Buying a new computer after the holidays

[Jim H]

My old Packard Bell computer is on it's last legs. The 133 Mhz pentium with a 1 gig hard drive ain't what it used to be. Sometime after Christmas or New Years Day I'll have to put it out to pasture. The question is, what will take it's place? I currently use it at the office for faxes (sp) /internet connection/spreadsheet & wordprocessing. None of the software I currently use would push the "envelope" any of the new machines. What I "need" is hard drive space, a decent amount of ram (256 or better) and a modem. What I "want" is a cd-rom & cd-rw drive and usb connections. There are many companies out there offering the same basic systems, who do you suggest? After a couple of days looking, it's all a blur.

Thanks, Jim

[Jim H]

My old Packard Bell computer is on it's last legs. The 133 Mhz pentium with a 1 gig hard drive ain't what it used to be. Sometime after Christmas or New Years Day I'll have to put it out to pasture. The question is, what will take it's place? I currently use it at the office for faxes (sp) /internet connection/spreadsheet & wordprocessing. None of the software I currently use would push the "envelope" any of the new machines. What I "need" is hard drive space, a decent amount of ram (256 or better) and a modem. What I "want" is a cd-rom & cd-rw drive and usb connections. There are many companies out there offering the same basic systems, who do you suggest? After a couple of days looking, it's all a blur.

Thanks, Jim

[Jim H]

My old Packard Bell computer is on it's last legs. The 133 Mhz pentium with a 1 gig hard drive ain't what it used to be. Sometime after Christmas or New Years Day I'll have to put it out to pasture. The question is, what will take it's place? I currently use it at the office for faxes (sp) /internet connection/spreadsheet & wordprocessing. None of the software I currently use would push the "envelope" any of the new machines. What I "need" is hard drive space, a decent amount of ram (256 or better) and a modem. What I "want" is a cd-rom & cd-rw drive and usb connections. There are many companies out there offering the same basic systems, who do you suggest? After a couple of days looking, it's all a blur.

Thanks, Jim

[Donn]

Jim...my last 4 PC's, both desktop and laptop, have been Dell. Unmatched price/reliability/customer support.

[Donn]

Jim...my last 4 PC's, both desktop and laptop, have been Dell. Unmatched price/reliability/customer support.

[Donn]

Jim...my last 4 PC's, both desktop and laptop, have been Dell. Unmatched price/reliability/customer support.

[whb]

Jim

I am typing this on a clone. One of the strongest advantages of a clone is that nothing inside is proprietary. Therefore, if something goes wrong your corner computer store will have a replacement part.

That being said, I use a clone becuase I am still wanting to do a lot of file exchange with others.'

When I retire it will be a MAC. They just don't break. And you never see "Because you are an idiot and didn't shut the machine down right... to avoid seeing this message in the future... :confused: " Man I hate seeing that line.

Good luck

Howard

[whb]

Jim

I am typing this on a clone. One of the strongest advantages of a clone is that nothing inside is proprietary. Therefore, if something goes wrong your corner computer store will have a replacement part.

That being said, I use a clone becuase I am still wanting to do a lot of file exchange with others.'

When I retire it will be a MAC. They just don't break. And you never see "Because you are an idiot and didn't shut the machine down right... to avoid seeing this message in the future... :confused: " Man I hate seeing that line.

Good luck

Howard

[whb]

Jim

I am typing this on a clone. One of the strongest advantages of a clone is that nothing inside is proprietary. Therefore, if something goes wrong your corner computer store will have a replacement part.

That being said, I use a clone becuase I am still wanting to do a lot of file exchange with others.'

When I retire it will be a MAC. They just don't break. And you never see "Because you are an idiot and didn't shut the machine down right... to avoid seeing this message in the future... :confused: " Man I hate seeing that line.

Good luck

Howard

[Meerkat]

Dell has my vote too. I would stay away from Gateway and Hewlett Packard. Gateway machines tend to be slow, whatever the CPU clock speed and Hewlett Packards tend to be nightmares - I know HP employees that wouldn't own one again!

If you're mechanically inclined (can you use a screwdriver?), you can build your own easily enough. You may not save any money doing it that way, but you could well end up with a higher quality system. The downside is you get to be your own hardware tech and/or pay $$ in the future for repairs - no system waranty, just on the components. I build my own usually and so far (after 4) have never had a major problem except with one "bare-bones" system that fortunately did have a waranty on the basic box.

If you don't feel comfortable going the DIY route, another option worth considering is your local computer store. Do a little snooping and find out which one has been around longest and which is the busiest on a Saturday. A shop selling not only complete systems but components too (i.e. hard drives, cd-drives, memory, CPU's, cases etc.) is probably a better choice then a slick showroom with pre-built sytems only (those tend to come in from Taiwan in container loads). The shop offering the components and serving the DIY crowd tends to be more computer savvy and are likely to be around longer to support the warantee they offer with _their_ pre-built systems. Most shops of that type let you "roll your own" - select the components you want - and then build to order.

Now for something mildly more controversial. If you can, get Windows 2000 Professional. If you absolutely can't get that (worst case, e-bay has it for sale and some mailorder places still offer it, possibly including Dell!), the next best bet is Windows XP Professional. Stay away from Windows ME or Windows XP Home. Of course, if you're a software wiz and/or want a measure of independence and more free software then you'll ever know what to do with, get Linux! smile.gif

Get a Celeron with more then 1.2 GHZ clock speed or a Pentium4 - some P3's have heat problems and they and older, slower Celerons are old technology. AMD Athelons are a good buy too and are usually much less expensive then a box using an Intel CPU.

If you decide to go the DIY route, let me know. I can help you pick a good motherboard etc.

[Meerkat]

Dell has my vote too. I would stay away from Gateway and Hewlett Packard. Gateway machines tend to be slow, whatever the CPU clock speed and Hewlett Packards tend to be nightmares - I know HP employees that wouldn't own one again!

If you're mechanically inclined (can you use a screwdriver?), you can build your own easily enough. You may not save any money doing it that way, but you could well end up with a higher quality system. The downside is you get to be your own hardware tech and/or pay $$ in the future for repairs - no system waranty, just on the components. I build my own usually and so far (after 4) have never had a major problem except with one "bare-bones" system that fortunately did have a waranty on the basic box.

If you don't feel comfortable going the DIY route, another option worth considering is your local computer store. Do a little snooping and find out which one has been around longest and which is the busiest on a Saturday. A shop selling not only complete systems but components too (i.e. hard drives, cd-drives, memory, CPU's, cases etc.) is probably a better choice then a slick showroom with pre-built sytems only (those tend to come in from Taiwan in container loads). The shop offering the components and serving the DIY crowd tends to be more computer savvy and are likely to be around longer to support the warantee they offer with _their_ pre-built systems. Most shops of that type let you "roll your own" - select the components you want - and then build to order.

Now for something mildly more controversial. If you can, get Windows 2000 Professional. If you absolutely can't get that (worst case, e-bay has it for sale and some mailorder places still offer it, possibly including Dell!), the next best bet is Windows XP Professional. Stay away from Windows ME or Windows XP Home. Of course, if you're a software wiz and/or want a measure of independence and more free software then you'll ever know what to do with, get Linux! smile.gif

Get a Celeron with more then 1.2 GHZ clock speed or a Pentium4 - some P3's have heat problems and they and older, slower Celerons are old technology. AMD Athelons are a good buy too and are usually much less expensive then a box using an Intel CPU.

If you decide to go the DIY route, let me know. I can help you pick a good motherboard etc.

[Meerkat]

Dell has my vote too. I would stay away from Gateway and Hewlett Packard. Gateway machines tend to be slow, whatever the CPU clock speed and Hewlett Packards tend to be nightmares - I know HP employees that wouldn't own one again!

If you're mechanically inclined (can you use a screwdriver?), you can build your own easily enough. You may not save any money doing it that way, but you could well end up with a higher quality system. The downside is you get to be your own hardware tech and/or pay $$ in the future for repairs - no system waranty, just on the components. I build my own usually and so far (after 4) have never had a major problem except with one "bare-bones" system that fortunately did have a waranty on the basic box.

If you don't feel comfortable going the DIY route, another option worth considering is your local computer store. Do a little snooping and find out which one has been around longest and which is the busiest on a Saturday. A shop selling not only complete systems but components too (i.e. hard drives, cd-drives, memory, CPU's, cases etc.) is probably a better choice then a slick showroom with pre-built sytems only (those tend to come in from Taiwan in container loads). The shop offering the components and serving the DIY crowd tends to be more computer savvy and are likely to be around longer to support the warantee they offer with _their_ pre-built systems. Most shops of that type let you "roll your own" - select the components you want - and then build to order.

Now for something mildly more controversial. If you can, get Windows 2000 Professional. If you absolutely can't get that (worst case, e-bay has it for sale and some mailorder places still offer it, possibly including Dell!), the next best bet is Windows XP Professional. Stay away from Windows ME or Windows XP Home. Of course, if you're a software wiz and/or want a measure of independence and more free software then you'll ever know what to do with, get Linux! smile.gif

Get a Celeron with more then 1.2 GHZ clock speed or a Pentium4 - some P3's have heat problems and they and older, slower Celerons are old technology. AMD Athelons are a good buy too and are usually much less expensive then a box using an Intel CPU.

If you decide to go the DIY route, let me know. I can help you pick a good motherboard etc.

[gary porter]

Jim, if I were going to buy a new computer I'd go to www.dell.com (http://www.dell.com) go to the custom page and price it out. Or, just pick one of the standard models they have which would probably do fine, call them up and order it. Its worth the extra money to get a flat panel monitor. They draw less than half the current which means half the heat or less, no harmful radiation considerations, a fraction of the desk space required and a 15" one gives you pretty much a full 15" viewing area, same with the 17" and now they have an 18" which is what I'd buy. Be careful that you ask for a flat panel not screen. The 17" has a model number like 1702FP etc.
Good Luck
Gary

[gary porter]

Jim, if I were going to buy a new computer I'd go to www.dell.com (http://www.dell.com) go to the custom page and price it out. Or, just pick one of the standard models they have which would probably do fine, call them up and order it. Its worth the extra money to get a flat panel monitor. They draw less than half the current which means half the heat or less, no harmful radiation considerations, a fraction of the desk space required and a 15" one gives you pretty much a full 15" viewing area, same with the 17" and now they have an 18" which is what I'd buy. Be careful that you ask for a flat panel not screen. The 17" has a model number like 1702FP etc.
Good Luck
Gary

[gary porter]

Jim, if I were going to buy a new computer I'd go to www.dell.com (http://www.dell.com) go to the custom page and price it out. Or, just pick one of the standard models they have which would probably do fine, call them up and order it. Its worth the extra money to get a flat panel monitor. They draw less than half the current which means half the heat or less, no harmful radiation considerations, a fraction of the desk space required and a 15" one gives you pretty much a full 15" viewing area, same with the 17" and now they have an 18" which is what I'd buy. Be careful that you ask for a flat panel not screen. The 17" has a model number like 1702FP etc.
Good Luck
Gary

[Donn]

Since meerkat brought it up, I'd suggest NT4 Workstation for your OS. It's the most widely installed PC OS in the world, and is the most stable Windows OS. It has more support and more development than any other OS on the market. Dual boot it with Linux if you want to play...but NT rules.

[Donn]

Since meerkat brought it up, I'd suggest NT4 Workstation for your OS. It's the most widely installed PC OS in the world, and is the most stable Windows OS. It has more support and more development than any other OS on the market. Dual boot it with Linux if you want to play...but NT rules.

[Donn]

Since meerkat brought it up, I'd suggest NT4 Workstation for your OS. It's the most widely installed PC OS in the world, and is the most stable Windows OS. It has more support and more development than any other OS on the market. Dual boot it with Linux if you want to play...but NT rules.

[gary porter]

Donn, I'd agree with you however, I don't think its avialable anymore on the new machines. 2000 is still and is somewhat NT based so given that, it would be the best choice. I've been using Linux for many years now and thats what I use on my main machine but I'm not sure I'd recomend anyone just jumping in unless they have a bit of time as it does have a learning curve. Linux is much better nowadays and I think most anyone could do the installation as well as many companies are now offering it prepackaged.

[gary porter]

Donn, I'd agree with you however, I don't think its avialable anymore on the new machines. 2000 is still and is somewhat NT based so given that, it would be the best choice. I've been using Linux for many years now and thats what I use on my main machine but I'm not sure I'd recomend anyone just jumping in unless they have a bit of time as it does have a learning curve. Linux is much better nowadays and I think most anyone could do the installation as well as many companies are now offering it prepackaged.

[gary porter]

Donn, I'd agree with you however, I don't think its avialable anymore on the new machines. 2000 is still and is somewhat NT based so given that, it would be the best choice. I've been using Linux for many years now and thats what I use on my main machine but I'm not sure I'd recomend anyone just jumping in unless they have a bit of time as it does have a learning curve. Linux is much better nowadays and I think most anyone could do the installation as well as many companies are now offering it prepackaged.

[rodcross]

Believe it or not, I'm typing this on a 1995 Pentium Pro that I built from parts I bought at a computer show. A little nerve-wracking assembling a shopping bag of parts and wondering if it will run. The same machine, back then, would have cost $3,500. I think I came home with $900-$1,000 spent. I thought I smoked it the other day, when it failed to boot, so I took it to a local repair shop. $202.99 later, I had a new power supply, a new CPU fan and twice the memory. This machine is only slightly slower than my fancy IBM laptop. I'm still very happy with this machine.

You know, Jim, some people have discovered that owning a share or two of IBM gets you on their mailing list for their on-line specials for stockholders only. I'm a big fan of IBM machines. When this one finally gives up the ghost, I'll probably go straight to Big Blue.

[rodcross]

Believe it or not, I'm typing this on a 1995 Pentium Pro that I built from parts I bought at a computer show. A little nerve-wracking assembling a shopping bag of parts and wondering if it will run. The same machine, back then, would have cost $3,500. I think I came home with $900-$1,000 spent. I thought I smoked it the other day, when it failed to boot, so I took it to a local repair shop. $202.99 later, I had a new power supply, a new CPU fan and twice the memory. This machine is only slightly slower than my fancy IBM laptop. I'm still very happy with this machine.

You know, Jim, some people have discovered that owning a share or two of IBM gets you on their mailing list for their on-line specials for stockholders only. I'm a big fan of IBM machines. When this one finally gives up the ghost, I'll probably go straight to Big Blue.

[rodcross]

Believe it or not, I'm typing this on a 1995 Pentium Pro that I built from parts I bought at a computer show. A little nerve-wracking assembling a shopping bag of parts and wondering if it will run. The same machine, back then, would have cost $3,500. I think I came home with $900-$1,000 spent. I thought I smoked it the other day, when it failed to boot, so I took it to a local repair shop. $202.99 later, I had a new power supply, a new CPU fan and twice the memory. This machine is only slightly slower than my fancy IBM laptop. I'm still very happy with this machine.

You know, Jim, some people have discovered that owning a share or two of IBM gets you on their mailing list for their on-line specials for stockholders only. I'm a big fan of IBM machines. When this one finally gives up the ghost, I'll probably go straight to Big Blue.

[imported_Conrad]

Take a look on eBay- we've bought three machines there, all year old lease returns at very competitive prices with a long enough warranty to let you get it set up, checked out, etc. On one we had a dead CD- the seller shipped a replacement at no charge. Check the feedback!

[imported_Conrad]

Take a look on eBay- we've bought three machines there, all year old lease returns at very competitive prices with a long enough warranty to let you get it set up, checked out, etc. On one we had a dead CD- the seller shipped a replacement at no charge. Check the feedback!

[imported_Conrad]

Take a look on eBay- we've bought three machines there, all year old lease returns at very competitive prices with a long enough warranty to let you get it set up, checked out, etc. On one we had a dead CD- the seller shipped a replacement at no charge. Check the feedback!

[JimConlin]

I've bought two PC's in the last year, both pretty serious ones. One is a Micron and the other a Dell. There's a difference between them that isn't on any of the spec sheets, it's NOISE. The Micron has, I think, three different blowers. It's the noisiest PC i've ever had. The Dell seems to have no blowers. I can hear the disk drive. I love it. Unfortunately, it was bought for my daughter (The Princess) so i'm SOL. YMMV, so listen to the box in a quiet place or at least ask about cooling fans.

The flat monitors are very good and getting less expensive all the time. I figure that I paid $200 for 3 ft^2 of desk.

Hope this helps.

[JimConlin]

I've bought two PC's in the last year, both pretty serious ones. One is a Micron and the other a Dell. There's a difference between them that isn't on any of the spec sheets, it's NOISE. The Micron has, I think, three different blowers. It's the noisiest PC i've ever had. The Dell seems to have no blowers. I can hear the disk drive. I love it. Unfortunately, it was bought for my daughter (The Princess) so i'm SOL. YMMV, so listen to the box in a quiet place or at least ask about cooling fans.

The flat monitors are very good and getting less expensive all the time. I figure that I paid $200 for 3 ft^2 of desk.

Hope this helps.

[JimConlin]

I've bought two PC's in the last year, both pretty serious ones. One is a Micron and the other a Dell. There's a difference between them that isn't on any of the spec sheets, it's NOISE. The Micron has, I think, three different blowers. It's the noisiest PC i've ever had. The Dell seems to have no blowers. I can hear the disk drive. I love it. Unfortunately, it was bought for my daughter (The Princess) so i'm SOL. YMMV, so listen to the box in a quiet place or at least ask about cooling fans.

The flat monitors are very good and getting less expensive all the time. I figure that I paid $200 for 3 ft^2 of desk.

Hope this helps.

[Meerkat]

Hey loon; now that XP is out all the corps are moving up - to Windows 2000 Professional! smile.gif Boeing was doing a company-wide rollout when I was there last September. (Boeing is one of Microsoft's bellweather "critical-must-support" clients. They had fits when Boeing threatened to dump Microsoft Exchange.)

Personally, I think Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) is better then NT 4.0 because Plug 'n Play and certain PCI support is better integrated into the core OS.

[Meerkat]

Hey loon; now that XP is out all the corps are moving up - to Windows 2000 Professional! smile.gif Boeing was doing a company-wide rollout when I was there last September. (Boeing is one of Microsoft's bellweather "critical-must-support" clients. They had fits when Boeing threatened to dump Microsoft Exchange.)

Personally, I think Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) is better then NT 4.0 because Plug 'n Play and certain PCI support is better integrated into the core OS.

[Meerkat]

Hey loon; now that XP is out all the corps are moving up - to Windows 2000 Professional! smile.gif Boeing was doing a company-wide rollout when I was there last September. (Boeing is one of Microsoft's bellweather "critical-must-support" clients. They had fits when Boeing threatened to dump Microsoft Exchange.)

Personally, I think Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) is better then NT 4.0 because Plug 'n Play and certain PCI support is better integrated into the core OS.

[cs]

I'm going to second (and even third) a lot of the suggestions out there.

Yes to Dell (no to Gateway)

Yes to NT 4.0 or XP Profesional (Big no to ME)

If you want USB connections don't get NT 4.0 since it don't recgonize USB.

For sure get a CD burner they even have CD/DVD burners if you want to pay the price.

What ever you get make sure that you get the maximum amount of RAM available (this is the one area not to cut corners in). In fact if I had to choice I would downgrade the processer speed for more RAM.

Chad

[cs]

I'm going to second (and even third) a lot of the suggestions out there.

Yes to Dell (no to Gateway)

Yes to NT 4.0 or XP Profesional (Big no to ME)

If you want USB connections don't get NT 4.0 since it don't recgonize USB.

For sure get a CD burner they even have CD/DVD burners if you want to pay the price.

What ever you get make sure that you get the maximum amount of RAM available (this is the one area not to cut corners in). In fact if I had to choice I would downgrade the processer speed for more RAM.

Chad

[cs]

I'm going to second (and even third) a lot of the suggestions out there.

Yes to Dell (no to Gateway)

Yes to NT 4.0 or XP Profesional (Big no to ME)

If you want USB connections don't get NT 4.0 since it don't recgonize USB.

For sure get a CD burner they even have CD/DVD burners if you want to pay the price.

What ever you get make sure that you get the maximum amount of RAM available (this is the one area not to cut corners in). In fact if I had to choice I would downgrade the processer speed for more RAM.

Chad

[Donn]

Originally posted by Meerkat:
Hey loon; now that XP is out all the corps are moving up - to Windows 2000 Professional! smile.gif Maybe "all the corps" is a tad bit of hyperbole. First of all, most of the corps have been in a big IT spending freeze since before Win2K came out. There has still been some upgrade spending, but good bit of it has been going NT's way, and Microsoft expects that it will take 5 more years before NT Server and Workstation lose first place in their respective product groups.

We all tend to think of the PC industry in terms of the newest technology, but there are lots of corporations who do not. I've moved 3 companies from NT 3.51 to NT 4 this year. One of them involved a 1000+ site license. We discussed going straight to Win2k, but their network guy, who is as good an NT wizard as I've ever met, said no. "NT4 will do everything we need to do, and we don't need the learning curve, or a newer OS."

The business world is very deliberate when it comes to OS upgrades. I've got customers who are still on Win95.

[Donn]

Originally posted by Meerkat:
Hey loon; now that XP is out all the corps are moving up - to Windows 2000 Professional! smile.gif Maybe "all the corps" is a tad bit of hyperbole. First of all, most of the corps have been in a big IT spending freeze since before Win2K came out. There has still been some upgrade spending, but good bit of it has been going NT's way, and Microsoft expects that it will take 5 more years before NT Server and Workstation lose first place in their respective product groups.

We all tend to think of the PC industry in terms of the newest technology, but there are lots of corporations who do not. I've moved 3 companies from NT 3.51 to NT 4 this year. One of them involved a 1000+ site license. We discussed going straight to Win2k, but their network guy, who is as good an NT wizard as I've ever met, said no. "NT4 will do everything we need to do, and we don't need the learning curve, or a newer OS."

The business world is very deliberate when it comes to OS upgrades. I've got customers who are still on Win95.

[Donn]

Originally posted by Meerkat:
Hey loon; now that XP is out all the corps are moving up - to Windows 2000 Professional! smile.gif Maybe "all the corps" is a tad bit of hyperbole. First of all, most of the corps have been in a big IT spending freeze since before Win2K came out. There has still been some upgrade spending, but good bit of it has been going NT's way, and Microsoft expects that it will take 5 more years before NT Server and Workstation lose first place in their respective product groups.

We all tend to think of the PC industry in terms of the newest technology, but there are lots of corporations who do not. I've moved 3 companies from NT 3.51 to NT 4 this year. One of them involved a 1000+ site license. We discussed going straight to Win2k, but their network guy, who is as good an NT wizard as I've ever met, said no. "NT4 will do everything we need to do, and we don't need the learning curve, or a newer OS."

The business world is very deliberate when it comes to OS upgrades. I've got customers who are still on Win95.

[mmd]

I second what cs said. I've purchased fourteen computers in the past ten years (business & home use, stand-alones, networked, & laptops), and the last six have been Dell. Good product, good price, excellent service. Spend the money for a CD burner, you'll find it very useful.

[mmd]

I second what cs said. I've purchased fourteen computers in the past ten years (business & home use, stand-alones, networked, & laptops), and the last six have been Dell. Good product, good price, excellent service. Spend the money for a CD burner, you'll find it very useful.

[mmd]

I second what cs said. I've purchased fourteen computers in the past ten years (business & home use, stand-alones, networked, & laptops), and the last six have been Dell. Good product, good price, excellent service. Spend the money for a CD burner, you'll find it very useful.

[Bruce Hooke]

If you want a new computer Dell is certainly the way I would go. My home and work PC's are both Dell's and they have served me well. On my home PC I have upgraded or added a lot of components (new hard drive, new hard drive controller, CD-Burner, more memory, SCSI card, Network card...) and I have never had any problems with proprietary parts.

That said, for your needs you might want to consider a used computer. There are some very good deals out there on relatively recent machines. My preference would be to check the local paper and local computer repair shops, over eBay but that's just me. The key thing on used computers, in my opinion, is that you should plan on wiping clean the hard drive and re-installing everything so that you can start clean. Over time computers will tend to 'degrade' in terms of software performance, and re-installing everything from scratch will bring everything back up to where it should be. This does mean that you will need to get any software CD's with the computer, which can be an issue in some cases.

This is also my issue with building your own computer. Let's say you want to have some version of Microsoft Office on your computer. If you don't have an old copy that you can transfer to your new computer (in which case you should remove it from your old computer if you are being honest), then you will have to spend something like $500 to buy just Microsoft Office! Meanwhile, if you buy a new Dell (or any other brand) you can get Microsoft Office as part of the package for what probably amounts to $150-200. So, it becomes pretty hard to justify building your own computer when you factor in the cost of software. Building it yourself, with software, is likely to run you to quite a bit more than what buying new would cost you...

[Bruce Hooke]

If you want a new computer Dell is certainly the way I would go. My home and work PC's are both Dell's and they have served me well. On my home PC I have upgraded or added a lot of components (new hard drive, new hard drive controller, CD-Burner, more memory, SCSI card, Network card...) and I have never had any problems with proprietary parts.

That said, for your needs you might want to consider a used computer. There are some very good deals out there on relatively recent machines. My preference would be to check the local paper and local computer repair shops, over eBay but that's just me. The key thing on used computers, in my opinion, is that you should plan on wiping clean the hard drive and re-installing everything so that you can start clean. Over time computers will tend to 'degrade' in terms of software performance, and re-installing everything from scratch will bring everything back up to where it should be. This does mean that you will need to get any software CD's with the computer, which can be an issue in some cases.

This is also my issue with building your own computer. Let's say you want to have some version of Microsoft Office on your computer. If you don't have an old copy that you can transfer to your new computer (in which case you should remove it from your old computer if you are being honest), then you will have to spend something like $500 to buy just Microsoft Office! Meanwhile, if you buy a new Dell (or any other brand) you can get Microsoft Office as part of the package for what probably amounts to $150-200. So, it becomes pretty hard to justify building your own computer when you factor in the cost of software. Building it yourself, with software, is likely to run you to quite a bit more than what buying new would cost you...

[Bruce Hooke]

If you want a new computer Dell is certainly the way I would go. My home and work PC's are both Dell's and they have served me well. On my home PC I have upgraded or added a lot of components (new hard drive, new hard drive controller, CD-Burner, more memory, SCSI card, Network card...) and I have never had any problems with proprietary parts.

That said, for your needs you might want to consider a used computer. There are some very good deals out there on relatively recent machines. My preference would be to check the local paper and local computer repair shops, over eBay but that's just me. The key thing on used computers, in my opinion, is that you should plan on wiping clean the hard drive and re-installing everything so that you can start clean. Over time computers will tend to 'degrade' in terms of software performance, and re-installing everything from scratch will bring everything back up to where it should be. This does mean that you will need to get any software CD's with the computer, which can be an issue in some cases.

This is also my issue with building your own computer. Let's say you want to have some version of Microsoft Office on your computer. If you don't have an old copy that you can transfer to your new computer (in which case you should remove it from your old computer if you are being honest), then you will have to spend something like $500 to buy just Microsoft Office! Meanwhile, if you buy a new Dell (or any other brand) you can get Microsoft Office as part of the package for what probably amounts to $150-200. So, it becomes pretty hard to justify building your own computer when you factor in the cost of software. Building it yourself, with software, is likely to run you to quite a bit more than what buying new would cost you...

[CptnDon]

I'm not intending to start an old fashioned flame war, BUT...for people like me who have no need, no intention, no desire, no time, no interest in becoming PC tecno geniuses...what about macs?
I never hear the mac users I know talk about all this crap. They just use their computers.

[CptnDon]

I'm not intending to start an old fashioned flame war, BUT...for people like me who have no need, no intention, no desire, no time, no interest in becoming PC tecno geniuses...what about macs?
I never hear the mac users I know talk about all this crap. They just use their computers.

[CptnDon]

I'm not intending to start an old fashioned flame war, BUT...for people like me who have no need, no intention, no desire, no time, no interest in becoming PC tecno geniuses...what about macs?
I never hear the mac users I know talk about all this crap. They just use their computers.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

BUY A MAC
http://a288.g.akamai.net/7/288/51/cbd9c45208573e/www.apple.com/r/store/gallery/ibook2002/images/1.jpg
$1,299.00
800MHz PowerPC G3
512K L2 cache @800MHz
128MB SDRAM memory
30GB Ultra ATA drive
ATI Radeon 7500
32MB dedicated video memory
Combo Drive
Built-in 56K v.92 modem
AirPort ready
Up to 5 hr. battery life

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

BUY A MAC
http://a288.g.akamai.net/7/288/51/cbd9c45208573e/www.apple.com/r/store/gallery/ibook2002/images/1.jpg
$1,299.00
800MHz PowerPC G3
512K L2 cache @800MHz
128MB SDRAM memory
30GB Ultra ATA drive
ATI Radeon 7500
32MB dedicated video memory
Combo Drive
Built-in 56K v.92 modem
AirPort ready
Up to 5 hr. battery life

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

BUY A MAC
http://a288.g.akamai.net/7/288/51/cbd9c45208573e/www.apple.com/r/store/gallery/ibook2002/images/1.jpg
$1,299.00
800MHz PowerPC G3
512K L2 cache @800MHz
128MB SDRAM memory
30GB Ultra ATA drive
ATI Radeon 7500
32MB dedicated video memory
Combo Drive
Built-in 56K v.92 modem
AirPort ready
Up to 5 hr. battery life

[John of Phoenix]

Three years ago I bot a Dell laptop and two docking ports. One for the office and one for home. It's like having three computers. The set up at the office is all top quality - flat monitor, high speed laser printer with letterhead and plain paper trays, Zip drive, a keyboard with built in calculator and a roller ball mouse. The set up at home also has a flat monitor but with a built-in TV tuner, a wireless mouse and keyboard, a joystick (for helicopter games :D ) BIG speakers, a little color ink jet printer, and cable modem. The "third" computer is the laptop as a stand alone, which is a pretty capable little machine. DVD, lots of RAM, 14" screen, big drive, LOTS of software, basically it's a portable desktop.

The downside - it's heavy, 20 lbs, ready to transport, with charger, etc. and the case. But remember it's three years old.

It also eats batteries. Though I rarely use it on battery power, it seems to cook them if they're installed and charging in the docking ports. The first one was on warranty (within days) but the second cost close to $200. After going through two in as many years, I just don't put the battery in if it's in the docking port.

I've found that C|Net.com is an excellent source for info of a techno nature. Try this link for their reviews of notebooks.

http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-1026.html?tag=st.re.9870989.dir.1026

Click on "Editor's top picks" for some good comparisons.

[John of Phoenix]

Three years ago I bot a Dell laptop and two docking ports. One for the office and one for home. It's like having three computers. The set up at the office is all top quality - flat monitor, high speed laser printer with letterhead and plain paper trays, Zip drive, a keyboard with built in calculator and a roller ball mouse. The set up at home also has a flat monitor but with a built-in TV tuner, a wireless mouse and keyboard, a joystick (for helicopter games :D ) BIG speakers, a little color ink jet printer, and cable modem. The "third" computer is the laptop as a stand alone, which is a pretty capable little machine. DVD, lots of RAM, 14" screen, big drive, LOTS of software, basically it's a portable desktop.

The downside - it's heavy, 20 lbs, ready to transport, with charger, etc. and the case. But remember it's three years old.

It also eats batteries. Though I rarely use it on battery power, it seems to cook them if they're installed and charging in the docking ports. The first one was on warranty (within days) but the second cost close to $200. After going through two in as many years, I just don't put the battery in if it's in the docking port.

I've found that C|Net.com is an excellent source for info of a techno nature. Try this link for their reviews of notebooks.

http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-1026.html?tag=st.re.9870989.dir.1026

Click on "Editor's top picks" for some good comparisons.

[John of Phoenix]

Three years ago I bot a Dell laptop and two docking ports. One for the office and one for home. It's like having three computers. The set up at the office is all top quality - flat monitor, high speed laser printer with letterhead and plain paper trays, Zip drive, a keyboard with built in calculator and a roller ball mouse. The set up at home also has a flat monitor but with a built-in TV tuner, a wireless mouse and keyboard, a joystick (for helicopter games :D ) BIG speakers, a little color ink jet printer, and cable modem. The "third" computer is the laptop as a stand alone, which is a pretty capable little machine. DVD, lots of RAM, 14" screen, big drive, LOTS of software, basically it's a portable desktop.

The downside - it's heavy, 20 lbs, ready to transport, with charger, etc. and the case. But remember it's three years old.

It also eats batteries. Though I rarely use it on battery power, it seems to cook them if they're installed and charging in the docking ports. The first one was on warranty (within days) but the second cost close to $200. After going through two in as many years, I just don't put the battery in if it's in the docking port.

I've found that C|Net.com is an excellent source for info of a techno nature. Try this link for their reviews of notebooks.

http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-1026.html?tag=st.re.9870989.dir.1026

Click on "Editor's top picks" for some good comparisons.

[Donn]

Dell Precision 340 Workstation
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor, 2.00GHz, 512K Full Speed Cache
512MB PC800 ECC RDRAM(2 RIMMS)
Intel PRO/1000 XT, Gigabit PCI NIC
ATI, Radeon™ VE, 32MB, VGA (dual monitor capable)
Dell UltraSharp™ 1504FP 15 inch Flat Panel Monitor (15.0 inch vis)
40GB ATA-100 IDE (7200 rpm) Hard Drive
40X/10X/40X IDE CD Read-Write

$1,422 Delivered

[Donn]

Dell Precision 340 Workstation
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor, 2.00GHz, 512K Full Speed Cache
512MB PC800 ECC RDRAM(2 RIMMS)
Intel PRO/1000 XT, Gigabit PCI NIC
ATI, Radeon™ VE, 32MB, VGA (dual monitor capable)
Dell UltraSharp™ 1504FP 15 inch Flat Panel Monitor (15.0 inch vis)
40GB ATA-100 IDE (7200 rpm) Hard Drive
40X/10X/40X IDE CD Read-Write

$1,422 Delivered

[Donn]

Dell Precision 340 Workstation
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor, 2.00GHz, 512K Full Speed Cache
512MB PC800 ECC RDRAM(2 RIMMS)
Intel PRO/1000 XT, Gigabit PCI NIC
ATI, Radeon™ VE, 32MB, VGA (dual monitor capable)
Dell UltraSharp™ 1504FP 15 inch Flat Panel Monitor (15.0 inch vis)
40GB ATA-100 IDE (7200 rpm) Hard Drive
40X/10X/40X IDE CD Read-Write

$1,422 Delivered

[mmd]

CptnDon, I have no problem w/ Apple computers other than for the tasks I have to do in my professional life, the availability, price, and compatibility of a lot of the technical software and files that I use makes a PC more viable. From what I've seen, for home use and graphics a Mac can't be touched by a PC. I guess ya picks the shoe that is the most comfortable regardless of current fashion.

[mmd]

CptnDon, I have no problem w/ Apple computers other than for the tasks I have to do in my professional life, the availability, price, and compatibility of a lot of the technical software and files that I use makes a PC more viable. From what I've seen, for home use and graphics a Mac can't be touched by a PC. I guess ya picks the shoe that is the most comfortable regardless of current fashion.

[mmd]

CptnDon, I have no problem w/ Apple computers other than for the tasks I have to do in my professional life, the availability, price, and compatibility of a lot of the technical software and files that I use makes a PC more viable. From what I've seen, for home use and graphics a Mac can't be touched by a PC. I guess ya picks the shoe that is the most comfortable regardless of current fashion.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Donn that Dell is over $120 more than the Apple iBook and its not portable and Apple delivers and you plug and play no hooking things up. For the extra $100 you save you can get an Airport card and have a wireless laptop like me :D
A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent the Mac runs all Windoz apps and runs OS X rock solid UNIX base
The Combo Drive reads writes CD and plays DVD's and did I mention its portable
And no one beats Apple monitors - stunning smile.gif

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Donn that Dell is over $120 more than the Apple iBook and its not portable and Apple delivers and you plug and play no hooking things up. For the extra $100 you save you can get an Airport card and have a wireless laptop like me :D
A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent the Mac runs all Windoz apps and runs OS X rock solid UNIX base
The Combo Drive reads writes CD and plays DVD's and did I mention its portable
And no one beats Apple monitors - stunning smile.gif

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Donn that Dell is over $120 more than the Apple iBook and its not portable and Apple delivers and you plug and play no hooking things up. For the extra $100 you save you can get an Airport card and have a wireless laptop like me :D
A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent the Mac runs all Windoz apps and runs OS X rock solid UNIX base
The Combo Drive reads writes CD and plays DVD's and did I mention its portable
And no one beats Apple monitors - stunning smile.gif

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Originally posted by LOON:
the most stable Windows OS. :D :D :D :D :D :D
ROTFL

[ 11-15-2002, 11:43 AM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Originally posted by LOON:
the most stable Windows OS. :D :D :D :D :D :D
ROTFL

[ 11-15-2002, 11:43 AM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Originally posted by LOON:
the most stable Windows OS. :D :D :D :D :D :D
ROTFL

[ 11-15-2002, 11:43 AM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Donn]

Joe...if Apple products were so good, they'd have more than 5% market share. They're even losing market share in the graphics design world, which they used to own.

[Donn]

Joe...if Apple products were so good, they'd have more than 5% market share. They're even losing market share in the graphics design world, which they used to own.

[Donn]

Joe...if Apple products were so good, they'd have more than 5% market share. They're even losing market share in the graphics design world, which they used to own.

[Bruce Hooke]

Most of my family uses Macs and they seem to be quite happy with. Macs are not a good option for me because some of the software I want to use is not available for the Mac. Also, most of my work depends on PC's and it's nice to have the same system on both walls of my home office :D

Do realize that most PC users are not 'techies' like the people who are responding to this thread -- it's just that if you ask a computer question the people who will most likely jump in and answer are the techies. I think this is part of what hurts peoples' impressions of the PC world -- because the people they talk to immediately launch into this other language that sounds like giberish!

I have helped a number of VERY non-technical people buy PC's through Dell and they have all been quite happy. If you aren't into techie stuff you will most likely be quite happy with one of Dell's stock systems. Obviously educating yourself will, as in the case of any purchase, make you a more educated consumer who can make better chioces, but Dell has very good help information on their website to explain to you what the different options mean. Buying a PC can be more complex than buying a Mac, largely because you have a lot more options to choose from...

[Bruce Hooke]

Most of my family uses Macs and they seem to be quite happy with. Macs are not a good option for me because some of the software I want to use is not available for the Mac. Also, most of my work depends on PC's and it's nice to have the same system on both walls of my home office :D

Do realize that most PC users are not 'techies' like the people who are responding to this thread -- it's just that if you ask a computer question the people who will most likely jump in and answer are the techies. I think this is part of what hurts peoples' impressions of the PC world -- because the people they talk to immediately launch into this other language that sounds like giberish!

I have helped a number of VERY non-technical people buy PC's through Dell and they have all been quite happy. If you aren't into techie stuff you will most likely be quite happy with one of Dell's stock systems. Obviously educating yourself will, as in the case of any purchase, make you a more educated consumer who can make better chioces, but Dell has very good help information on their website to explain to you what the different options mean. Buying a PC can be more complex than buying a Mac, largely because you have a lot more options to choose from...

[Bruce Hooke]

Most of my family uses Macs and they seem to be quite happy with. Macs are not a good option for me because some of the software I want to use is not available for the Mac. Also, most of my work depends on PC's and it's nice to have the same system on both walls of my home office :D

Do realize that most PC users are not 'techies' like the people who are responding to this thread -- it's just that if you ask a computer question the people who will most likely jump in and answer are the techies. I think this is part of what hurts peoples' impressions of the PC world -- because the people they talk to immediately launch into this other language that sounds like giberish!

I have helped a number of VERY non-technical people buy PC's through Dell and they have all been quite happy. If you aren't into techie stuff you will most likely be quite happy with one of Dell's stock systems. Obviously educating yourself will, as in the case of any purchase, make you a more educated consumer who can make better chioces, but Dell has very good help information on their website to explain to you what the different options mean. Buying a PC can be more complex than buying a Mac, largely because you have a lot more options to choose from...

[Bruce Hooke]

Originally posted by LOON:
Joe...if Apple products were so good, they'd have more than 5% market share. They're even losing market share in the graphics design world, which they used to own.Actually, as is often the case, I think the relative share of Mac's vs. IBM compatible PC's has little to do with the relative quality of the products and a lot to do with marketing and licensing decisions.

Also, at this point Mac's are at a real disadvantage because there is more software on the market for PC's, parts are much more readily available for PC's, repair shops for PC's are much easier to find, and if you are dealing with something like a local ISP they are much more likely to know PC's well and thus be better able to help you...

[Bruce Hooke]

Originally posted by LOON:
Joe...if Apple products were so good, they'd have more than 5% market share. They're even losing market share in the graphics design world, which they used to own.Actually, as is often the case, I think the relative share of Mac's vs. IBM compatible PC's has little to do with the relative quality of the products and a lot to do with marketing and licensing decisions.

Also, at this point Mac's are at a real disadvantage because there is more software on the market for PC's, parts are much more readily available for PC's, repair shops for PC's are much easier to find, and if you are dealing with something like a local ISP they are much more likely to know PC's well and thus be better able to help you...

[Bruce Hooke]

Originally posted by LOON:
Joe...if Apple products were so good, they'd have more than 5% market share. They're even losing market share in the graphics design world, which they used to own.Actually, as is often the case, I think the relative share of Mac's vs. IBM compatible PC's has little to do with the relative quality of the products and a lot to do with marketing and licensing decisions.

Also, at this point Mac's are at a real disadvantage because there is more software on the market for PC's, parts are much more readily available for PC's, repair shops for PC's are much easier to find, and if you are dealing with something like a local ISP they are much more likely to know PC's well and thus be better able to help you...

[Donn]

Joe:

"A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent"

You'll have to prove that one to me. The G3 runs a 100MHZ bus, while the P4, 2GHZ runs a 400MHZ bus. With twice the processor and 4 times bus speed in the P4, I can't see how the G3 could be 2 times faster.

[Donn]

Joe:

"A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent"

You'll have to prove that one to me. The G3 runs a 100MHZ bus, while the P4, 2GHZ runs a 400MHZ bus. With twice the processor and 4 times bus speed in the P4, I can't see how the G3 could be 2 times faster.

[Donn]

Joe:

"A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent"

You'll have to prove that one to me. The G3 runs a 100MHZ bus, while the P4, 2GHZ runs a 400MHZ bus. With twice the processor and 4 times bus speed in the P4, I can't see how the G3 could be 2 times faster.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Actually that 5% market share has been bantered about since 1998 its an old statistic. Its funny how people that own Mercedes Benz which have less then a 5% share of the car market ( not including there buying Chysler ). Benz owners DON'T want to be like the other 95% of the Geo Metro or Chevy Cavalier owners. Its Odd that a computer owner would WANT to be part of the 95% of the problems with personal computers today. Simple fact is I was originally a computer Science major at Princeton University back in 1982 I worked on IBM 370 mainframes working in Pascal UNIX, FORTRAN, COBOL, APL & C. When the first Mac came out in 1985 I knew it had changed the paradigm for personal computers. Windoz has come a long way to trying to copy a Mac but its a poor imitation and now with OSX rock solid UNIX base its even more of a Joke. Play with what ya want Ill stay with my Mercedes of computers.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Actually that 5% market share has been bantered about since 1998 its an old statistic. Its funny how people that own Mercedes Benz which have less then a 5% share of the car market ( not including there buying Chysler ). Benz owners DON'T want to be like the other 95% of the Geo Metro or Chevy Cavalier owners. Its Odd that a computer owner would WANT to be part of the 95% of the problems with personal computers today. Simple fact is I was originally a computer Science major at Princeton University back in 1982 I worked on IBM 370 mainframes working in Pascal UNIX, FORTRAN, COBOL, APL & C. When the first Mac came out in 1985 I knew it had changed the paradigm for personal computers. Windoz has come a long way to trying to copy a Mac but its a poor imitation and now with OSX rock solid UNIX base its even more of a Joke. Play with what ya want Ill stay with my Mercedes of computers.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Actually that 5% market share has been bantered about since 1998 its an old statistic. Its funny how people that own Mercedes Benz which have less then a 5% share of the car market ( not including there buying Chysler ). Benz owners DON'T want to be like the other 95% of the Geo Metro or Chevy Cavalier owners. Its Odd that a computer owner would WANT to be part of the 95% of the problems with personal computers today. Simple fact is I was originally a computer Science major at Princeton University back in 1982 I worked on IBM 370 mainframes working in Pascal UNIX, FORTRAN, COBOL, APL & C. When the first Mac came out in 1985 I knew it had changed the paradigm for personal computers. Windoz has come a long way to trying to copy a Mac but its a poor imitation and now with OSX rock solid UNIX base its even more of a Joke. Play with what ya want Ill stay with my Mercedes of computers.

[Donn]

Actually, the 5% market share that I refer to was reported by Forbes, in January of this year:

http://www.forbes.com/2002/01/22/0122comeback.html

:D

[Donn]

Actually, the 5% market share that I refer to was reported by Forbes, in January of this year:

http://www.forbes.com/2002/01/22/0122comeback.html

:D

[Donn]

Actually, the 5% market share that I refer to was reported by Forbes, in January of this year:

http://www.forbes.com/2002/01/22/0122comeback.html

:D

[Dave Fleming]

I am still here. Just been keeping out of sight and reading all the wild and hairy stuff.
Won't leave till the 22 of Nov for the Bay Area.

Computers hummmmm.
My Intergraph TD-300 finally went beyond fixable this spring and I started looking around.
Dell I don't personally like because of being tied to them. Know this personally from helping SWIMPALS friend more than once with her Dell. Poor gal has some serious medical problems and
will on occasion loose memory and do silly things. Be that as it may, I was talking to a neighbor who makes his vicarious living as a consultant and network type.
He said that he would build a system for me for a bottle of Vodka if I bought the parts.
"DEAL Larry you are on".

Intel 1.6 Gig CPU
512 RAM
Matrox 550 with 32 Megs of memory
Asus Motherboard newest version
Creative Soundblaster
2) IBM 40 Gig Hard Drives
DVD/CD player
CD Burner/Player
both Sony
Floppy drive
Linksys 4 port router
Motherboard has 56 K modem built in but I already had Speedstream DSL modem
Altec Lansing speakers and woofer
4 USB ports
2 in front of case and 2 in rear

for less than $1300 US Dollars
Already had
HP LaserJet 5L B&W printer
Scanport Scanner
Iomega 250 MB external Zip drive
Was running NT4 with Service pack 6 but with USB he installed Windows 2000 Pro. It was a seamless transition and that is from me the non-computer nerd.
2000 is just an updated version of NT 4 with some new bells and whistles and of course USB and DirectX.
ALL my old software works perfectly on this machine
Eudora 3. something for e-mail
Forte Agent for newsgroup reading
Did buy Office 2000 and Norton 2000
Had Adobe Photoshop but on the old system it would come to a crawl. On this it flies.
Got some CAD stuff ie: Rhino and whilst I just putz with it, it does work nicely.

Oh monitor was fairly new Sony Flat Screen Multiscan G400 so that was one less expence too.

All the parts are off the shelf, and the store is 10 minutes away and has been there since the 1980's. Every thing came with Mfg's warranty.
The thing works and I'm happy what else is there to say?

[Dave Fleming]

I am still here. Just been keeping out of sight and reading all the wild and hairy stuff.
Won't leave till the 22 of Nov for the Bay Area.

Computers hummmmm.
My Intergraph TD-300 finally went beyond fixable this spring and I started looking around.
Dell I don't personally like because of being tied to them. Know this personally from helping SWIMPALS friend more than once with her Dell. Poor gal has some serious medical problems and
will on occasion loose memory and do silly things. Be that as it may, I was talking to a neighbor who makes his vicarious living as a consultant and network type.
He said that he would build a system for me for a bottle of Vodka if I bought the parts.
"DEAL Larry you are on".

Intel 1.6 Gig CPU
512 RAM
Matrox 550 with 32 Megs of memory
Asus Motherboard newest version
Creative Soundblaster
2) IBM 40 Gig Hard Drives
DVD/CD player
CD Burner/Player
both Sony
Floppy drive
Linksys 4 port router
Motherboard has 56 K modem built in but I already had Speedstream DSL modem
Altec Lansing speakers and woofer
4 USB ports
2 in front of case and 2 in rear

for less than $1300 US Dollars
Already had
HP LaserJet 5L B&W printer
Scanport Scanner
Iomega 250 MB external Zip drive
Was running NT4 with Service pack 6 but with USB he installed Windows 2000 Pro. It was a seamless transition and that is from me the non-computer nerd.
2000 is just an updated version of NT 4 with some new bells and whistles and of course USB and DirectX.
ALL my old software works perfectly on this machine
Eudora 3. something for e-mail
Forte Agent for newsgroup reading
Did buy Office 2000 and Norton 2000
Had Adobe Photoshop but on the old system it would come to a crawl. On this it flies.
Got some CAD stuff ie: Rhino and whilst I just putz with it, it does work nicely.

Oh monitor was fairly new Sony Flat Screen Multiscan G400 so that was one less expence too.

All the parts are off the shelf, and the store is 10 minutes away and has been there since the 1980's. Every thing came with Mfg's warranty.
The thing works and I'm happy what else is there to say?

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Originally posted by LOON:
Joe:

"A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent"

You'll have to prove that one to me. The G3 runs a 100MHZ bus, while the P4, 2GHZ runs a 400MHZ bus. With twice the processor and 4 times bus speed in the P4, I can't see how the G3 could be 2 times faster.This one is simple I can give you basic simple answer that is the ROOT of all Windoz problems. The Windoz GUI is an overlay of layers and basic bloatwear. You start with machine language code then lay DOS over it (its still running DOS that's why you get a C prompt still) then you lay on the big fat Windoz GUI its not an operating system because DOS is the operating system. Its cobbled together. This layering is what makes BUS speed irrelevant. That's sage one. Then you have to look at the Mac G3 chip which IS NOT Apples fastest they have a G4 with Velocity engine but you basic G3 running @ 800 MHz will run aprox to a 1.6 Gig Pentium which is still short of your spec but then you calculate the Bloat wear as previously stated and you get a Faster Mac. Its a shame most people KNOW macs are better, faster & prettier but choose for what ever reason to buy a PC? The other most important factor be honest Donn how many times has your PC crashed? I have had my iBook for 2 years and had 1 crash ONE and it was a hardware problem not an OS can any PC user say that. The no crash goes A LONG WAY TO MAKING THE MAC A MUCH FASTER PC

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Originally posted by LOON:
Joe:

"A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent"

You'll have to prove that one to me. The G3 runs a 100MHZ bus, while the P4, 2GHZ runs a 400MHZ bus. With twice the processor and 4 times bus speed in the P4, I can't see how the G3 could be 2 times faster.This one is simple I can give you basic simple answer that is the ROOT of all Windoz problems. The Windoz GUI is an overlay of layers and basic bloatwear. You start with machine language code then lay DOS over it (its still running DOS that's why you get a C prompt still) then you lay on the big fat Windoz GUI its not an operating system because DOS is the operating system. Its cobbled together. This layering is what makes BUS speed irrelevant. That's sage one. Then you have to look at the Mac G3 chip which IS NOT Apples fastest they have a G4 with Velocity engine but you basic G3 running @ 800 MHz will run aprox to a 1.6 Gig Pentium which is still short of your spec but then you calculate the Bloat wear as previously stated and you get a Faster Mac. Its a shame most people KNOW macs are better, faster & prettier but choose for what ever reason to buy a PC? The other most important factor be honest Donn how many times has your PC crashed? I have had my iBook for 2 years and had 1 crash ONE and it was a hardware problem not an OS can any PC user say that. The no crash goes A LONG WAY TO MAKING THE MAC A MUCH FASTER PC

[Dave Fleming]

I am still here. Just been keeping out of sight and reading all the wild and hairy stuff.
Won't leave till the 22 of Nov for the Bay Area.

Computers hummmmm.
My Intergraph TD-300 finally went beyond fixable this spring and I started looking around.
Dell I don't personally like because of being tied to them. Know this personally from helping SWIMPALS friend more than once with her Dell. Poor gal has some serious medical problems and
will on occasion loose memory and do silly things. Be that as it may, I was talking to a neighbor who makes his vicarious living as a consultant and network type.
He said that he would build a system for me for a bottle of Vodka if I bought the parts.
"DEAL Larry you are on".

Intel 1.6 Gig CPU
512 RAM
Matrox 550 with 32 Megs of memory
Asus Motherboard newest version
Creative Soundblaster
2) IBM 40 Gig Hard Drives
DVD/CD player
CD Burner/Player
both Sony
Floppy drive
Linksys 4 port router
Motherboard has 56 K modem built in but I already had Speedstream DSL modem
Altec Lansing speakers and woofer
4 USB ports
2 in front of case and 2 in rear

for less than $1300 US Dollars
Already had
HP LaserJet 5L B&W printer
Scanport Scanner
Iomega 250 MB external Zip drive
Was running NT4 with Service pack 6 but with USB he installed Windows 2000 Pro. It was a seamless transition and that is from me the non-computer nerd.
2000 is just an updated version of NT 4 with some new bells and whistles and of course USB and DirectX.
ALL my old software works perfectly on this machine
Eudora 3. something for e-mail
Forte Agent for newsgroup reading
Did buy Office 2000 and Norton 2000
Had Adobe Photoshop but on the old system it would come to a crawl. On this it flies.
Got some CAD stuff ie: Rhino and whilst I just putz with it, it does work nicely.

Oh monitor was fairly new Sony Flat Screen Multiscan G400 so that was one less expence too.

All the parts are off the shelf, and the store is 10 minutes away and has been there since the 1980's. Every thing came with Mfg's warranty.
The thing works and I'm happy what else is there to say?

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Originally posted by LOON:
Joe:

"A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent"

You'll have to prove that one to me. The G3 runs a 100MHZ bus, while the P4, 2GHZ runs a 400MHZ bus. With twice the processor and 4 times bus speed in the P4, I can't see how the G3 could be 2 times faster.This one is simple I can give you basic simple answer that is the ROOT of all Windoz problems. The Windoz GUI is an overlay of layers and basic bloatwear. You start with machine language code then lay DOS over it (its still running DOS that's why you get a C prompt still) then you lay on the big fat Windoz GUI its not an operating system because DOS is the operating system. Its cobbled together. This layering is what makes BUS speed irrelevant. That's sage one. Then you have to look at the Mac G3 chip which IS NOT Apples fastest they have a G4 with Velocity engine but you basic G3 running @ 800 MHz will run aprox to a 1.6 Gig Pentium which is still short of your spec but then you calculate the Bloat wear as previously stated and you get a Faster Mac. Its a shame most people KNOW macs are better, faster & prettier but choose for what ever reason to buy a PC? The other most important factor be honest Donn how many times has your PC crashed? I have had my iBook for 2 years and had 1 crash ONE and it was a hardware problem not an OS can any PC user say that. The no crash goes A LONG WAY TO MAKING THE MAC A MUCH FASTER PC

[Donn]

Originally posted by Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ):
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by LOON:
Joe:

"A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent"

You'll have to prove that one to me. The G3 runs a 100MHZ bus, while the P4, 2GHZ runs a 400MHZ bus. With twice the processor and 4 times bus speed in the P4, I can't see how the G3 could be 2 times faster.This one is simple I can give you basic simple answer that is the ROOT of all Windoz problems. The Windoz GUI is an overlay of layers and basic bloatwear. You start with machine language code then lay DOS over it (its still running DOS that's why you get a C prompt still) then you lay on the big fat Windoz GUI its not an operating system because DOS is the operating system. Its cobbled together. This layering is what makes BUS speed irrelevant. That's sage one. Then you have to look at the Mac G3 chip which IS NOT Apples fastest they have a G4 with Velocity engine but you basic G3 running @ 800 MHz will run aprox to a 1.6 Gig Pentium which is still short of your spec but then you calculate the Bloat wear as previously stated and you get a Faster Mac. Its a shame most people KNOW macs are better, faster & prettier but choose for what ever reason to buy a PC? The other most important factor be honest Donn how many times has your PC crashed? I have had my iBook for 2 years and had 1 crash ONE and it was a hardware problem not an OS can any PC user say that. The no crash goes A LONG WAY TO MAKING THE MAC A MUCH FASTER PC</font>[/QUOTE]For a computer science major, you seem to know very little about computers. The bus speed is irrelevent? The bus speed and processor speed comes into play long before any operating system issues.

I'll put my 5 year old workstation up against your mac anytime, and we'll run completely impartial benchware software on each, and see which is a faster machine. It's never crashed, not once, for any reason. NT4 has never crashed, Linux has never crashed. (ya don't have to run Windows on an Intel machine.)

Tell me what software you run on your Mac, Joe. What applications do you use regularly?

PS...I didn't quote Dell's fastest processor/chipset config either. They have a 3+GHZ P4 that runs on a 533MHZ bus. They have 2.8GHZ Xeon processors with 2GB of L2 cache...and they'll handle 4GB of Ram, and you can put more than one of them in the box.

[ 11-15-2002, 01:27 PM: Message edited by: LOON ]

[Donn]

Originally posted by Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ):
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by LOON:
Joe:

"A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent"

You'll have to prove that one to me. The G3 runs a 100MHZ bus, while the P4, 2GHZ runs a 400MHZ bus. With twice the processor and 4 times bus speed in the P4, I can't see how the G3 could be 2 times faster.This one is simple I can give you basic simple answer that is the ROOT of all Windoz problems. The Windoz GUI is an overlay of layers and basic bloatwear. You start with machine language code then lay DOS over it (its still running DOS that's why you get a C prompt still) then you lay on the big fat Windoz GUI its not an operating system because DOS is the operating system. Its cobbled together. This layering is what makes BUS speed irrelevant. That's sage one. Then you have to look at the Mac G3 chip which IS NOT Apples fastest they have a G4 with Velocity engine but you basic G3 running @ 800 MHz will run aprox to a 1.6 Gig Pentium which is still short of your spec but then you calculate the Bloat wear as previously stated and you get a Faster Mac. Its a shame most people KNOW macs are better, faster & prettier but choose for what ever reason to buy a PC? The other most important factor be honest Donn how many times has your PC crashed? I have had my iBook for 2 years and had 1 crash ONE and it was a hardware problem not an OS can any PC user say that. The no crash goes A LONG WAY TO MAKING THE MAC A MUCH FASTER PC</font>[/QUOTE]For a computer science major, you seem to know very little about computers. The bus speed is irrelevent? The bus speed and processor speed comes into play long before any operating system issues.

I'll put my 5 year old workstation up against your mac anytime, and we'll run completely impartial benchware software on each, and see which is a faster machine. It's never crashed, not once, for any reason. NT4 has never crashed, Linux has never crashed. (ya don't have to run Windows on an Intel machine.)

Tell me what software you run on your Mac, Joe. What applications do you use regularly?

PS...I didn't quote Dell's fastest processor/chipset config either. They have a 3+GHZ P4 that runs on a 533MHZ bus. They have 2.8GHZ Xeon processors with 2GB of L2 cache...and they'll handle 4GB of Ram, and you can put more than one of them in the box.

[ 11-15-2002, 01:27 PM: Message edited by: LOON ]

[Donn]

Originally posted by Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ):
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by LOON:
Joe:

"A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent"

You'll have to prove that one to me. The G3 runs a 100MHZ bus, while the P4, 2GHZ runs a 400MHZ bus. With twice the processor and 4 times bus speed in the P4, I can't see how the G3 could be 2 times faster.This one is simple I can give you basic simple answer that is the ROOT of all Windoz problems. The Windoz GUI is an overlay of layers and basic bloatwear. You start with machine language code then lay DOS over it (its still running DOS that's why you get a C prompt still) then you lay on the big fat Windoz GUI its not an operating system because DOS is the operating system. Its cobbled together. This layering is what makes BUS speed irrelevant. That's sage one. Then you have to look at the Mac G3 chip which IS NOT Apples fastest they have a G4 with Velocity engine but you basic G3 running @ 800 MHz will run aprox to a 1.6 Gig Pentium which is still short of your spec but then you calculate the Bloat wear as previously stated and you get a Faster Mac. Its a shame most people KNOW macs are better, faster & prettier but choose for what ever reason to buy a PC? The other most important factor be honest Donn how many times has your PC crashed? I have had my iBook for 2 years and had 1 crash ONE and it was a hardware problem not an OS can any PC user say that. The no crash goes A LONG WAY TO MAKING THE MAC A MUCH FASTER PC</font>[/QUOTE]For a computer science major, you seem to know very little about computers. The bus speed is irrelevent? The bus speed and processor speed comes into play long before any operating system issues.

I'll put my 5 year old workstation up against your mac anytime, and we'll run completely impartial benchware software on each, and see which is a faster machine. It's never crashed, not once, for any reason. NT4 has never crashed, Linux has never crashed. (ya don't have to run Windows on an Intel machine.)

Tell me what software you run on your Mac, Joe. What applications do you use regularly?

PS...I didn't quote Dell's fastest processor/chipset config either. They have a 3+GHZ P4 that runs on a 533MHZ bus. They have 2.8GHZ Xeon processors with 2GB of L2 cache...and they'll handle 4GB of Ram, and you can put more than one of them in the box.

[ 11-15-2002, 01:27 PM: Message edited by: LOON ]

[Dave Fleming]

O&O East
Donn, with NT 4.0 come a new acronym, the BSOD.
Never heard of that or the NTOSKRNL.EXE warning?
Thank Goodness I had Larry to come a rescue me more than once.
SWIMPAL's Kaiser Permanente OS is NT and she has about 8 people working on it at one time.
She has to call the company whizbangs about once every other week as one or another machine with get the BSOD.
Larry my computer assembler make a nice living fixing NT and 98 problems for his clients.
He had a devil of a time dual booting NT and XP from the same machine. Finally he gave up and just keeps XP on its own machine and NT-98 and 95 on another machine.

On the Apple thing, my B-i-L was an Apple fanatic for the longest while. Every time we would go up to the Bay Area he would have the latest Apple machine and would carefully box up the previous model and add it to his collection down in the garage. Last year 2001 when we went up for Mothers Day he took me up to his office and low and behold he had, what he calls an IBM machine!
I asked him why the change, were not Apples any good anymore? He just mumbled something about software and availablity.

I like the idea of a rock solid OS but again I am no computer expert just wish that someone would get it together and put out a universal OS and do away with multiple boots, conflicts, crashes, whatevers.

[Dave Fleming]

O&O East
Donn, with NT 4.0 come a new acronym, the BSOD.
Never heard of that or the NTOSKRNL.EXE warning?
Thank Goodness I had Larry to come a rescue me more than once.
SWIMPAL's Kaiser Permanente OS is NT and she has about 8 people working on it at one time.
She has to call the company whizbangs about once every other week as one or another machine with get the BSOD.
Larry my computer assembler make a nice living fixing NT and 98 problems for his clients.
He had a devil of a time dual booting NT and XP from the same machine. Finally he gave up and just keeps XP on its own machine and NT-98 and 95 on another machine.

On the Apple thing, my B-i-L was an Apple fanatic for the longest while. Every time we would go up to the Bay Area he would have the latest Apple machine and would carefully box up the previous model and add it to his collection down in the garage. Last year 2001 when we went up for Mothers Day he took me up to his office and low and behold he had, what he calls an IBM machine!
I asked him why the change, were not Apples any good anymore? He just mumbled something about software and availablity.

I like the idea of a rock solid OS but again I am no computer expert just wish that someone would get it together and put out a universal OS and do away with multiple boots, conflicts, crashes, whatevers.

[Dave Fleming]

O&O East
Donn, with NT 4.0 come a new acronym, the BSOD.
Never heard of that or the NTOSKRNL.EXE warning?
Thank Goodness I had Larry to come a rescue me more than once.
SWIMPAL's Kaiser Permanente OS is NT and she has about 8 people working on it at one time.
She has to call the company whizbangs about once every other week as one or another machine with get the BSOD.
Larry my computer assembler make a nice living fixing NT and 98 problems for his clients.
He had a devil of a time dual booting NT and XP from the same machine. Finally he gave up and just keeps XP on its own machine and NT-98 and 95 on another machine.

On the Apple thing, my B-i-L was an Apple fanatic for the longest while. Every time we would go up to the Bay Area he would have the latest Apple machine and would carefully box up the previous model and add it to his collection down in the garage. Last year 2001 when we went up for Mothers Day he took me up to his office and low and behold he had, what he calls an IBM machine!
I asked him why the change, were not Apples any good anymore? He just mumbled something about software and availablity.

I like the idea of a rock solid OS but again I am no computer expert just wish that someone would get it together and put out a universal OS and do away with multiple boots, conflicts, crashes, whatevers.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

BUS speed IS irrelevant when the CPU time is BLOATED with OS so that the perceived response time is slower. Here is a way to look at it you tell me to go get a new sanding disk for you - Now I'm as fast as Maurice Green and I blast off to get the disk (me being BUS speed) I get to the store the shop keeper has to ask his manager then needs a price check then tells me he cant take of me because I don't have the correct plug in for sanding disks, He goes on break I wait he comes back and forgets what I ordered then tells me &gt;C

I Run all MS Office, Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator, IE, A CAD program, Numeriouse games, Lime Wire, oy the list goes on and on.

Question back to you Donn How much space dose your NT OS take up that should give you an idea of BLOATWEAR dont even get me started on MS WORD

[ 11-15-2002, 01:44 PM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

BUS speed IS irrelevant when the CPU time is BLOATED with OS so that the perceived response time is slower. Here is a way to look at it you tell me to go get a new sanding disk for you - Now I'm as fast as Maurice Green and I blast off to get the disk (me being BUS speed) I get to the store the shop keeper has to ask his manager then needs a price check then tells me he cant take of me because I don't have the correct plug in for sanding disks, He goes on break I wait he comes back and forgets what I ordered then tells me &gt;C

I Run all MS Office, Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator, IE, A CAD program, Numeriouse games, Lime Wire, oy the list goes on and on.

Question back to you Donn How much space dose your NT OS take up that should give you an idea of BLOATWEAR dont even get me started on MS WORD

[ 11-15-2002, 01:44 PM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

BUS speed IS irrelevant when the CPU time is BLOATED with OS so that the perceived response time is slower. Here is a way to look at it you tell me to go get a new sanding disk for you - Now I'm as fast as Maurice Green and I blast off to get the disk (me being BUS speed) I get to the store the shop keeper has to ask his manager then needs a price check then tells me he cant take of me because I don't have the correct plug in for sanding disks, He goes on break I wait he comes back and forgets what I ordered then tells me &gt;C

I Run all MS Office, Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator, IE, A CAD program, Numeriouse games, Lime Wire, oy the list goes on and on.

Question back to you Donn How much space dose your NT OS take up that should give you an idea of BLOATWEAR dont even get me started on MS WORD

[ 11-15-2002, 01:44 PM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Bruce Hooke]

Dave - That's a great story about your friend building you a computer. A couple of things do occur to me:

I noticed that the $1300 for parts did not include the OS upgrade, Office 2000 and Norton 2000 wasn't your total cost up to around, or quite possibly higher than, what a comparible computer would have cost from someplace like Dell? I've thought about building my own computer at times but I've never been able to get the numbers to work. What has seemed at least vaguely viable is to keep upgrading my current computer. The next step in that line would be a new Motherboard...

Also, I am somewhat puzzled by your comment about being tied to Dell. My Dell home PC is 5 years old and I think I've called Dell twice since I got the computer. In that time period I've added a new hard drive, a CD-burner, a network card, more memory, a hard drive controller, and a SCSI card; and I've done a complete reinstall of all the software from the ground up -- all without any input from Dell. Certainly if a part under warranty failed I would have gone back to Dell but that's no harder (in fact probably easier in many cases given the indifferent support I've gotten from some parts suppliers) than going back to Dell...

I don't mean to be argumentative it's just that some of what you said puzzled me a bit given my experience. Ultimately it's clear that you are very happy with your computer and that's what really matters. smile.gif

[Bruce Hooke]

Dave - That's a great story about your friend building you a computer. A couple of things do occur to me:

I noticed that the $1300 for parts did not include the OS upgrade, Office 2000 and Norton 2000 wasn't your total cost up to around, or quite possibly higher than, what a comparible computer would have cost from someplace like Dell? I've thought about building my own computer at times but I've never been able to get the numbers to work. What has seemed at least vaguely viable is to keep upgrading my current computer. The next step in that line would be a new Motherboard...

Also, I am somewhat puzzled by your comment about being tied to Dell. My Dell home PC is 5 years old and I think I've called Dell twice since I got the computer. In that time period I've added a new hard drive, a CD-burner, a network card, more memory, a hard drive controller, and a SCSI card; and I've done a complete reinstall of all the software from the ground up -- all without any input from Dell. Certainly if a part under warranty failed I would have gone back to Dell but that's no harder (in fact probably easier in many cases given the indifferent support I've gotten from some parts suppliers) than going back to Dell...

I don't mean to be argumentative it's just that some of what you said puzzled me a bit given my experience. Ultimately it's clear that you are very happy with your computer and that's what really matters. smile.gif

[Bruce Hooke]

Dave - That's a great story about your friend building you a computer. A couple of things do occur to me:

I noticed that the $1300 for parts did not include the OS upgrade, Office 2000 and Norton 2000 wasn't your total cost up to around, or quite possibly higher than, what a comparible computer would have cost from someplace like Dell? I've thought about building my own computer at times but I've never been able to get the numbers to work. What has seemed at least vaguely viable is to keep upgrading my current computer. The next step in that line would be a new Motherboard...

Also, I am somewhat puzzled by your comment about being tied to Dell. My Dell home PC is 5 years old and I think I've called Dell twice since I got the computer. In that time period I've added a new hard drive, a CD-burner, a network card, more memory, a hard drive controller, and a SCSI card; and I've done a complete reinstall of all the software from the ground up -- all without any input from Dell. Certainly if a part under warranty failed I would have gone back to Dell but that's no harder (in fact probably easier in many cases given the indifferent support I've gotten from some parts suppliers) than going back to Dell...

I don't mean to be argumentative it's just that some of what you said puzzled me a bit given my experience. Ultimately it's clear that you are very happy with your computer and that's what really matters. smile.gif

[Jim H]

Thank you for all of the great advice! I'll look a little more closely at Dell. To tell you the truth, I was a mouse click away from buying a Dell yesterday but I decided to do a little more research. Meerkat, I might build a PC for home use as I do have some experience changing out modem, sound, scanner cards and upgrading memory. My last upgrade was an additional hard drive, it works but it seems that Windows doesn't recognize all 6 gigs. I like the idea of owning a clone, the PB machine I bought (what 5 yrs ago?) has the video chip imbeded in the motherboard and the old modem had the sound board imbeded in it. When I replaced the modem I lost the sound on the machine. The local computer superstore was trying to sell me on a clone, maybe I'll take a second look. I will stay with a PC as opposed to a MAC simply because I don't want to buy all new software. The cd-rom & cd-rw is something I want for recording/mixing music but would also be handy for backing-up my ACT databases and fax logs. USB connections are new to me, we just bought another scanner for my father's computer (a Visioneer - fastest document scanner I have seen to date) it was a quick install with a USB connection. It seems a lot of peripherals are USB ready now.

Thanks, Jim

[Jim H]

Thank you for all of the great advice! I'll look a little more closely at Dell. To tell you the truth, I was a mouse click away from buying a Dell yesterday but I decided to do a little more research. Meerkat, I might build a PC for home use as I do have some experience changing out modem, sound, scanner cards and upgrading memory. My last upgrade was an additional hard drive, it works but it seems that Windows doesn't recognize all 6 gigs. I like the idea of owning a clone, the PB machine I bought (what 5 yrs ago?) has the video chip imbeded in the motherboard and the old modem had the sound board imbeded in it. When I replaced the modem I lost the sound on the machine. The local computer superstore was trying to sell me on a clone, maybe I'll take a second look. I will stay with a PC as opposed to a MAC simply because I don't want to buy all new software. The cd-rom & cd-rw is something I want for recording/mixing music but would also be handy for backing-up my ACT databases and fax logs. USB connections are new to me, we just bought another scanner for my father's computer (a Visioneer - fastest document scanner I have seen to date) it was a quick install with a USB connection. It seems a lot of peripherals are USB ready now.

Thanks, Jim

[Jim H]

Thank you for all of the great advice! I'll look a little more closely at Dell. To tell you the truth, I was a mouse click away from buying a Dell yesterday but I decided to do a little more research. Meerkat, I might build a PC for home use as I do have some experience changing out modem, sound, scanner cards and upgrading memory. My last upgrade was an additional hard drive, it works but it seems that Windows doesn't recognize all 6 gigs. I like the idea of owning a clone, the PB machine I bought (what 5 yrs ago?) has the video chip imbeded in the motherboard and the old modem had the sound board imbeded in it. When I replaced the modem I lost the sound on the machine. The local computer superstore was trying to sell me on a clone, maybe I'll take a second look. I will stay with a PC as opposed to a MAC simply because I don't want to buy all new software. The cd-rom & cd-rw is something I want for recording/mixing music but would also be handy for backing-up my ACT databases and fax logs. USB connections are new to me, we just bought another scanner for my father's computer (a Visioneer - fastest document scanner I have seen to date) it was a quick install with a USB connection. It seems a lot of peripherals are USB ready now.

Thanks, Jim

[Donn]

Hi Dave...welcome back...never had a BSOD on my system, and seldom on the systems I've installed and maintain. Most BSOD's are caused by user error and improperly configured systems. When I get a bad piece of code, NT isolates it and prevents it from crashing the system.

Joe...you're mixing apples :D with oranges here. We're talking about the performance of the hardware, not the software. They are two different things. The physical relationships between the processor, and it's support mechanisms like bus, RAM, L2 and hard drive are what determines the speed of the computer.

I have no argument with the size of Windows, Word, and lots of other useful software, but I know how to tweak my intallations to eliminate a good deal of it. The same thing can be done on Macs. I know a guy who could spend an hour with your machine, and free up a great deal of drive space for you. I could probably do it, too, but I've never done it before, and I don't wan't you chasing me off the mountain. :D

My point is that you have to compare like items. Sure, a Mac with no user tweaking will outperform a poorly configured Intel machine. But a properly configured Intel machine will blow the disks off of an Apple.

[Donn]

Hi Dave...welcome back...never had a BSOD on my system, and seldom on the systems I've installed and maintain. Most BSOD's are caused by user error and improperly configured systems. When I get a bad piece of code, NT isolates it and prevents it from crashing the system.

Joe...you're mixing apples :D with oranges here. We're talking about the performance of the hardware, not the software. They are two different things. The physical relationships between the processor, and it's support mechanisms like bus, RAM, L2 and hard drive are what determines the speed of the computer.

I have no argument with the size of Windows, Word, and lots of other useful software, but I know how to tweak my intallations to eliminate a good deal of it. The same thing can be done on Macs. I know a guy who could spend an hour with your machine, and free up a great deal of drive space for you. I could probably do it, too, but I've never done it before, and I don't wan't you chasing me off the mountain. :D

My point is that you have to compare like items. Sure, a Mac with no user tweaking will outperform a poorly configured Intel machine. But a properly configured Intel machine will blow the disks off of an Apple.

[Donn]

Hi Dave...welcome back...never had a BSOD on my system, and seldom on the systems I've installed and maintain. Most BSOD's are caused by user error and improperly configured systems. When I get a bad piece of code, NT isolates it and prevents it from crashing the system.

Joe...you're mixing apples :D with oranges here. We're talking about the performance of the hardware, not the software. They are two different things. The physical relationships between the processor, and it's support mechanisms like bus, RAM, L2 and hard drive are what determines the speed of the computer.

I have no argument with the size of Windows, Word, and lots of other useful software, but I know how to tweak my intallations to eliminate a good deal of it. The same thing can be done on Macs. I know a guy who could spend an hour with your machine, and free up a great deal of drive space for you. I could probably do it, too, but I've never done it before, and I don't wan't you chasing me off the mountain. :D

My point is that you have to compare like items. Sure, a Mac with no user tweaking will outperform a poorly configured Intel machine. But a properly configured Intel machine will blow the disks off of an Apple.

[Dave Fleming]

Ayup, that is for parts ONLY, my mistake.

Well with that ladies Dell seems like I was on to customer service every time I was over there and would be on hold long enough to eat a nice fat hot corned beef sandwich say 30 or 40 minutes and then it was not unusual to be put on hold again and the person would never come back!!!
Nothing broke but her HP printer and HP scanner would not co-operate with each other.
Could be just her problem as she is running 95, the later version.

I like components from a known maker ie: Matrox or IBM. Not fond of stuff that is generic in nature just my personal preference as is, the less built in the better I like it. That is one reason I upgraded to 2000 aka NT 5.0, the plug and play feature. He installed for me from his own disk.

I belive that computers are like cars or pickemup trucks everybody has their favourites and it is pretty damn hard to change a set mind, ya folla?

[ 11-15-2002, 03:32 PM: Message edited by: Dave Fleming ]

[Dave Fleming]

Ayup, that is for parts ONLY, my mistake.

Well with that ladies Dell seems like I was on to customer service every time I was over there and would be on hold long enough to eat a nice fat hot corned beef sandwich say 30 or 40 minutes and then it was not unusual to be put on hold again and the person would never come back!!!
Nothing broke but her HP printer and HP scanner would not co-operate with each other.
Could be just her problem as she is running 95, the later version.

I like components from a known maker ie: Matrox or IBM. Not fond of stuff that is generic in nature just my personal preference as is, the less built in the better I like it. That is one reason I upgraded to 2000 aka NT 5.0, the plug and play feature. He installed for me from his own disk.

I belive that computers are like cars or pickemup trucks everybody has their favourites and it is pretty damn hard to change a set mind, ya folla?

[ 11-15-2002, 03:32 PM: Message edited by: Dave Fleming ]

[Dave Fleming]

Ayup, that is for parts ONLY, my mistake.

Well with that ladies Dell seems like I was on to customer service every time I was over there and would be on hold long enough to eat a nice fat hot corned beef sandwich say 30 or 40 minutes and then it was not unusual to be put on hold again and the person would never come back!!!
Nothing broke but her HP printer and HP scanner would not co-operate with each other.
Could be just her problem as she is running 95, the later version.

I like components from a known maker ie: Matrox or IBM. Not fond of stuff that is generic in nature just my personal preference as is, the less built in the better I like it. That is one reason I upgraded to 2000 aka NT 5.0, the plug and play feature. He installed for me from his own disk.

I belive that computers are like cars or pickemup trucks everybody has their favourites and it is pretty damn hard to change a set mind, ya folla?

[ 11-15-2002, 03:32 PM: Message edited by: Dave Fleming ]

[Jim H]

JohnT, is that helicopter game Comanche? A few years ago a A/V company loaded that program on a machine at a hotel meeting room with a movie theater size screen and stereo sound system, playing games on a regular computer screen has never been the same since. :eek:

[ 11-15-2002, 02:49 PM: Message edited by: JimHillman ]

[Jim H]

JohnT, is that helicopter game Comanche? A few years ago a A/V company loaded that program on a machine at a hotel meeting room with a movie theater size screen and stereo sound system, playing games on a regular computer screen has never been the same since. :eek:

[ 11-15-2002, 02:49 PM: Message edited by: JimHillman ]

[Jim H]

JohnT, is that helicopter game Comanche? A few years ago a A/V company loaded that program on a machine at a hotel meeting room with a movie theater size screen and stereo sound system, playing games on a regular computer screen has never been the same since. :eek:

[ 11-15-2002, 02:49 PM: Message edited by: JimHillman ]

[Bruce Hooke]

Dave - I follow you completely and you raise some very good points. If I had ended up having to call Dell due to hardware problems I probably would have had the same waiting on hold problem and it's mostly luck that I didn't have any hardware problems (except on some of the upgrades I did myself but that's another story!). Also, when I selected parts for my computer I could select exactly what I thought was the best brand...

I certainly agree with you on Windows 2000 Pro - I have it on my work computer and I love it. In something like 4000 hours of use it has crashed just a handful of times (except for one time period when a hardware problem was causing the machine to go down once an hour or so -- but I can't blame that on the OS!). My home computer runs Windows 98, which does OK. I'd love to upgrade it to Windows 2000 Pro but the software itself would cost quite a bit and then I'd have to turn around and upgrade a lot of my other software...

[Bruce Hooke]

Dave - I follow you completely and you raise some very good points. If I had ended up having to call Dell due to hardware problems I probably would have had the same waiting on hold problem and it's mostly luck that I didn't have any hardware problems (except on some of the upgrades I did myself but that's another story!). Also, when I selected parts for my computer I could select exactly what I thought was the best brand...

I certainly agree with you on Windows 2000 Pro - I have it on my work computer and I love it. In something like 4000 hours of use it has crashed just a handful of times (except for one time period when a hardware problem was causing the machine to go down once an hour or so -- but I can't blame that on the OS!). My home computer runs Windows 98, which does OK. I'd love to upgrade it to Windows 2000 Pro but the software itself would cost quite a bit and then I'd have to turn around and upgrade a lot of my other software...

[Bruce Hooke]

Dave - I follow you completely and you raise some very good points. If I had ended up having to call Dell due to hardware problems I probably would have had the same waiting on hold problem and it's mostly luck that I didn't have any hardware problems (except on some of the upgrades I did myself but that's another story!). Also, when I selected parts for my computer I could select exactly what I thought was the best brand...

I certainly agree with you on Windows 2000 Pro - I have it on my work computer and I love it. In something like 4000 hours of use it has crashed just a handful of times (except for one time period when a hardware problem was causing the machine to go down once an hour or so -- but I can't blame that on the OS!). My home computer runs Windows 98, which does OK. I'd love to upgrade it to Windows 2000 Pro but the software itself would cost quite a bit and then I'd have to turn around and upgrade a lot of my other software...

[John of Phoenix]

OMG!! On a movie theater size screen? Did anyone get airsick? Seriously! I went to the Imax theater at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum with a flight school buddy and he got airsick. redface.gif He may live it down in his NEXT lifetime, but not this one. :D

A friend who is an Apache instructor pilot recommended Jane's "AH-64D Longbow". He says it's so close to the real thing that they use it for tactical training. Some of the info from the game's heads up display had to be changed because it was too close to revealing classified info. It's a slick program.

[John of Phoenix]

OMG!! On a movie theater size screen? Did anyone get airsick? Seriously! I went to the Imax theater at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum with a flight school buddy and he got airsick. redface.gif He may live it down in his NEXT lifetime, but not this one. :D

A friend who is an Apache instructor pilot recommended Jane's "AH-64D Longbow". He says it's so close to the real thing that they use it for tactical training. Some of the info from the game's heads up display had to be changed because it was too close to revealing classified info. It's a slick program.

[John of Phoenix]

OMG!! On a movie theater size screen? Did anyone get airsick? Seriously! I went to the Imax theater at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum with a flight school buddy and he got airsick. redface.gif He may live it down in his NEXT lifetime, but not this one. :D

A friend who is an Apache instructor pilot recommended Jane's "AH-64D Longbow". He says it's so close to the real thing that they use it for tactical training. Some of the info from the game's heads up display had to be changed because it was too close to revealing classified info. It's a slick program.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Da ummmmm Donn beat this Apple
http://a248.e.akamai.net/7/248/2041/210/store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/productshotpowermac.jpg
• Power Mac G4 Dual 1.25GHz w/167MHz system bus
• 2.0GB PC2700 DDR SDRAM - 4 DIMMs
• 120GB Ultra ATA drive
• Optical 1 - Apple SuperDrive
• Optical 2 - Combo Drive (DVD/CD-RW)
• NVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium dual-display w/128MB DDR
• 56K internal modem
• Apple Pro Keyboard - U.S. English
• Mac OS
the world’s fastest graphics processor, NVIDIA’s new GeForce4 Titanium, will be available in the world’s fastest personal computer, the Pentium-crushing Power Mac™ G4, starting next month. Delivered on a AGP 4X card containing 128MB of double data rate (DDR) SDRAM, the GeForce4 Titanium processor renders incredibly lifelike content and special effects such as real-time character animation and amazing surface details never before seen on a personal computer.

“The Power Mac G4 with Mac OS X and NVIDIA’s new GeForce4 Titanium combine to provide an incredible visual workstation,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Creative professionals and gamers alike are going to enjoy the amazing leap in 3D realism.”

The GeForce4 Titanium delivers incredible performance, processing 87 million triangles per second and 4.9 billion textured pixels per second to perform over 1.23 trillion operations per second. The GeForce4 Titanium delivers another first—the connection of two Apple flat-panel displays simultaneously in a single slot by providing both Apple Display Connector (ADC) and Digital Visual Interface (DVI) connectors (requires DVI to ADC adapter). The card provides both extended desktop as well as video mirroring, and it enables standard VGA devices to attach via the included DVI to VGA adapter.

The ultimate digital powerhouse for creative professionals, the new Power Mac G4 line features systems with dual 1-GHz, 933-MHz and 800-MHz PowerPC G4 processors with Velocity Engine™. The 933-MHz and dual 1-GHz models include the NVIDIA GeForce4 MX with 64MB of DDR SDRAM. Providing incredible performance, the dual 1-GHz Power Mac G4 delivers an amazing 15 gigaflops (15 billion floating point operations per second), running professional applications like Adobe Photoshop up to 72 percent faster and encoding DVD Video over 300 percent faster than a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4-based PC*.

[ 11-15-2002, 04:44 PM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Da ummmmm Donn beat this Apple
http://a248.e.akamai.net/7/248/2041/210/store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/productshotpowermac.jpg
• Power Mac G4 Dual 1.25GHz w/167MHz system bus
• 2.0GB PC2700 DDR SDRAM - 4 DIMMs
• 120GB Ultra ATA drive
• Optical 1 - Apple SuperDrive
• Optical 2 - Combo Drive (DVD/CD-RW)
• NVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium dual-display w/128MB DDR
• 56K internal modem
• Apple Pro Keyboard - U.S. English
• Mac OS
the world’s fastest graphics processor, NVIDIA’s new GeForce4 Titanium, will be available in the world’s fastest personal computer, the Pentium-crushing Power Mac™ G4, starting next month. Delivered on a AGP 4X card containing 128MB of double data rate (DDR) SDRAM, the GeForce4 Titanium processor renders incredibly lifelike content and special effects such as real-time character animation and amazing surface details never before seen on a personal computer.

“The Power Mac G4 with Mac OS X and NVIDIA’s new GeForce4 Titanium combine to provide an incredible visual workstation,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Creative professionals and gamers alike are going to enjoy the amazing leap in 3D realism.”

The GeForce4 Titanium delivers incredible performance, processing 87 million triangles per second and 4.9 billion textured pixels per second to perform over 1.23 trillion operations per second. The GeForce4 Titanium delivers another first—the connection of two Apple flat-panel displays simultaneously in a single slot by providing both Apple Display Connector (ADC) and Digital Visual Interface (DVI) connectors (requires DVI to ADC adapter). The card provides both extended desktop as well as video mirroring, and it enables standard VGA devices to attach via the included DVI to VGA adapter.

The ultimate digital powerhouse for creative professionals, the new Power Mac G4 line features systems with dual 1-GHz, 933-MHz and 800-MHz PowerPC G4 processors with Velocity Engine™. The 933-MHz and dual 1-GHz models include the NVIDIA GeForce4 MX with 64MB of DDR SDRAM. Providing incredible performance, the dual 1-GHz Power Mac G4 delivers an amazing 15 gigaflops (15 billion floating point operations per second), running professional applications like Adobe Photoshop up to 72 percent faster and encoding DVD Video over 300 percent faster than a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4-based PC*.

[ 11-15-2002, 04:44 PM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Da ummmmm Donn beat this Apple
http://a248.e.akamai.net/7/248/2041/210/store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/productshotpowermac.jpg
• Power Mac G4 Dual 1.25GHz w/167MHz system bus
• 2.0GB PC2700 DDR SDRAM - 4 DIMMs
• 120GB Ultra ATA drive
• Optical 1 - Apple SuperDrive
• Optical 2 - Combo Drive (DVD/CD-RW)
• NVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium dual-display w/128MB DDR
• 56K internal modem
• Apple Pro Keyboard - U.S. English
• Mac OS
the world’s fastest graphics processor, NVIDIA’s new GeForce4 Titanium, will be available in the world’s fastest personal computer, the Pentium-crushing Power Mac™ G4, starting next month. Delivered on a AGP 4X card containing 128MB of double data rate (DDR) SDRAM, the GeForce4 Titanium processor renders incredibly lifelike content and special effects such as real-time character animation and amazing surface details never before seen on a personal computer.

“The Power Mac G4 with Mac OS X and NVIDIA’s new GeForce4 Titanium combine to provide an incredible visual workstation,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Creative professionals and gamers alike are going to enjoy the amazing leap in 3D realism.”

The GeForce4 Titanium delivers incredible performance, processing 87 million triangles per second and 4.9 billion textured pixels per second to perform over 1.23 trillion operations per second. The GeForce4 Titanium delivers another first—the connection of two Apple flat-panel displays simultaneously in a single slot by providing both Apple Display Connector (ADC) and Digital Visual Interface (DVI) connectors (requires DVI to ADC adapter). The card provides both extended desktop as well as video mirroring, and it enables standard VGA devices to attach via the included DVI to VGA adapter.

The ultimate digital powerhouse for creative professionals, the new Power Mac G4 line features systems with dual 1-GHz, 933-MHz and 800-MHz PowerPC G4 processors with Velocity Engine™. The 933-MHz and dual 1-GHz models include the NVIDIA GeForce4 MX with 64MB of DDR SDRAM. Providing incredible performance, the dual 1-GHz Power Mac G4 delivers an amazing 15 gigaflops (15 billion floating point operations per second), running professional applications like Adobe Photoshop up to 72 percent faster and encoding DVD Video over 300 percent faster than a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4-based PC*.

[ 11-15-2002, 04:44 PM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by LOON:
Joe:

"A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent"

You'll have to prove that one to me. The G3 runs a 100MHZ bus, while the P4, 2GHZ runs a 400MHZ bus. With twice the processor and 4 times bus speed in the P4, I can't see how the G3 could be 2 times faster.Because the PowerPC chip is a real RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) architecture; the Intel chips are actually CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing) architecture.

What's the big deal, you say?

On the PowerPC, 90% of all instructions executed in 1 clock cycle; not so on the Intel architecture -- many, if not most, commonly-used instructions require [far] more than one clock cycle to execute.

It gets better, too. While Intel-architecture CPUs do exceed PowerPC CPUs when looking at floating-point arithmetic operations, they lose to PowerPC CPUs when looking at integer arithmetic operations.

Guess what kind of arithmetic is done more often than any other in a computer program: Integer arithmetic.

Just about everything in a computer program devolves into integer computations of some sort or other -- a simple array lookup ( a[ i ] ), for instance, works out to be this sequence of operations:

</font> Take address in memory of a.</font> Compute the offset of the desired element from the address of a by multiplying i by the size of the object a contains (say, 4 octets if a contains fullword integers or pointers). Don't forget to decrement i by 1 if array indices are relative to 1, rather than 0 (zero).</font> Add the computed offset to the address of a obtained in step 1, above to yield the address of the desired element.
</font>About the only time that floating point arithmetic is used is in complicated math calculations (complex spreadsheets) , image processing (photoshop and the like), etc.

And raw CPU speed doesn't mean all that much anymore: the CPU is hobbled by the speed of the system bus. While you may have a 2.0 gigahertz CPU, if your system bus is running at 400 megahertz, every fetch or store to/from memory stops the CPU for at least 5 clock cycles waiting for the memory access to complete, thereby cutting your effective CPU speed by, well, a lot.

And CPU-bound programs are rare in the real world. Most real computer programs are generally I/O bound -- the limiting factor is the speed of the input/output subsystems.

How fast data can be shoved down the bus to/from different subsystems and devices -- display, keyboard, mouse, diskdrive, memory, network adapter, the carbon-base computer at the keyboard, etc. -- are what constrain things.

It's rare that any real program will ever consume more than 10% or so of the CPU. A CPU hitting 70 or 90 percent utilization is usually a sign of a problem.

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by LOON:
Joe:

"A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent"

You'll have to prove that one to me. The G3 runs a 100MHZ bus, while the P4, 2GHZ runs a 400MHZ bus. With twice the processor and 4 times bus speed in the P4, I can't see how the G3 could be 2 times faster.Because the PowerPC chip is a real RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) architecture; the Intel chips are actually CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing) architecture.

What's the big deal, you say?

On the PowerPC, 90% of all instructions executed in 1 clock cycle; not so on the Intel architecture -- many, if not most, commonly-used instructions require [far] more than one clock cycle to execute.

It gets better, too. While Intel-architecture CPUs do exceed PowerPC CPUs when looking at floating-point arithmetic operations, they lose to PowerPC CPUs when looking at integer arithmetic operations.

Guess what kind of arithmetic is done more often than any other in a computer program: Integer arithmetic.

Just about everything in a computer program devolves into integer computations of some sort or other -- a simple array lookup ( a[ i ] ), for instance, works out to be this sequence of operations:

</font> Take address in memory of a.</font> Compute the offset of the desired element from the address of a by multiplying i by the size of the object a contains (say, 4 octets if a contains fullword integers or pointers). Don't forget to decrement i by 1 if array indices are relative to 1, rather than 0 (zero).</font> Add the computed offset to the address of a obtained in step 1, above to yield the address of the desired element.
</font>About the only time that floating point arithmetic is used is in complicated math calculations (complex spreadsheets) , image processing (photoshop and the like), etc.

And raw CPU speed doesn't mean all that much anymore: the CPU is hobbled by the speed of the system bus. While you may have a 2.0 gigahertz CPU, if your system bus is running at 400 megahertz, every fetch or store to/from memory stops the CPU for at least 5 clock cycles waiting for the memory access to complete, thereby cutting your effective CPU speed by, well, a lot.

And CPU-bound programs are rare in the real world. Most real computer programs are generally I/O bound -- the limiting factor is the speed of the input/output subsystems.

How fast data can be shoved down the bus to/from different subsystems and devices -- display, keyboard, mouse, diskdrive, memory, network adapter, the carbon-base computer at the keyboard, etc. -- are what constrain things.

It's rare that any real program will ever consume more than 10% or so of the CPU. A CPU hitting 70 or 90 percent utilization is usually a sign of a problem.

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by LOON:
Joe:

"A 800 MHz PowerPC G3 is 2x as fast as a 2 gig pent"

You'll have to prove that one to me. The G3 runs a 100MHZ bus, while the P4, 2GHZ runs a 400MHZ bus. With twice the processor and 4 times bus speed in the P4, I can't see how the G3 could be 2 times faster.Because the PowerPC chip is a real RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) architecture; the Intel chips are actually CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing) architecture.

What's the big deal, you say?

On the PowerPC, 90% of all instructions executed in 1 clock cycle; not so on the Intel architecture -- many, if not most, commonly-used instructions require [far] more than one clock cycle to execute.

It gets better, too. While Intel-architecture CPUs do exceed PowerPC CPUs when looking at floating-point arithmetic operations, they lose to PowerPC CPUs when looking at integer arithmetic operations.

Guess what kind of arithmetic is done more often than any other in a computer program: Integer arithmetic.

Just about everything in a computer program devolves into integer computations of some sort or other -- a simple array lookup ( a[ i ] ), for instance, works out to be this sequence of operations:

</font> Take address in memory of a.</font> Compute the offset of the desired element from the address of a by multiplying i by the size of the object a contains (say, 4 octets if a contains fullword integers or pointers). Don't forget to decrement i by 1 if array indices are relative to 1, rather than 0 (zero).</font> Add the computed offset to the address of a obtained in step 1, above to yield the address of the desired element.
</font>About the only time that floating point arithmetic is used is in complicated math calculations (complex spreadsheets) , image processing (photoshop and the like), etc.

And raw CPU speed doesn't mean all that much anymore: the CPU is hobbled by the speed of the system bus. While you may have a 2.0 gigahertz CPU, if your system bus is running at 400 megahertz, every fetch or store to/from memory stops the CPU for at least 5 clock cycles waiting for the memory access to complete, thereby cutting your effective CPU speed by, well, a lot.

And CPU-bound programs are rare in the real world. Most real computer programs are generally I/O bound -- the limiting factor is the speed of the input/output subsystems.

How fast data can be shoved down the bus to/from different subsystems and devices -- display, keyboard, mouse, diskdrive, memory, network adapter, the carbon-base computer at the keyboard, etc. -- are what constrain things.

It's rare that any real program will ever consume more than 10% or so of the CPU. A CPU hitting 70 or 90 percent utilization is usually a sign of a problem.

[cs]

If you understand the 20 or so above post you're a better man than me. LOL

To make a long story short. If you are going with a PC rather than a MAC buy Dell.

I will repeat what I think is the most important thing and I think that Nichols post backs me up. RAM is more important the CPU speed so get all that you can.

Chad

[cs]

If you understand the 20 or so above post you're a better man than me. LOL

To make a long story short. If you are going with a PC rather than a MAC buy Dell.

I will repeat what I think is the most important thing and I think that Nichols post backs me up. RAM is more important the CPU speed so get all that you can.

Chad

[cs]

If you understand the 20 or so above post you're a better man than me. LOL

To make a long story short. If you are going with a PC rather than a MAC buy Dell.

I will repeat what I think is the most important thing and I think that Nichols post backs me up. RAM is more important the CPU speed so get all that you can.

Chad

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by LOON:
Hi Dave...welcome back...never had a BSOD on my system, and seldom on the systems I've installed and maintain. Most BSOD's are caused by user error and improperly configured systems. When I get a bad piece of code, NT isolates it and prevents it from crashing the system.A BSOD (stands for Blue Screen O' Death) isn't caused by user error or 'improperly configured' systems. An ordinary user shouldn't be able to crash the system with a hard stop like that.

A BSOD is the equivalent of a Unix kernel panic: The operating system itself has crashed. It too, is simply a computer program. The crash may be a bug in the OS, it might be due to a hardware problem, or (most likely) it might be due to a problem with a device driver.

The device drivers are problematic in Windows NT, Windows 2000 and their kin because, unlike other more sensibly designed operating systems, they run in the operating system's arena, rather than in user space.

Window's [non-]security model is also a real problem WRT BSODs, since the default security arrangement is no security whatsoever. Any user can trash any file, registry entry, etc., either on purpose or by accident.

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by LOON:
Hi Dave...welcome back...never had a BSOD on my system, and seldom on the systems I've installed and maintain. Most BSOD's are caused by user error and improperly configured systems. When I get a bad piece of code, NT isolates it and prevents it from crashing the system.A BSOD (stands for Blue Screen O' Death) isn't caused by user error or 'improperly configured' systems. An ordinary user shouldn't be able to crash the system with a hard stop like that.

A BSOD is the equivalent of a Unix kernel panic: The operating system itself has crashed. It too, is simply a computer program. The crash may be a bug in the OS, it might be due to a hardware problem, or (most likely) it might be due to a problem with a device driver.

The device drivers are problematic in Windows NT, Windows 2000 and their kin because, unlike other more sensibly designed operating systems, they run in the operating system's arena, rather than in user space.

Window's [non-]security model is also a real problem WRT BSODs, since the default security arrangement is no security whatsoever. Any user can trash any file, registry entry, etc., either on purpose or by accident.

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by LOON:
Hi Dave...welcome back...never had a BSOD on my system, and seldom on the systems I've installed and maintain. Most BSOD's are caused by user error and improperly configured systems. When I get a bad piece of code, NT isolates it and prevents it from crashing the system.A BSOD (stands for Blue Screen O' Death) isn't caused by user error or 'improperly configured' systems. An ordinary user shouldn't be able to crash the system with a hard stop like that.

A BSOD is the equivalent of a Unix kernel panic: The operating system itself has crashed. It too, is simply a computer program. The crash may be a bug in the OS, it might be due to a hardware problem, or (most likely) it might be due to a problem with a device driver.

The device drivers are problematic in Windows NT, Windows 2000 and their kin because, unlike other more sensibly designed operating systems, they run in the operating system's arena, rather than in user space.

Window's [non-]security model is also a real problem WRT BSODs, since the default security arrangement is no security whatsoever. Any user can trash any file, registry entry, etc., either on purpose or by accident.

[Donn]

Joe:

Dell Workstation 530N

Dual Intel® Xeon™ Processors, 2.80GHz, 512K Cache, 533MHZ bus
4GB Memory with Riser PC800 ECC RDRAM® (8 RIMMS™)
Dual Ultra 160/M SCSI Controller Cards
Quad 146GB Ultra 320 SCSI, 1 inch (10,000 rpm) (that's 584 Gigs)
nVidia, Quadro4 900XGL, 128MB, VGA/DVI (dual monitor capable)
Dual Dell UltraSharp™ 2000FP 20 inch Flat Panel Monitor (20.0 inch vis)
Dual Ethernet, 1 on the motherboard, and a second Intel PRO/1000 XT, Gigabit PCI NIC

That's using half the internal bays, so there's plenty of room for expansion.

If you ask nicely, Dell will build a 4 processor system, and give you up to 2Gigs of L2 cache.

Nicholas,

"Guess what kind of arithmetic is done more often than any other in a computer program: Integer arithmetic."

Excuse me?

"About the only time that floating point arithmetic is used is in complicated math calculations (complex spreadsheets) , image processing (photoshop and the like), etc."

What need would one have for high performance workstations if one was not doing graphics and/or spreadsheet, CAD, and some DBMS work?

"It's rare that any real program will ever consume more than 10% or so of the CPU. A CPU hitting 70 or 90 percent utilization is usually a sign of a problem. "

Try running realtime stock trading software like RealTick, and scads of Excel and other (Neural Net) market analysis packages...and watch a dual Xeon system go to 50-60%.

"A BSOD (stands for Blue Screen O' Death) isn't caused by user error or 'improperly configured' systems. An ordinary user shouldn't be able to crash the system with a hard stop like that."

What's an "ordinary user?" On an improperly configured system, any user can crash the OS.

"A BSOD is the equivalent of a Unix kernel panic: The operating system itself has crashed. It too, is simply a computer program. The crash may be a bug in the OS, it might be due to a hardware problem, or (most likely) it might be due to a problem with a device driver."

Here, you're contradicting your previous statement. A problem with a device driver is a user error.

[ 11-15-2002, 05:19 PM: Message edited by: LOON ]

[Donn]

Joe:

Dell Workstation 530N

Dual Intel® Xeon™ Processors, 2.80GHz, 512K Cache, 533MHZ bus
4GB Memory with Riser PC800 ECC RDRAM® (8 RIMMS™)
Dual Ultra 160/M SCSI Controller Cards
Quad 146GB Ultra 320 SCSI, 1 inch (10,000 rpm) (that's 584 Gigs)
nVidia, Quadro4 900XGL, 128MB, VGA/DVI (dual monitor capable)
Dual Dell UltraSharp™ 2000FP 20 inch Flat Panel Monitor (20.0 inch vis)
Dual Ethernet, 1 on the motherboard, and a second Intel PRO/1000 XT, Gigabit PCI NIC

That's using half the internal bays, so there's plenty of room for expansion.

If you ask nicely, Dell will build a 4 processor system, and give you up to 2Gigs of L2 cache.

Nicholas,

"Guess what kind of arithmetic is done more often than any other in a computer program: Integer arithmetic."

Excuse me?

"About the only time that floating point arithmetic is used is in complicated math calculations (complex spreadsheets) , image processing (photoshop and the like), etc."

What need would one have for high performance workstations if one was not doing graphics and/or spreadsheet, CAD, and some DBMS work?

"It's rare that any real program will ever consume more than 10% or so of the CPU. A CPU hitting 70 or 90 percent utilization is usually a sign of a problem. "

Try running realtime stock trading software like RealTick, and scads of Excel and other (Neural Net) market analysis packages...and watch a dual Xeon system go to 50-60%.

"A BSOD (stands for Blue Screen O' Death) isn't caused by user error or 'improperly configured' systems. An ordinary user shouldn't be able to crash the system with a hard stop like that."

What's an "ordinary user?" On an improperly configured system, any user can crash the OS.

"A BSOD is the equivalent of a Unix kernel panic: The operating system itself has crashed. It too, is simply a computer program. The crash may be a bug in the OS, it might be due to a hardware problem, or (most likely) it might be due to a problem with a device driver."

Here, you're contradicting your previous statement. A problem with a device driver is a user error.

[ 11-15-2002, 05:19 PM: Message edited by: LOON ]

[Donn]

Joe:

Dell Workstation 530N

Dual Intel® Xeon™ Processors, 2.80GHz, 512K Cache, 533MHZ bus
4GB Memory with Riser PC800 ECC RDRAM® (8 RIMMS™)
Dual Ultra 160/M SCSI Controller Cards
Quad 146GB Ultra 320 SCSI, 1 inch (10,000 rpm) (that's 584 Gigs)
nVidia, Quadro4 900XGL, 128MB, VGA/DVI (dual monitor capable)
Dual Dell UltraSharp™ 2000FP 20 inch Flat Panel Monitor (20.0 inch vis)
Dual Ethernet, 1 on the motherboard, and a second Intel PRO/1000 XT, Gigabit PCI NIC

That's using half the internal bays, so there's plenty of room for expansion.

If you ask nicely, Dell will build a 4 processor system, and give you up to 2Gigs of L2 cache.

Nicholas,

"Guess what kind of arithmetic is done more often than any other in a computer program: Integer arithmetic."

Excuse me?

"About the only time that floating point arithmetic is used is in complicated math calculations (complex spreadsheets) , image processing (photoshop and the like), etc."

What need would one have for high performance workstations if one was not doing graphics and/or spreadsheet, CAD, and some DBMS work?

"It's rare that any real program will ever consume more than 10% or so of the CPU. A CPU hitting 70 or 90 percent utilization is usually a sign of a problem. "

Try running realtime stock trading software like RealTick, and scads of Excel and other (Neural Net) market analysis packages...and watch a dual Xeon system go to 50-60%.

"A BSOD (stands for Blue Screen O' Death) isn't caused by user error or 'improperly configured' systems. An ordinary user shouldn't be able to crash the system with a hard stop like that."

What's an "ordinary user?" On an improperly configured system, any user can crash the OS.

"A BSOD is the equivalent of a Unix kernel panic: The operating system itself has crashed. It too, is simply a computer program. The crash may be a bug in the OS, it might be due to a hardware problem, or (most likely) it might be due to a problem with a device driver."

Here, you're contradicting your previous statement. A problem with a device driver is a user error.

[ 11-15-2002, 05:19 PM: Message edited by: LOON ]

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by cs:
To make a long story short. If you are going with a PC rather than a MAC buy Dell.But buy a Mac. You'll be pleasantly surprised. OS X is not the old MacOS. OS X is a throughbred Unix with all that implies. It's fast, rock-solid and stable. Some people complain that OS X is slow, but that is largely because the display layer (Aqua, Quartz, Cocoa, etc.) contains a whole lot of new code that's never been optimized. Every incremental release ( 10.1, 10.2) has brought more than incremental improvements in speed as code gets profiled and optimized.

My iMac (500mhz slot-loading iMac DV, 256mb memory, 80gb fast hard drive) runs Virtual PC w/Windows 2000(!) in emulation. Amazingly, the performace really isn't hideous -- about like running Windows 2000 on a somewhat marginal wintel box, or running a Terminal Server session.


I will repeat what I think is the most important thing and I think that Nichols post backs me up. RAM is more important the CPU speed so get all that you can.RAM is important, but so are all the other subsystems: system bus, video card, disc drives, etc. I'd much rather have a somewhat slower CPU with higher end subsystems on board than a cutting edge CPU with somewhat marginal subsystems.

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by cs:
To make a long story short. If you are going with a PC rather than a MAC buy Dell.But buy a Mac. You'll be pleasantly surprised. OS X is not the old MacOS. OS X is a throughbred Unix with all that implies. It's fast, rock-solid and stable. Some people complain that OS X is slow, but that is largely because the display layer (Aqua, Quartz, Cocoa, etc.) contains a whole lot of new code that's never been optimized. Every incremental release ( 10.1, 10.2) has brought more than incremental improvements in speed as code gets profiled and optimized.

My iMac (500mhz slot-loading iMac DV, 256mb memory, 80gb fast hard drive) runs Virtual PC w/Windows 2000(!) in emulation. Amazingly, the performace really isn't hideous -- about like running Windows 2000 on a somewhat marginal wintel box, or running a Terminal Server session.


I will repeat what I think is the most important thing and I think that Nichols post backs me up. RAM is more important the CPU speed so get all that you can.RAM is important, but so are all the other subsystems: system bus, video card, disc drives, etc. I'd much rather have a somewhat slower CPU with higher end subsystems on board than a cutting edge CPU with somewhat marginal subsystems.

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by cs:
To make a long story short. If you are going with a PC rather than a MAC buy Dell.But buy a Mac. You'll be pleasantly surprised. OS X is not the old MacOS. OS X is a throughbred Unix with all that implies. It's fast, rock-solid and stable. Some people complain that OS X is slow, but that is largely because the display layer (Aqua, Quartz, Cocoa, etc.) contains a whole lot of new code that's never been optimized. Every incremental release ( 10.1, 10.2) has brought more than incremental improvements in speed as code gets profiled and optimized.

My iMac (500mhz slot-loading iMac DV, 256mb memory, 80gb fast hard drive) runs Virtual PC w/Windows 2000(!) in emulation. Amazingly, the performace really isn't hideous -- about like running Windows 2000 on a somewhat marginal wintel box, or running a Terminal Server session.


I will repeat what I think is the most important thing and I think that Nichols post backs me up. RAM is more important the CPU speed so get all that you can.RAM is important, but so are all the other subsystems: system bus, video card, disc drives, etc. I'd much rather have a somewhat slower CPU with higher end subsystems on board than a cutting edge CPU with somewhat marginal subsystems.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Donn I repeat
the dual 1-GHz Power Mac G4 delivers an amazing 15 gigaflops (15 billion floating point operations per second), running professional applications like Adobe Photoshop up to 72 percent faster and encoding DVD Video over 300 percent faster than a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4-based PC*. 15 gigaflops 15 gigaflops !!!!! Also we can go on with open bays and if you ask nice Apple will build ya anything you want as well. But this is a stock roadster Not bad for 5% market share and the cinima display will blow the doors off anything you got.. But this is the top line system @ $4,000 the cool thing with Apple is you can get this for $999.00
700MHz PowerPC G3
512K L2 cache @700MHz
128MB SDRAM memory
20GB Ultra ATA drive
ATI Radeon 7500
16MB dedicated video memory
CD-ROM
Built-in 56K v.92 modem
AirPort ready
Up to 5 hr. battery life

AND ITS A LAPTOP !!!

[ 11-15-2002, 06:01 PM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Donn I repeat
the dual 1-GHz Power Mac G4 delivers an amazing 15 gigaflops (15 billion floating point operations per second), running professional applications like Adobe Photoshop up to 72 percent faster and encoding DVD Video over 300 percent faster than a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4-based PC*. 15 gigaflops 15 gigaflops !!!!! Also we can go on with open bays and if you ask nice Apple will build ya anything you want as well. But this is a stock roadster Not bad for 5% market share and the cinima display will blow the doors off anything you got.. But this is the top line system @ $4,000 the cool thing with Apple is you can get this for $999.00
700MHz PowerPC G3
512K L2 cache @700MHz
128MB SDRAM memory
20GB Ultra ATA drive
ATI Radeon 7500
16MB dedicated video memory
CD-ROM
Built-in 56K v.92 modem
AirPort ready
Up to 5 hr. battery life

AND ITS A LAPTOP !!!

[ 11-15-2002, 06:01 PM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Donn I repeat
the dual 1-GHz Power Mac G4 delivers an amazing 15 gigaflops (15 billion floating point operations per second), running professional applications like Adobe Photoshop up to 72 percent faster and encoding DVD Video over 300 percent faster than a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4-based PC*. 15 gigaflops 15 gigaflops !!!!! Also we can go on with open bays and if you ask nice Apple will build ya anything you want as well. But this is a stock roadster Not bad for 5% market share and the cinima display will blow the doors off anything you got.. But this is the top line system @ $4,000 the cool thing with Apple is you can get this for $999.00
700MHz PowerPC G3
512K L2 cache @700MHz
128MB SDRAM memory
20GB Ultra ATA drive
ATI Radeon 7500
16MB dedicated video memory
CD-ROM
Built-in 56K v.92 modem
AirPort ready
Up to 5 hr. battery life

AND ITS A LAPTOP !!!

[ 11-15-2002, 06:01 PM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Donn]

Joe:

"2.0 GHz Pentium 4-based PC*"

That's the second time you've included the asterisk without explaining what it refers to. Inquiring minds want to know.

[Donn]

Joe:

"2.0 GHz Pentium 4-based PC*"

That's the second time you've included the asterisk without explaining what it refers to. Inquiring minds want to know.

[Donn]

Joe:

"2.0 GHz Pentium 4-based PC*"

That's the second time you've included the asterisk without explaining what it refers to. Inquiring minds want to know.

[Jim H]

Originally posted by John Teetsel:
OMG!! On a movie theater size screen? Did anyone get airsick? Seriously! I went to the Imax theater at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum with a flight school buddy and he got airsick. redface.gif He may live it down in his NEXT lifetime, but not this one. :D I kid you not, with the surround sound system it was like being in the cockpit. I did'nt get sick but you did get that sinking feeling every time you dropped down a terrain feature. About the only thing the game was missing was the sound you hear inside a helicopter, 10,000 metal parts trying desperately to fly apart. It was so much better on the "big screen" that I could never get back into the game again. :mad: I just have to win the lottery... It's been awhile since I've looked but I'll check out the Longbow.

Chad, I just LOOK like I understand, you know sit there with that interested look and nod every once in a while ;) a lot of umhms and "that makes sense", yep (went right over my head).

Today, for the second time this week, I was one click from a Dell but then I decided to look into building one (could'nt be all that hard right??). Intel motherboard $199, Processor ?? (forgot to check), video card $159, sound card $50, power supply $40, tower $50 to 100, hard drive $109, modem $50, cd-rw $80 MS XP pro. $200, my sanity priceless...

I guess I'll drink on it some more.

Thanks, Jim

[Jim H]

Originally posted by John Teetsel:
OMG!! On a movie theater size screen? Did anyone get airsick? Seriously! I went to the Imax theater at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum with a flight school buddy and he got airsick. redface.gif He may live it down in his NEXT lifetime, but not this one. :D I kid you not, with the surround sound system it was like being in the cockpit. I did'nt get sick but you did get that sinking feeling every time you dropped down a terrain feature. About the only thing the game was missing was the sound you hear inside a helicopter, 10,000 metal parts trying desperately to fly apart. It was so much better on the "big screen" that I could never get back into the game again. :mad: I just have to win the lottery... It's been awhile since I've looked but I'll check out the Longbow.

Chad, I just LOOK like I understand, you know sit there with that interested look and nod every once in a while ;) a lot of umhms and "that makes sense", yep (went right over my head).

Today, for the second time this week, I was one click from a Dell but then I decided to look into building one (could'nt be all that hard right??). Intel motherboard $199, Processor ?? (forgot to check), video card $159, sound card $50, power supply $40, tower $50 to 100, hard drive $109, modem $50, cd-rw $80 MS XP pro. $200, my sanity priceless...

I guess I'll drink on it some more.

Thanks, Jim

[Jim H]

Originally posted by John Teetsel:
OMG!! On a movie theater size screen? Did anyone get airsick? Seriously! I went to the Imax theater at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum with a flight school buddy and he got airsick. redface.gif He may live it down in his NEXT lifetime, but not this one. :D I kid you not, with the surround sound system it was like being in the cockpit. I did'nt get sick but you did get that sinking feeling every time you dropped down a terrain feature. About the only thing the game was missing was the sound you hear inside a helicopter, 10,000 metal parts trying desperately to fly apart. It was so much better on the "big screen" that I could never get back into the game again. :mad: I just have to win the lottery... It's been awhile since I've looked but I'll check out the Longbow.

Chad, I just LOOK like I understand, you know sit there with that interested look and nod every once in a while ;) a lot of umhms and "that makes sense", yep (went right over my head).

Today, for the second time this week, I was one click from a Dell but then I decided to look into building one (could'nt be all that hard right??). Intel motherboard $199, Processor ?? (forgot to check), video card $159, sound card $50, power supply $40, tower $50 to 100, hard drive $109, modem $50, cd-rw $80 MS XP pro. $200, my sanity priceless...

I guess I'll drink on it some more.

Thanks, Jim

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Donn here is no asterisk 15 gigaflops Donn ya like Apples hun ? what do ya think of those Apple's :D 15 gigaflops

[ 11-15-2002, 07:09 PM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Donn here is no asterisk 15 gigaflops Donn ya like Apples hun ? what do ya think of those Apple's :D 15 gigaflops

[ 11-15-2002, 07:09 PM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Donn here is no asterisk 15 gigaflops Donn ya like Apples hun ? what do ya think of those Apple's :D 15 gigaflops

[ 11-15-2002, 07:09 PM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Donn]

Jim...don't build one. You can buy a better one for $599, with a warranty. However, if you must, you left out some pieces (like a NIC). Of course, you could save the $50-100 on the box, and build your own wooden tower. :D

[Donn]

Jim...don't build one. You can buy a better one for $599, with a warranty. However, if you must, you left out some pieces (like a NIC). Of course, you could save the $50-100 on the box, and build your own wooden tower. :D

[Donn]

Jim...don't build one. You can buy a better one for $599, with a warranty. However, if you must, you left out some pieces (like a NIC). Of course, you could save the $50-100 on the box, and build your own wooden tower. :D

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Well I guess we lost anouther one to the dark side - no offence Jim but dont be drinking when you BUILD your own :eek:

Today, for the second time this week, I was one click from a Dell but then I decided to look into building one (could'nt be all that hard right??). Intel motherboard $199, Processor ?? (forgot to check), video card $159, sound card $50, power supply $40, tower $50 to 100, hard drive $109, modem $50, cd-rw $80 MS XP pro. $200, my sanity priceless...
I guess I'll drink on it some more.
Thanks, Jim

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Well I guess we lost anouther one to the dark side - no offence Jim but dont be drinking when you BUILD your own :eek:

Today, for the second time this week, I was one click from a Dell but then I decided to look into building one (could'nt be all that hard right??). Intel motherboard $199, Processor ?? (forgot to check), video card $159, sound card $50, power supply $40, tower $50 to 100, hard drive $109, modem $50, cd-rw $80 MS XP pro. $200, my sanity priceless...
I guess I'll drink on it some more.
Thanks, Jim

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Well I guess we lost anouther one to the dark side - no offence Jim but dont be drinking when you BUILD your own :eek:

Today, for the second time this week, I was one click from a Dell but then I decided to look into building one (could'nt be all that hard right??). Intel motherboard $199, Processor ?? (forgot to check), video card $159, sound card $50, power supply $40, tower $50 to 100, hard drive $109, modem $50, cd-rw $80 MS XP pro. $200, my sanity priceless...
I guess I'll drink on it some more.
Thanks, Jim

[Jim H]

Originally posted by LOON:
Jim...don't build one. You can buy a better one for $599, with a warranty. However, if you must, you left out some pieces (like a NIC). Of course, you could save the $50-100 on the box, and build your own wooden tower. :D NI what?? You mean it's a bad thing if I have parts left over?? Add a wood tower and... wait do you smell something burning?? :D

Well Don, you pushed me over the edge. I picked the Dimension 2300 with the Pentium 4 2Ghz with 256 of RAM, 30GB hard drive (I'll never use all of that - noooo!), 48X24X48 cd-rw and a 48X cd-rom.

[Jim H]

Originally posted by LOON:
Jim...don't build one. You can buy a better one for $599, with a warranty. However, if you must, you left out some pieces (like a NIC). Of course, you could save the $50-100 on the box, and build your own wooden tower. :D NI what?? You mean it's a bad thing if I have parts left over?? Add a wood tower and... wait do you smell something burning?? :D

Well Don, you pushed me over the edge. I picked the Dimension 2300 with the Pentium 4 2Ghz with 256 of RAM, 30GB hard drive (I'll never use all of that - noooo!), 48X24X48 cd-rw and a 48X cd-rom.

[Jim H]

Originally posted by LOON:
Jim...don't build one. You can buy a better one for $599, with a warranty. However, if you must, you left out some pieces (like a NIC). Of course, you could save the $50-100 on the box, and build your own wooden tower. :D NI what?? You mean it's a bad thing if I have parts left over?? Add a wood tower and... wait do you smell something burning?? :D

Well Don, you pushed me over the edge. I picked the Dimension 2300 with the Pentium 4 2Ghz with 256 of RAM, 30GB hard drive (I'll never use all of that - noooo!), 48X24X48 cd-rw and a 48X cd-rom.

[Meerkat]

RISC vs. CISC - ah, the power of marketing hype. 1 instruction per cycle? Yup - and 3-10 or more instructions to get the same work done as one CISC instruction - and with all those instruction fetches too! In the lifetime of a CPU, an memory fetch takes a week and a hard-disk fetch takes decades. (At at time when the technology was slower, the relative scale for a hard disk fetch was 52 years.)

Apple - why pay more? Because, you will! Apple software is _expensive_ compared to Windows software. Of course, everything is expensive compared to Linux software ;)

[Meerkat]

RISC vs. CISC - ah, the power of marketing hype. 1 instruction per cycle? Yup - and 3-10 or more instructions to get the same work done as one CISC instruction - and with all those instruction fetches too! In the lifetime of a CPU, an memory fetch takes a week and a hard-disk fetch takes decades. (At at time when the technology was slower, the relative scale for a hard disk fetch was 52 years.)

Apple - why pay more? Because, you will! Apple software is _expensive_ compared to Windows software. Of course, everything is expensive compared to Linux software ;)

[Meerkat]

RISC vs. CISC - ah, the power of marketing hype. 1 instruction per cycle? Yup - and 3-10 or more instructions to get the same work done as one CISC instruction - and with all those instruction fetches too! In the lifetime of a CPU, an memory fetch takes a week and a hard-disk fetch takes decades. (At at time when the technology was slower, the relative scale for a hard disk fetch was 52 years.)

Apple - why pay more? Because, you will! Apple software is _expensive_ compared to Windows software. Of course, everything is expensive compared to Linux software ;)

[Donn]

You're gonna be in pig heaven, Jim. Now start to think about networking your old 133, and continue to use it for stuff that doesn't require blazing speed and cavernous storage. Use it to run your home phone/fax/etc system. They are great phone answering devices. Hell..that old relic could control all the utilities in your house, and monitor security monitors, and control irrigation systems...and..and :D

[Donn]

You're gonna be in pig heaven, Jim. Now start to think about networking your old 133, and continue to use it for stuff that doesn't require blazing speed and cavernous storage. Use it to run your home phone/fax/etc system. They are great phone answering devices. Hell..that old relic could control all the utilities in your house, and monitor security monitors, and control irrigation systems...and..and :D

[Donn]

You're gonna be in pig heaven, Jim. Now start to think about networking your old 133, and continue to use it for stuff that doesn't require blazing speed and cavernous storage. Use it to run your home phone/fax/etc system. They are great phone answering devices. Hell..that old relic could control all the utilities in your house, and monitor security monitors, and control irrigation systems...and..and :D

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

OK Donn last challenge where ya posting from, your desk top?, in your office? Where am I posting hmmmmmm lets see from my laptop Im in the kitchen getting some YUM B&J Pistachio Ice cream ( OH MAN ITS THE BEST ) ooh wait let me move to the living room throw another log on the fire, into the great room check on SWMBO & Tess there doing fine or could I be posting from the porcelain library, you will never know since I have a laptop and a wireless Apple Airport network thought the house and in the barn and in the hammock at the pond in the summer time. Such a sweet set up and took 3 minutes to configure with the cable modem &lt; BIG GRIN &gt; :D :D :D :D :D

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

OK Donn last challenge where ya posting from, your desk top?, in your office? Where am I posting hmmmmmm lets see from my laptop Im in the kitchen getting some YUM B&J Pistachio Ice cream ( OH MAN ITS THE BEST ) ooh wait let me move to the living room throw another log on the fire, into the great room check on SWMBO & Tess there doing fine or could I be posting from the porcelain library, you will never know since I have a laptop and a wireless Apple Airport network thought the house and in the barn and in the hammock at the pond in the summer time. Such a sweet set up and took 3 minutes to configure with the cable modem &lt; BIG GRIN &gt; :D :D :D :D :D

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

OK Donn last challenge where ya posting from, your desk top?, in your office? Where am I posting hmmmmmm lets see from my laptop Im in the kitchen getting some YUM B&J Pistachio Ice cream ( OH MAN ITS THE BEST ) ooh wait let me move to the living room throw another log on the fire, into the great room check on SWMBO & Tess there doing fine or could I be posting from the porcelain library, you will never know since I have a laptop and a wireless Apple Airport network thought the house and in the barn and in the hammock at the pond in the summer time. Such a sweet set up and took 3 minutes to configure with the cable modem &lt; BIG GRIN &gt; :D :D :D :D :D

[Donn]

Well, Joe...looks like I have to own up...I'm on the Newton...a discontinued Apple machine, the size of a mass market paperback, with a 3Com wireless modem. Runs for a week on 4 AA batteries. Does internet, fax, db, spreadsheet, calendar, contact software, and carries several Project Gutenburg books. It automatically downloads the NYT crossword puzzles too. It's the ultimate portable computer.

BTW...I can connect my handheld GPS to it, and use navigational software. :D Also have a cellular modem for it, so I could be posting from the boat...just haven't ever been inclined to post from the boat...or the hammock, for that matter.

[Donn]

Well, Joe...looks like I have to own up...I'm on the Newton...a discontinued Apple machine, the size of a mass market paperback, with a 3Com wireless modem. Runs for a week on 4 AA batteries. Does internet, fax, db, spreadsheet, calendar, contact software, and carries several Project Gutenburg books. It automatically downloads the NYT crossword puzzles too. It's the ultimate portable computer.

BTW...I can connect my handheld GPS to it, and use navigational software. :D Also have a cellular modem for it, so I could be posting from the boat...just haven't ever been inclined to post from the boat...or the hammock, for that matter.

[Donn]

Well, Joe...looks like I have to own up...I'm on the Newton...a discontinued Apple machine, the size of a mass market paperback, with a 3Com wireless modem. Runs for a week on 4 AA batteries. Does internet, fax, db, spreadsheet, calendar, contact software, and carries several Project Gutenburg books. It automatically downloads the NYT crossword puzzles too. It's the ultimate portable computer.

BTW...I can connect my handheld GPS to it, and use navigational software. :D Also have a cellular modem for it, so I could be posting from the boat...just haven't ever been inclined to post from the boat...or the hammock, for that matter.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Hey I have a Newton and you know properly configured it could actually do all of those things hands down another apple product way ahead of its time

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Hey I have a Newton and you know properly configured it could actually do all of those things hands down another apple product way ahead of its time

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Hey I have a Newton and you know properly configured it could actually do all of those things hands down another apple product way ahead of its time

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by LOON:
Nicholas,

"Guess what kind of arithmetic is done more often than any other in a computer program: Integer arithmetic."

Excuse me?You don't build software for a living: I do.

If you go into the detail of what the code is actually doing -- e.g., look the actual machine code emitted by the compiler, -- you'll find that virtually everything done involves integer arithmetic -- That goes from computing the location of the mouse pointer to deciding what color to paint a pixel on the screen.


"About the only time that floating point arithmetic is used is in complicated math calculations (complex spreadsheets) , image processing (photoshop and the like), etc."

What need would one have for high performance workstations if one was not doing graphics and/or spreadsheet, CAD, and some DBMS work?Well, let's see, database software has very little use for floating point work, except where it needs to do calculations on floating point columns. Database systems are intensively I/O bound, not CPU bound -- I/O is what a DMBS does.

And, since most people are buying what amount to very high end workstations these days, I say that word processing, web surfing, playing MP3s, etc.

Virtually none of which requires a lot of floating point work.

Programmers tend to avoid floating point unless there's a real strong reason for using it.


"It's rare that any real program will ever consume more than 10% or so of the CPU. A CPU hitting 70 or 90 percent utilization is usually a sign of a problem. "

Try running realtime stock trading software like RealTick, and scads of Excel and other (Neural Net) market analysis packages...and watch a dual Xeon system go to 50-60%.As I said, those are exactly the sort of applications that will exercise the FPU. But they still do way more integer arithmetic than they do floating point arithmetic.

And you'll note that even with your heavily loaded system, you're still not using more than 25%-30% per CPU.

BTW, on a Wintel box running NT4, the cost of a context switch starts to become expensive once you hit about 40 threads per CPU. NT4 runs something like 20 or 25 threads by its lonesome. So an easy way to get better performance out of NT is to switch to a dual processor machine. A slower dual process machine will outpeform a faster single processor machine if there are a lot of tasks executing simultaneously.


"A BSOD (stands for Blue Screen O' Death) isn't caused by user error or 'improperly configured' systems. An ordinary user shouldn't be able to crash the system with a hard stop like that."

What's an "ordinary user?" On an improperly configured system, any user can crash the OS.Ordinary User: non-root, non-system adminstrator user. The only time anyone should log in with administrative priveleges is for the purposes of system maintenance. That's one of the problems with a default Windows setup: everyone is admin; the default security setup is everybody gets full access to everything and everybody has write access to system directories and files.

Unix offers the perfect example of why you never run as root without good reason. If you login as root and bring up a shell ('DOS prompt' in Windows parlance) and type the magic incantation:


$ cd /
$ rm -rf *Log out, then shutdown the system. Congratulations! You now have a non-bootable system: the file system is completely empty.

'cd /' changes the working directory to the root (same as C:\). 'rm' is a command that deletes/removes/unlinks files. '-rf' says to recursively delete files and directories without prompting. The '*' says to delete every file.

It's a really easy mistake to make. All it takes is an intention to type something like "rm -rf *.bak" and type "rm -fr * .bak" instead, you've hosed your system.

Running as the administrator is a really Bad Idea from the point of view of system security and integrity: that's the primary reason Windows is as unreliable as it is (that and the poor coding that goes into it).


"A BSOD is the equivalent of a Unix kernel panic: The operating system itself has crashed. It too, is simply a computer program. The crash may be a bug in the OS, it might be due to a hardware problem, or (most likely) it might be due to a problem with a device driver."

Here, you're contradicting your previous statement. A problem with a device driver is a user error.Nope. Device drivers are system software, not user software. They're an extension to the operating system, and in Windows NT and 2000 (and I assume XP) run in priveleged ('kernel mode') memory (ring-0 on Intel CPUs.) -- the same os the operating system's kernel. That means a rogue device driver can crash the operating system: the BSOD. Here's a diagram that shows where device drivers live in the grand scheme of things:

http://www.winntmag.com/Files/4494/Figure_02.gif

User software runs in non-privileged ('user mode') memory (ring-3 on Intel CPUs.) It can't crash the operating system. It can only take out itself. (n.b., In the Intel 'ring' architecture, rings 0 through 3 implement decreasing amounts of privilege for processes running in them: ring-0 has all privileges, ring-3 the least. Rings 1 and 2 aren't used by Windows.)

But because of Micro$oft's slovenly design (actually, it's not the design that's so slovenly, it's the implementation,) any ordinary user (or user process) can do something -- screw up a registry entry, trash or replace a file, etc. -- that will, in turn, cause something in ring-0 to crash.

And there you have your BSOD.

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by LOON:
Nicholas,

"Guess what kind of arithmetic is done more often than any other in a computer program: Integer arithmetic."

Excuse me?You don't build software for a living: I do.

If you go into the detail of what the code is actually doing -- e.g., look the actual machine code emitted by the compiler, -- you'll find that virtually everything done involves integer arithmetic -- That goes from computing the location of the mouse pointer to deciding what color to paint a pixel on the screen.


"About the only time that floating point arithmetic is used is in complicated math calculations (complex spreadsheets) , image processing (photoshop and the like), etc."

What need would one have for high performance workstations if one was not doing graphics and/or spreadsheet, CAD, and some DBMS work?Well, let's see, database software has very little use for floating point work, except where it needs to do calculations on floating point columns. Database systems are intensively I/O bound, not CPU bound -- I/O is what a DMBS does.

And, since most people are buying what amount to very high end workstations these days, I say that word processing, web surfing, playing MP3s, etc.

Virtually none of which requires a lot of floating point work.

Programmers tend to avoid floating point unless there's a real strong reason for using it.


"It's rare that any real program will ever consume more than 10% or so of the CPU. A CPU hitting 70 or 90 percent utilization is usually a sign of a problem. "

Try running realtime stock trading software like RealTick, and scads of Excel and other (Neural Net) market analysis packages...and watch a dual Xeon system go to 50-60%.As I said, those are exactly the sort of applications that will exercise the FPU. But they still do way more integer arithmetic than they do floating point arithmetic.

And you'll note that even with your heavily loaded system, you're still not using more than 25%-30% per CPU.

BTW, on a Wintel box running NT4, the cost of a context switch starts to become expensive once you hit about 40 threads per CPU. NT4 runs something like 20 or 25 threads by its lonesome. So an easy way to get better performance out of NT is to switch to a dual processor machine. A slower dual process machine will outpeform a faster single processor machine if there are a lot of tasks executing simultaneously.


"A BSOD (stands for Blue Screen O' Death) isn't caused by user error or 'improperly configured' systems. An ordinary user shouldn't be able to crash the system with a hard stop like that."

What's an "ordinary user?" On an improperly configured system, any user can crash the OS.Ordinary User: non-root, non-system adminstrator user. The only time anyone should log in with administrative priveleges is for the purposes of system maintenance. That's one of the problems with a default Windows setup: everyone is admin; the default security setup is everybody gets full access to everything and everybody has write access to system directories and files.

Unix offers the perfect example of why you never run as root without good reason. If you login as root and bring up a shell ('DOS prompt' in Windows parlance) and type the magic incantation:


$ cd /
$ rm -rf *Log out, then shutdown the system. Congratulations! You now have a non-bootable system: the file system is completely empty.

'cd /' changes the working directory to the root (same as C:\). 'rm' is a command that deletes/removes/unlinks files. '-rf' says to recursively delete files and directories without prompting. The '*' says to delete every file.

It's a really easy mistake to make. All it takes is an intention to type something like "rm -rf *.bak" and type "rm -fr * .bak" instead, you've hosed your system.

Running as the administrator is a really Bad Idea from the point of view of system security and integrity: that's the primary reason Windows is as unreliable as it is (that and the poor coding that goes into it).


"A BSOD is the equivalent of a Unix kernel panic: The operating system itself has crashed. It too, is simply a computer program. The crash may be a bug in the OS, it might be due to a hardware problem, or (most likely) it might be due to a problem with a device driver."

Here, you're contradicting your previous statement. A problem with a device driver is a user error.Nope. Device drivers are system software, not user software. They're an extension to the operating system, and in Windows NT and 2000 (and I assume XP) run in priveleged ('kernel mode') memory (ring-0 on Intel CPUs.) -- the same os the operating system's kernel. That means a rogue device driver can crash the operating system: the BSOD. Here's a diagram that shows where device drivers live in the grand scheme of things:

http://www.winntmag.com/Files/4494/Figure_02.gif

User software runs in non-privileged ('user mode') memory (ring-3 on Intel CPUs.) It can't crash the operating system. It can only take out itself. (n.b., In the Intel 'ring' architecture, rings 0 through 3 implement decreasing amounts of privilege for processes running in them: ring-0 has all privileges, ring-3 the least. Rings 1 and 2 aren't used by Windows.)

But because of Micro$oft's slovenly design (actually, it's not the design that's so slovenly, it's the implementation,) any ordinary user (or user process) can do something -- screw up a registry entry, trash or replace a file, etc. -- that will, in turn, cause something in ring-0 to crash.

And there you have your BSOD.

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by LOON:
Nicholas,

"Guess what kind of arithmetic is done more often than any other in a computer program: Integer arithmetic."

Excuse me?You don't build software for a living: I do.

If you go into the detail of what the code is actually doing -- e.g., look the actual machine code emitted by the compiler, -- you'll find that virtually everything done involves integer arithmetic -- That goes from computing the location of the mouse pointer to deciding what color to paint a pixel on the screen.


"About the only time that floating point arithmetic is used is in complicated math calculations (complex spreadsheets) , image processing (photoshop and the like), etc."

What need would one have for high performance workstations if one was not doing graphics and/or spreadsheet, CAD, and some DBMS work?Well, let's see, database software has very little use for floating point work, except where it needs to do calculations on floating point columns. Database systems are intensively I/O bound, not CPU bound -- I/O is what a DMBS does.

And, since most people are buying what amount to very high end workstations these days, I say that word processing, web surfing, playing MP3s, etc.

Virtually none of which requires a lot of floating point work.

Programmers tend to avoid floating point unless there's a real strong reason for using it.


"It's rare that any real program will ever consume more than 10% or so of the CPU. A CPU hitting 70 or 90 percent utilization is usually a sign of a problem. "

Try running realtime stock trading software like RealTick, and scads of Excel and other (Neural Net) market analysis packages...and watch a dual Xeon system go to 50-60%.As I said, those are exactly the sort of applications that will exercise the FPU. But they still do way more integer arithmetic than they do floating point arithmetic.

And you'll note that even with your heavily loaded system, you're still not using more than 25%-30% per CPU.

BTW, on a Wintel box running NT4, the cost of a context switch starts to become expensive once you hit about 40 threads per CPU. NT4 runs something like 20 or 25 threads by its lonesome. So an easy way to get better performance out of NT is to switch to a dual processor machine. A slower dual process machine will outpeform a faster single processor machine if there are a lot of tasks executing simultaneously.


"A BSOD (stands for Blue Screen O' Death) isn't caused by user error or 'improperly configured' systems. An ordinary user shouldn't be able to crash the system with a hard stop like that."

What's an "ordinary user?" On an improperly configured system, any user can crash the OS.Ordinary User: non-root, non-system adminstrator user. The only time anyone should log in with administrative priveleges is for the purposes of system maintenance. That's one of the problems with a default Windows setup: everyone is admin; the default security setup is everybody gets full access to everything and everybody has write access to system directories and files.

Unix offers the perfect example of why you never run as root without good reason. If you login as root and bring up a shell ('DOS prompt' in Windows parlance) and type the magic incantation:


$ cd /
$ rm -rf *Log out, then shutdown the system. Congratulations! You now have a non-bootable system: the file system is completely empty.

'cd /' changes the working directory to the root (same as C:\). 'rm' is a command that deletes/removes/unlinks files. '-rf' says to recursively delete files and directories without prompting. The '*' says to delete every file.

It's a really easy mistake to make. All it takes is an intention to type something like "rm -rf *.bak" and type "rm -fr * .bak" instead, you've hosed your system.

Running as the administrator is a really Bad Idea from the point of view of system security and integrity: that's the primary reason Windows is as unreliable as it is (that and the poor coding that goes into it).


"A BSOD is the equivalent of a Unix kernel panic: The operating system itself has crashed. It too, is simply a computer program. The crash may be a bug in the OS, it might be due to a hardware problem, or (most likely) it might be due to a problem with a device driver."

Here, you're contradicting your previous statement. A problem with a device driver is a user error.Nope. Device drivers are system software, not user software. They're an extension to the operating system, and in Windows NT and 2000 (and I assume XP) run in priveleged ('kernel mode') memory (ring-0 on Intel CPUs.) -- the same os the operating system's kernel. That means a rogue device driver can crash the operating system: the BSOD. Here's a diagram that shows where device drivers live in the grand scheme of things:

http://www.winntmag.com/Files/4494/Figure_02.gif

User software runs in non-privileged ('user mode') memory (ring-3 on Intel CPUs.) It can't crash the operating system. It can only take out itself. (n.b., In the Intel 'ring' architecture, rings 0 through 3 implement decreasing amounts of privilege for processes running in them: ring-0 has all privileges, ring-3 the least. Rings 1 and 2 aren't used by Windows.)

But because of Micro$oft's slovenly design (actually, it's not the design that's so slovenly, it's the implementation,) any ordinary user (or user process) can do something -- screw up a registry entry, trash or replace a file, etc. -- that will, in turn, cause something in ring-0 to crash.

And there you have your BSOD.

[Donn]

Yep...spits docs to the printer, and synch's with SWMBO's Newton over infra-red, and even does voice recording and handwriting recognition.

Still state of the art in handhelds...the only thing Apple ever did right, and the jerk, Jobs, put it on the shelf, stranding thousands of developers and hundreds of thousands of users. So far, he's turned down 3 buyers for the technology.

[Donn]

Yep...spits docs to the printer, and synch's with SWMBO's Newton over infra-red, and even does voice recording and handwriting recognition.

Still state of the art in handhelds...the only thing Apple ever did right, and the jerk, Jobs, put it on the shelf, stranding thousands of developers and hundreds of thousands of users. So far, he's turned down 3 buyers for the technology.

[Donn]

Yep...spits docs to the printer, and synch's with SWMBO's Newton over infra-red, and even does voice recording and handwriting recognition.

Still state of the art in handhelds...the only thing Apple ever did right, and the jerk, Jobs, put it on the shelf, stranding thousands of developers and hundreds of thousands of users. So far, he's turned down 3 buyers for the technology.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Ummmmm Donn Nicholas just did a much better job of explaining the Wondoz parfait theory I was trying to explain to you smile.gif

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Ummmmm Donn Nicholas just did a much better job of explaining the Wondoz parfait theory I was trying to explain to you smile.gif

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Ummmmm Donn Nicholas just did a much better job of explaining the Wondoz parfait theory I was trying to explain to you smile.gif

[gunnar I am]

Run Gunnar! Run! Technical Things ! Run!

[gunnar I am]

Run Gunnar! Run! Technical Things ! Run!

[gunnar I am]

Run Gunnar! Run! Technical Things ! Run!

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Yup Gunnar looks like thats what Donn did seems like after Nicholas post its been all quite on Great South Bay :D

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Yup Gunnar looks like thats what Donn did seems like after Nicholas post its been all quite on Great South Bay :D

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Yup Gunnar looks like thats what Donn did seems like after Nicholas post its been all quite on Great South Bay :D

[mmd]

Whew! Talk about trying to take a drink from a fire hose. :D ("Information overload! System crash! Run, Will Robinson, run!)

[mmd]

Whew! Talk about trying to take a drink from a fire hose. :D ("Information overload! System crash! Run, Will Robinson, run!)

[mmd]

Whew! Talk about trying to take a drink from a fire hose. :D ("Information overload! System crash! Run, Will Robinson, run!)

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by LOON:
Yep...spits docs to the printer, and synch's with SWMBO's Newton over infra-red, and even does voice recording and handwriting recognition.

Still state of the art in handhelds...the only thing Apple ever did right, and the jerk, Jobs, put it on the shelf, stranding thousands of developers and hundreds of thousands of users. So far, he's turned down 3 buyers for the technology.The Newton is great technology.

The fact that there is still an active Newton community out there says a lot about the technology, especially since you can get a much more powerful PalmOS device for quite reasonable prices.

I think one of the big problems Newton had was that it is adaptive software -- it learns the user's handwriting over time. Which makes it a true one-person machine.

When it first came out, they handed them out to reviewers for a month or two. It never had a chance. The reviewers have this groovy techno-whiz-bang box and show it to all their friends/acquaintances/enemies/people-they-meet-on-the-street, etc. and let them play with it.

The poor machine never had a chance to learn the users handwriting because (1) it was in the reviewers hands for too short a period of time and (2) while they had it, it was loaned to everybody in the aforementioned list, confusing the hell out of the handwriting recognition system.

Consequently, the reviewers panned it as 'not quite ready for prime time.'

The same thing happened when actual customers got hold of a Newton for themselves. They let anybody they met play with it and confused the hell out of it, and then decided it was no good.

I think Steve Jobs was right to keep the Newton technology in his pocket. Since Palm has now proved the worth of handwriting recognition...

I daresay that sometime in the [realitively] near future that you'll see Newton technology start to crop up in OS X (Jaguar already has some sort of handwriting recognition int it) -- and I'm willing to bet that the iPod, or Son of iPod will know what to do with a pencil.

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by LOON:
Yep...spits docs to the printer, and synch's with SWMBO's Newton over infra-red, and even does voice recording and handwriting recognition.

Still state of the art in handhelds...the only thing Apple ever did right, and the jerk, Jobs, put it on the shelf, stranding thousands of developers and hundreds of thousands of users. So far, he's turned down 3 buyers for the technology.The Newton is great technology.

The fact that there is still an active Newton community out there says a lot about the technology, especially since you can get a much more powerful PalmOS device for quite reasonable prices.

I think one of the big problems Newton had was that it is adaptive software -- it learns the user's handwriting over time. Which makes it a true one-person machine.

When it first came out, they handed them out to reviewers for a month or two. It never had a chance. The reviewers have this groovy techno-whiz-bang box and show it to all their friends/acquaintances/enemies/people-they-meet-on-the-street, etc. and let them play with it.

The poor machine never had a chance to learn the users handwriting because (1) it was in the reviewers hands for too short a period of time and (2) while they had it, it was loaned to everybody in the aforementioned list, confusing the hell out of the handwriting recognition system.

Consequently, the reviewers panned it as 'not quite ready for prime time.'

The same thing happened when actual customers got hold of a Newton for themselves. They let anybody they met play with it and confused the hell out of it, and then decided it was no good.

I think Steve Jobs was right to keep the Newton technology in his pocket. Since Palm has now proved the worth of handwriting recognition...

I daresay that sometime in the [realitively] near future that you'll see Newton technology start to crop up in OS X (Jaguar already has some sort of handwriting recognition int it) -- and I'm willing to bet that the iPod, or Son of iPod will know what to do with a pencil.

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by LOON:
Yep...spits docs to the printer, and synch's with SWMBO's Newton over infra-red, and even does voice recording and handwriting recognition.

Still state of the art in handhelds...the only thing Apple ever did right, and the jerk, Jobs, put it on the shelf, stranding thousands of developers and hundreds of thousands of users. So far, he's turned down 3 buyers for the technology.The Newton is great technology.

The fact that there is still an active Newton community out there says a lot about the technology, especially since you can get a much more powerful PalmOS device for quite reasonable prices.

I think one of the big problems Newton had was that it is adaptive software -- it learns the user's handwriting over time. Which makes it a true one-person machine.

When it first came out, they handed them out to reviewers for a month or two. It never had a chance. The reviewers have this groovy techno-whiz-bang box and show it to all their friends/acquaintances/enemies/people-they-meet-on-the-street, etc. and let them play with it.

The poor machine never had a chance to learn the users handwriting because (1) it was in the reviewers hands for too short a period of time and (2) while they had it, it was loaned to everybody in the aforementioned list, confusing the hell out of the handwriting recognition system.

Consequently, the reviewers panned it as 'not quite ready for prime time.'

The same thing happened when actual customers got hold of a Newton for themselves. They let anybody they met play with it and confused the hell out of it, and then decided it was no good.

I think Steve Jobs was right to keep the Newton technology in his pocket. Since Palm has now proved the worth of handwriting recognition...

I daresay that sometime in the [realitively] near future that you'll see Newton technology start to crop up in OS X (Jaguar already has some sort of handwriting recognition int it) -- and I'm willing to bet that the iPod, or Son of iPod will know what to do with a pencil.

[Meerkat]

The first really decent "real" handwriting recognition ("HR") that I've seen is, alas, on Win-CE 3.0 (Pocket PC - "PPC"). I've heard rumors that the illegal monopoly with the blessings of the government has a lock on HR with some new patents.

Having said that, any kind of recognition (voice, handwriting, image, other) is a horsepower issue. How much computer power can you bring to bear on the problem? For a PPC running at 206 Mhz to do as well as it does on cursive handwriting is pretty surprising. When pocket devices start having about a 1 Ghz processor or better, "voice writing" in your pocket becomes a viable possibility - IBM's ViaVoice for the PPC wouldn't work reliably for me at all. Fortunately it was free.

Anyone watch "Enterprise"? Those paperback book sized tablets they use are cool and just about the right size IMO (similar in size to the old Newton I had and returned). The new MS tablet architecture is too big and far too expensive to get out of the niche market. Why pay $2000+ for one when you can get a reasonably decent laptop with the same or better specs for $800 less new?

[Meerkat]

The first really decent "real" handwriting recognition ("HR") that I've seen is, alas, on Win-CE 3.0 (Pocket PC - "PPC"). I've heard rumors that the illegal monopoly with the blessings of the government has a lock on HR with some new patents.

Having said that, any kind of recognition (voice, handwriting, image, other) is a horsepower issue. How much computer power can you bring to bear on the problem? For a PPC running at 206 Mhz to do as well as it does on cursive handwriting is pretty surprising. When pocket devices start having about a 1 Ghz processor or better, "voice writing" in your pocket becomes a viable possibility - IBM's ViaVoice for the PPC wouldn't work reliably for me at all. Fortunately it was free.

Anyone watch "Enterprise"? Those paperback book sized tablets they use are cool and just about the right size IMO (similar in size to the old Newton I had and returned). The new MS tablet architecture is too big and far too expensive to get out of the niche market. Why pay $2000+ for one when you can get a reasonably decent laptop with the same or better specs for $800 less new?

[Meerkat]

The first really decent "real" handwriting recognition ("HR") that I've seen is, alas, on Win-CE 3.0 (Pocket PC - "PPC"). I've heard rumors that the illegal monopoly with the blessings of the government has a lock on HR with some new patents.

Having said that, any kind of recognition (voice, handwriting, image, other) is a horsepower issue. How much computer power can you bring to bear on the problem? For a PPC running at 206 Mhz to do as well as it does on cursive handwriting is pretty surprising. When pocket devices start having about a 1 Ghz processor or better, "voice writing" in your pocket becomes a viable possibility - IBM's ViaVoice for the PPC wouldn't work reliably for me at all. Fortunately it was free.

Anyone watch "Enterprise"? Those paperback book sized tablets they use are cool and just about the right size IMO (similar in size to the old Newton I had and returned). The new MS tablet architecture is too big and far too expensive to get out of the niche market. Why pay $2000+ for one when you can get a reasonably decent laptop with the same or better specs for $800 less new?

[Donn]

Nicholas"

"You don't build software for a living: I do."

You're right...I'm retired for a living, but one the things I do to continue to earn money, is consult on the interface of technology and business. Software developers work for me. You have the same affliction that many software developers have; an inability to look beyond the code.

In a home/home office/small office environment, there is seldom a difference between the user and the administrator, they are the same person, the owner of the PC. When a device driver needs to be updated, they don't call IT, they download and install the new driver. As we both know, peripheral manufacturers aren't the best at providing sufficient instructions/systems support for these installations. If a mistake is made, and a BSOD occurs, it's a user error created system crash. That's reality. That's the most common cause of a BSOD in that environment.

In the networked multi-user environment, the user that causes the BSOD is the system's admin, and, usually not a workstation user, because the sysadmin maintains the device drivers.

"But because of Micro$oft's slovenly design (actually, it's not the design that's so slovenly, it's the implementation,) any ordinary user (or user process) can do something -- screw up a registry entry, trash or replace a file, etc. -- that will, in turn, cause something in ring-0 to crash.

And there you have your BSOD."

There's no reason to slander Microsoft. I find it interesting that the same user who faults Microsoft for releasing incomplete software and continually updating it, thinks it's "optimization" when Apple releases version 10, 10.1, 10.2, etc...but I digress.

In a properly configured NT network, the only user who can effect a fatal registry alteration, or delete or replace a system enabling file, is the sysadmin. You're correct to point out that it's not the software design, but slovenly implementation. That slovenly implementation is generally on the part of the sysadmin.

Jim:(thread starter)

"I currently use it at the office for faxes (sp) /internet connection/spreadsheet & wordprocessing. None of the software I currently use would push the "envelope" any of the new machines. What I "need" is hard drive space, a decent amount of ram (256 or better) and a modem. What I "want" is a cd-rom & cd-rw drive and usb connections."

"I picked the Dimension 2300 with the Pentium 4 2Ghz with 256 of RAM, 30GB hard drive (I'll never use all of that - noooo!), 48X24X48 cd-rw and a 48X cd-rom."

Jim got way more PC than his stated needs and wants would require, and paid around a grand for it.

Joe and Nicholas:

Regarding the Mac/Intel comparisons...since Joe wouldn't provide me with the explanation of the asterisk in Apple's claim, I checked their website for information on the G4. I couldn't find the exact same copy, but did find this:

"The dual 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 processors — with a combined performance of 18 billion floating-point operations per second, or 18 gigaflops — put this fearsomely fast Power Mac G4 squarely in the lead as the ultimate high-end graphics workstation. The twin-engined 1.25GHz G4 runs professional applications like Adobe Photoshop up to 90 percent faster than a 2.53GHz Pentium 4-based PC. To harness all this power required the new system controller designed for Xserve as well as its L3 cache and DDR memory."

Sounds pretty impressive, eh? Unfortunately, they're comparing a dual processor RISC architecture to a single processor CISC architecture. Let's compare a single G4 chipset to a single Itanium 2 chipset, one of Intel's answers to RISC.

Power Mac G4
Proprietary RISC architecture
1 GHZ processor
256K L2 cache
2MB L3 cache
167MHZ system bus
128 bit data path
1.3GB/s bandwidth

Intel Itanium 2
EPIC architecture(explicit parallel instruction computing)
1GHZ processor
256K L2 cache
3MB L3 cache
400MHZ system bus
128 bit data path
6.4GB/s bandwidth

Not only does Intel have the better performing chipset/bus combination, but it has the benefit of the vast majority of system and software developers working on it's stuff. Someone else on the thread said that Apple's market share was only 5% because of the marketing power and shenanigans of the WinTel juggernaut. I don't think that's entirely true. When a business hires operators, they are dealing with a workforce that has experience with Windows based software. When you call an employment agency or run an ad for a Mac operator, you're working from a severely diminished base of possible employees. The same goes for software and systems solutions. Nicholas, your resume is a great example. You state that the OS's you work in are Windows/NT,Windows v3.1 and
OS/2.

[Donn]

Nicholas"

"You don't build software for a living: I do."

You're right...I'm retired for a living, but one the things I do to continue to earn money, is consult on the interface of technology and business. Software developers work for me. You have the same affliction that many software developers have; an inability to look beyond the code.

In a home/home office/small office environment, there is seldom a difference between the user and the administrator, they are the same person, the owner of the PC. When a device driver needs to be updated, they don't call IT, they download and install the new driver. As we both know, peripheral manufacturers aren't the best at providing sufficient instructions/systems support for these installations. If a mistake is made, and a BSOD occurs, it's a user error created system crash. That's reality. That's the most common cause of a BSOD in that environment.

In the networked multi-user environment, the user that causes the BSOD is the system's admin, and, usually not a workstation user, because the sysadmin maintains the device drivers.

"But because of Micro$oft's slovenly design (actually, it's not the design that's so slovenly, it's the implementation,) any ordinary user (or user process) can do something -- screw up a registry entry, trash or replace a file, etc. -- that will, in turn, cause something in ring-0 to crash.

And there you have your BSOD."

There's no reason to slander Microsoft. I find it interesting that the same user who faults Microsoft for releasing incomplete software and continually updating it, thinks it's "optimization" when Apple releases version 10, 10.1, 10.2, etc...but I digress.

In a properly configured NT network, the only user who can effect a fatal registry alteration, or delete or replace a system enabling file, is the sysadmin. You're correct to point out that it's not the software design, but slovenly implementation. That slovenly implementation is generally on the part of the sysadmin.

Jim:(thread starter)

"I currently use it at the office for faxes (sp) /internet connection/spreadsheet & wordprocessing. None of the software I currently use would push the "envelope" any of the new machines. What I "need" is hard drive space, a decent amount of ram (256 or better) and a modem. What I "want" is a cd-rom & cd-rw drive and usb connections."

"I picked the Dimension 2300 with the Pentium 4 2Ghz with 256 of RAM, 30GB hard drive (I'll never use all of that - noooo!), 48X24X48 cd-rw and a 48X cd-rom."

Jim got way more PC than his stated needs and wants would require, and paid around a grand for it.

Joe and Nicholas:

Regarding the Mac/Intel comparisons...since Joe wouldn't provide me with the explanation of the asterisk in Apple's claim, I checked their website for information on the G4. I couldn't find the exact same copy, but did find this:

"The dual 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 processors — with a combined performance of 18 billion floating-point operations per second, or 18 gigaflops — put this fearsomely fast Power Mac G4 squarely in the lead as the ultimate high-end graphics workstation. The twin-engined 1.25GHz G4 runs professional applications like Adobe Photoshop up to 90 percent faster than a 2.53GHz Pentium 4-based PC. To harness all this power required the new system controller designed for Xserve as well as its L3 cache and DDR memory."

Sounds pretty impressive, eh? Unfortunately, they're comparing a dual processor RISC architecture to a single processor CISC architecture. Let's compare a single G4 chipset to a single Itanium 2 chipset, one of Intel's answers to RISC.

Power Mac G4
Proprietary RISC architecture
1 GHZ processor
256K L2 cache
2MB L3 cache
167MHZ system bus
128 bit data path
1.3GB/s bandwidth

Intel Itanium 2
EPIC architecture(explicit parallel instruction computing)
1GHZ processor
256K L2 cache
3MB L3 cache
400MHZ system bus
128 bit data path
6.4GB/s bandwidth

Not only does Intel have the better performing chipset/bus combination, but it has the benefit of the vast majority of system and software developers working on it's stuff. Someone else on the thread said that Apple's market share was only 5% because of the marketing power and shenanigans of the WinTel juggernaut. I don't think that's entirely true. When a business hires operators, they are dealing with a workforce that has experience with Windows based software. When you call an employment agency or run an ad for a Mac operator, you're working from a severely diminished base of possible employees. The same goes for software and systems solutions. Nicholas, your resume is a great example. You state that the OS's you work in are Windows/NT,Windows v3.1 and
OS/2.

[Donn]

Nicholas"

"You don't build software for a living: I do."

You're right...I'm retired for a living, but one the things I do to continue to earn money, is consult on the interface of technology and business. Software developers work for me. You have the same affliction that many software developers have; an inability to look beyond the code.

In a home/home office/small office environment, there is seldom a difference between the user and the administrator, they are the same person, the owner of the PC. When a device driver needs to be updated, they don't call IT, they download and install the new driver. As we both know, peripheral manufacturers aren't the best at providing sufficient instructions/systems support for these installations. If a mistake is made, and a BSOD occurs, it's a user error created system crash. That's reality. That's the most common cause of a BSOD in that environment.

In the networked multi-user environment, the user that causes the BSOD is the system's admin, and, usually not a workstation user, because the sysadmin maintains the device drivers.

"But because of Micro$oft's slovenly design (actually, it's not the design that's so slovenly, it's the implementation,) any ordinary user (or user process) can do something -- screw up a registry entry, trash or replace a file, etc. -- that will, in turn, cause something in ring-0 to crash.

And there you have your BSOD."

There's no reason to slander Microsoft. I find it interesting that the same user who faults Microsoft for releasing incomplete software and continually updating it, thinks it's "optimization" when Apple releases version 10, 10.1, 10.2, etc...but I digress.

In a properly configured NT network, the only user who can effect a fatal registry alteration, or delete or replace a system enabling file, is the sysadmin. You're correct to point out that it's not the software design, but slovenly implementation. That slovenly implementation is generally on the part of the sysadmin.

Jim:(thread starter)

"I currently use it at the office for faxes (sp) /internet connection/spreadsheet & wordprocessing. None of the software I currently use would push the "envelope" any of the new machines. What I "need" is hard drive space, a decent amount of ram (256 or better) and a modem. What I "want" is a cd-rom & cd-rw drive and usb connections."

"I picked the Dimension 2300 with the Pentium 4 2Ghz with 256 of RAM, 30GB hard drive (I'll never use all of that - noooo!), 48X24X48 cd-rw and a 48X cd-rom."

Jim got way more PC than his stated needs and wants would require, and paid around a grand for it.

Joe and Nicholas:

Regarding the Mac/Intel comparisons...since Joe wouldn't provide me with the explanation of the asterisk in Apple's claim, I checked their website for information on the G4. I couldn't find the exact same copy, but did find this:

"The dual 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 processors — with a combined performance of 18 billion floating-point operations per second, or 18 gigaflops — put this fearsomely fast Power Mac G4 squarely in the lead as the ultimate high-end graphics workstation. The twin-engined 1.25GHz G4 runs professional applications like Adobe Photoshop up to 90 percent faster than a 2.53GHz Pentium 4-based PC. To harness all this power required the new system controller designed for Xserve as well as its L3 cache and DDR memory."

Sounds pretty impressive, eh? Unfortunately, they're comparing a dual processor RISC architecture to a single processor CISC architecture. Let's compare a single G4 chipset to a single Itanium 2 chipset, one of Intel's answers to RISC.

Power Mac G4
Proprietary RISC architecture
1 GHZ processor
256K L2 cache
2MB L3 cache
167MHZ system bus
128 bit data path
1.3GB/s bandwidth

Intel Itanium 2
EPIC architecture(explicit parallel instruction computing)
1GHZ processor
256K L2 cache
3MB L3 cache
400MHZ system bus
128 bit data path
6.4GB/s bandwidth

Not only does Intel have the better performing chipset/bus combination, but it has the benefit of the vast majority of system and software developers working on it's stuff. Someone else on the thread said that Apple's market share was only 5% because of the marketing power and shenanigans of the WinTel juggernaut. I don't think that's entirely true. When a business hires operators, they are dealing with a workforce that has experience with Windows based software. When you call an employment agency or run an ad for a Mac operator, you're working from a severely diminished base of possible employees. The same goes for software and systems solutions. Nicholas, your resume is a great example. You state that the OS's you work in are Windows/NT,Windows v3.1 and
OS/2.

[Meerkat]

Hmmmm...

EPIC is also a proprietary architecture.

A 400 Mhz bus is a huge advantage. It's also a considerably faster bus then 99% of all CPU chips that Intel sells - or AMD for that matter.

If Itanium II is as successful as Itanium I was, Intel is going down with the Itanic! No one has been able to dispell the rumors that Intel is working on a "lesser" 64 bit chip because the Itanium has been so spectacularly unsuccessful. Meanwhile, AMD will roll out it's 64 bit "Hammer" in the next few months - which happily won't require you to buy all new software the way Itanium would.

Stating that Microsoftware is slovenly isn't slander if it's the truth - which it is. MS, like IBM, isn't a technology company, it's a marketing company (however it started out). They are less concerned with the quality of the product then that you buy it. That's a lot of what the DOJ suit was about (how they got you to buy it).

[Meerkat]

Hmmmm...

EPIC is also a proprietary architecture.

A 400 Mhz bus is a huge advantage. It's also a considerably faster bus then 99% of all CPU chips that Intel sells - or AMD for that matter.

If Itanium II is as successful as Itanium I was, Intel is going down with the Itanic! No one has been able to dispell the rumors that Intel is working on a "lesser" 64 bit chip because the Itanium has been so spectacularly unsuccessful. Meanwhile, AMD will roll out it's 64 bit "Hammer" in the next few months - which happily won't require you to buy all new software the way Itanium would.

Stating that Microsoftware is slovenly isn't slander if it's the truth - which it is. MS, like IBM, isn't a technology company, it's a marketing company (however it started out). They are less concerned with the quality of the product then that you buy it. That's a lot of what the DOJ suit was about (how they got you to buy it).

[Meerkat]

Hmmmm...

EPIC is also a proprietary architecture.

A 400 Mhz bus is a huge advantage. It's also a considerably faster bus then 99% of all CPU chips that Intel sells - or AMD for that matter.

If Itanium II is as successful as Itanium I was, Intel is going down with the Itanic! No one has been able to dispell the rumors that Intel is working on a "lesser" 64 bit chip because the Itanium has been so spectacularly unsuccessful. Meanwhile, AMD will roll out it's 64 bit "Hammer" in the next few months - which happily won't require you to buy all new software the way Itanium would.

Stating that Microsoftware is slovenly isn't slander if it's the truth - which it is. MS, like IBM, isn't a technology company, it's a marketing company (however it started out). They are less concerned with the quality of the product then that you buy it. That's a lot of what the DOJ suit was about (how they got you to buy it).

[Donn]

Regarding the Newton:

I think the handwriting recognition was a seriously overblown feature. Even when they fixed it, in the MP2K and MP2100, it was not the device's primary feature for most users.

IMO, the 2100 mastered the portable computer genre. My business was buying overstock and remaindered books from publishers, and reselling them to booksellers. My 2100 carried a snapshot of my inventory in a database package called Leverage. With it, I could reference my inventory of over 25,000 titles, by any of about 30 fields of data linked to the item#.

If I was at a publisher's office shopping for books, I could tell at a glance what I had in stock, what used to be in stock, what I paid, what I sold it for, who bought it, it's rate of sale, its roi, and a myriad of other info...all from that tiny form factor. I could also generate an order for the publisher, and print it off on any printer he might have in his office.

If I was selling, in my showroom or on the road, I had the same access to data, and the ability to take an order from the customer right in the machine, decrementing my inventory levels as the order was entered. If I was in my showroom, the customers order was transmitted via IR to a printer for a copy for the customer, and to my PC, which was networked with the AS400 that ran my business.

The increased internal memory, the StrongArm 167MHZ processor and the addition of the second PCMCIA slot, made the MP2x models real pocket (almost) powerhouses. And the most wondrous feature of all...it came on instantly..no POST.

Jobs put the Newton on the shelf because he was trying to save the company. The project was never profitable, even though it was elegant. It never reached the mass market that would have made it profitable. At the time, Apple had to make hard choices to stay in business...and shelving the Newton was one of them. If they bring it back in an up-to-date form factor, and with comparable technology, I'll be a customer.

[Donn]

Regarding the Newton:

I think the handwriting recognition was a seriously overblown feature. Even when they fixed it, in the MP2K and MP2100, it was not the device's primary feature for most users.

IMO, the 2100 mastered the portable computer genre. My business was buying overstock and remaindered books from publishers, and reselling them to booksellers. My 2100 carried a snapshot of my inventory in a database package called Leverage. With it, I could reference my inventory of over 25,000 titles, by any of about 30 fields of data linked to the item#.

If I was at a publisher's office shopping for books, I could tell at a glance what I had in stock, what used to be in stock, what I paid, what I sold it for, who bought it, it's rate of sale, its roi, and a myriad of other info...all from that tiny form factor. I could also generate an order for the publisher, and print it off on any printer he might have in his office.

If I was selling, in my showroom or on the road, I had the same access to data, and the ability to take an order from the customer right in the machine, decrementing my inventory levels as the order was entered. If I was in my showroom, the customers order was transmitted via IR to a printer for a copy for the customer, and to my PC, which was networked with the AS400 that ran my business.

The increased internal memory, the StrongArm 167MHZ processor and the addition of the second PCMCIA slot, made the MP2x models real pocket (almost) powerhouses. And the most wondrous feature of all...it came on instantly..no POST.

Jobs put the Newton on the shelf because he was trying to save the company. The project was never profitable, even though it was elegant. It never reached the mass market that would have made it profitable. At the time, Apple had to make hard choices to stay in business...and shelving the Newton was one of them. If they bring it back in an up-to-date form factor, and with comparable technology, I'll be a customer.

[Donn]

Regarding the Newton:

I think the handwriting recognition was a seriously overblown feature. Even when they fixed it, in the MP2K and MP2100, it was not the device's primary feature for most users.

IMO, the 2100 mastered the portable computer genre. My business was buying overstock and remaindered books from publishers, and reselling them to booksellers. My 2100 carried a snapshot of my inventory in a database package called Leverage. With it, I could reference my inventory of over 25,000 titles, by any of about 30 fields of data linked to the item#.

If I was at a publisher's office shopping for books, I could tell at a glance what I had in stock, what used to be in stock, what I paid, what I sold it for, who bought it, it's rate of sale, its roi, and a myriad of other info...all from that tiny form factor. I could also generate an order for the publisher, and print it off on any printer he might have in his office.

If I was selling, in my showroom or on the road, I had the same access to data, and the ability to take an order from the customer right in the machine, decrementing my inventory levels as the order was entered. If I was in my showroom, the customers order was transmitted via IR to a printer for a copy for the customer, and to my PC, which was networked with the AS400 that ran my business.

The increased internal memory, the StrongArm 167MHZ processor and the addition of the second PCMCIA slot, made the MP2x models real pocket (almost) powerhouses. And the most wondrous feature of all...it came on instantly..no POST.

Jobs put the Newton on the shelf because he was trying to save the company. The project was never profitable, even though it was elegant. It never reached the mass market that would have made it profitable. At the time, Apple had to make hard choices to stay in business...and shelving the Newton was one of them. If they bring it back in an up-to-date form factor, and with comparable technology, I'll be a customer.

[Jim H]

Donn, actually less than a grand. I already have a monitor and I traded off some small options for others, resulting in a discount. I decided to buy a machine that would last another 5 yrs (good luck on that!). Some of what they offered I could have installed myself, but considering the number of unfinished tasks that have accumulated (no fault of my own) I was willing to spend a little more to let them do it for me. Now I'll be able to post pictures and do a lot of things my old PB refused to do. :D

[Jim H]

Donn, actually less than a grand. I already have a monitor and I traded off some small options for others, resulting in a discount. I decided to buy a machine that would last another 5 yrs (good luck on that!). Some of what they offered I could have installed myself, but considering the number of unfinished tasks that have accumulated (no fault of my own) I was willing to spend a little more to let them do it for me. Now I'll be able to post pictures and do a lot of things my old PB refused to do. :D

[Jim H]

Donn, actually less than a grand. I already have a monitor and I traded off some small options for others, resulting in a discount. I decided to buy a machine that would last another 5 yrs (good luck on that!). Some of what they offered I could have installed myself, but considering the number of unfinished tasks that have accumulated (no fault of my own) I was willing to spend a little more to let them do it for me. Now I'll be able to post pictures and do a lot of things my old PB refused to do. :D

[Donn]

Jim...it looks like a great machine. I priced it with just the cdrw and a 17" flat panel, and it was $1422...mighty tempting.

[Donn]

Jim...it looks like a great machine. I priced it with just the cdrw and a 17" flat panel, and it was $1422...mighty tempting.

[Donn]

Jim...it looks like a great machine. I priced it with just the cdrw and a 17" flat panel, and it was $1422...mighty tempting.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Donn you forgetting one very important piece of the Newton puzzle. Newton was a Scully project, Scully ousted the boy wonder Jobs and when Jobs came back he got rid of all things Scully. Its a shame because those very search features you spoke about and the Newton OS was the closest I have seen to a true human interface on ANY computer. I may not be able to eloquently say this but it was intuitive. For example after you set up your data base of contacts and you wrote Lunch tomorrow with Lisa @ Bouley tap assist it would automatically go to your datebook and schedule an appointment for 12:00 noon (Lunch time) with My wife Lisa (based on how many times I chose that Lisa out of all other Lisa's (It would learn) at Bouley restaurant by double tapping either the word Lisa or Bouley it would pull up the info. If I wrote call Lisa it would ONLY pull up the phone # and would produce the call tones that you could hold to a phone receiver to make the call for you. By the way the whole fuss with the hand writhing recognition for whatever reason I NEVER had trouble with it I must write Newtonian either that or all those years of Catholic school penmanship paid off. Also I have a eMate from a strictly Industrial Design Point of view my daughter uses it now ITS INDESTRUCTIBLE. That's another case for Apple how many people do you know that have a collection of Gateways they keep just because there beautiful. I have an original 1985 Mac B/W monitor and all I have a quadra 860 - 2 Newton's and the eMate 1 Powerbook and one iBook I have and I even have iPod MP3 ( soooo cool)

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Donn you forgetting one very important piece of the Newton puzzle. Newton was a Scully project, Scully ousted the boy wonder Jobs and when Jobs came back he got rid of all things Scully. Its a shame because those very search features you spoke about and the Newton OS was the closest I have seen to a true human interface on ANY computer. I may not be able to eloquently say this but it was intuitive. For example after you set up your data base of contacts and you wrote Lunch tomorrow with Lisa @ Bouley tap assist it would automatically go to your datebook and schedule an appointment for 12:00 noon (Lunch time) with My wife Lisa (based on how many times I chose that Lisa out of all other Lisa's (It would learn) at Bouley restaurant by double tapping either the word Lisa or Bouley it would pull up the info. If I wrote call Lisa it would ONLY pull up the phone # and would produce the call tones that you could hold to a phone receiver to make the call for you. By the way the whole fuss with the hand writhing recognition for whatever reason I NEVER had trouble with it I must write Newtonian either that or all those years of Catholic school penmanship paid off. Also I have a eMate from a strictly Industrial Design Point of view my daughter uses it now ITS INDESTRUCTIBLE. That's another case for Apple how many people do you know that have a collection of Gateways they keep just because there beautiful. I have an original 1985 Mac B/W monitor and all I have a quadra 860 - 2 Newton's and the eMate 1 Powerbook and one iBook I have and I even have iPod MP3 ( soooo cool)

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Donn you forgetting one very important piece of the Newton puzzle. Newton was a Scully project, Scully ousted the boy wonder Jobs and when Jobs came back he got rid of all things Scully. Its a shame because those very search features you spoke about and the Newton OS was the closest I have seen to a true human interface on ANY computer. I may not be able to eloquently say this but it was intuitive. For example after you set up your data base of contacts and you wrote Lunch tomorrow with Lisa @ Bouley tap assist it would automatically go to your datebook and schedule an appointment for 12:00 noon (Lunch time) with My wife Lisa (based on how many times I chose that Lisa out of all other Lisa's (It would learn) at Bouley restaurant by double tapping either the word Lisa or Bouley it would pull up the info. If I wrote call Lisa it would ONLY pull up the phone # and would produce the call tones that you could hold to a phone receiver to make the call for you. By the way the whole fuss with the hand writhing recognition for whatever reason I NEVER had trouble with it I must write Newtonian either that or all those years of Catholic school penmanship paid off. Also I have a eMate from a strictly Industrial Design Point of view my daughter uses it now ITS INDESTRUCTIBLE. That's another case for Apple how many people do you know that have a collection of Gateways they keep just because there beautiful. I have an original 1985 Mac B/W monitor and all I have a quadra 860 - 2 Newton's and the eMate 1 Powerbook and one iBook I have and I even have iPod MP3 ( soooo cool)

[rustnrot]

I just got the following emachines refurb for $375 delivered from ubid.com. 90 day warranty. Yep, unlike many computers on ebay and the ilk comes with XP and the software listed below. I need to network to my old machine that does not have XP. I've decided, for the price, to get a whole new (refurb) machine that has XP on it to replace the other old machine rather than spend $100 or so just for the XP upgrade.

Specifications of eMachines T1980

AMD Athlon™ XP processor 1900+
(1.6 GHz) with QuantiSpeed™ architecture
Via KM 266 chipset
Dimensions: 7.25"w x 14.125"h x 16"d
80 GB HDD
AOL service included, click here for details
256 MB DDR (PC 2100)
56K* ITU v.92 ready Fax/Modem
10/100Mbps built-in Ethernet
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
16x Max. DVD Drive; 24x Max. CD-RW Drive;
3.5" 1.44MB FDD
Keyboard, Wheel Mouse, Amplified Speakers
Works 6.0, Money 2002, Encarta Online, Adobe® Acrobat® Reader, Media Player, Real Player, Internet Ex plorer, Netscape, AOL 7.0, MSN® CompuServe®, PowerDVD 4.0, BigFix®
AC '97 Audio
Integrated S3 ProSavage8
(1 AGP slot available for upgrade)
4 USB ports (2 on front), 1 Serial, 1 Parallel, 2 PS/2, Audio In & Out, MIDI/Game port, Mic-In & Head Phone jack on front, 3 PCI slots (2 available)

[rustnrot]

I just got the following emachines refurb for $375 delivered from ubid.com. 90 day warranty. Yep, unlike many computers on ebay and the ilk comes with XP and the software listed below. I need to network to my old machine that does not have XP. I've decided, for the price, to get a whole new (refurb) machine that has XP on it to replace the other old machine rather than spend $100 or so just for the XP upgrade.

Specifications of eMachines T1980

AMD Athlon™ XP processor 1900+
(1.6 GHz) with QuantiSpeed™ architecture
Via KM 266 chipset
Dimensions: 7.25"w x 14.125"h x 16"d
80 GB HDD
AOL service included, click here for details
256 MB DDR (PC 2100)
56K* ITU v.92 ready Fax/Modem
10/100Mbps built-in Ethernet
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
16x Max. DVD Drive; 24x Max. CD-RW Drive;
3.5" 1.44MB FDD
Keyboard, Wheel Mouse, Amplified Speakers
Works 6.0, Money 2002, Encarta Online, Adobe® Acrobat® Reader, Media Player, Real Player, Internet Ex plorer, Netscape, AOL 7.0, MSN® CompuServe®, PowerDVD 4.0, BigFix®
AC '97 Audio
Integrated S3 ProSavage8
(1 AGP slot available for upgrade)
4 USB ports (2 on front), 1 Serial, 1 Parallel, 2 PS/2, Audio In & Out, MIDI/Game port, Mic-In & Head Phone jack on front, 3 PCI slots (2 available)

[rustnrot]

I just got the following emachines refurb for $375 delivered from ubid.com. 90 day warranty. Yep, unlike many computers on ebay and the ilk comes with XP and the software listed below. I need to network to my old machine that does not have XP. I've decided, for the price, to get a whole new (refurb) machine that has XP on it to replace the other old machine rather than spend $100 or so just for the XP upgrade.

Specifications of eMachines T1980

AMD Athlon™ XP processor 1900+
(1.6 GHz) with QuantiSpeed™ architecture
Via KM 266 chipset
Dimensions: 7.25"w x 14.125"h x 16"d
80 GB HDD
AOL service included, click here for details
256 MB DDR (PC 2100)
56K* ITU v.92 ready Fax/Modem
10/100Mbps built-in Ethernet
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
16x Max. DVD Drive; 24x Max. CD-RW Drive;
3.5" 1.44MB FDD
Keyboard, Wheel Mouse, Amplified Speakers
Works 6.0, Money 2002, Encarta Online, Adobe® Acrobat® Reader, Media Player, Real Player, Internet Ex plorer, Netscape, AOL 7.0, MSN® CompuServe®, PowerDVD 4.0, BigFix®
AC '97 Audio
Integrated S3 ProSavage8
(1 AGP slot available for upgrade)
4 USB ports (2 on front), 1 Serial, 1 Parallel, 2 PS/2, Audio In & Out, MIDI/Game port, Mic-In & Head Phone jack on front, 3 PCI slots (2 available)

[Donn]

I agree, Joe. The MessagePad2100 is a fabulously easy tool to use. I forgot to mention the fact that you could switch the screen from portrait to landscape, AND record voice notes on it!

The only thing that I don't like is the goofy dongle that you need to use to plug in the keyboard.

Mine must be 6-7 years old, and I may have to have the backlight replaced eventually, but otherwise, it's running like a champ.

[Donn]

I agree, Joe. The MessagePad2100 is a fabulously easy tool to use. I forgot to mention the fact that you could switch the screen from portrait to landscape, AND record voice notes on it!

The only thing that I don't like is the goofy dongle that you need to use to plug in the keyboard.

Mine must be 6-7 years old, and I may have to have the backlight replaced eventually, but otherwise, it's running like a champ.

[Donn]

I agree, Joe. The MessagePad2100 is a fabulously easy tool to use. I forgot to mention the fact that you could switch the screen from portrait to landscape, AND record voice notes on it!

The only thing that I don't like is the goofy dongle that you need to use to plug in the keyboard.

Mine must be 6-7 years old, and I may have to have the backlight replaced eventually, but otherwise, it's running like a champ.

[G. Schollmeier]

I have two Dell's. A desktop with XP Pro, and a laptop with XP Pro. So far I have not had a crash on either. XP will run all of my old software. It has a wizard to open the software in the system it was written for. I know nothing about the other OS's, but this is a great feature.
Gary

[G. Schollmeier]

I have two Dell's. A desktop with XP Pro, and a laptop with XP Pro. So far I have not had a crash on either. XP will run all of my old software. It has a wizard to open the software in the system it was written for. I know nothing about the other OS's, but this is a great feature.
Gary

[G. Schollmeier]

I have two Dell's. A desktop with XP Pro, and a laptop with XP Pro. So far I have not had a crash on either. XP will run all of my old software. It has a wizard to open the software in the system it was written for. I know nothing about the other OS's, but this is a great feature.
Gary

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

G. Schollmeier just for the record Mac OS X is backward compatible all you have to do is launch classic mode

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

G. Schollmeier just for the record Mac OS X is backward compatible all you have to do is launch classic mode

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

G. Schollmeier just for the record Mac OS X is backward compatible all you have to do is launch classic mode

[Frank Hagan]

Well, not wanting to get into the MAC vs. MS wars, if you are deciding to upgrade and don't do gaming, video production, etc., then the basic "home" system from Dell is a good buy.

They usually run something like $600 - $800. I upgraded the hard drive, but skipped on upgrading memory at their site ... I got 512 MB for $80 at Best Buy (they wanted $80 for an upgrade from 128 to 256mb when I bought).

Dell is about as close to a clone as you can get. And with USB and Windows XP or Windows 2000, you don't have to worry too much about compatibility. All of the USB devices I've plugged in have worked without any trouble.

[Frank Hagan]

Well, not wanting to get into the MAC vs. MS wars, if you are deciding to upgrade and don't do gaming, video production, etc., then the basic "home" system from Dell is a good buy.

They usually run something like $600 - $800. I upgraded the hard drive, but skipped on upgrading memory at their site ... I got 512 MB for $80 at Best Buy (they wanted $80 for an upgrade from 128 to 256mb when I bought).

Dell is about as close to a clone as you can get. And with USB and Windows XP or Windows 2000, you don't have to worry too much about compatibility. All of the USB devices I've plugged in have worked without any trouble.

[Frank Hagan]

Well, not wanting to get into the MAC vs. MS wars, if you are deciding to upgrade and don't do gaming, video production, etc., then the basic "home" system from Dell is a good buy.

They usually run something like $600 - $800. I upgraded the hard drive, but skipped on upgrading memory at their site ... I got 512 MB for $80 at Best Buy (they wanted $80 for an upgrade from 128 to 256mb when I bought).

Dell is about as close to a clone as you can get. And with USB and Windows XP or Windows 2000, you don't have to worry too much about compatibility. All of the USB devices I've plugged in have worked without any trouble.

[cs]

Originally posted by Nicholas Carey:
Unix offers the perfect example of why you never run as root without good reason. If you login as root and bring up a shell ('DOS prompt' in Windows parlance) and type the magic incantation:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />$ cd /
$ rm -rf *Log out, then shutdown the system. Congratulations! You now have a non-bootable system: the file system is completely empty.

'cd /' changes the working directory to the root (same as C:\). 'rm' is a command that deletes/removes/unlinks files. '-rf' says to recursively delete files and directories without prompting. The '*' says to delete every file.

It's a really easy mistake to make. All it takes is an intention to type something like "rm -rf *.bak" and type "rm -fr * .bak" instead, you've hosed your system.

</font>[/QUOTE]Just to be a pain I thought that I should point this out. Nicholas what you say is true (or so I've been told) there is only one problem with what you show there. In Unix if the screen looked like that you would not make the system un-bootable because you are only logged in as a user and not as root. If you want to make it more realistic looking replace the $ with #. :D

Disclaimer: I don't know enough about Unix to make any intelligant comment, just thought I would stir the pot a little more. :D Remember this is coming from somebody that can crash any system from NT4 to SCO Unix. Besides who needs 44 different commands to copy?

Chad

[ 11-18-2002, 09:10 AM: Message edited by: cs ]

[cs]

Originally posted by Nicholas Carey:
Unix offers the perfect example of why you never run as root without good reason. If you login as root and bring up a shell ('DOS prompt' in Windows parlance) and type the magic incantation:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />$ cd /
$ rm -rf *Log out, then shutdown the system. Congratulations! You now have a non-bootable system: the file system is completely empty.

'cd /' changes the working directory to the root (same as C:\). 'rm' is a command that deletes/removes/unlinks files. '-rf' says to recursively delete files and directories without prompting. The '*' says to delete every file.

It's a really easy mistake to make. All it takes is an intention to type something like "rm -rf *.bak" and type "rm -fr * .bak" instead, you've hosed your system.

</font>[/QUOTE]Just to be a pain I thought that I should point this out. Nicholas what you say is true (or so I've been told) there is only one problem with what you show there. In Unix if the screen looked like that you would not make the system un-bootable because you are only logged in as a user and not as root. If you want to make it more realistic looking replace the $ with #. :D

Disclaimer: I don't know enough about Unix to make any intelligant comment, just thought I would stir the pot a little more. :D Remember this is coming from somebody that can crash any system from NT4 to SCO Unix. Besides who needs 44 different commands to copy?

Chad

[ 11-18-2002, 09:10 AM: Message edited by: cs ]

[cs]

Originally posted by Nicholas Carey:
Unix offers the perfect example of why you never run as root without good reason. If you login as root and bring up a shell ('DOS prompt' in Windows parlance) and type the magic incantation:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />$ cd /
$ rm -rf *Log out, then shutdown the system. Congratulations! You now have a non-bootable system: the file system is completely empty.

'cd /' changes the working directory to the root (same as C:\). 'rm' is a command that deletes/removes/unlinks files. '-rf' says to recursively delete files and directories without prompting. The '*' says to delete every file.

It's a really easy mistake to make. All it takes is an intention to type something like "rm -rf *.bak" and type "rm -fr * .bak" instead, you've hosed your system.

</font>[/QUOTE]Just to be a pain I thought that I should point this out. Nicholas what you say is true (or so I've been told) there is only one problem with what you show there. In Unix if the screen looked like that you would not make the system un-bootable because you are only logged in as a user and not as root. If you want to make it more realistic looking replace the $ with #. :D

Disclaimer: I don't know enough about Unix to make any intelligant comment, just thought I would stir the pot a little more. :D Remember this is coming from somebody that can crash any system from NT4 to SCO Unix. Besides who needs 44 different commands to copy?

Chad

[ 11-18-2002, 09:10 AM: Message edited by: cs ]

[ccmanuals]

Well, I'll throw my .o2 in the fray here. For the past 12 years, in my current capacity as the Chief of Communications and Computer Systems for a fairly large Air Force Agency I have had the opporunity to deal first hand with most of the major hardware and software developers and companies. Recently we went through a desktop hardware replacement. Prior to purchase we looked at (hands on) alot of factors i.e. performance, warranty, cost, support, reliability, before we decided on a particular machine. With this particular recent buy Gateway soundly beat Dell in all of the factors above. What I'm saying is, don't rule out Gateway. They make a great PC and support it all at an attactive price.

I assume you are inquiring about a pc for your home? If you want to save some serious bucks put Linux on your box and star office. If you don't care about money (too much) I would recommend Win2K as the OS of choice.

[ccmanuals]

Well, I'll throw my .o2 in the fray here. For the past 12 years, in my current capacity as the Chief of Communications and Computer Systems for a fairly large Air Force Agency I have had the opporunity to deal first hand with most of the major hardware and software developers and companies. Recently we went through a desktop hardware replacement. Prior to purchase we looked at (hands on) alot of factors i.e. performance, warranty, cost, support, reliability, before we decided on a particular machine. With this particular recent buy Gateway soundly beat Dell in all of the factors above. What I'm saying is, don't rule out Gateway. They make a great PC and support it all at an attactive price.

I assume you are inquiring about a pc for your home? If you want to save some serious bucks put Linux on your box and star office. If you don't care about money (too much) I would recommend Win2K as the OS of choice.

[ccmanuals]

Well, I'll throw my .o2 in the fray here. For the past 12 years, in my current capacity as the Chief of Communications and Computer Systems for a fairly large Air Force Agency I have had the opporunity to deal first hand with most of the major hardware and software developers and companies. Recently we went through a desktop hardware replacement. Prior to purchase we looked at (hands on) alot of factors i.e. performance, warranty, cost, support, reliability, before we decided on a particular machine. With this particular recent buy Gateway soundly beat Dell in all of the factors above. What I'm saying is, don't rule out Gateway. They make a great PC and support it all at an attactive price.

I assume you are inquiring about a pc for your home? If you want to save some serious bucks put Linux on your box and star office. If you don't care about money (too much) I would recommend Win2K as the OS of choice.

[Norske3]

WOW :eek: ,...for the non-tecky...we are gettin a "crash" (no pun indented)course on the in's and out's of Computers...thanks folks...I'm takin' notes here...still can't decide between a Dell or a Big Mac... :D

[Norske3]

WOW :eek: ,...for the non-tecky...we are gettin a "crash" (no pun indented)course on the in's and out's of Computers...thanks folks...I'm takin' notes here...still can't decide between a Dell or a Big Mac... :D

[Norske3]

WOW :eek: ,...for the non-tecky...we are gettin a "crash" (no pun indented)course on the in's and out's of Computers...thanks folks...I'm takin' notes here...still can't decide between a Dell or a Big Mac... :D

[Jim H]

Heeeerrrreee's Jim! I'm typing to you all from the command center of the Dimension 2300 (loud booming voice seemingly coming from the heavens). I thought I'd take the time to thank everyone once again for all of the good advice. Rec'd it this evening, just getting to loading software now.

Goodnight,

Jim

[Jim H]

Heeeerrrreee's Jim! I'm typing to you all from the command center of the Dimension 2300 (loud booming voice seemingly coming from the heavens). I thought I'd take the time to thank everyone once again for all of the good advice. Rec'd it this evening, just getting to loading software now.

Goodnight,

Jim

[Jim H]

Heeeerrrreee's Jim! I'm typing to you all from the command center of the Dimension 2300 (loud booming voice seemingly coming from the heavens). I thought I'd take the time to thank everyone once again for all of the good advice. Rec'd it this evening, just getting to loading software now.

Goodnight,

Jim

[cs]

Jim I'm glad that the collective here at the mighty Wooden Boat Forum was able to help you make a decission. I, for one, think you will be happy with your Dell.

Chad

[cs]

Jim I'm glad that the collective here at the mighty Wooden Boat Forum was able to help you make a decission. I, for one, think you will be happy with your Dell.

Chad

[cs]

Jim I'm glad that the collective here at the mighty Wooden Boat Forum was able to help you make a decission. I, for one, think you will be happy with your Dell.

Chad

[Norske3]

This Computer Thread deserves its own Section................
Computer Tech. Only: :D

Hey Scott...what do think?

[Norske3]

This Computer Thread deserves its own Section................
Computer Tech. Only: :D

Hey Scott...what do think?

[Norske3]

This Computer Thread deserves its own Section................
Computer Tech. Only: :D

Hey Scott...what do think?

[brad9798]

I know I'm late on this one, but I will NEVER AGAIN purchase a new retail computer ... it is a waste of money for a 1-2 year technology shelf life.

I currently own to PC's (one compaq and one gateway) and four Macintosh's. Macs are MUCH more stable- anyone who thinks differently does not have enough experience with them.

Of course, the PC vs. Mac argument is a lot like the Ford vs. Chevy vs. Dodge truck arguments ... no one will win.

I purchase my systems at six to 12 months from their original sales date.

TRANSLATION: I routinely get $2,000 systems, with full warranties, for $500-700.

Again, why buy new????

Take care,

Brad