I did the pc thang!

[Jeb]

i forgot one pro to pcs...
Rapid doesn't have one.
I think i remember reading a benchmark of RTCW a while back in which a dual p4 1ghz with a geforce 3 got 30fps,
while a dual 800 mac with a geforce 3 got 90fps.
I might search for the link, but it the stat came from ID software.
I really would be curious if that is still true, because maybe there is a reason that we see Maximum PC still benchmarking pcs based off Q3. Which is nearing its 4 year birthday.

[neospirahnis]

i'll make my reply as yet another lump of text.


plain and simple, this argument and all the people involved suffer from a lack of knowledge about the other arguments experience/side.    Just as OS X is not   OS 7.8, or whatever release that's pre BSD-adaptation   windows XP is not win98.   Provided that you understand how to operate a PC,  it is 100% possible to have a system that is completley acceptable and will perform beyond your expectations. No it hasnt been prepackaged by an OEM.  No it doesnt *technically* have an OS based off of the most stable Operating System platform in use today.  WinXP is not the horrid unusable/unattractive beast that I've seen it portrayed as by the Mac side of the argument.  The organazational sysetm of the OS is completley based off of the user.  Everything is capable of being manipulated.  My earlier reference to DOS was not aimed to raise it up as the god of OS'. I was simply stating that if there is some sort of windows problem that you're getting a headache with, you can generally work it out via DOS, or the ARC - Automated Repair Console.  
    Yes I admit that via the statistical law of standard deviation that more often than not more stupid people will comprise the whole of a clique. 80% of people who use computers  I beleve shouldnt be allowed to use or own a computer. Give them a commadore64, thats it, maybe a Tandy. That way they can't infect the rest of us with their stupid jabber.  Whatever.
     I say again my largest annoyance with Apple, is that they market computers as if they were appliances. Not a piece of hardware. Since 1998 ( I think ) the release of the iMac spawned the marketing campaign that attempted, and for a large part succeeded in making Apple's chique.  
     Also: Installing a PCI device does not require drivers. Most of the drivers that are required for things such as NICs and Video Cards are already contained within the OS.  You've gotta have one EXOTIC Card not to be able to use it right off the bat. I'm talking like a Wildcat 6210, which i doubt anyone here would have $4000 to lay down on for it.
   The reason Mac's survive today, for the most part that is, is that Apple's campaign to make the machines popular and cool with everyone has succeeded. That and the oppurtunity costs associated with switching e.g. a corporation over from a PC network, to a Mac network. Hell even integrated Mac's into a fully operating Win2kADVServer network is a bitch.    


   For the record I never claimed PC's to be faster. the G4 proccessor, mfg'ed by motorola is from off the top of my head nearly twice as powerful in raw computational ability. With half the transistor count, ( vs AMD or Intel ) something in the neighborhood of 7.1Gflops vs 2.4Gflops on a 2.Ghz Wintel machine.  

  Another economic superiority standpoint, Mac's have got to get cheaper if they are going to compete as heavily with PC's as Apple would like them to.  For $700 I can build a more than decent PC.  for the same price *call me on it if im wrong* I can't exactly get a near comperable Mac.  Mac's CANT catch onto the large mainstream consumer market they're marketed towards 'proffessionals' who work on their own, not on an enterprise level. Though that is what the Xserve technology is attempting to break into.    

btw Yes my mother is proud, more specifically my stepdad is proud of me for pirating software. That way he doesnt have to pay for it.
Ironically I bought my own copy of XP.


yet another also      PC Hardware is not crap lol. If you honestly beleive that, you must think africa is shangri-la.

[PsYcO aSsAsSiN]

Colin and I have a brand new G4 at home and it gets 86 fps average with our geforce4 on medal of honor with 1024x768 and everything on maximum.

That doesn't mean much when you are playing with like the other 6 people on GameRanger...I averaged around 110 fps on my dual 3ghz PC with a geforce4 ti+ card in it when IP joining into one of Ace's games or that doof SanFracsicko's (or whatever his name is). The big thing with fps is the host and what kind of lag you are getting.

BTW, I love my line here at UCLA...dslreports.com has it clocked at 25986kb/s Down and 23546kb/s up. I love downloading off of servers at over a megabyte/second and playing MOH:AA with superior frame rates (dip occasionally due to host lagging). We should try playing MOH:AA togther Ace and see what pings we get  .

All of the points for and against macs/PC's are compelling, and to each person who contributed something smart his own opinions.

[Jeb]

hah,
its funny how Apple makes quality software and hardware for their computers,
and microsoft takes shit and puts a serial number on cd case.
Again, if you want power and elegance in a computer then by all means buy a apple
if you want to play CS2, watch asf porn, and get viruses buy all means build a pc.

[Brain]

which came first, the hen or the egg?

well, this is the only question asked so far that i have an answer for that hasn't already been addressed buy others.
(i'll give you a few sec to straighten that out)




the egg came first.
here's the logic: in any living organisim in this world there exists a chance for mutation between one  generation and the next (technicaly this mutation can occur every time that your dna devides, but it is more pronounced from generation to generation) therefor, you would have a hen like reptile(for the sake of argument let's say that it is one mutation from  becoming a chicken) and when that creature layed it's egg, the mutation would occur, changing that egg into a chicken egg.

of course, if you want to look at it another way, the egg came first because it has been around almost as long as sexual reproduction in complex lifeforms(if i remember correctly, that would mean that plants had the first eggs.  yes, plants so have the equivelent of egg cells), and thus many times longer than the chicken

(yes i realize this has NOTHING to do with the topic, but i had to answer that 'unanswerable' question, just to prove that poster wrong)

[Mr. Lothario]

windows XP is not win98.   Provided that you understand how to operate a PC,  it is 100% possible to have a system that is completley acceptable and will perform beyond your expectations. No it hasnt been prepackaged by an OEM.  No it doesnt *technically* have an OS based off of the most stable Operating System platform in use today.  WinXP is not the horrid unusable/unattractive beast that I've seen it portrayed as by the Mac side of the argument.  The organazational sysetm of the OS is completley based off of the user.  Everything is capable of being manipulated.

     I agree with you. I stopped worrying about arguing Mac vs. PC quite a while ago, when I realized that OS choice, at least at home, is almost entirely subjective. For various subjective reasons, and a smaller number of objective ones, I prefer to own and operate a Mac. I know many people who have equally valid subjective and objective reasons for using a PC. I've got nothing against PCs. I'll use one myself when I have to, and I won't even complain much. Microsoft's business practices are not the purest ever used, but hell, it'll bite 'em in the ass eventually. In the meantime, if you like it, by all means, use it. It's no skin off of my teeth. We could all stand to be a lot more tolerant about the others' choice of OS.

Give them a commadore64, thats it, maybe a Tandy. That way they can't infect the rest of us with their stupid jabber.

     Hehehehe.

    I say again my largest annoyance with Apple, is that they market computers as if they were appliances. Not a piece of hardware. Since 1998 ( I think ) the release of the iMac spawned the marketing campaign that attempted, and for a large part succeeded in making Apple's chique.

     I actually read something recently that had an interesting take on the appliance issue. The author opined that Apple selling the iMac as a pretty object rather than as a purely functional one indicated that the computer industry had become a "mature" industry. Before an industry is mature, function matters more than form. After, the opposite is true, because at that point, any car, or bike, or washing machine, will basically fulfill its function as well as any other. So looks start to matter. Whether this is yet true of the computer industry is debatable, but I thought it was an interesting idea nonetheless.

  The reason Mac's survive today, for the most part that is, is that Apple's campaign to make the machines popular and cool with everyone has succeeded.

     There's nothing wrong with that. Apple knows that, for the forseeable future, it's going to be a niche player. So they're simply trying to be the biggest niche player they can be. And they're succeeding quite admirably. As was mentioned earlier, Apple is one of the very few tech companies making money lately. Besides, all gung-ho macho platform bullshit aside, it's good to have an alternative. Not just for economic reasons, but for choice. Hypothetically, if Microsoft did something that made millions of people decide that they didn't want to use Windows anymore (*coughPalladiumcough*), those people have other options, of which one is Apple. This is a good situation.

     Besides that, even the most die-hard of PC users should be cheering Apple on. The more worried Microsoft is about Apple, the better Microsoft's products will be. Competition is good, as usual.

[Mr. Lothario]

Con't:

 Another economic superiority standpoint, Mac's have got to get cheaper if they are going to compete as heavily with PC's as Apple would like them to.  For $700 I can build a more than decent PC.  for the same price *call me on it if im wrong* I can't exactly get a near comperable Mac.  Mac's CANT catch onto the large mainstream consumer market they're marketed towards 'proffessionals' who work on their own, not on an enterprise level. Though that is what the Xserve technology is attempting to break into.

     Mmm, this is true, but it's not the whole picture. Macs are a DAMN sight cheaper than they were years ago. For several years now, the top-of-the-line desktop Mac has cost right around $3500. The Mac IIci, released in late 1989, cost $9000. You also get much more bang in a top-of-the-line Mac now than you did then, even allowing for earlier technology. Macs are still expensive compared to PCs, and especially compared to homebuilt PCs, but compared to themselves, they're pretty reasonable.

     Being marketed towards individuals is a good strategy for Apple. In some markets, such as graphics and education, Apple has historically had an advantage, and that's still true to a degree. There are other markets that Apple has just recently begun to gain ground in, such as science and biotech, and possibly engineering (I'm not sure about that last one). Those gains are entirely creditable to the fact that OS X is a *nix and can run the applications that those users rely on, and can run them with better ease-of-use and a more polished interface than was possible with other *nix boxes. Regardless, Apple has targeted the home user with its "switch" campaign. They're playing on dissatisfaction with Windows, and it seems to be working, in that PC users are switching. Many Linux users (read: highly savvy, technically skilled users) have switched to OS X because it's what they've been waiting for for years: a real *nix OS with a beautiful, functional GUI. Works for me. : )

[jn.loudnotes]

Brain. . .Brain. . .Brain.  . .

Your logic is impeccable, but somewhat excessively verbose.  And a little late as well.

4.? The egg came first, obviously.? However, the first eggs likely did not bear chicks, but some evolutionary ancestor to that animal

[kos.viper]

Colin and I have a brand new G4 at home and it gets 86 fps average with our geforce4 on medal of honor with 1024x768 and everything on maximum.

That doesn't mean much when you are playing with like the other 6 people on GameRanger...I averaged around 110 fps on my dual 3ghz PC with a geforce4 ti+ card in it when IP joining into one of Ace's games or that doof SanFracsicko's (or whatever his name is). The big thing with fps is the host and what kind of lag you are getting.

Your eye isn't going to be able to tell a difference between 86fps or 110fps.  Anything over 60 looks the same.  Does help the ping though.

[PsYcO aSsAsSiN]

I know Viper, I just like seeing my fps meter at 110 in the lower left of my screen  

[Brain]

Brain. . .Brain. . .Brain.  . .

Your logic is impeccable, but somewhat excessively verbose.  And a little late as well.

4.? The egg came first, obviously.? However, the first eggs likely did not bear chicks, but some evolutionary ancestor to that animal

1. it's supposed to be verbose.  it's more accurate that way. besides,it makes the logic seem even more impressive
2. yea, it's a bit late, but i responded to it right after i read it, and when you forget to check the forums for a day, alot of posts pile up. so i skimmed the thread to see if any thing really needed moderating, looked for any realy interesting points, and in the process, missed your point.
consider my foot shoved in my mouth =P

the only saving grace for that post was that i brought up the unstated assumption that egg referred to a chicken egg

ok, i'm going to shut up before i start nibbling on my kneecap here

[Jeb]

ass,
wouldn't your monitor's refresh rate play a factor in your quest for superior FPS?
jeb
ps. i only got 65 average on my G4, Geforce 3

[+-KoS-+ Gorf]

Nvidia owns you jeb.

also guess what all:  My dad finally went to the Apple store in New York City and bought us a GeForce4 Ti 4600 for our new G4.

I will test it out when I get home in a week or two and post a personal review in which I will show you all benchmarks in many different games and compare it to the GeForce4 MX.

Jeb:  125 mhz refresh rate.