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#41
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Another PC Oddity
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 -- |
#42
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
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 |
#43
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
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 |
#44
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
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. |
#45
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
"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. |
#46
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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illuminated Zippy keyboard
"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. |
#47
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
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. |
#48
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
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. |
#49
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
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 |
#50
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
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 |
#51
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
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#52
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
"Jason Warren" wrote in message
... In article isition, says... Back in another life I owned a "baby Sparc" Sun workstation. the desk.) It typically would run 300 days or so without the need for a boot. I had the same experience. There were a Windows PC and an IBM RISC box running AIX in my office. I'd reboot the AIX box once every six months or so "just in case," but there wasn't any real reason to do so. Software updates almost never required a restart and they installed in seconds. The Windows machine was a typical Windows machine... People whose only computer experince is using Windows don't know how idignant they should be! This is, in my view, one of the few legitimate "major gripes" about Windows. Its memory management is atrocious. 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, and memory becomes so "clogged" that programs will crash for no obvious reason. Would that a restart were required only once a year. 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. |
#53
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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illuminated Zippy keyboard
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...... |
#54
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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illuminated Zippy keyboard
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. |
#55
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
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. |
#56
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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illuminated Zippy keyboard
"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. |
#57
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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illuminated Zippy keyboard
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. |
#58
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
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? |
#59
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
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. |
#60
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
"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. |
#61
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
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 |
#62
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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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. 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 |
#63
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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illuminated Zippy keyboard
"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. |
#64
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
"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.) |
#65
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
"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 |
#66
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
"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 |
#67
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
"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 |
#68
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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illuminated Zippy keyboard
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 |
#69
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Another PC Oddity
"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? |
#70
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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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? |
#71
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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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 |
#72
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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." |
#73
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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. |
#74
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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 |
#75
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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. |
#76
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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 |
#77
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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." |
#78
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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 |
#79
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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 |
#80
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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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