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Joined: Sep 2007
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LaRate, you're quite right - component selection (and combination) is very important. Fortunately the netbook I am using ticks all the necessary boxes - wireless, ethernet, audio, video, mic, webcam, bluetooth, trackpad, etc. - it just works. James x
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Joined: Feb 2010
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LaRate, you're quite right - component selection (and combination) is very important. Fortunately the netbook I am using ticks all the necessary boxes - wireless, ethernet, audio, video, mic, webcam, bluetooth, trackpad, etc. - it just works. This is a perfect illustration of the problem, that you can't do this on "virtually any modern PC" -- I remember numerous articles about how the Dell Mini 9 (your model?) was one of the few netbooks that everything worked on. On most netbooks, either the Mac OS install wouldn't work or would work with only major limitations (no sound, no wifi, no ethernet, etc.). Also, even the Dell install required some above-average understanding of how to do things, as there are sites full of people helping each other get it to work, since many people have questions/problems with it when they attempt it. And you have to keep your fingers crossed whenever a new OS update comes out. BTW, if you know anyone who wants one, I'm selling one. :-) Mine has the internal SSD drive, I wanted something tiny, cheap, and as quick as possible within those constraints. It does work nicely, but I could not adjust to the feel of the keyboard (and to a lesser extent, trackpad, but that can be addressed with a mouse), so I never used it. I may buy one of the new Airs at some point. There are also still features you can get on real Macs that you can't get on the "hackintosh" laptops like firewire (which, unfortunately, some Macs don't have any more either, though it was enormously useful for target disk mode and useful for some high quality audio interfaces), and multi-touch trackpad operation (like two finger scrolling, for example, which is very nice). Though one thing that the Dells and such do have over the current crop of Mac notebooks is that at least the battery is user replaceable! One of the dumbest things Apple did... EDIT: p.s. -- the replacement Dell model does not work perfectly for running Mac OS like the 9 did, so the older model is actually in demand for this. Again, showing you can't pick any modern PC and expect it to work.
Last edited by anotherscott; 01/25/11 11:00 AM.
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Look, I don't mean to be nasty here, but I find it very surprising that you sound so sure of yourself in the arena of computers because some of your comments are quite alarmingly simplistic and some are outright incorrect. In MacMacMac's defense, I ran W2k/XP systems for years with 0 AV and 0 infections (I'd do an occasional scan to check, never had a true issue (plenty of false positives, esp in the early days of AV software)). Much of what he says is correct, if you follow some fundamental rules (and your computer habits allow for you to follow those rules) then your chances of infection can be brought down to a negligible value. That being said, I don't think that his case, nor mine, are valid arguments for the safety of an OS in general. Not everyone follows those rules, as a matter of fact, probably the significant majority of folks don't. And like it or not, "if you behave perfectly then so will the product" is not what I consider a valid approach.
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The competition is pretty close nowadays. I am a mac user but in a sudden foolish idea I sold everything I owned for acoustic instruments. After five month as a social outcast I finally borrowed this four years old pc laptop and slapped windows 7 in it and have, with time, unconsciously recreated almost the same streamlined experience the Apple Universe gave me. Had zero problems and everything is working mighty fine.
I don't find pros and cons over the other but as soon as I can afford I'll buy a mac again just for the aesthetics and smaller office footprint. My everyday work will probably work exactly the same.
RD-700NX (25 nov 2010)
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After years of only Pc use, I'm really enjoying the Mac so far. There is much to learn, but I understand that my inability to do things has more to do with my own limitations and not that you just can't do it on a Mac. Luckily there are tutorials on the Apple site that explain things very well.
As far as running Windows programs, I'll try installing the program Parallels so that I don't have to reboot in Windows (I keep typing "WinDOWNS"...Freudian much?).
private piano/voice teacher FT
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It does work nicely, but I could not adjust to the feel of the keyboard (and to a lesser extent, trackpad, but that can be addressed with a mouse), so I never used it. Another two pet peeves of mine are keyboards and laptop pointing devices. Way back in the 286 days we had $100 luxury Cadillac long-throw keys on our desktop (granted they were pretty clacky, and god help you if you dumped your coffee / wine / beer in it) and most laptops had trackballs, which made infinite sense. Today almost everything, including desktops, are using short travel, hard to type on, laptop-like keys. Most laptops are additionally cursed by awkward placement of page up/down, the cut & paste Ctrl key moved out of the corner for a seldom needed function key, the power button located immediately above the backspace, etc. It's getting to the point where I'm seriously considering making my own desktop keyboard (perhaps individual capacitive sensors with a global "thump" sensor, each key a tactile depression in a sheet of Plexiglas). And I really wish someone would bring trackballs back to laptops (optical please) - trackpads are almost uniformly pretty horrible, and that rubber eraser thingie in IBMs / Lenovos is an abomination that should have died on the drafting table.
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It does work nicely, but I could not adjust to the feel of the keyboard (and to a lesser extent, trackpad, but that can be addressed with a mouse), so I never used it. Another two pet peeves of mine are keyboards and laptop pointing devices. Way back in the 286 days we had $100 luxury Cadillac long-throw keys on our desktop (granted they were pretty clacky, and god help you if you dumped your coffee / wine / beer in it) and most laptops had trackballs, which made infinite sense. Today almost everything, including desktops, are using short travel, hard to type on, laptop-like keys. Most laptops are additionally cursed by awkward placement of page up/down, the cut & paste Ctrl key moved out of the corner for a seldom needed function key, the power button located immediately above the backspace, etc. It's getting to the point where I'm seriously considering making my own desktop keyboard (perhaps individual capacitive sensors with a global "thump" sensor, each key a tactile depression in a sheet of Plexiglas). And I really wish someone would bring trackballs back to laptops (optical please) - trackpads are almost uniformly pretty horrible, and that rubber eraser thingie in IBMs / Lenovos is an abomination that should have died on the drafting table. Great example of personal preferences. I remember the clack-clack days, where the IBM keyboard reigned supreme (type a document and stop anything smaller than a 357 bullet). I always liked the long travel true spring keyboards. However, I found myself increasingly preferring the shorter travel flatter keyboards, they were more comfortable on my wrists without having to resort to a wrist pad. Now I use the Apple flat keyboard (chiclets and all, the designers of the IBM PCjr chiclet keyboards are getting the last laugh) and I'm completely cool with it. As for laptop trackballs, I never did get along with them. I also actually liked the TrackPoint on ThinkPads. I'm completely down with trackpads now, esp since you can do a lot more with them with gestures.
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Joined: Sep 2007
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EDIT: p.s. -- the replacement Dell model does not work perfectly for running Mac OS like the 9 did... You are correct. There are actually four revisions of the Dell Mini10. The 10v (aka 1011) shares essentially the same hardware as the original Mini9 and can therefore run OS X without any issues. However the other Mini10 models adopt different graphics hardware for which no OS X drivers exist, thus hardware acceleration cannot be enabled. Again, showing you can't pick any modern PC and expect it to work. Correct. Cheers, James x
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Piano
by Gino2 - 04/17/24 02:34 PM
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Piano
by Gino2 - 04/17/24 02:23 PM
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