PC for editing

[S8 Booster]

Ok Pedro, you can just as well give it up - here is another good example how Bill Gates keeps sucking money out of dummies.

An Apple a day keeps Bill Gates away.

R

[Pedro]

G5 processors are produced by Intel. But that does not mean, that Mac has switched to IBM-standard. As far as I know, the RISC technology continues?
You have a lot more productivity output per gigabyte processor clock. And less wasted energy (heat). It´s not a good idea, to compare processor clock frequencies, that are internal technical matters, that are dificult to consider, as there are many other issues that incluences workflow productivity.
I would compare the start-up time of applications (photoshop), or the encoding time of DV to MPEG and not processor clocks.

And, most important, how much time do YOU have to invest to understand how to control and use a complete system (including installation, video capturing, dvd output) and how much time you have to invest to maintain a system running, lets say, over a year.

Last week I visited a PC friend and he wanted to playback a DVD-R I brought with me on his WindowsME pentium system. Windows Media player did not recognize the DVD, Roxio DVD player did it play only silent. Then we downloaded a 3rd player from the internet and it played. Then he wanted to burn a CD-RW with a downloaded application for me. The CD-RW did not play on the iMacG3 I brought with me, and it did not play on his PC. Then he burned the same stuff on CD-R, without changing anything and it worked on both systems. During all this time, he had a frozen system 3 times (the blue screen with the fake message) and had to restart the PC by power on reset. 1 Month ago, I had formatted his HD and installed a "clean" Win ME system. Only one of my expieriences with PC maintainance.
Imagine, using sth like that for video editing, handling big amounts of data, trusting in interfaces etc???
Are we to stupid for using Windows??? Perhaps I am, but at least I have no problems using Mac.

Pedro

[mercyboy]

the speed of your chip is just one of many critical hardware components that work together to affect the speed of your system. the "bus" speed, cache, distance of the cache, level of the cache, how many bits the processor handles, blah, blah, blah. that's why you'll often see PCs with extremely high advertised processor speeds still getting beat by Macs with what seem to be much slower processor speeds. and that gets back to buying a "system" rather than just a box full of stuff.

BUT THE ONE THING none of us has mentioned and that might be important for many of us to consider is the total absolute FACT that the USA resell value of used MACS blows away the resell value of used PCs...I always sell my used systems before they get too old and I get great offers for my Macs and almost have to give away my PCs--and these have been top-of-the-line PCs (despite their relative age), too.

[christoph]

G5 processors are produced by Intel. But that does not mean, that Mac has switched to IBM-standard. As far as I know, the RISC technology continues?

actually no, the G5 (and also the G3) is produced by IBM.. the G4 is produced by motorola. RISC is not an IBM standard either, but used in quite a few non-intel chips.. usually servers and high end chips though.

i'm a big mac fan, but for quite a while it looked like apple made the wrong choice when motorola couldnt get the G4 to higher clock speeds... a 500Mhz G4 was definitely way faster than a 500mhz PIII.. but two years later the G4 was still at 1Ghz and intel moved to a 2.7Ghz P4 instead.. which pretty much smoked the G4 in all but specialized applications (photoshop comes to mind here).

now, since IBM took over, the future looks bright again.. it has just won the microprocessor adward, dual 2.5Ghz G5 are around the corner and 3Ghz will be reached soon... at the same time, the G6 is already under development.

During all this time, he had a frozen system 3 times (the blue screen with the fake message) and had to restart the PC by power on reset. 1 Month ago, I had formatted his HD and installed a "clean" Win ME system. Only one of my expieriences with PC maintainance.

as much as i like to bash windows, comparing ME to OSX is not really fair... OS9 had it's problems too (i still prefered it to ME though)... and XP still hasn't caught up with OSX as far as i am concerned.. but it's definitely possible to have a nice XP system and do serious work with it ;)

++ christoph ++

[MovieStuff]

the USA resell value of used MACS blows away the resell value of used PCs

Which is handy when an unhappy Mac owner decides to replace his problematic Mac with an equally problematic PC. At least he has money left over! ;)

[crimsonson]

Macs resale value has always been tied to the fact that Apple has a very strict control over distribution of Apple products. Ever wonder why a mom and pop store can sell a G5 within $100 of Mac Mall?

RISC was originally designed by IBM in the mid 1970s and the G5 *is* a RISC processor - the IBM 970.

[mercyboy]

i was just catching up on some magazine reading, and the following appeared in BUSINESS 2.0's fourth annual "101 Dumbest Moments" after #33 - 35 also nailed Microsoft:

"#36: Michael Hanscom, a temp worker at Microsoft's in-house print shop, is fired after posting to his blog a photo that showed workers at the facility taking delivery of several Apple G5 computers. His supervisor insists that Hanscom was fired not for showing the company relying on the product of its chief rival, but for revealing the location of one of its shipping and receiving departments."

Yeah, right!

[ericMartinJarvies]

my g5 has not crashed once since i started using it a couple months back. i've had 20 or 30 applications opened and perhaps 50-100 windows at once, with dvd playing and a couple of video windows(fcp), jumping between shake and photoshop, also viewing out to ntsc/pal monitor and on and on. not one single system crash. the ONLY application that has crashed on me has been microsoft's internet explorer, and this has happened 5 or 6 times now. if i open an application, and prior to it loading completely i click on a web link, or close a browser window ... the IE crashes.

having the terminal window allows easy apache, mysql, php, etc. configurations ... x-11, plenty of unix osx packaged apps like gimp, and all the fun obscure function specific apps/source code, really makes it a fun machine. but what really gives me tickle is being able to run windows on my osx and never having to worry about it crashing truly one of my finer computer related experiences.

one thing i have noticed with osx is the fact that it has indeed broke away from the typical unix KISS methodology, and it seems this way because of the user interface ... most likely had to do with migrating the older os9 system interface/user base ... but hardly something that is a problem.

another really cool feature is being able to boot the system as a drive ... being able to plug it into another computer, or another to it.

has anyone ever used a computer that has 8gb of ram? i beleive PC's are still at 4gb?? or has that changed?

now that lexar has those new 4 and 8gb cards available ... all that remains is for someone to create a bay that can handle about 20 of those, this ways moving video/images to and from environments will be a piece of case.

here is a question for mac users:
if money was no object, and only the best would do, which one would you purchase:

-decklink hd/sd/dv
-cinewave hd/sd/dv
-aja hd/io hd/sd/dv
-pinnacle hd/sd/dv
-avid hd/sd/dv
-what did i miss?

eric

[mattias]

the G5 *is* a RISC processor

of course. who said it wasn't?

/matt

[crimsonson]

of course. who said it wasn't?

Certains comments where unsure...

[Pedro]

I am only a user who wants a running system without always babysitting it. I also would not go with Windows xp for several reasons. Many of my collegues, who are running XP now at home, report strange behaviour and problems running USB devices, like the popular memory sticks.

What me bothers most with XP is the automated Microsoft feedback when connected to the internet. I don´t want any Big Bill Watching Me. Of course, all these user observing funcionalities can be switched off, when browsing into the deeps of the operating system, but what standard user cares or is able to do that? Activating an operation system only by direct contact to Microsoft is really a bad joke...

In contrary, I latly installed a HD with OSX and several applications in an iMac G3/350 MHz. The HD originally was running in a 333 MHz model, with a completly different hardware. And, I was really surprized, everything worked on the newer iMac, without re-installing anything. That was too cool! Only the Windows 98 image of Virtual PC was totally confused, and had to be installed again.


@Eric: why don´t you delete that IE from your G5 and use Safari instead? It´s a really great browser, it never crashed with me. The simple little MAIL application is also great and very practical!

Pedro

[ericMartinJarvies]

pedro,

i am running netscape, safari, IE, etc. i like netscrape because it remembers passwords. ie does not. and on and on ... i use the right browser for the right application/purpose. same with al lthe software on my machine

eric

[mercyboy]

fyi: microsoft is no longer going to develop ie for the mac, which is obviously out of spite due to apple's launch of safari. safari blows away ie anyway (especially being able to use the tabs feature to have multiple pages open within the same program window--each with its own history, etc.), and netscape is just a sad sad sad story nowadays. the only BIG problem with safari is the cache, which has no manual control and makes it necessary to manually refresh things such as ebay auction pages (otherwise you'll be looking at old prices rather than current prices). hopefully they've fixed that in jaguar, but really there's no excuse for it having been like that in the first place.

[mattias]

netscape is just a sad sad sad story nowadays

i disagree. you should use mozilla (aka firefox/thunderbird/camino) though, which is the open source versions of netscape, since it's usually a few months before netscape in the evolution. i think it's both the best browser as well as the best email and usenet client.

/matt

[Taqi]

i disagree. you should use mozilla (aka firefox/thunderbird/camino) though, which is the open source versions of netscape, since it's usually a few months before netscape in the evolution. i think it's both the best browser as well as the best email and usenet client.

I second that - I switched over to Mozilla a few weeks ago having become utterly fed up with IE. It's the best browser I've used...