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  • #31
    My uncle was furious that W7 was not compatible with his DOS-based spreadsheet program he's been using for a million years...

    I'm all for "if it ain't broke", but seriously, Excel is a great bit of kit...

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    • #32
      Originally posted by chokkidog View Post
      Wow!
      "holier than thou" is a game Mal doesn't play.
      That is just a misread of his post. :-D

      Go Mac....Plug-in. Play. Period.;-D
      Ah, my mistake. Harder to convey attitude online!

      And you missed two extra steps in you Mac scenario: Mac dies after 2 years, buy new Mac. ;-)

      Seriously though, from a repair/service point of view, Macs are an expensive PITA. It really prejudices me against them as a whole. :-/

      Comment


      • #33
        And I have to disagree with just one point, amellor: 7 & 8 are both vastly more stable/reliable than XP. Plenty of stats on that one available on the web. :-)

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        • #34
          Originally posted by fruity View Post
          Back on topic, like I said, if you're prepared to LEARN Win8 is the obvious choice, Yelta. It won't take more than a couple of hours to master if you go in with an open mind.
          Tell that to the people still typing with two fingers... You know, the same people who used to go around disabling firewalls/AVs before they started discriminating between users and admins.

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          • #35
            Originally posted by fruity View Post
            Ah, my mistake. Harder to convey attitude online!

            And you missed two extra steps in you Mac scenario: Mac dies after 2 years, buy new Mac. ;-)

            Seriously though, from a repair/service point of view, Macs are an expensive PITA. It really prejudices me against them as a whole. :-/
            Seriously........ and you're an experienced Mac user???????

            Sorry fruity but that's a load of twaddle, I mean like, a complete load.

            I have two Macs running in the house, one is 8 years old, the other 6.
            They are used to run a business.
            I bought 3 when I first got into Macs, one went with a split up so I don't know about it but it did run a hairdressing business for 4 years.
            The other; my daughter had it for 5 years, as a Textile Designer and online business; she upgraded for a bigger screen.
            None have ever required repairs.

            Yes, I've upgraded RAM in one, nothin' unusual about that; if you want to take advantage of new OS.

            Spreading misinformation, prejudice and biased generalisations are a waste of time.
            But that's the 'Punch and Judy' ;-D

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            • #36
              Without the 'tude, but otherwise, this^^

              They might be expensive to repair, but the build quality is better than anything I've seen in the consumer-PC world and I get the impression that they're significantly more reliable.

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              • #37
                For what it's worth....

                I reckon Mac's of various incarnations are pretty decent computers. Used to own an Apple II way back when and I loved it, for what it was. Nearly bought an iMac a couple of years ago when I was trying to setup a decent DAW, just so much trouble with hardware/driver compatibility with PCs, but I managed to luck out with a combo that worked, at the last minute before decision time.

                I also love Linux boxes. Heaps of flexibility and the sky is the limit for the sorts of things that are possible. Unfortunately though, I have a plethora of dedicated and aged MS and other software, that will not run properly on anything other than a Windows box, so that is pretty well where I'm stuck. In reality, it doesn't much matter what hardware/OS combo you have, so long as it does everything you want in an efficient and effortless way. Rather than get too involved in future windows builds, I'll build a Linux box out of spares I have on hand and use that for everything I can; anything I can't, well, that stays on the current Windows box.

                Mal.

                Comment


                • #38
                  Windows 8.1

                  Originally posted by Dragunov21 View Post
                  Without the 'tude, but otherwise, this^^

                  They might be expensive to repair, but the build quality is better than anything I've seen in the consumer-PC world and I get the impression that they're significantly more reliable.
                  They're mostly made with the same components, so how could they be more reliable? Sure, you average $1000 Mac is a better machine than the $299 Acer at the supermarket, but what else would you expect?

                  I'm not speaking as a Mac user, I'm speaking as someone who fixes the damn things. And I'll say I've seen some seriously shoddy PC designs out there, and some very, very cheap components, but for the same money you'll get as good or better quality components in PC-land.

                  But that wasn't really what I was getting at anyway: I was getting at the actual cost of repairs. I'm glad you haven't had an issues personally, but when I see a standard power supply replacement on an iMac costing 4 times the price of an equivalent PC one, you have to say "WTF?!". They do fail (particularly HDDs & PSUs), and when they do it's expensive. Often so much so Mac users tend to just go buy a new one.

                  Whether that's ultimately fiscal or philosophical I don't know.

                  So bias? No, not really. Just empirical evidence. I know it offends the sensibilities of Mac users though, so usually I just smile and nod when they tell me they're magically indestructible machines. ;p

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                  • #39
                    Originally posted by fruity View Post
                    for the same money you'll get as good or better quality components in PC-land.
                    Of course, no-one's arguing that. All I can go off is the fact that most people I know running anything from Dells to Asuses to HPs (spit) to Acers have had something fail or start malfunctioning within about three years. The few (6, that I can recall) that own Macs haven't had anything fail in 2-6 years of ownership.

                    I'd assumed that part of it might be better-engineered cooling solutions, as that's where most laptop PCs I've seen fall down.

                    Not a representative sample, but that's where my opinion comes from.

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      I've had this discussion a few times with people and based on my research the failure rates between computer makers are pretty close . Like the study I read had all the reputable brands within 5%. So it boils down to what OS, what warranty and what price you get as the components are all the same. The components quoted MTBF doesn't changed based on who's building the system.

                      I agree I see a lot more broken down PCs than Mac and it has nothing to do with quality, it's to do with there being less Macs being used. As failure rates are similar the higher systems sold will have higher total figures fail. Anything else you want to tell yourself is placebo.

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                      • #41
                        Originally posted by fruity View Post
                        And I have to disagree with just one point, amellor: 7 & 8 are both vastly more stable/reliable than XP. Plenty of stats on that one available on the web. :-)
                        Hi Fruity

                        You sound just like a friend of mine who uses Win8, after a lot of prior praising of both Vista(!) & Win7. My background: My company rolled out over 2000 WAN's and LAN's all over Aust from 1989 onwards, mostly my design. I also build custom servers, notebooks or specific task desktops (i.e. "Mac prices" with "IBM speed and business functionality"). FYI, in house Microsoft user functionality tests failed Win8 months ago (using their own people as guinea pigs!).

                        My first computer use was what is now called chat / messenger in 1970. I currently use various 'nixes (including MacOs) and flavours of Windows.

                        I have 4 industrial strength desktops (different flavours of top drawer hardware) that multiboot (Slackware & Debian Linux, FreeBSD Unix, Win XP w PAE, 7 (32 & 64 bit), 8 & 8.1). The only time they blue screen: you guessed it: Win7 and 8 both crash ("kernel panic" if MS had the guts to say so) about every three weeks or so. They are never in Win for more than one day as their memory map is shot in light use by that time. Oh, I had to move the memory back down to 16Gb because Win8 crashes even more often when using 32Gb. If I kept on that path I reckon I would have go back to a single monitor (down from three), take out one graphic card, perhaps start downgrading CPU cores (down from 8 to ???) and perhaps go back to 32 bit & 4Gb RAM as well. Programming is the best that India has to offer (put a debugger on it and be horrified: more lost memory pointers than cheap map). Perhaps they are suitable for internet use & emails, certainly not for my real work. And don't even get me started on the compatibility issues which vary from accounting spreadsheets snafu's to power station control system meltdowns. Complete junk IMO, although I admit Win7 is at least 100% more stable than Win8 (not saying much there).

                        My 1999 personal workhorse has never crashed using any of the 'nixes or Win 98 & XP. It was supposed to be upgraded by one these 4 machines just over a year ago. I am now on the point of making yet another machine running ZEN Hypervisor so if Win 7 / 8 drops it guts I can just restart its shell. Option 2: Run a 'nix and use VMware, virtual box parallels or whatever as a virtual machine and quarantine the various Win's that way. For an upgraded machine that I expected to have operational in a spare month circa Dec 2012, all 4 are proving to have untenable stability and compatibility issues but only in Win7 & 8. That is why businesses are (reluctantly) moving away from XP now. If it didn't run out of support, I doubt that they would bother.

                        Originally posted by Dimal View Post
                        For what it's worth....

                        I reckon Mac's of various incarnations are pretty decent computers. Used to own an Apple II way back when and I loved it, for what it was. Nearly bought an iMac a couple of years ago when I was trying to setup a decent DAW, just so much trouble with hardware/driver compatibility with PCs, but I managed to luck out with a combo that worked, at the last minute before decision time.

                        I also love Linux boxes. Heaps of flexibility and the sky is the limit for the sorts of things that are possible. Unfortunately though, I have a plethora of dedicated and aged MS and other software, that will not run properly on anything other than a Windows box, so that is pretty well where I'm stuck. In reality, it doesn't much matter what hardware/OS combo you have, so long as it does everything you want in an efficient and effortless way. Rather than get too involved in future windows builds, I'll build a Linux box out of spares I have on hand and use that for everything I can; anything I can't, well, that stays on the current Windows box.

                        Mal.
                        Hi Mal

                        "I also love Linux boxes": Considering they just work, it is hard not to.

                        "plethora of dedicated and aged MS and other software": Me too. Especially since a lot of these client systems are CAD/CAM where replacing a few million $$$'s worth of manufacturing gear (30 year lifespan is common) to "upgrade" your OS is validly seen as a really bad joke. I am getting to the point (as you may well be) of getting back into virtual machines to gain some overall reliability. Full retirement from IS is looking more attractive by the day!



                        TampIt

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                        • #42
                          Can't say I ever liked Vista, TampIt: that genuinely was a very underdone OS, and the driver support at release was absolutely woeful. I can still here myself bitching about it. ;-) Mind you, you might recall that XP RTM was also a horrible pig of an OS: SP2 was where it really became great.

                          Personally I still use a mix of platforms depending on requirements, and yeah, it still includes an ancient XP machine. I keep it offline though, and it only has one job to do. :P

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                          • #43
                            Originally posted by fruity View Post
                            Can't say I ever liked Vista, TampIt: that genuinely was a very underdone OS, and the driver support at release was absolutely woeful. I can still here myself bitching about it. ;-) Mind you, you might recall that XP RTM was also a horrible pig of an OS: SP2 was where it really became great.

                            Personally I still use a mix of platforms depending on requirements, and yeah, it still includes an ancient XP machine. I keep it offline though, and it only has one job to do. :P
                            Hi fruity

                            What can I say? Never buy version one of anything MS.

                            Reliability: Windows took several releases until 3.11 finally (mostly) worked. Win95 was rubbish until B so MS "fixed it" by adding/embedding Internet Explorer so C sucked. Win98 a rare mix: totally unstable & insecure until second edition. Then MS "patches" screwed the speed towards the end of its life (to force people into XP?). WinXP: SP3 made it work properly (still insecure unless beaten up severely during setup), that is when I finally moved my 98 clients over. IMO Vista 7 & 8 are still way too immature in a lot of areas where XP "just works". Sad to think I was running 8 monitor systems under MS Dos 3.3 & Slackware 2 (stockbroker client) and Win7 barely manages 3 without shooting itself. Try it with two portraits (A4 word processing) with one landscape (spreadsheets & firefox) one in between them. Even the backgrounds fail (see attached)Click image for larger version

Name:	Win7 Background.jpg
Views:	1
Size:	221.8 KB
ID:	736971. Junk. Especially since my old Red Hat v5 machine ('96?) or WinXP (2001) would even allow me to use differing backgrounds & resolutions on each of 5 screens.

                            Anyway, back to a decent coffee with... (too many choices today). At least I know that will work today.

                            TampIt

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                            • #44
                              As I expected, this thread certainly took off, thanks for the replies.

                              Have had a play with 8.1 and doubt I will have any problems coming to terms with it, everything I need is there, just a matter of taking the blinkers of and getting used to it.

                              Have ordered a new box, Intel i7 4770 processor, 16GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM and 1TB WD Black HDD with 8.1 installed.

                              As I said in my OP, was looking for comments from people who have been using 8 for a while, a couple of the people who replied fit the bill admirably, the rest, not so much.

                              I know Apple people feel they are duty bound to spread the gospel (bit like those nice young men in suits who knock on your door) according to Cupertino, however I did explain I will be sticking with MS, has always worked well for me so I have no reason to change.

                              Thanks again for the input, its been very entertaining.

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                              • #45
                                Nice machine, Yelta. If you can stretch the budget, grab an SSD too and you'll substantially improve the general feel of it! ;-)

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