It's spelled Commodore. And I used to use Berkely Softwerks GEOS as well. And I have 4 Macs up on a shelf that are the 9" black and white models. An SE, and SE/30, the original 512k and a "Classic". I even have a fully functional NeXT TurboStation somewhere. I have an Apple //e under a table somewhere. An 867 G4 under yet another table. And I have a Quadra too. I just mean to throw them all away, but I never get around to it. I forgot, I have a G3 blue and white too. I gave my mother my Intel Core2Dou MacBook 2GHz which is pretty new. She wanted a Mac when she saw her sisters, my aunt. And you might find this hard to believe but all I ran on that Mac was Windows. So I reformatted it and gave it away. I sold my dual 2 GHz G5 when the intel pentium single core 3.2 GHz running After Effects blew it away. Got a good price for it too.

I have the first CDROM from Apple as well. It was called the 300i and it's very long and low profile. It came with speakers and RCA audio in the back for the powered speakers. It was $599 when I bought it, but then black CDs used to be $9.99 for a 3-pack.

I switched from the Apple IIe to the Commodore 64, to the 128, then the Atari ST, then the Mac, then the Amiga, then the PC in 1991. Built lots of PCs all the way up to 1996 when I bought a PowerCenter from PowerComputing. Dropped that for a 400 MHz Pentium based WinBook. In 1999 switched back to the Mac, owned all kinds of various models. By about 2004 I dropped the drop the mac except for what I use at work.

In 1994 I certified for Novell Network Engineering. Then got a Lotus Developer and Admin certification. Later got an MCSE. Then an HP Star, various ProCurve notes, became a SAN engineer for Storage Array Network Design. By 1999 I was editing which is why I got into the Mac. Prior to that I had edited in Premiere 4.2 in 96. And prior to that, I played around on the Toaster. In 86 I wrote a BBS and a terminal in Blitz 64 for the commodore.

Basically, I have a deep background in both art related and tech related areas. So I have built hundreds of PCs, supported huge networks, and know both platforms exceedingly well.

Alex Alexzander

"I'd rather pay 1300 bucks on a Macbook that will last me 6-8 years..."

Why would anyone want to use a computer after 6-8 years?! You may save money but you lose tons of productivity. Not realistic. I don't imagine an 8-year-old Mac being able to run the latest OS X. So the $1300 investment is realistically only good for 2-3 years. I'd rather pay $599 for a 2-3 year notebook, thank you.

No one is using a computer from 8 years ago. He'd be running System 9 and a 350 to 450 MHz G3 or G4. Mac guys love to make this claim, and yet before the January expo they already have their already over loaded credit cards ready to buy anything Jobs announces. And always, it's slightly better than the past machine and absolutely not at all worth a total upgrade cost of buying an entirely new Mac.

One ex-friend told me he wanted to be a designer. So he buys a iMac. I said, why not buy the Adobe suite so you can learn the software. Nope, he wanted the Mac, then had no money for software. Claimed it would last him for many years to come and made the mistake of calling the depreciating iMac an investment, as almost all Mac users confuse the distinction. Investments appreciate in value, which is why they are called investments. All else is not an investment by definition. Anyway, 6 months later he buys a quad-core. I say, what about learning to design? To that he actually swears at me, uses the f word several times, tells me PCs suck, I didn't even mention PCs, just mentioned Adobe's suite is all, and he tells me all about how he needs the tower because of expansion et al. He never so much as expanded the memory or learned a thing about design. And that is your typical mac fanboy. In love with the image but more often than not, hold absolutely no skill that requires a Mac what so ever.

Note to many of you Mac users. You can read mac rumors with any NetBook for 6 times less the money. And no one will know what you use to post all that Apple love. I'm posting this from my HP2133 and guess what... The text looks just the same as your text from your big expensive silver paper-weight. And no, it's not crashing and it only costs $699 and even has an Express Card slot and a 9 in 1 media card reader. It weighs 2.6 pounds. Lighter than your Air and a thousand dollars less. 1280 x 768 res too. Fits better on the airline tray tables too. Imagine that.

Alex Alexzander

Tell you ten things. Yeah, let's play this game. Why don't you tell me ten things OSX has that Vista doesn't have.

I'll give you ten things off the top of my head:

1. Access to a far larger choice of hardware from more than one vendor.
2. Access to a far larger base of competitive software in the areas of business, enterprise, and home entertainment.
3. Direct support for Blu-ray playback in software, including HDCP support from software player, to Video Card, to HDCP compliant display. Had this for 2 years now.
4. Built-in FTP support right in the Vista UI. Apple's support of FTP in the Finder has no write access, only read access.
5. An uninstall architecture that allows customers to easily remove software without leaving stupid plist files all over the place. This includes driver rollback on any device, which simply doesn’t exist on the Mac at all. Had this since Windows ME. About 9 years now. And don't even say Macs don't need drivers. Install an ATTO card and tell me you don't need drivers.
6. DirectX, which is the hands down winner for game development.
7. Media Center in Vista is vastly superior to Apple’s Media Player.
8. I can change much of the interface look and feel. I can set the colors of the Areo glass too, and not just a preset. I can make it any color in the 24bit spectrum. Can you change the color of your windows? Make it look just like older versions of the OS if you want to? Nope.
9. Built in true support for Active Directory, making Vista an excellent Enterprise Client in a large network.
10. A roaming profile, making logging into any PC assume all the characteristics of the PC I use every day.

But those ten things aren't so important. What is important is that Windows has tons of vendor support. Unlike Apple, which you can only buy from Apple, I can buy a Windows PC from anyone. I can buy a tablet PC from perhaps ten different vendors. Can you buy a tablet PC that isn't a hackup job from a MacBook? Nope. Can you buy a 8.9" NetBook? No. Can you buy a 7" NetBook? No again. If Apple decides to stop giving you FireWire, you are out of luck. If Dell doesn't give me FireWire, I can buy an HP, or an ASUS, or a Levano, or any number of other vendors. I'm not locked into any one vendor. They all run Windows, and so I have choices. You do not. If Apple doesn't make a NetBook, you don't have one to buy at all.

Can you buy a new tower that cost $399? No. How about twice that price? No. 3 times that price? No. 4 times that price, perhaps. What if I want a media center type PC with built in DVR? I have many to choose from. You have maybe one or two from Elgato. And external stick-out trash. I can build a PC that looks like a stereo component, has a DVD or Blu-ray, covers recording, playback, and burning. Can you do that? No.

Can you build or buy a single unit with say 8 or 12 drive bays for a single device for a rack that can host a large database? No. You need to go external. Can you even buy an XRAID anymore? No, Apple dropped em. The only true rack mount Apple offers is the Xserve. Wow, a choice of an Xserve 1u or the Xserve of 1u. Tough choice there.

Do you have support for subscription music? No. You have to buy every single song. Can you go to Amazon and rent a movie? No. How about Cinema Now? No. Movie Link? No.

Vista is more than what is in the box. It's a huge eco system of hardware, software, and middle ware. That's what OSX lacks. Mostly Vista isn't pathetic. OSX is.

Alex Alexzander

Why would I ever want the junk put out by Apple to "Save" my netbook, when Acer has already done that for me?? I have been using a netbook with XP (which does not crash when properly set up) and use a 160GB hard drive with fantastic clarity on a small screen and can use most if not all the apps that I find to be essential and in a machine that fits into my cargo pockets and if I need to install something on the road, my 16 GB flash drives are more than enough for the task. With LAN and Wireless, I can access the net, send completed projects and keep in contact with anyone that I need to.
Oh, by the way, Expensive?? try $450.00 Canadian before taxes. To make it more user friendly, I dropped the McAfee suite and installed my own favorite, and if needed I have an external DVD drive and burner that is very portable. So, who need Apple, 5 Notebooks and not one is junk from them.

rocostonik wrote:I did do something stupid on a PC, I tried to edit some music on it.

And yet I've been able to make thousands of edits in Media Composer, export tracks to ProTools, bring em back into Media Composer, compress the whole thing using a 2-pass CinemaCraft Encoder, bring that all into AvidDVD, not to mention effects creation and editing in Boris RED, various filters and AniMatte for weeks and months at a time. In addition, wrote a book, did the artwork for over 450 illustrations in that book, give that to my editor, get back PDFs of each chapter, perform markups for the Quark layout over a 9 month period of time, and not see a single blue-screen. And that's just a small part of my past. I've worked on easily over hundreds of DVDs over the last three years. No problem. Designed I can't remember how many specialty cases for various packaging jobs all in Illustrator and Photoshop, no problems. My PC must be blessed or something. And I guess all the PCs I have built and bought for the last 17 years are also blessed. Because aside from GPF errors in Windows 3.1, I have not had any real problems I can think of, period. Not even so much as a virus, and all I use is NOD32, and the built in Windows Defender. Just a simple $34 a year app is all that stands between me at the evil world.

I can understand all those folks who don't know better downloading junk from peer to peer sites getting their PCs into trouble. No one can help you if you're too stupid not to install everything you get your bored to death hands on.

On the other hand, if you are truly a long time Mac user, and you have used them not just in their OSX era, but go back to the days of System 6, 7, 8 and 9, then you'll understand when I say that the worst experience I have had on computers in squarely in the Mac side of the fence. PRAM that needs to be reset. Prior to OSX, having to find the best way to manage the memory for each app so Photoshop wouldn't die or be extremely slow. Having to buy better ram than Apple provides else your Mac would freeze very often, why do you think RAMJET exists for Mac users? Most of us long time users know better than to use any old ram in a Mac. Where as in a PC, slap anything in it and it works.

The Dual G5 1.8GHz at my office is half way to lemonville. Stick two SATA drives in it, it goes bezerk. Leave just one, and it's fine. And like many Mac users in the know, I had to debate with my employer that memory quality was a big deal. He bought cheap ram and it drove me nuts with panics. So I went out of pocket to put RAMJET memory it. The crashes magically stopped. Point is, I'm not some PC user who has no experience with Apple's products. You can feed me all the bull you like. I consulted with quite a few advertising agencies as a consultant, and I always vastly improved their Mac reliability. Macs not only cost more. You have to pay attention to the hardware you put inside them. In particular, the memory. You have to treat them with kid gloves or they flake on you.

Now on the other side of that, I've been building my own PCs since the 286 10 MHz, and all the while I have done things much more easily. Need a hard drive back in the day, buy a used MFM RLL controller and a used Seagate ST-251 and you're in business. Get an MGA card, and you're off. Want color, get a CGA card, throw out the MGA card. Want EGA and then VGA later on, easy. Get an Orchid ProDesigner. On the old Macs, I bought a IMS Twin Turbo and it was hell. And the card was $499. An Orchid ProDesigner, $239, twice the memory.

As far back as I can remember, the PC has always been so very easy. Buy whatever you want, throw it together, install Windows, load your drivers, and presto, you have a machine purpose built for what ever you want. You have the install discs, drivers, etc. So you need to fix it, hey you got all the software that went into it. Easy as pie.

I still remember when the Monster 3DFX boards first came out. Quake was using OpenGL. I had a Matrox card. I wanted that killer new rendering. All I had to do was buy the Monster board, plug it in, connect the Matrox to the Monster, and the Monster to my VGA monitor. Load a driver, and I had OpenGL rendering on the card and it was truly beautiful. On the Mac side in that time. Nothing. Macs had zippo. Slow 2D and it still costs a lot more.

Never have I seen Apple give you more than any ol PC will give you. And all the while, folks like you chime in with "It just works". Well my friend, my PC just works better.

Alex Alexzander

So obviously they have some kinda pro use. Just as much as a windows machine.