PC's Or Mac's Poll

[Nick]

I vote PC but where's the Linux?

[Insectoid]

A little late, but, isn't there already a thread on favorite O/S (I would know, I started it)? I suppose this is thread is concentrated more on the mac vs PC, a common argument (sparked no doubt by the ads). I found some more advantages to mac as well. If you attach a second display, it automatic detects and configures it, so I can watch south park on the big screen and play a full screen game on the default! And the configuration software is excellent, allowing you to change the orientation of the second display relative to the default. I have never even seen the software that does this on windows (if windows even comes with this software). 2 days of multiple displays at school and already I want to buy a second monitor. And it configures autofreakinmatically! The only downside is I haven't figured out how to move full screen apps onto the second display.

[Dan]

Nick @ 3rd December 2008, 5:53 pm wrote:

I vote PC but where's the Linux?

I think alot of peoleop mix up the diffrences between hardware and OS when talking about Mac and PC (where pc is any computer not made by mac), for the most part i blame this on the mac ads.

It used to be that Mac computers used differnt cpu and hardware arachtecture witch there OS took advantge of/relayed on so you could only run the apple OS's on apple's hard ware and hardware was not sawapbale between a "PC" and a Mac. So there was some vaidity in the Mac vs PC + some OS comprason as Mac's where almost allways runing the same OS (not counting versions).

However now with mac computers using intentel chips and the hardware being more and more comabtable between them a Mac and a PC are about the same thing or as diffrent as a Dell and an IBM (maybe a bit more). Also with the mac OS now able to be run on PCs (none mac computers) with a bit of hacking the OS and hardware have become sepearte things and should be compared to as such.

The question should be OS X vs Windows (or Linux, Unix, ect) or Mac vs IBM (or Dell, Sony, tobishabe, alineware, etc) but not both mixed together in an almost imposable to compare way.


With all that side i still voted for PC becues every time i go out to buy a computer i consider both mac hardware options and others and the price per specs never warent buying a mac, there is almost allways a deal with better hardware (at least performece wise) or less cost with a manfucator other then apple. This could be becues i don't value the look of my computers at all but i should not be paying that much for an apple logo and a white case. As for OS X vs other OSs i also can't see the advantage to it over any free *nix based OS other then it looking nicer and posible a better UI as the cost of less customization.

I would love to have a mac but i can't justify buying one so intill some one gives me one for free or they drop there prices i will be sticking to none apple hard ware and software.

[S_Grimm]

for the price of a mac Pro, I can buy a MB with dual QC's at 3ghz each, 1TB HDD (or 2 500gb HDD's) 64gb of RAM and a Decent looking case and a power supply.

Then create a Dual Boot Partition on the HDD and Install OSX.

Why buy a Mac?

[Clayton]

AV wrote:

...64gb of RAM...[/b]

O.o

[Tony]

AV @ Wed Dec 03, 2008 8:11 pm wrote:

Then create a Dual Boot Partition on the HDD and Install OSX.

Why buy a Mac?

Because a Hackintosh is not production stable for the projects of the magnitude that require that much hardware power.

[Dan]

Tony @ 3rd December 2008, 10:57 pm wrote:

AV @ Wed Dec 03, 2008 8:11 pm wrote:

Then create a Dual Boot Partition on the HDD and Install OSX.

Why buy a Mac?

Because a Hackintosh is not production stable for the projects of the magnitude that require that much hardware power.

To be honest i don't think OS X or Windows would be a good OS to use on a project of that magnitude (tho they both would probaly support the hardware as long as it is a 64bit cpu version) and you would proably want some high perforcment and stablity flavor of unix or maybe linux.

Also it would be very odd to have a dual quad core and 64gb of ram, i would think you would want one of the supper computer chips/layouts that has/supports many cpus aimed at parleell processing (i know lakehead used to have one with 64 cores intill it was desotryed when the cooling system failed but aprently it is being replaced).


Edit: Also a computer with 64GB of ram is not going to be a PC and it is going to be big, deftaly not a tower.

[Tony]

Well that depends on what you are running. You are right if you are thinking servers, but a Mac Pro is a desktop unit. There are better hardware choices for server racks.

I hate to use the clich? example of heavy media editing, but if a studio is putting together a film, they wouldn't let an OS update render their workstations interoperable.

Besides, a Mac Pro isn't even targeted at you guys. It's not a student-level machine. I don't think anyone is expecting you to pay $3000 to type up school assignments. A multimillion dollar budget movie will not bother to save a few hundred dollars in hardware costs. Besides, they'll loose more money in hourly wages wasted by their editors complaining about not being able to work with their tools of choice.

[Dan]

You don't normlly render movies on the same workstations you work on editing the movie so there is no point in have 64gb ram in the workstation. My understanding is the rendering is normally done on server farms with out any GUI. Dual quad core is not going to help much for eiditng a movie either (tho it could for rendering it) there just is not that much that can be parialized in the editing process.

Also the original point was not who the computer is aimed at but a comparison of hardware costs.

The media editing example with macs is clichice bueces it is just another tatic used by apple to mix up apple hardware with apple software witch seems to be how apple sells there hardware (that and apple logos). The turth is the new mac hardware (esptaly ones with intel cpus) does not give any more advantages to media editing then other PCs with the same specs.

Imagen the outrage if microsoft made it so windows only ran on microsoft hardware, only made MS office for windows and then made the claim that there hardware was the best for business becues office only runs on there hardware.

[S_Grimm]

@Dan: It will be running linux, with a windows virtual computer along with a virtual Mac.

Also @ Dan: The MB supports 64 gb of RAM. I will only be using 30gb or so.

Also Also @ Dan: It will be in a full ATX tower, with liquid cooled power supply and a ****wack of fans.

Now back on topic :

Dan wrote:

Imagen the outrage if microsoft made it so windows only ran on microsoft hardware, only made MS office for windows and then made the claim that there hardware was the best for business becues office only runs on there hardware.

If Microsoft did that, no one would buy Windows. Everyone would go over to linux.

[Insectoid]

Windows has such a huge user base that the sheeple would believe what MS says and continue buying their stuff. Most people believe Linux is only for programmers, and so won't use it. Linux won't grow it's user base until it is marketed pre-installed on popular PC brands, which won't happen because they make more money selling windows.

(by 'marketed' I mean 'distributed')

[rdrake]

insectoid @ Thu Dec 04, 2008 12:11 pm wrote:

Linux won't grow it's user base until it is marketed pre-installed on popular PC brands, which won't happen because they make more money selling windows.

What? Like selling PCs with Linux on them for really cheap in Wal-Mart or something? Or Dell selling them in their online store? Or Asus selling the EEE PC with Linux pre-installed?

[Insectoid]

Exactly. People would buy the computers, because they're $150 cheaper or whatever windows costs, they get exposed to Linux, they like it, Linux gets popular, Windows dies. (I'm talking about brands like MDG, Dell, etc. Popular, yet still crap).

[Dan]

AV @ 4th December 2008, 11:44 am wrote:

@Dan: It will be running linux, with a windows virtual computer along with a virtual Mac.

Also @ Dan: The MB supports 64 gb of RAM. I will only be using 30gb or so.

Also Also @ Dan: It will be in a full ATX tower, with liquid cooled power supply and a ****wack of fans.

If this is a real computer ran at your home it's just dumb to have that much ram. If you are building it your self you are going to have massive bottle necks and will probably not get any of your moneys worth out of the hardware.

I am asumming the idea is to run a bunch of VMs of windows to run game servers, however thats going to lead to even more overhead and there will for sure be a bottle neck of your home connection (or if you are co locating it the VMs sharing one connection will cause another bottle neck). Also at most your are going to have 4 VMs ruining ok at once (more likely 2 or 3) and that means 7.5GB of ram for each VM for the best case when no game server is going to need more then 2GB.

You would be better off aucatly buying 2 or 3 normal computers to run as game servers and run windows xp directly on them (assuming the game server software is windows only). This would also mean better uptime in case of a failure on one computer.

[S_Grimm]

Dan @ Thu Dec 04, 2008 2:20 pm wrote:

You would be better off aucatly buying 2 or 3 normal computers to run as game servers and run windows xp directly on them (assuming the game server software is windows only). This would also mean better uptime in case of a failure on one computer.

Already do have 2 running windows XP. This one is for compiling large files and video editing. Thats why I'm putting 30gb in it.



BTW: how can i set up another computer to run parallel processing?