- http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jay/ ------------x

wrote:


Most the people complaining about having to rebuild their machines
use them for net surfing as well, so it is easy to see why they fail.



I rest my case.

So is all this "don't use internet apps on an audio computer" derived
from problems on a PC? Because I've got internet and FTP and web
development tools on my Mac as well as ProTools, Reason, Finale, and
Mach Five plus a DVD player and games and I've never had a problem due
to some internet/audio or other app conflict.

In fact, the studio I used to work at had EVERY TDM ProTools rig
connected to the internet. OK, I'll admit that we didn't surf the web
while recording an orchestra date to 48 tracks of PT 24-bit, but I know
of a lot of instances where the engineer would get bored sometimes while
people were working out "verses" in the "vocal" while listening to the
"beat" and would browse the web with ProTools open and in input. They
would even record sometimes with the internet on in the background. We
never had a problem.

So if I factor in the cost of buying TWO PC computers (one for audio,
one for internet), then the cost of my Mac seems lower than the PC.

What does it say about a computer OS that you have to strip it down such
that you can only run a few applications before they start to
potentially conflict with each other?

Cheers,
Trevor de Clercq

atlasrecrd wrote:
S O'Neill wrote:


The Mac is still far more stable.


LOL.


I've been forced to reinstall

Windows

about eight times to, ah, zero times for OSX. Lots of little

crap

on

Windows (I mean NT, XP, 2000, *and* 2003; ME and 9x lose hands

down)

just plain doesn't work right, and it varies what that may be from

day

to day or machine to machine;



Then you were using an internet machine.

I run PT on a Dell laptop flawlessly - because I use it for audio
only.

And, it didn't cost me a silly amount of money like a mac would.

Mike Rivers wrote:
When you re-install Windows, does it build a new registry based on the
programs that are currently installed? My greatest fear about
re-installing Windows is that things that used to work will become
invisible or won't work.

I never install an operating system on top of itself, and I never do
OS upgrades (i.e. "run this and it will upgrade your OS") either.

The reason is, both of these are very complex processes. Installing
the OS onto a clean system has been done a zillion times and is very
well tested. The other two are done less often and are tested less,
therefore I expect them to be less reliable. For something as critical
as the OS (on which the reliability of everything else I ever do with
the computer depends), I don't trust untested processes.

You can tell I'm a little paranoid, right? Well, that's what years
of working with computers does to you. Oftentimes I am still not
convinced I am paranoid *enough* yet.

- Logan

S O'Neill wrote:

huwgareth wrote:

Most the people complaining about having to rebuild their machines
use them for net surfing as well, so it is easy to see why they fail.

I rest my case.

My car never gets stuck as long as I drive on pavement? g

--
ha

atlasrecrd wrote:

And, it didn't cost me a silly amount of money like a mac would.

Again, everytime in rec.audio.pro someone has run the numbers for
machines as closely matched as could be done, there isn't enough money
difference to support your contention.

And I'm sorry if you have to not use your machine for anything else. The
same TiBook here can simultaneously run the MIO via Firewire, Logic Pro,
and be on the 'net downloading a file. So you're claiming your machine
is cheaper, but I'm noticing you need another machine to hit the
Internet, and I don't need another machine to do that. My cost for one
Mac might be less tahn your cost for two of them other compooters.

There are some differences. What matters to one person may well be
irrelevant to another.

--
ha

Scott Dorsey wrote:
And I was saying that _neither_ PCs nor Macs are perfectly reliable, but
they're getting better.

I suppose it all depends on what you consider reliable.

$ uptime
10:09am up 462 day(s), 1:44, 11 users, load average: 1.00, 1.01, 0.91
--scott

You've got me beat; I'm only at 104 days on my main Unix machine,
having last rebooted on 11/5/2004. Looking back on the output of
"last", it appears that I rebooted 5 times during 2004, so 104 days
is actually a bit above average.

Still, all the reboots since I installed the OS in May 2000 have
been voluntary except:
* one time I did something "experimental" just to see what would
happen, like trying to move a snapshot backing store file onto
the filesystem that was using for a snapshot while it was in use.
* one time I did something obviously stupid and had to restore
some important files from backups.
* the time a houseguest was sleeping in the office (a/k/a computer
room a/k/a guest room) and he decided the noise of my nightly
backups was annoying, so he hit the power button right in the
middle of the backups every night until I noticed that computers
had been rebooted and asked why. grrrr....

So basically, one crash in 5 years, and it was because I was doing
something I knew could lead to a crash, but did it anyway.

- Logan

wrote:

I'm not going to disagree that there are a lot of mac users in the
creative areas, but it's probably a lot less to do with the actual
performance of the boxes, or the applications. Meaning, Macs no longer
are SCSI and have any sort of speed advantage over a Wintel box. I can
still build a Wintel box with SCSI drives, firewire, USB2 and every
other feature I care to build. I can usually do this for around $1200,
if not less to have an absolute screamer that is lean, mean and will
work perfectly with my Nuendo/MOTU products.
I think more guys use Macs because of the their design. They just look
cool. And they see them on the cover of Mix and other mags in "pro
studios".
Speaking of creative people in general...I happen to work for Adobe. A
few years ago, you'd find literally EVERYONE that used Photoshop or
Illustrator on a Mac. Now, I don't see that as the case. The Wintel
boxes run these apps just fine, no different than a Mac. Adobe even
stopped producing their Premier Pro product for the Mac platform. They
bought an audio app....Cool Edit Pro, PC only. As much as I love Macs,
they're just computers.
With all of this said, I'm contemplating getting a new laptop for the
house. Do I want to just use my current computer and move it into
fulltime internet and home duties? Do I just get a PC notebook and
continue to use my music computer for music only? One side of me would
love to have a Mac and they're great computers and look cool, but I'd
be having to get all new software like MS Office, etc. Is it really
worth it? Who knows....they sure look cool though....
later,
m

I love Macs . . . yet my DAW is a PC. It's all because of Cooledit,
before Adobe bought it. My DAW is really a super duper 2 channel
recorder that replaced my stereo cassette deck. Because Cool Edit 2000
had such a fanatastic interface I went the PC route for my DAW. I really
did wish that Cool Edit was available for the Mac. Protools and other
mac programs were just a bit more, in terms of price and features, than
I really needed. Heck, even Cooledit 2K is a bit overkill for me.

I still do think Macs are more stable, though. The Apple advantage now
is software. OS X is stable as hell, especially from Jaguar (10.2.6
onwards) I have no fear of running multiple aaps on my mac, so long as
memory and CPU power allows, launch away. My PC, on the other hand,I
alwaysa get wary with 3 or more apps running, and the PC is Win XP Pro.
Multi-taksing on a Windows PC is not a PC's strength. Comparing one app
on PC vs one app on a Mac, the PC will do better in terms of
performance, but it's more than that that makes a computer likeable. I
tend to think of Macs like a premium automobile, and PCs are Chevy
Luminas, the standard rental fleet.

For those of you who think Mac people get so defensive, you have to
appreciate that Macs are the 5% minority, so they have to talk it up. In
this thread alone, I've seen PC people putting down macs who most
probably have never even used a Mac. People also should concede that
with PCs being 95% of the market, there's going to be ALOT of
miss-information about the Mac. I've used both PC and Mac in my career.
During Mac OS9 and below days vs Windows 95 98 etc, because the Mac
interface was so simple, PC users were quick to dismiss the Mac as too
simple, but the Mac could do everything that the PC could, only
friendlier. Of course there were things PCs could do that macs couldn't,
but when I found a particualar capability that PCs had and macs didn't,
it didn't really matter to me. Perfect example, In the days when modems
were the most popular means of connecting to an onlline service, a
friend showed me how he could pool a bunch of modems together and
combine their total throguhput to be used for their online connection .
.. . .with Windows. The mac had nothing like that. Quite exotic stuff,
but how many people would really take advantage of that?

The simple fact is, Bill Gates does not control the hardware. Given the
HUGE market that Windows is in, how can it be possible? Bill would lose
a whole lot of money establishing that control.Of course Microsoft tries
with things like digital signing, but if a windows program is not
digitally signed, is it such a bad thing? I'll still install it
Windows, especially after Windows 2000, has really grown up, though,
I'll admitt.

Macs tend to be better in the audio world because they have matured more
in that market, and they have the advantage, due to thier smaller market
and hardware structure, of getting hardware and software to talk to each
other very well. Once you get very familiar with Macs, you see that.
With Winows, you go to device manager and get blown away by the
confurion. Registry keys? Come one. Yes, todays computers are very very
complex devices, and the mac is certainly no exception, but Apple
software goes that extra step to simply things, thereby making the
computing experience better.

CD

Trevor de Clercq wrote:
So is all this "don't use internet apps on an audio computer" derived
from problems on a PC? Because I've got internet and FTP and web
development tools on my Mac as well as ProTools, Reason, Finale, and
Mach Five plus a DVD player and games and I've never had a problem due
to some internet/audio or other app conflict.

In fact, the studio I used to work at had EVERY TDM ProTools rig
connected to the internet. OK, I'll admit that we didn't surf the web
while recording an orchestra date to 48 tracks of PT 24-bit, but I know
of a lot of instances where the engineer would get bored sometimes while
people were working out "verses" in the "vocal" while listening to the
"beat" and would browse the web with ProTools open and in input. They
would even record sometimes with the internet on in the background. We
never had a problem.

So if I factor in the cost of buying TWO PC computers (one for audio,
one for internet), then the cost of my Mac seems lower than the PC.

What does it say about a computer OS that you have to strip it down such
that you can only run a few applications before they start to
potentially conflict with each other?


You don't--unless you're pushing the absolute limits of the machine (in which case it becomes true on either OS.)

I've had my Win32 audio machines (3 of them now, covering 5+ years) in daily use for email and browsing and finances and the like without a single infection or meltdown of any kind.

Logan Shaw wrote:
Mike Rivers wrote:

When you re-install Windows, does it build a new registry based on the
programs that are currently installed? My greatest fear about
re-installing Windows is that things that used to work will become
invisible or won't work.


I never install an operating system on top of itself, and I never do
OS upgrades (i.e. "run this and it will upgrade your OS") either.

The reason is, both of these are very complex processes. Installing
the OS onto a clean system has been done a zillion times and is very
well tested. The other two are done less often and are tested less,
therefore I expect them to be less reliable. For something as critical
as the OS (on which the reliability of everything else I ever do with
the computer depends), I don't trust untested processes.

Besides--hard drives are continuously getting cheaper, faster, and bigger. My advice (which applies to Macs, PCs, and *nix variants alike) is always to buy a new hard disk, replace the existing one with it, update the OS to current patch levels, install your major apps--and only then to reinstall the old disk as a secondary drive. This method has proven itself quite well over 20 years.