XP support ends April 2014

I was going to say that in even more sarcastic way but no need now thx antonye


Bootsam you like it or not no OS (of any kind) no music app you think off will run. OS is there primarily to control all the hardware so it plays nicely together, secondly to provide common framework for all applications created for it to refer to when sending requests lastly for use to be able to issue commands. There we stop (unix, linux with no GUI) or go to more sub-levels of GUI. No application that you are thinking off speaks directly to sound chip, cpu or graphics. They all go via OS that communicates with hardware via drivers.

Case in point is fact when your music is to loud you lower the volume in Mac OS. You do not launch your music app to get volume down. If apps were independent like you say then you could only run one (remember Atari) at a time or you would get access violation error of two (or more) instances trying to access one resource at the same time. At the moment only quantum computers can do two operations at the same time (1 and 0 both present at ones) any other PC architecture we know off has either 1 or 0.

I can send you a little app that speaks directly to hard drive. It requires you to boot from USB, nothing else starts. In that mode you cannot even access data on said HDD as no instances of "OS" is loaded to handle HDD file system. All you see is 1 and 0 of your data (literally). Sending commands to HDD is more like sending correct (or not) bits to correct space in its memory for action to happen. You can so fuck up your HDD that it starts thinking it is a duck.

 

Also windows 1.0 till 98se was so unstable as it left hardware to control itself. That meant sooner or later two devices ended up with same IRQ. All would be well if both were sound cards. Dear god if one was sound and one graphics you were a goner. Winamp sends request to sound card via said IRQ but graphics also gets it, has o idea what to do with it so it says bye bye.

 

First windows NT changed that as it took control over plenty of resources. Each version of NT Kernel had more and more control over resources leaving less and less to hardware.

With windows 8 your BIOS on motherboard is there to test hardware (optional) before launching windows bootloader and telling it, its all yours.

 

God, here we go again.
Everyone in the world who uses a mac does so because it's pretty?! Macs aren't as configurable, you can't do as much? Do some research.

I used, abused and upgraded PCs for 20 years before being forced onto macs due to work. It was a revelation. I still use both on a daily basis but currently won't have anything other than macs at home (excluding server) for the very simple reason that I have no desire to waste time maintaining and updating PCs.

Oh and IRQ conflicts weren't THAT challenging.

 

You can get a good PC for the price of a Mac

 

No one ever said IRQ's were challenging but issues with them (and other related) are main reasons why PC's and MAC's do what they do how they do it.

You do not have to deal with upgrading MAC's because you cannot upgrade MACs so that is a bit of a invalid argument now is it? Adding memory or bigger HDD is not an upgrade.
Sorry but you have no choice of motherboard, you have almost 0 choice of graphics card and for most models none, no choice on sound card, no choice on network cards (comes with no choice on motherboard) so yes they are not configurable (unless we talking OS).

Most of people I know do not use MAC's and yet have 0 issues with windows. They all know of MAC's as most have/had something from apple (iPhone, ipod, ipad) yet still choose not to use them for various reasons. It is funny there is always same arguments on both sides Baggz did you notice that? MAC users claim they had major issues with Windows based PC's and PC users claim no software on MAC. Yet it is wrong on both accounts.
MAC's are also not as faultless in operation/design as it is claimed to be.
Try using MacBook air with Apple TV .....
or possibly connecting RJ45 to MacBook air, or maybe HDMI .... should I go on. Yes laptop is light but then add all adaptors you will or might need and weight is back to normal (display port to HDMI, display port to VGA, possibly RJ45 and USB hub to have more then 1 port).

We have few users who can infect a MAC in seconds saying that do the same to Windows so no it is not as secure as it claimed to be. The least MS users assume windows is shit and buy some protection.

 

The moment someone mentions GRC you know that they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about!

 

Erm Which one hehe:
Glass Reinforced Concrete
Granular Computing
Geothermal Resources Council
German Red Cross
Government of the Republic of China
General Rifling Characteristics ?

 

I did something similar. I had used PC's for 20 years, built and upgraded them myself. I switched to a 27" iMac 2 months ago and wish I'd done it sooner, it's a fantastic machine.

However I don't like the Apple store lifestyle rubbish. You have no tills to pay for anything, and get herded into an area depending on what you want. I found I was being treat like a child when I went in.

 

You can by with an app on your phone. Pick up the product, scan it, click pay and walk out trying desperately not to look like a shoplifter. Very weird experience but fast & convenient.

 

What p*sses me off about all this OS business is that MS (and the manufacturers of PCs) don't perfect their 'current' product and they have nearly everybody convinced that they must have the latest OS (or upgraded product) at the drop of a hat.....

.....for example XP was working generally OK with some snags that still need sorting, but no, that gets left by the wayside for bl**dy Vista (crap in it's entirety), then along comes 7 which is supposedly OK and everyone changes to that........and you can't get XP (unless you happen to know a way around that :wink.........Then instead of sorting 7 properly; we have 8 which apparently isn't as good as 7............So I guess that means 9 which must be due by now, will be better than 8.............

It seems to me that there is a good / bad/ good / bad cycle running with these OSs.

I recall when I first started looking at PCs for something suitable for my work, the best thing in sliced bread was on offer and it cost a lot, yet just around the corner the next best thing since sliced bread was already waiting in the wings.......these days they usually have massive hard drives, which aren't what is needed......RAM is the priority.......not many people have enough data to warrant huge hard drives.

Although I have a powerful 64 bit PC I am still using it as 32 bit simply because I don't need anything more powerful for all the work I do with it...........half the time PCs are slow and cause problems simply because they aren't set up right.....too many processes running with everything on C drive (OS and data)........I have set mine up so that it appears I have 11 hard drives (3 really; just partitioned for various Page, Data, OS, Scratch files etc etc..........I use graphic type files which are in excess of 4.5Gb without issues.

IMO we are being 'had over' time and time again..........

 

That's business! Impossible to argue that things haven't improved in 20yrs. When I think back to my uber flash & expensive DX2-66......

 

It's all a bit massive corporation hiding behind a Californian hippy vibe. I genuinely dislike the Apple store and will only visit as a last resort.

 

Yes, Baggazee you are probably right............

I am one of those people that was determined not to let my life be dictated by a bl**dy computer........unfortunately it didn't work and I reckon I spent more time fixing things and maintaining it than I did actually working on it.