I love the mac GUI too. The thing about Macs is the hardware lasts a lot longer than your traditional windows box (able to use it w/ the OS at a decent speed) so your TCO is a LOT lower.
Windows XP or linux?
- Thread starter JDream
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TCO on a mac is roughly 36 months before either upgrading memory to the max and keeping it for another 18 months, or going all out from the start and making it last 60 months. Yes I am familiar with TCO across platforms, and yes the mac, on end-user systems wins by quite a margin. Griffith University's IT dept did a TCO study on their whole-of-campus(es) and the mac TCO after just 12 months came in a whopping 40% lower than the equivalent PC hardware.
I'm still a huge Sun Microsystems fan, love SPARC's but also realize they are cost-prohibitive for all but the most seriously deranged IT geeks, however since the release of Solaris 10 '06, buying an Opteron / x86 /a64 with one or two decent processors a decent (high end) motherboard and a good whack of ram, you're just above the cost of a mac, and you have the most rock solid platform on earth. Don't forget about Sun's contributions to the W3C and their Software platforms. Java is everywhere.
ahhh, I forgot to mention, the best part about linux / UN*X is the tweaking. once you pop, you can't stop.
I'm still a huge Sun Microsystems fan, love SPARC's but also realize they are cost-prohibitive for all but the most seriously deranged IT geeks, however since the release of Solaris 10 '06, buying an Opteron / x86 /a64 with one or two decent processors a decent (high end) motherboard and a good whack of ram, you're just above the cost of a mac, and you have the most rock solid platform on earth. Don't forget about Sun's contributions to the W3C and their Software platforms. Java is everywhere.
ahhh, I forgot to mention, the best part about linux / UN*X is the tweaking. once you pop, you can't stop.
Great info, people! I read all of these posts about Linux, and wish to learn how to use it. I have the Knoppix 3.9 CD, and used it 2 times. It found and read my Zio Multi Media Card Reader, which XP has forgotten how to do. It did work for 5 years on XP. However, Knoppix fould my 2 hard drives each with 2 partitions, but reported "No Folders, No Files".
I know that most of these distros will not access the hard drives to write, so that is a negative attribute to me.
I save stuff, not just browse. I save email for reference. I have about 8 years worth of files I want to keep, and they mostly only work in MS programs.
I know that most of these distros will not access the hard drives to write, so that is a negative attribute to me.
I save stuff, not just browse. I save email for reference. I have about 8 years worth of files I want to keep, and they mostly only work in MS programs.
Re: RE: Windows XP or linux?
Why would you pay more money for a system that can barely be differentiated from today's current PCs? They use the same processors yet cost much, much more. Once Apple switched to Intel chips I expected the prices for their computers to drop. They have not. They remain the same yet there is no performance difference. Go ahead and purchase the OS 10 Jaguar. Have fun finding software that will run on it.
no1important said:
Why would you pay more money for a system that can barely be differentiated from today's current PCs? They use the same processors yet cost much, much more. Once Apple switched to Intel chips I expected the prices for their computers to drop. They have not. They remain the same yet there is no performance difference. Go ahead and purchase the OS 10 Jaguar. Have fun finding software that will run on it.
Re: RE: Windows XP or linux?
I'm certain that this would be different if you actually installed Linux to your hard drive, rather than just use the live CD.
However, I have used Knoppix in the past to read and write to Microsoft NTFS and FAT partitions. I've rescued a few crashed MS-Windows systems with Linux this way.
If you really want to use a user friendly distro, I suggest Mandriva.
joe6966 said:
I'm certain that this would be different if you actually installed Linux to your hard drive, rather than just use the live CD.
However, I have used Knoppix in the past to read and write to Microsoft NTFS and FAT partitions. I've rescued a few crashed MS-Windows systems with Linux this way.
If you really want to use a user friendly distro, I suggest Mandriva.