Amstrad sold typewriters with monitors attached, and a few 8-Bits, pretty much UK exclusive as far as I know. How is this relevent to apple?
Ahh Amstrad had a habit of building all-in-one 8 and 16bit machines...when the tape deck/diskdrive broke the computer was useless...and on their CPC 8bit machines if the monitor died...so did your computer's PSU. All in one is a bad design in my opinion, you need to account for twice the potential replacement units if only half the unit fails (say the backlight on the LCD)
Luckily they don't go "kaput" very often. Mine still hasn't, and it's 11 Years old. I've tried. It's fell off desks and everything.
If you run a business then bllind faith is not enough...you need contingency...which was my point.
It's funny you mention Toshiba, i've got a 310cds laptop here, and you could probably beat someone to death with it, lcd first, and it'd be unharmed. It weighs about half a stone even with the battery removed though.
The 310CDS is comparable with those rubbish black plastic era Macintosh notebooks from the mid-late 90s with the trackball in the middle of the palm rest. Funny thing is in 1996/98 Toshiba was making full featured Pentium and Pentium MMX tiny ultra portable laptops with SVGA 6.1" TFT screens the size of two DVD cases stacked ontop of each other, and performance wise (including battery performance!) they were identical to a full sized laptop. So yes Toshiba does know more about laptops than any other company all thing considered, and their Portege is superior to the Air from a hardware point of view (OS is not my problem....Toshiba don't write bloatware7).
Here is a Toshiba Libretto 233MMX Laptop
Hardly bigger than todays USB 3.5" 1/3 height floppy drives.
Once you get used to them they are unquestionably superior. Easier to type on, almost silent, and... Pop a few keys off your keyboard with a pen or something. You won't break it, unless it's a laptop. They'll go back on fine. See all the bits of crisps, dust, fluff, a few pubes? That stuff can't end up in the current mac keyboard.
It's yet another case of style over function I feel, I have nothing against laptop keyboards, use them 24/7 myself...but on a desktop.....come on. Anyway the Dell Inspiron 9400/XPS 1720 laptops have superior keyboards to everyone...and also these Apple 'desktop' keyboards.
They feel really weird before you get used to them though, and I've not got one because I refue to pay thirty odd quid for a keyboard. £7 Argos jobby for me thanks.
I'm fussy about my keyboards, it's worth spending a little extra when you use them all day as I have to for my business.
That's kind of daft. The price of a BMW/Apple is reflected in the build quality very clearly. The main difference though is that a new BMW is hideous. It's like they style all the cars by getting a 90's one, and covering it in dents.
Bit of an in-joke from the UK TV show Top Gear....when Richard Hammond proclaims to have the fastest electric convertible roof (because BMW told him it was...in techno-bullshit Z4's manual) but Clarkson proceeded to show him his review car (cheaper Honda S2000) was quicker...and the tag line is "don't believe what you read in your glossy manuals son"
At any rate, I've never actually bought an iMac brand new, and have only ever had this one, single apple product. The current iMac is great, and the form factor is exactly what I want. But I cant afford it, so I settle for a a Hackintosh taking up legroom under my desk.
The only machine I use OS X on is a Dell Latitude D810...it is an awesome PC laptop...despite being half a decade old it still runs games that 'new' laptop technology shafted by integrated graphics do not.
Which one? My sister had one (cant remember the model) that looked okay. Comedy PB moments were: She couldn't figure out how to play a dvd, refused to beleve the CD burner could also read CDs (whaaa?) and got angry if you proved her wrong, she installed a sound card without looking at the instructions or installing drivers ("what would I want to drive my computer for? it's not a car") then was surprised when it didn't work, destroying her CRT by spraying the insides with furnature polish (WHHHY), and blowing up the PSU doing the same.
But I digress.
That one....only the machine though....monitor is usual pap, and keyboard about 5 quid quality.
Which is one hell of a difference. Every desktop enviroment, toolkit and even the X Window system itself is universally shite.
Ugh. I think the only system to do it worse was windows 3.x.
GUI is just graphics though, whilst XP may look like a Fischer Price 'My first GUI' with orange and blue it is the best OS Microshits have ever made...hell you can even manage DVD playback in 266mhz same as the previous 2 versions of Windows back....unlike today where the bloat continues unabated AND...Windows 7 looks the most pathetic of all GUIs since Windows Millenium IMO.
YMMV
