Amiga.org
The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Alternative Operating Systems => Topic started by: vic20owner on November 15, 2005, 03:20:32 AM
-
Yeah I finally did it. I sold off the $800 worth of Amiga stuff I have collected and put it in savings. I spent $300 on a used 450mhz G4 with 1GB ram, monitor, dvd, zip, etc.
All I can say is wow.. it's everything I wish my Amiga could have done for me. it's not windows, it's not intel, and it does everything a modern computer should do and more... and I think it does it better than any of my XP boxes and linux boxes. It already runs pretty fast for a 450 but Im going to drop a 2ghz accelerator in it... why? For fun.
Not bragging, not trolling, just sharing. If you haven't found what you are looking for, consider osx. It's a nice step from Linux, a jump from windows, and a huge leap from the amiga.
OSX will soon be released for intel.. but me? I like the PPC. It reminds me of my Amiga.
-vic
-
I just had this same conversation about OSX being the best of both worlds in many reaspects. In a crazy alternate world Amiga could have been like this. I recommend a Pioneer DVD-R drive from www.macasales.com along with ILife 05. iDVD, IMovie, and Garage Band gave me the same buzz as Deluxe paint, & Bars & pipes did back in the day.
-Regards,
Crom00
-
I did the same thing a while back. I bought a G4 533 "Digital Audio" before the mini was announced. I love both the machine and OSX. Although usable, the OS does feel a little sluggish on this machine even with plenty of ram.
I would recommend following through with the processor upgrade like you mentioned. I still haven't, and I think I would use the machine a lot more if I did. I have to admit it's a beautiful OS though:-D.
Jeff
-
i also have a osx running here, you did a good choice, welcome to the modern computer world ;)
________
ASS OILED (http://www.fucktube.com/categories/159/oiled/videos/1)
-
I used Mac a lot from 68k to G2. Always thought they should be much faster for the hardware they were packing though, cause my 1200 is still way more responsive than my Power Tower G2, and just much better to use, despite the uglier standard interface (just using 1084s). The new macs are pretty sweet, and the second hand G3's are really cheap now. I also want to buy one when I graduate.
I would like to know, how do you 'feel' the responsiveness is with the G3 and OSX? Does it feel as good as the old Amigas, or does it still suffer the feeling of bloatware? I still use win98, cause it's less of a resource hog than XP, but getting too outdated.
-Oli
-
I use 10.3 on a G3/400 Lombard Powerbook with 128 + 256MB RAM and it's slooooow. Certainly usable but browsing is a pain when there is flash and/or (big) animgifs on the page. When just using the OS when not doing any other stuff I have to be patient, sometimes there's 'GUI-lag' running upto several seconds. The puny video hardware probably also doesn't help.
You could ofcourse always use OS9. Then again sticking a spork in your eyes hurts less, more likely.
-
I hope you didn't sell all of your Amiga stuff and kept at least one working machine, because you will miss it eventually. I am back to being hooked on my Amigas after many years of Windows and a few on my Mac Powerbook. I do agree that the Mac is far ahead of Windows as far as MY EXPERIENCE (Please don't start any flames from that comment).
I am going in the opposite direction than you are. I am interested in seeing how close to a "Modern Computer" I can get with my Classic A4000 w/Phase5 PPC/68060 running OS4 and/or MorphOS. I know it won't compete speed wise or feature wise, but I want to see what the feel of the experience is like compared to those other, so called "Modern Computers". I am going to thin out my Amiga collection and spend the money I make on more Amiga hard&software to push the Classic Amiga as far as it will go. (PCI addon w/video card & TV tuner, USB, etc.)
After all, AOS 4.0 will be released in just two more weeks, right?
(if you don't get the two more weeks joke, you have not been an Amiga user long enough to remember it)
-
OS X Tiger is really good. I got a 1.5Ghz PowerBook G4 (1.25Gig of RAM) recently, and really enjoy using it.
Can't wait until Apple shift to the dual core x86, then I'll get a dektop Mac too.
-
I'm using OSX Tiger (10.something) on my 1.4gig iBook and I love it. To me it actually feels a lot like using AmigaOS, and on my iBook it really flies. Much quicker than my A1200 even for general OS usage, I have to admit.
I still love my A1200 though :-)
-
I have to endure a 1.25GHz eMac at work running 10.3 in 256MB ram on a third rate graphics card. Naturally, I love it...
-
Karlos wrote:
I have to endure a 1.25GHz eMac at work running 10.3 in 256MB ram on a third rate graphics card. Naturally, I love it...
Any MacOS before 10.4 was not good, certainly I was never tempted to part with any cold hard cash... I can feel your pain with ony 256megs, OS X needs at least twice that to be happy. Though with a decent CPU (ie 2Ghz Athlon64), 10.4 runs fine in VESA2.0 mode ;-)
-
What's are the major differences between Panther and Tiger? I have 10.3.9 on an old G3 and it's acceptable, but nothing that special. I would try Tiger but I'd expect it to be slower and more bloated on my budget system.
-
adolescent wrote:
What's are the major differences between Panther and Tiger? I have 10.3.9 on an old G3 and it's acceptable, but nothing that special. I would try Tiger but I'd expect it to be slower and more bloated on my budget system.
Tiger runs like garbage on G3 machines. It's the first version of the OS that runs slower than the previous one. Spotlight and Dashboard are the two "big" features. For me spotlight is useless because it won't search the system folders (I still haven't figured out how to get around this in Tiger). Dashboard is kind of neat for a litte while, but the general consensus seems to be it's not terribly useful in the long run. CoreImage is pretty cool, but on a G3 I doubt it would work very well. At release time Tiger was also kind of buggy, though that may have been cleaned up by now.
-
Karlos wrote:
I have to endure a 1.25GHz eMac at work running 10.3 in 256MB ram on a third rate graphics card. Naturally, I love it...
I knew we'd eventually break you. :-D
(Yes, I did spot the sarcasm)
One thing I've noticed , is that I'm a lot more relaxed after switching from Winblows to OSX. After using windows since the 3.1 days I finally had enough, got fed up with fighting with the damn machine.
After 6 months of using OSX, I havent had to punch it once, I spend more time working instead of virus & malware scanning and patching etc. etc.
-
@Doobrey
On capable hardware I have no doubt OSX performs very well, just not at work on the machine I have to use.
Still, for a while I had to use OSX 10.2 on an original iMac 400MHz G3 with 128MB, I was close to punching that every day ;-)
One of my principal gripes with OSX relate to my super evovled next generation colour perception and the fact that OSX still doesn't let me define "highlighted text foreground colour = X, highlighted text background colour = Y". You may only set the background colour or invert the whole scheme (as part of the accessibility options - :lol:)
I mean, how elementally simple is that? I know it is mac tradition to limit the complexity of the interface so that even the interior designer types can get to grips with it, but please, even they can grasp the idea of more than one colour at a time :lol:
As for the local fileserver (OSX Server) dying to the point of total non bootability because file permissions may have been messed up (despite only allowing remote access to the staff), that is just pathetic. When informed that 'you did keep an eye on permissions and repaired them to keep it all tickety boo' by my local mac expert I was aghast. I mean wow, I have to remember to fix problems that shouldn't really arise anyway and before they do?
It was just a local file repository on the LAN with individual user accounts, none of which had any kind of permission to access stuff outside their home folder. How could it get so corrupted in the first place :-?
Hence my sentiment now: "Don't be fooled by the glitz of OSX, some day it is going to come and bite you hard on the arse."
-
Yeah, I got a g4 1 ghz w/ 1gig ram os 10.4.3
it is a very nice machine I love it it does everything I need it too, the only complaint is its windows media player compatibility and its lack of responsiveness which is the main reason I'm saving for an os4 or morphos machine so I can have a sports car computer so to speak
-
@Jeff
Pick up a PC Geforce FX 5200 and flash it. You will probably need a friend with a PCI video card and a spare PC to flash it with. Made a night and day difference with my AGP 400 Sawtooth. In fact it can run WoW (albeit not playable in very populated areas) even though its 500MHz under min specs.
The GeForce will really make the machine sing at 533 and it will be gorgeous if you upgrade the CPU.
-
@Karlos
Oh Karlos you're so jaded. :P
-
nyteschayde wrote:
@Karlos
Oh Karlos you're so jaded. :P
Seeing as you're a mate I'll let you get away with that...
That and the fact it is so bloody true :lol: If I used them as a home machine I expect I'd be a lot less critical, but they have caused me a lot of needless headaches at work ;-)
-
I'm running OSX 10.3 on a Mac Mini w/ 512 mb ram. I find it to be pretty sluggish compared to both of my Wintel machines.
Sometimes it takes several seconds for windows to open after I double click on them.
Nothing to this day is more responsive than my former A4000/060 Picasso 4. Everthing was instant on that machine.
-
@nyteschayde
I already picked up a Mac Radeon 8500 64 meg. Will the Geforce FX 5200 be better than that? The next thing I really need is the CPU upgrade.
Thanks :-)
-
It will be better but not compared to the CPU. At this point a CPU upgrade will give you more desirable performance. The 8500 is a good card and in the future I still recommend getting the Geforce since its compatible with all the tiger effects that the 8500 may or may not be compatible with but its definitely good enough to give you hardware acceleration and the CPU will polish it off nicely.
-
I went OS X this past summer and love it. I got a new PB G4 1.67GHz 15" and a refurb iMac G5 17" and love using them all the time. Tiger rocks. I also have a PC though, a P4 3.2GHz with Radeon X800 256MB for compatibility.
-
:angry: AAAArrgggghhh :angry:
-
I would like to know, how do you 'feel' the responsiveness is with the G3 and OSX?
No clue, but on my Mac mini, when I click on anything, I have to wait for a fully-complete window to pop up. Sometimes that takes a second, sometimes it takes 10. A truly responsive computer will give you instant feedback, and fill-in details as thing get processed.
More memory in a mini speeds up the wait, but not the response. I'd imagine a G3 would choke.
My mini came with OS 10.4, so I haven't tried 10.3. It's worth pointing out that Tiger is a 12+ GB install. The first Mac person to call XP "bloatware" will be promptly shot.
Karlos: It was just a local file repository on the LAN with individual user accounts, none of which had any kind of permission to access stuff outside their home folder. How could it get so corrupted in the first place
I had to rebuild the desktops of my OS 8 newspaper machines about once a week. I see Apple has made a lot of progress.
spihunter: Sometimes it takes several seconds for windows to open after I double click on them.
Most of the time, Dock items won't even "bounce" on my machine to let me know the system is doing something. It just sits there.
nyteschayde: It will be better but not compared to the CPU. At this point a CPU upgrade will give you more desirable performance.
My mini feels a lot slower than the two G3/266 machines I bought for my school newspaper (the school would not allow me to buy anything but Mac hardware). Like PC vendors, Apple puts too strong an emphasis on the CPU speed.
TjLaZer: I also have a PC though, a P4 3.2GHz with Radeon X800 256MB for compatibility.
Whoa. That's quite a compatibility system. :-)
-
Karlos wrote:
@Doobrey
One of my principal gripes with OSX relate to my super evovled next generation colour perception and the fact that OSX still doesn't let me define "highlighted text foreground colour = X, highlighted text background colour = Y". You may only set the background colour or invert the whole scheme (as part of the accessibility options - :lol:)
I mean, how elementally simple is that? I know it is mac tradition to limit the complexity of the interface so that even the interior designer types can get to grips with it, but please, even they can grasp the idea of more than one colour at a time :lol:
It seems someone at at Apple was listening to you... since I suffer a similar (if not the same) affliction, I also needed to change the highlighted text colour... so I went to system preferences and then selected appearance... lo and behold there is a setting in Tiger that allows one to set that very feature. :-D
-
@Waccoon
I am sure you might have something wrong with your mac mini as I only have a G4 867 with 768mb ram and I dont find tiger slow at all, I also only have the standard GeForce 4 MX gfx card
-
bloodline wrote:
It seems someone at at Apple was listening to you... since I suffer a similar (if not the same) affliction, I also needed to change the highlighted text colour... so I went to system preferences and then selected appearance... lo and behold there is a setting in Tiger that allows one to set that very feature. :-D
That must be one of the 'dozens of updates' in Tiger then. Still stuck with 10.3.9 here and I sure don't have that option anywhere. Are you sure it lets you independently set the back and foreground text colours?
All I get is this:
(http://www.extropia.co.uk/_temp/prefs.png)
-edit-
Thank god that was a png and not the tiff it saved as :-D
-
If you guys are having stability or speed problems with your OSX boxes/laptops then I feel for you, but I have to say that it must be a problem with your machine, as I am running the latest version of OSX on my iBook which is just a G4 1.4gig with 256Mb RAM, and it absolutely flies. No waiting for anything to happen!
-- EDIT
Mumble mumble amiga mumble...
-
If it is a problem with the machine than that says it all. This is a completely "out of the box" eMac with the OS that shipped with it. Just as the server was an out of the box G4 workstation with nothing but OS X Server.
;-)
-
Karlos wrote:
bloodline wrote:
It seems someone at at Apple was listening to you... since I suffer a similar (if not the same) affliction, I also needed to change the highlighted text colour... so I went to system preferences and then selected appearance... lo and behold there is a setting in Tiger that allows one to set that very feature. :-D
That must be one of the 'dozens of updates' in Tiger then. Still stuck with 10.3.9 here and I sure don't have that option anywhere. Are you sure it lets you independently set the back and foreground text colours?
All I get is this:
http://www.extropia.co.uk/_temp/prefs.png
Err, yeah... I set the appearance to blue and then used a custom colour for the highlight (a very dark blue)... now I have no visual problems what so ever...
-
You are missing the issue, I want to get "white on dark blue" for highlighted text as that is the most visually obvious thing to me. Virtually every other OS I've ever used lets me do this.
Here on 10.3.9 the text foreground colour is always black, you are just changing the background highlight colour, nothing more :-/
Hell, let's see what happens if I make highlihhted text black.... :lol:
-edit-
Oh wait, I do think I missed a sarcastic note there :lol:
-
Also Dont forget in Tiger you can also change the colour lable of the background text and the forgound also changes. I would show a pic of this but I dont know how to add pics here
-
Alas we don't have tiger here and wether it gets installed or not is not my decision.
So it really took them until tiger to implement something like this?
To damn busy with rotating login screens I expect :-P
-
I just had a look at my panther box and you are also able to change the background lable colour, I think you looking in the system preferences then apperance, but its not there what you need to do is if you have a two button mouse then right click say on your hd icon then there will be a option to change the lable colour. If you dont have a two button mouse then you need to use the option key I think, this should help
-
I really wanted to get an iBook for a laptop, but the realities of what software I need to take with me and what runs on Mac did not coincide very well. So I'm stuck with a Windows laptop. :/
-
Hi billt
Maybe you could of got some one with a mac to try out virtualpc then you could of got to test out the programs you needed on the mac to see if you might of got that ibook after all
http://www.apple.com/macosx/applications/virtualpc/
-
@AntonioX
Ah. I think you don't understand what I am complaining about. I want basic text (in any text editing application or browser etc) after I highlight it by dragging over it with the mouse to change from 'black on white' to 'white on blue'.
I cannot find an option for this anywhere here :-/
-
Welcome to the world of Macs! I like my Macs just about as much as my Amigas. One thing to remember about OS X is it likes RAM. The more you can give it the better. It caches all it can to RAM to help speeds things up. If you have less then 1GB of RAM you will want to at least get your system up to 1GB. Going from 512MB to 1GB is like night and day. You will notice the change.
-
@ Karlos
I am not sure if I am right again but do you mean like changeing the colours in say textedit?
-
AntonioX wrote:
@ Karlos
I am not sure if I am right again but do you mean like changeing the colours in say textedit?
Yeah, any application really where you can select text. In the "Appearence" Prefs (see earlier window grab) the only option for text highlight seems to affect the selected texts background colour only.
-
Karlos wrote:
If it is a problem with the machine than that says it all. This is a completely "out of the box" eMac with the OS that shipped with it. Just as the server was an out of the box G4 workstation with nothing but OS X Server.
;-)
I don't know about Tiger, but when I used OS9 and below, the out of the box installation was always pretty bad. It would install a lot of rubbish that one didn't need or want, even when one specified that particular components should not be installed. I always used to do a LOT of customisation of any MacOS installation. Much pruning, and rearranging, and use of a good de-fragger (this all made a big difference to performance for me). I don't have much faith in OS installers, and unfortunately, Mac documentation isn't always very helpful for anyone who wants to do any system customisation (well, I think everyone knows that's a weak point in MacOS, but not their target market). Some of the bad response times reported here sound like my crump old macs. From having played with macs somewhat in my local puter shop over the years, I would expect better. You may well be able to tweak your performance somewhat.
-
@ Karlos
I am not sure if you can do that but I will look and see if some one else might od made a program that does this :) or even if you post this on http://www.macfixit.com/ they might be able to help as they are good at this kind of thing
-
@Oliver
Isn't all that *exactly* the sort of 'typical windows maintnance' type of thing MacOS is supposed to save you from? :lol:
Multi GB installs and not working on their own hardware out of the box. How they can lambast MS is beyond me ;-)
-
Running 10.2.8 on a 700Mhz eMac and loving it :)
Best computer I ever owned.
-
@Karlos
Well, yeah, one would have thought so. Up until about system 6, I was generally pretty happy in macland, but OS's just started growing out of control. I love to blast windows as much as the next guy, but I actually have preferred using it to systems 7,8,9.
At uni, we had some imacs in a library cafe, as a net bar, and I could type several words in advance of the letters appearing on the screen (I'm also not much of a typist by the way). What the hell were those things doing??? Admitedly, I think they must have been set up really badly, but why couldn't the software show what you type prior to doing whatever (I don't know what) was keeping the CPU so busy? Talk about wanting to punch a compter (or at least some engineer).
Anyway, at least mac has done a good marketing job, unlike some other company which shall remain nameless. As an engineer however, I so often find it grating when business and human factors come in the way of success of good design. sigh.
I had hoped that the *nix based code would have made macos a lot more efficent. Multi GB installs just fail to impress.
-
hmm, thinking about Apple's maketing strategy of the past 5 years or so, which has focussed somewhat on the 'hairdresser' market (please, I really don't mean to offend anyone, honest), having out of the box installations that hamstring performance really does seem to be a bit of a dull move. Really good way to annoy and befuddle one's customers.
-
Oliver wrote:
hmm, thinking about Apple's maketing strategy of the past 5 years or so, which has focussed somewhat on the 'hairdresser' market (please, I really don't mean to offend anyone, honest), having out of the box installations that hamstring performance really does seem to be a bit of a dull move. Really good way to annoy and befuddle one's customers.
Substitute "hairdresser" for "as seen on tv interior designer type" and you can be as offensive as you wish and I'm with you 100%...
-
No way you can compare os 7,8,9 to OSX. OSX is the best thing I've ever seen. The security and power of unix/linux/bsd and the convenience of a mac with the compatibility feeling of windows. Everything is soooo well designed, there was very little learning curve. Coming from Linux, I find the power of the bash shell everything I wanted. I'm running my G4/450 as a web server for my kiteboarding forum (www.flkitesurf.com), watching dvds, browing the web and generally just screwing around with no slowdown. No hiccups, no choppy video, no slow page serving, nothing. Installing software is quicker and easier than anything I've ever used, including the amiga.
I tried really hard to use my amiga for daily tasks and found it completely useless by today's standards. Windows was ok but always felt "messy".
OSX is wonderful. This is my slowest computer (others are P3/850mhz xp, P4/3.4ghz xp, P4/3ghz xp, P4/2.5ghz linux) and it runs smoother than all of them. I find it painful to look at windows now... it looks like it was designed by the tele tubbies, video is always flakey, programs stop responding, and the filesystem layout is just a mess.
So yeah, I'm converted. I'm going to by a mac mini G4 ($499) as my next major computer purchase.
-
@vic20owner
That's good to hear. Interestingly mixed results from the other users though. Do you have any ideas why that would be?
-
@Vic20owner
Good for you, I'm glad you found a system you like.
he security and power of unix/linux/bsd and the convenience of a mac with the compatibility feeling of windows. Everything is soooo well designed, there was very little learning curve.
Sure it's fantastic as a home OS, provided you don't have any rare sight problems ;-)
One word of advice - do not *depend* on all this security. OS X Server _failed_ totally, in a way I have never seen any OS do before (I've only ever seen hardware failures that compare) at work, having been doing nothing more than allowing people to log in from their eMacs and save work to there in case they have to work on another station another day.
My 1.25GHz G4 eMac at work often crawls when running Mail, BBEdit, Firefox, Transmit and couple of bash terminals concurrently which are the absolute bare minimum tools I need to do my job. Occasionally I need to use XL to prepare data for my boss, or OmniGraffle to make diagrams. Unless I close down some other apps, it will literally show me the spinning candy mouse pointer anything from 10 to 30 seconds, in which time I cannot actually click on anything.
Typically I have to boot my machine twice a day at work. I am sure a hefty ram upgrade would help but I don't see it happening soon. My colleagues (non technical) use them just for firefox, mail and office, occasionally some other apps and they have many of the same issues.
These are already higher spec systems than the mac mini you intend to buy.
-
Switching to Mac OS X is probably the last thing I would do, considering the current abuse of system resources. If Mac OS X should ever be as light as AmigaOS, then .. well... that would be something. :-P
Personally I consider AOS (or on x86: BeOS and OS/2 - the latter one with quite a bit of ideas from AOS) to be the perfect combination of Windows and MacOS, and on top of that: Much, much smaller in regard to use of system resources.
Switching to MacOS from Windows is reasonable. Like switching from Yugo to Mercedes. Switching from AmigaOS to Mac OS X is more like switching from a Mercedes to a Yugo :lol:
-
I had some responsiveness problems in Tiger but I thought they were my HD. 10.4.3 seems to improved things a lot though.
OS X eats RAM I'd say 512MB is the minimum.
As for being bloated... it's not quite as bad as it sounds , Half of the Tiger install disc is printer drivers. There's also all sorts of OSS software included web server, FTP, there's also development tools such as Python, Perl etc.
It's big because there's a lot there.
-
dylansmrjo wrote:
Switching to Mac OS X is probably the last thing I would do, considering the current abuse of system resources. If Mac OS X should ever be as light as AmigaOS, then .. well... that would be something. :-P
Personally I consider AOS (or on x86: BeOS and OS/2 - the latter one with quite a bit of ideas from AOS) to be the perfect combination of Windows and MacOS, and on top of that: Much, much smaller in regard to use of system resources.
Switching to MacOS from Windows is reasonable. Like switching from Yugo to Mercedes. Switching from AmigaOS to Mac OS X is more like switching from a Mercedes to a Yugo :lol:
Uh, yeah what ever mate. I wouldnt go as far as saying that. OS X is awesome. Its much more stable and can do things as well if not better then Windows and AmigaOS cant even touch it. The only people I know that talk like that are the ones that have never sat down and used OS X longer then the time you can in a store.
-
Does anyone else think it's a but daft to include EVERY printer driver in a basic installation, just in case you happen to use one of them? Does anyone change printers so often that this becomes a really good feature, and well worth the disk space, installation time, ....
In OSX, does any of this 'just in case' installation end up occupying RAM? I know it did in OS 8. I had assumed that Apple would have improved matters somewhat for their 10'th gen OS. Is this the case?
-
All this kicking of OS X isn't really very constructive... Since I have has the opertunity to run OSX and Windows on the same hardware, I can say that all performance issues experienced with OS X are due to crap hardware... can't wait 'till apple drop the crap PPC and use the superior x86 architecture
As for OS X security... it's been mroe secure than both Win2K and WinXP for me.
As For OS X stability, it's as stable as the most stable Unix I've ever used (AIX and Linux), beats the hell out of Windows and AmigaOS.
OS X has something a bit special for Audio users though... The core audio is excelent, low latencty, highly integrated and STABLE!
-
VirtualPC Could be a solution for some, but I'm putting together a mobile engineering workstation for use re. my day job, and I don't think emulation on an iBook would offer the performance to make that bearable. There's a couple other reasons I chose this particular laptop that the iBook wouldn't have matched either, but the big deciding factor was engineering software and performance. Perhaps after Apple's laptops go x86 and Windows can run directly or VirtualPC won't suffer CPU emulation performance hit, then I can reconsider.
-
Karlos wrote:
@Vic20owner
My 1.25GHz G4 eMac at work often crawls when running Mail, BBEdit, Firefox, Transmit and couple of bash terminals concurrently which are the absolute bare minimum tools I need to do my job. Occasionally I need to use XL to prepare data for my boss, or OmniGraffle to make diagrams. Unless I close down some other apps, it will literally show me the spinning candy mouse pointer anything from 10 to 30 seconds, in which time I cannot actually click on anything.
Typically I have to boot my machine twice a day at work. I am sure a hefty ram upgrade would help but I don't see it happening soon. My colleagues (non technical) use them just for firefox, mail and office, occasionally some other apps and they have many of the same issues.
These are already higher spec systems than the mac mini you intend to buy.
I thought the "eMacs" were the lowest spec Mac you could get, or maybe the same spec as the mini. I would think any company that wanted to use Macs would invest in higher spec machines, specially for your position where you are running so many apps at once. Tell them to get you a new dual G5 Power Mac @ 2.5mHz with 4gb RAM, that should fix all your problems and the prices should start coming down as they get ready to switch to x86, specially if you can find a used one. :-D
-
@ billt,
Virtual PC isn't great, but I use it on my 1gHz G4 w/1gb RAM Powerbook to run my PC CAD program and it is not too bad. Faster than it ran on an old Pentium II @400mHz w/128mb RAM (I know that is not saying much, but it is very usable).
-
amigadave wrote:
I thought the "eMacs" were the lowest spec Mac you could get, or maybe the same spec as the mini. I would think any company that wanted to use Macs would invest in higher spec machines, specially for your position where you are running so many apps at once. Tell them to get you a new dual G5 Power Mac @ 2.5mHz with 4gb RAM, that should fix all your problems and the prices should start coming down as they get ready to switch to x86, specially if you can find a used one. :-D
As far as I know the mac mini is lower spec than the eMac, but I don't know for a fact :-)
As for the G5, dream on :-) It's a small place ;-)
Prior to the eMac I had to use an old iMac G3 433 (I think, could have been 500) with even less memory than this ;-)
-edit-
Seems out of the box the mac mini 1.25GHz and eMac 1.25 GHz are pretty similar, but the eMac is more expandable...
-edit-
Mother of all stupid typos :lol:
-
Karlos wrote:
Seems out of the box the mac mini 1.25GHz and eMac 1.25 GHz are pretty similar, but the eMac is more expandible...
I read that as "expendable"...
-
I think it's "expandable" :-P
-
bloodline wrote:
Karlos wrote:
Seems out of the box the mac mini 1.25GHz and eMac 1.25 GHz are pretty similar, but the eMac is more expandible...
I read that as "expendable"...
We can wish ;-)
-
Oliver wrote:
Talk about wanting to punch a computer (or at least some engineer).
Just don't do what I did today.
Had to fire up the PC, after using it for approx 5mins Windows p###ed me off so much I stood up to kick the computer as hard as I could.
The only trouble was my aim was about as good as a Beckham free kick, and I smashed my shin into the desk instead :madashell:
Spent the rest of the evening between OSX and AmigaOS to calm myself down. (yeah..sad aint it!)
-
odin wrote:
I use 10.3 on a G3/400 Lombard Powerbook with 128 + 256MB RAM and it's slooooow. Certainly usable but browsing is a pain when there is flash and/or (big) animgifs on the page.
What? How it is possible?. I am able to browse the net without problem and at reasonably speed on my older p2 266 and with only 96 megs of ram using w98. Also, the s.o response is faster.
-
AntonioX: I am sure you might have something wrong with your mac mini as I only have a G4 867 with 768mb ram and I dont find tiger slow at all, I also only have the standard GeForce 4 MX gfx card
If it's a problem with the machine, then that's the way Apple built it. It passes all hardware diagnostics in OSX and off the boot CD. The hard drive is barely audible, but I can clearly hear it going a mile a minute. Obviously, there is too little memory even for a "clean" installation.
Funny, when people tell me their PCs are slow, I say the same thing: there is something wrong with the system. Fresh installs of any OS should never be this slow.
Karlos: Isn't all that *exactly* the sort of 'typical windows maintnance' type of thing MacOS is supposed to save you from?
I second that. People who complain about the junk that comes with Windows are usually basing their claim on an OEM system, not a retail copy of Windows.
Vic20Owner: The security and power of unix/linux/bsd and the convenience of a mac with the compatibility feeling of windows.
I don't like Microsoft any more than anyone else, but given that practically everyone (including licensees like HP) set up their Windows machine with an administrator account with all security disabled, it's no surprise that security is a problem. Really, UNIX security is terribly old. It makes little sense to me to make a seperate account to keep bad apps out of the system folder, and give them full access to the Home folder. The OS is essentially disposable, but a user's data is what's important.
As Macs become more popular, you'll see an increase of security problems on them.
dylansmrjo: Personally I consider AOS (or on x86: BeOS and OS/2 - the latter one with quite a bit of ideas from AOS) to be the perfect combination of Windows and MacOS, and on top of that: Much, much smaller in regard to use of system resources.
Oh, boy, do I remember OS/2 version 2 (actually, it was CITRIX multiuser, based on OS/2). I liked it, actually, but that was before I knew anything about UNIX shells.
First time I ever saw a non-GUI OS that came on 5 HD floppy disks. :-)
minator: 10.4.3 seems to improved things a lot though.
I just got the 10.4.3 update today. 58.6 megs?
I've downloaded 400+ megs of updates since I got my Mac mini, that already had Tiger on it. Sheesh.
Acill: Uh, yeah what ever mate. I wouldnt go as far as saying that. OS X is awesome. Its much more stable and can do things as well if not better then Windows and AmigaOS cant even touch it. The only people I know that talk like that are the ones that have never sat down and used OS X longer then the time you can in a store.
Sorry, but I've had mine for over a month, and the more I use it, the less I like it, especially when it comes to file requesters and drag-and-drop. I'm glad I needed it for testing purposes, so it's not a waste of money purely as an experiment.
Oliver: Does anyone else think it's a but daft to include EVERY printer driver in a basic installation, just in case you happen to use one of them?
I think including any 3rd party drivers in an OS is pretty stupid, because:
1) Each driver is minimal
2) They are usually old drivers
3) Manufacturers will ask you to install "full" drivers, anyway
I wonder how many people realize how much smaller Windows would be without all the drivers pre-installed? Maybe instead of bloating thing by copying 200 printer drivers you'll never use, OS developers should make driver managers that are far more intuitive. MacOS has a snazzy new system updater, but a pretty lousy method of managing system updates you've already installed.
bloodline: All this kicking of OS X isn't really very constructive.
Things to think about when working on a new OS. I really, really wish somebody would take care of the 200 printer drivers issue.
bloodline: As For OS X stability, it's as stable as the most stable Unix I've ever used (AIX and Linux), beats the hell out of Windows and AmigaOS.
I've already had OSX freeze on me while trying to boot up Graphing Calulator in OS9 mode. After 10 minutes waiting for it to unfreeze, I gave up and pulled the plug.
Also, I can't play any DVDs. It gives me an error message that, when I looked it up online, translates that my DVD region is wrong. I bought this thing in a US store. How can it not be able to play US DVDs? I did find some info on how to change the DVD region, so I'll try that and see if it works.
billt: VirtualPC Could be a solution for some
Great. Now I'll need 2 Gigs of RAM. ;-)
Doobrey: The only trouble was my aim was about as good as a Beckham free kick, and I smashed my shin into the desk instead
No offense, but are you sure Windows is the problem, here? :-)
I should talk. I used to yell at my A1000 every time it gave me the "neverending requester" telling me my printer wasn't responding. I could click "cancel" a thousand times and it would never stop trying to print. I made a serious habit of saving my files before even thinking about printing.
-
@Waccoon
I am not sure why your mac mini is so slow, I have a mate whith one of the older ones that first come out and its a hell of a lot faster than my 867mhz... I think his is the 1.42gz version
-
It just needs more RAM. I've talked to other people who have 256MB in their minis, and they all say the same thing. Keep in mind that my mini came with Tiger, while other early minis came with Panther.
The DVD playback problem appears to be a popular issue, too. I've still got to try resetting my DVD region.
-
Just found this website as I was reminising about my A1200 and thinking about tinkering with it. Anyway I have been trapped in a Windows world for a long time, Linux just not mature enough for me yet. Then I saw Osx86 and gave it a spin, "WoW" is right, it could make me leave the Evil Empire. I know I'm talking about a alpha/beta and not using actual Mac hardware so not everything working but I'm positvie the original "dows" wasn't this good (cause XP still isn't!). If the mactels are cheap enough I will switch, unless Stevey gives in (not gonna happen) and takes Billy on toe to toe then I'll keep my excisting hardware (eMachines M6811 AMD64 Lappy). To all the Motorola fans , I hate to say it but it is an Intel world , At least for those who game etc.,etc.
-
Karlos wrote:
Sure it's fantastic as a home OS, provided you don't have any rare sight problems ;-)
It's also great if you have severe sight problems. My mum has a Windows laptop loaded up with £1000's of special software, and yet there are certain things that she has to use the basic family eMac for (like web browsing and reading PDFs) because it caters so much better straight out of the box.
Not that, that helps you in any way, just thought I'd mention it. :-)
My 1.25GHz G4 eMac at work often crawls when running Mail, BBEdit, Firefox, Transmit and couple of bash terminals concurrently which are the absolute bare minimum tools I need to do my job. Occasionally I need to use XL to prepare data for my boss, or OmniGraffle to make diagrams. Unless I close down some other apps, it will literally show me the spinning candy mouse pointer anything from 10 to 30 seconds, in which time I cannot actually click on anything.
I wonder what is going on there. On my 256MB, 700Mhz machine last week I was using iTunes, Adium, Safari, FireFox, TextEdit, and Oxygen (a big bloated Java XML editor) at the same time without any problems. What's the specs? How was the system set up? Have you asked to bring in your PPC A1200 yet? :-D
Typically I have to boot my machine twice a day at work.
:-o That's not good! Seriously you should get someone to look at it.
Recently I decided to do an OS X reinstall, after 3 years of use (and loads of dubious software, including some pretty dirty hacks) the system wasn't as responsive as it was when I got it (Did I mention in the first 2 years I did absolutely no maintainence at all?). Doing a custom install, was a piece of cake. Don't want the printer drivers installed? No problem! (I use gimp-print drivers anyway because my printer pre-dates OS X)
After completing the install, installing all the apps I use. (including Office and Photoshop Elements) and restoring some of my old data, the disk has 4.3Gig used and the system is flying like greased eels in a ill-conceived video game licenced by George Galloway :-D
It seems like many things in life, your mileage may vary. :-P
-
Agreed...when my system arrived (G4/450 sawtooth) it was so slow I couldn't even use it. I was sort of pissed off. Then I formatted and reinstalled Panther, and now it runs smooth as butter. I'm running a message forum (php+mysql),browsing the web and watching dvd's at the same time, with a few shells open of course. It hasn't even hiccupped on me once. My P3/800 barely plays divx, and my P4/3.2ghz will hiccup if I'm doing something else while it's playing. For some reason this machine doesnt. I even played a dvd while watching video on the web... both played nice together. 450mhz not so bad...
I transferred all of my unix code and utilities over and all work fine.
I'll probably drop a Sonnet cpu upgrade in it. Sure I could buy a mac mini for the same price, but I'm not going to be able to get 300Gb of storage in that little thing... plus I like my zip drive for transferring data to my daughter's mac.
So anyway.... going back to windows or linux just feels messy. I've been using computers for 20 years and working as a windows/unix software developer for 15 years. OSX is my favorite OS so far no doubt about it.
When it goes x86 I'll be running it.
-
Than welcome in the world of MAC. I used to use Mac since 2 years now and its greate!
Foreget windhose :D
I also have the Intel Beta release of OSX. And i must say it's also working.
I only use windows to plat games. :lol:
-
hugs powerbook
what took you so long? lol