OT hardware flexibility and reliability, was Re: Museums

On Jan 25, 2010, at 1:40 AM, Keith M wrote: Elitist attitude: I prefer to refer to it as "having standards". It's the same thing that causes me to avoid eating at McDonald's and shopping at Wal*Mart. But I have something to back it up. I've owned my primary desktop machine for four years; I bought it used for $1K. In that time, it has never crashed, never gotten a virus, and never had a hardware failure. I am what most people would call an "uber power user"...At any one time I've got probably fifty shell windows open, and maybe twenty browser windows with upwards of a hundred tabs each, and probably half a dozen PDF files, running across eight virtual screens. Add to that a mail program, and probably half a dozen other things. Oh, and at least two simh simulators, and three instances of Hercules. I work at home. I use this machine all day, every day, not just "a few hours after dinner to surf porn and eBay" like most people...but I use it ALL DAY, part of the time for work stuff, part for personal, but on any average day I'm pounding the crap out of this machine for probably fifteen hours. It has never crashed. Never had a virus. Never had a hardware failure. Never rebooted unless it was intentional. I've never replaced anything due to breakage or wearing out except a keyboard, and only because I wanted one. And oh by the way, that wasn't an Apple keyboard. (though my new one is) As for pricing, you get what you pay for...but do you really think $1000 for a machine of this level of reliability and longevity, over that many years, is bad economics? Probably. ;) But I'd not dismiss it as such. I'll simply explain my point and move on. You're laboring under some false assumptions, which I will clarify. I don't own an iPod or an iPhone. It's trivial to put mp3 files on an iPod, though; I've done that lots of times. The suitly DRM garbage is easy to avoid. I've never been bitten by it, and never will be. You don't have to be either. No problem there...not that I pay much attention to licenses. Well, it rarely breaks in the first place, but since you mentioned it...Stuff is cheap and available. Neither my video card, my DIMMs, my GigE interface, my FibreChannel controller, nor my hard drives say Apple anywhere on them. ...which it will... (sorry) ...and if my G5 breaks, which it hasn't (and remember, it was a few years old when I bought it!) I can just pick up some parts via eBay. Problem solved. Really? How many different video cards do you have in your computer right now? Mine works great, I have no complaints and I'm missing no functionality. There's probably a newer one out there, but do I care? Not particularly. I will admit, though, that I do enjoy the hardware flexibility that exists in the Linux world. I set up lots of Linux machines for people who finally figure out the Windows scam and jump ship. I don't push them toward Macs because everyone around here (southwest Florida) is broke, and I can give them Linux machines for free. I drive around on trash day and pick up PCs that are too slow to run Windows (typically 1GHz-2GHz machines) or have bad power supplies (lots of lightning down here), etc, and load them up with Linux for people. I like the hardware flexibility there, because I can scrounge anything out of the junk box and it'll work. But for my machines? I depend on them for my livelihood. I want the best of everything, and I don't like to settle for less. I have no idea (haven't read the article), I generally don't listen to what the media wants to tell me, I just use my computers. I have no doubt that Apple employs a bunch of sleazy suits who will do whatever they can to make money, no matter how dishonest, and those suits need to be beaten to within an inch of their lives. But that doesn't change the fact that: This computer has been in daily, VERY hard use at about 15hrs/day seven days per week and has never crashed, never had a virus, never had a hardware failure...never so much as burped. Ever. This isn't "religion", nor is it a "flame"...It's a fact. I looked at the stuff that was available, and made my decision. And I'm not "an Apple guy": I use a Mac because, right now, it's the best way to get a very fast, very reliable graphical UNIX machine on the desktop. The moment that changes, I will move to a different platform. If the PC world or Microsoft had anything better to offer, I'd use it. The moment Microsoft comes out with a good, fast, solid, standards-based desktop UNIX implementation, I'll use it! -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL