Thread: Post Your Computer

Protect yourself from viruses

Originally Posted by TheNocturnalGent

Protect yourself from viruses
[/b]

Haha! That is hilarious!!!

Originally Posted by MSG

Mmm... there AREN'T alot of viruses for windows. And plus, as long as you're not Warezing and crap, you're not likely to get anything.[/b]

I know. If you havn't noticed, I was "countering" my own argument.

Originally posted by 'MSG'
You're kidding, right?

No, you can now dual boot Mac OSX and Windows on an Intel Mac.

Ne-yo that post is mad!

I've got a computer which has the following properties:

3.2GHz Dual Processor
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 6800
1 GB RAM
200 GB Hard Disk Space
Awsome 19" (very thin) Flat screen LCD

Originally Posted by Casualtie

Keyboard: USB Root Hub

Mouse: USB Root Hub

Mouse Surface: Mouse Pad

[/b]

quoted for emphasis

Originally Posted by Casualtie

No, you can now dual boot Mac OSX and Windows on an Intel Mac.
[/b]

Ack. Last time I remember going into an Apple store, the laptops had no right mouse button. Bad? Yes. Enough reason to not dual boot Windows and OSX on a Mac? Pretty much.

No, new macs come with the mighty mouse. It looks like it's one button, but its actually more. The left and right side of the mouse are different buttons, the 360 degree scroll wheel in the middle is clickable, and 2 buttons on the side do programmable things. And yes, it works in windows.

Problem solved

Originally Posted by megabenman

No, new macs come with the mighty mouse. It looks like it's one button, but its actually more. The left and right side of the mouse are different buttons, the 360 degree scroll wheel in the middle is clickable, and 2 buttons on the side do programmable things. And yes, it works in windows.

Problem solved
[/b]

Originally Posted by megabenman

the laptops had no right mouse button
[/b]

Originally Posted by TweaK

So tell me, what's so great about Mac that tops off Windows?
The massive amount of virusses that are on Windows and not on Mac? That's what antivirus applications are for.
The massive amount of games and applications that do not support Mac?
Please convince me.
[/b]

Wow, that's rather a large chip on your shoulder. I've never really quite understood why Macintosh users are so frequently accosted for using something that works well for them for whatever reason.

Are Macs running MacOS (remember, they can run Linux or BSD quite well, and the Intel-based ones can run Windows, as well) better than PCs running Windows in some grand, overreaching, cosmic, good-versus-evil sense? I don't think I'm qualified to answer that, but I'd like to think they are. I do know that they make a better working environment for me, and I don't consider myself to be a stereotypical (or even typical) Mac user.

I came to using the Macintosh by means of SGI workstations (running IRIX, a truly user-friendly Unix). When it became apparent that SGI was getting out of that market just about the time I needed a workstation upgrade around five years ago, I switched from an Octane running IRIX 6.5 to a Macintosh running OS X 10.1. You see, I write software for Unix and Windows computers and do IT contracting work predominantly for Windows and IBM minicomputer shops.

That's right. I write Windows software and do Windows system administration on a Macintosh (a PowerPC Macintosh, no less). Of course, the final builds and the tests for the Windows-specific portions (user interface, COM+ components, etc.) of any code I write have to happen on a PC running Visual Studio, but a very large portion of the code I write runs just fine and gets unit-tested on Solaris or MacOS. The bits that run as web applications are portable by default.

So why would I go through so many hoops to get my job done? The Mac makes me more productive, and here's how:

• The Windows user interface monotonically approaches a perfectly passive-aggressive interaction environment with each passing upgrade. Whether it's second guessing me ("You asked to do something. Are you sure you want to something?"), pestering me ("I just loaded some updates! Want to reboot?" "How about now?" "Doesn't a reboot sound really nice right about now?" "Hey, how about that reboot?"), interrupting me for no good reason at all (maybe I don't care that there are "unused" icons on my desktop) or treating me like a child with silly animations or stupid speech bubbles coddling me, Windows is forever getting in my way. In creative work (programming, HTML layout, graphics work), an interruption consumes far more time than the interruption itself; it takes a not insignificant amount of time to "context switch" back to the previous task.
• Speaking of getting in my way, my typical uses for the computer involve typing code, typing documentation, typing HTML, and typing correspondence. It's safe to say that if I'm at the keyboard, I'm using the keyboard. I cannot recall how many times some Windows application running in the background has popped-up a system-wide dialog box, stolen focus from whatever I was typing in, caught a space or some other character as a button shortcut, and did something I didn't want just because I had the nerve to think I should be providing input to my computer. The Mac way (bouncing the Dock icon in 10.x, or flashing the application menu in older versions) is distracting and irritating, but not destructive.
  
• When I got my first PowerBook (a G3 "Pismo"), I was amazed that I could actually put it to sleep just by closing the lid, and wake it just by opening the lid--reliably. This has really only gotten somewhat universal in Windows XP SP2; before then, it was anyone's guess what would happen. Would the laptop turn off? Would it stay awake and overheat and then turn off permanently? Would it go to sleep like you told it to in the power control panel? The suspense was thrilling! I had fun terrifying the people around me using Windows ME and Windows 2000 by closing my laptop in the middle of something ("You can't do that! It'll burn up!"). My neighbor's Dell laptop running XP SP2 still doesn't do what he wants in that regard. Whereas, my Mac has Just Worked, whether I was plugging my Canon camera (which needs drivers under XP), a V-Cast wireless broadband card (which needs drivers and a dialer program under XP), a USB serial adapter (which needs drivers under XP), or a USB MIDI interface (which needs drivers under XP). Plug and play, every time, because the OS and hardware were made for each other. You can't get that level of smooth integration in the every-varying sea of PC peripherals, their myriad drivers, and the relatively stagnant Windows codebase. I see it on IBM systems running AIX, Sun servers running Solaris, and SGIs running IRIX: when the hardware and software teams can talk to each other, the end user spends a lot less time fighting with both.
• I can write and test software written for Unix in one window and use Microsoft Office in another window, without rebooting between Windows and BSD (or Linux). This is a less of an issue now that VMware Server is free, but having both hosted in the same OS is a much more elegant solution.
  
• I don't know how I worked with multiple applications on the Macintosh before Exposé in 10.4. I don't know how I'd work efficiently without it now. I tend to have a lot of windows open: editing windows, preview windows, debuggers, documentation, email, etc. That feature alone was worth the last upgrade.
  
• "Print to PDF" means I can share documents (bids, contracts, statements) with clients in such a way that they're not editable, and I don't have to pay Abode as much money as I paid for my last OS upgrade.
• The Registry, component registration, BHOs, and all that other nonsense on Windows are abominations. Most of my really serious consulting calls involve hand-hacking the Windows Registry either because some malware hitched a ride through IE or some COM+ registration went awry and left the shell in some sort of confused state (I'm not immune from this--do a Google-groups search for: eudora "unhappy shell"). Fixing these sorts of problems is far removed from the skill set of the typical computer user, as well it should be, since these things should be robust enough and transparent enough as to not cause problems!

In light of all that, having to break my workflow apart into portable and non-portable pieces is little effort. It also has the added bonus of a more robust finished product, which earns me repeat business.

You see, as I see it, just because Windows works better for my customers doesn't mean that it will work well for me or that I have to be less productive at my workstation by using it. Windows apparently works well for some people, and, yeah, I've run a whole lot of it since the late eighties, but it's a lot further from an optimal working environment than I'd like, so I keep that to a minimum these days. I'm much happier in MacOS or Unix because I feel like I'm driving the computer, not along for the ride: unexpected things very rarely happen, my computer doesn't find reasons to interrupt me, and it does what it is told without whining about automatic updates, unused desktop icons, or whatever else might not even be tangentally-related to what I'm trying to do.

I do have to admit, though, my Mac customers don't call me over nearly as often as my Windows customers do, so I suppose Windows is useful for me in an entirely unintentional sort of way.

As far as application availability goes, quality is more important to me than quantity. There is nothing I'd like to do on my Mac that is impossible for lack of software. I have all the software I need to get my work done and piddle around with fun stuff, and everything but Photoshop and Office either came with the OS or was available for free. On the other hand, there's a lot of software for Windows that I don't need on my Macintosh (antivirus software, anti-spyware software, third-party firewall, registry cleaner, decent web browser). I guess if I used my computer to play video games, I'd probably spend more time on my PC, but I don't have time for that sort of thing these days.

As far as antivirus software goes, viruses are only half the problem with malware on Windows. The fun part about running the platform for which everyone develops is that everyone develops for it, even the bad guys and the incompetent. Today I had the joy of working on a Windows XP system with anti-virus software installed and running with up-to-date definitions that a customer handed me because it was being "weird". Between the constant popups, the unkillable processes (programs run as services marked as too critical to stop), the background spyware programs that guarded their Registry keys from manipulation, and the fake "virus alert" widgets running in the system tray, the machine was completely unusuable. None of these programs was technically a virus--they were all properly-registered in the Registry, properly bound to the shell and Internet Explorer, and otherwise operating completely within the rules for that platform. Most-likely they came onboard when the hapless user downloaded some piece of shareware and didn't read every letter of the license agreement to know he was getting more than he wanted.

That's not to say Windows isn't better at some things than Mac OS is. For example, I like Windows Explorer (with all the candy and interference turned off) for file-management a lot better than I like the Finder, even taking Finder's spring-loaded folders into account. However, in terms of raw speed of being able to move and sort files by name, I'm still faster at the command-line on either OS.

Anyhow, back to the topic of this thread, my desktop computer is:
<blockquote>Power Macintosh G4 "QuickSilver"
Two 1GHz PowerPC 7455 "G4" processors
1.25GB memory
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card
Superdrive
SIIG SATA controller
160GB WD ATA hard drive
300GB WD SATA hard drive
Apple Pro Keyboard
Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical
Wacom Graphire4 tablet
Two Dell UltraSharp 2001FP displays
OS X 10.4.8 / 9.2.2</blockquote>
My laptop is:
<blockquote>17-inch PowerBook "Dual Layer"
1.67GHz PowerPC 7447A "G4" processor
2GB memory
ATI Mobility Radeon 9600
Dual-layer Superdrive
120GB hard drive
OS X 10.4.8 / 9.2.2</blockquote>
Sorry about the sermon, but, to turn the tables, why do you use Windows, and why is it better than a Macintosh running MacOS? More to the point, why does it matter which is better, so long as the user is happy?

Originally Posted by celestrion

[*] The Windows user interface monotonically approaches a perfectly passive-aggressive interaction environment with each passing upgrade. Whether it&#39;s second guessing me ("You asked to do something. Are you sure you want to something?"), pestering me ("I just loaded some updates&#33; Want to reboot?" "How about now?" "Doesn&#39;t a reboot sound really nice right about now?" "Hey, how about that reboot?"), interrupting me for no good reason at all (maybe I don&#39;t care that there are "unused" icons on my desktop) or treating me like a child with silly animations or stupid speech bubbles coddling me, Windows is forever getting in my way.[*] Speaking of getting in my way, my typical uses for the computer involve typing code, typing documentation, typing HTML, and typing correspondence. It&#39;s safe to say that if I&#39;m at the keyboard, I&#39;m using the keyboard. I cannot recall how many times some Windows application running in the background has popped-up a system-wide dialog box, stolen focus from whatever I was typing in, caught a space or some other character as a button shortcut, and did something I didn&#39;t want just because I had the nerve to think I should be providing input to my computer. [/b]

Cracking up That is Hilarious&#33;


Awesome Celestrion, now this is Tech Talk at it&#39;s finest. You are the MAN.

Kanaiz do you have a general feeling of Satisfaction? Because I&#39;m gonna tell you something when I read things like what Celestrion just posted it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside Hell, I&#39;m not gonna lie I loved it, I almost got hard-on.

***excuses himself to enjoy the pleasure of a cigarette***

I stopped reading at

silly animations[/b]

I mean, says the Mac user who has bouncing icons, wibbly wobbly Exposé window switching, genie minimising effects, glowing buttons and a UI engine that has practically every effect available on the planet. Windows? It can manage a stuttering, half-hearted fade. Sort of.

what on earth is all this ?&#33;?

real summary

windows - good client OS
*nix - good server OS
Mac - used to be good at specialised operations (DTP, music production, etc.) but PC&#39;s are just as equal today

Originally Posted by Ynot

what on earth is all this ?&#33;?[/b]

What is all this? All of what? Well it looks like he was making a point&#33; You didn&#39;t get it?

Originally Posted by Kaniaz

I mean, says the Mac user who has bouncing icons, wibbly wobbly Exposé window switching, genie minimising effects, glowing buttons and a UI engine that has practically every effect available on the planet.
[/b]

Bouncing icons, sure. An icon bounces while a program starts (much less irritating to me than changing the mouse cursor) and when it needs attention. I&#39;d much rather have an icon bounce than a program pop up a message box or dialog unannouned. If you have the Dock set to auto-hide, you only see the bounce when the progrram needs attention.

Exposé uses simple scaling effects, and they&#39;re only active when you call up that particular feature. The wobbly stuff, which I&#39;ll grant is largely superfluous, is mostly in Dashboard.

Genie is a bit over the top, so I switch to "Scale Effect". I&#39;d choose "none", if it were an option, so I guess Windows wins there.

The glowing buttons are there to provide UI clues. If it pulsates, it&#39;s "Important". If it&#39;s solid blue, it&#39;s the default action. If it has a halo around it, it&#39;s the default way back.

The Quartz drawing engine on the Mac has effects, yes, but my point is that none of these gets in my way or is overly childish. Windows has: an animated dog when you try to search for files (until you turn it off), cartoon files blowing in the wind when you copy or delete files, a waving Windows flag in the corner of each window while you bounce around the filesystem, more animations when you turn NTFS file compression on a folder hierarchy. What in the world is all that doing in a "Professional" operating system? Then there&#39;s the Microsoft Agent control (which, thankfully, very few developers use) which is in a class of nonsense by itself.

Originally Posted by Ynot

what on earth is all this ?&#33;?

real summary

windows - good client OS
*nix - good server OS
Mac - used to be good at specialised operations (DTP, music production, etc.) but PC&#39;s are just as equal today
[/b]

Well, it seems the authority has spoken.

Originally Posted by celestrion

More to the point, why does it matter which is better, so long as the user is happy?
[/b]

Exactly.
I&#39;m happy with Windows.
You&#39;re happy with Mac.
Some dudes are happy with Unix.

CAN&#39;T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?&#33;

CAN&#39;T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?&#33;[/b]

Definitely not. This is religion, and religion is war&#33;

I&#39;ve been building my new PC over the last few months..

So far I&#39;ve just got a

AMD2 4200+ set at 2.4GHz
2GB Corsair DDR2 800 C4 Pro RAM
7950 GX2 Video card
X-Fi Fatalitly Sound card
Sitting on a nice Asus mainboard
With a Raptor 10,000rpm HD
All in a Armor Jr case
And viewed on a 24" Dell Monitor at 1920/1200
With a Logitech 5.1 setup.

And I&#39;m in the middle of buying some more RAM, hopefully soon I&#39;ll get 2GB DDR2 800 Corsair Dominator C3DF(with fan). Which should be pretty sweet hopefully.

I look at Mac and Windows as fairly the same nowadays, I&#39;ve drifted away from both for good (I hope).

In any case.

My laptop box (uberflugen/firenflugen):

IBM/Lenovo T60
2.33ghz Intel Core Duo T2700
2gb DDRII-667
128mb ATI Radeon Mobility X1400
14.1" 1400x1050 display
Fingerprint Scanner, Bluetooth, IR
DUAL BOOTS: Gentoo Linux and OpenBSD (used to do Vista, but I got bored of it)

Desktop Rig (redefine):

Dell Optiplex GX240 wired like a christmas tree
2.4ghz Pentium 4 Nortwood (upped from 1.7ghz Willamette)
512mb pc133 ram (upped from 256mb)
160gb WD 7200rpm and 40gb Maxtor 7200rpm PATA drives (maxtor is disabled atm)
Geforce FX 5700 Ultra (original GDDR/II edition)
M-Audio Revolution 7.1 hooked up to 5.1 altec lansig speakers
USB 2.0 card (haha, box didn&#39;t have 2.0 originally and front USB got ripped out)
Too many wire splitters inside and a great deal of stuff is broken.
Runs Gentoo Linux, but I&#39;m lookin to decomission as it only runs as print server ATM.

Dump Server (thor)

-500mhz Katmai Pentium 3
-apprx. 450gb linear RAID array spanning maxtor 250gb and maxtor 200gb PATA drives
-2x 10/100 NIC
-Gentoo Linux, heavilly stripped down and rock stable, 54-1/2 days of uptime at the time of this writing.
-Serves movies, music, etc around LAN and wifi through Samba and NFS allowing access by Windows, *Nix, and Mac computers.

New Servers:

3x IBM eServer Xseries 330
Dual Pentium III-S 1.4ghz Tualatin (one is single)
768mb ram in two, 512mb in one, 1gb yet to be decided on placement. (ECC, sync)
2x 18.2gb 10,000RPM USCSI in each server

External Raid Array:
Case handles 16 SCSI drives
12x 18gb 10,000rpm SCSI drives soon to be arranged in RAID5

I probably missed some things but you get the idea. I JUST bought the new eServers and RAID array, so I upped a few *crappy* pics to http://joecool.ftfuchs.com/servers/

Servers are not named yet, T60 is called uberflugen in Linux, firenflugen in OpenBSD, and used to be wasserflugen in Vista (but vista sucks).

In any case.. that&#39;s my setup locally, I have access to many more servers on the outside though that I&#39;d rather not go into speccing out atm.

My (current) Desktop: Old lady Dez

Frankensteined- make unknown
CPU 486DX 33mHz (with a seperate numeric processor)
7168 KB RAM
41 MB HDD
Supports VGA/PGA/EGA displays
OS MS-DOS 6.22 but has pre-intalled shell (access 5)

I can&#39;t help but smile when i see the cryptic yet familiar command prompt flashing at me on my monochrome monitor... *dreamy smile...*
What is thyne bidding?>

My laptop: Moulder

Alienware Sentia
Intel Pentium M 2.00 GHz
1008 GB RAM
80 GB HDD
12.1 inch widescreen display (1280x800px)
Dual boots XP Pro and has a seperate partition for linux (but is currently unformatted)

A sexy little one, thought I need a more powerful processor.
I used to have a desktop running Solaris 9 but I reformatted it and gave it away. I would be using unix on my laptop but a few of my programs work best in a windows eviroment, in my experience (like VS.NET), so I stick with Windows.

Alienware Sentia
Intel Pentium M 2.00 GHz
1008 GB RAM
80 GB HDD
12.1 inch widescreen display (1280x800px)
Dual boots XP Pro and has a seperate partition for linux (but is currently unformatted)[/b]

Good God, 1008GB of ram... WHY DO YOU HAVE A HARD DRIVE?&#33;?&#33;?&#33;

Originally Posted by TheUnknown

Good God, 1008GB of ram... WHY DO YOU HAVE A HARD DRIVE?&#33;?&#33;?&#33;
[/b]

lol you ass.

Originally Posted by Slogan

1008 GB RAM
[/b]

Um... don&#39;t you mean 1.008 GB RAM? Seriously, I don&#39;t think anyone on this planet has a terabyte of ram. That&#39;s over a thousand gigabytes&#33;

Lol sorry, I was in a bit of a rush typing
Of course I mean 1.008 GB, not that I&#39;d mind having over a terabyte...
But the problem would be finding a computer that could run it....

Hey, there&#39;s a Tech forum. How about that?

Dell Dimension 4600
Monitor: 17" LCD
Processer: 2.8 Ghz
2.7 GB RAM
OS: Windows XP Professional
111 GB HDD
Video card: ATI Radeon X850 XT
Windows wireless optical mouse + wireless keyboard
HP Inkjet G5 Printer