On the Mac versus PC thing i've a few things to say.

Firstly PC is not a manufacturer. There are cheap PC's, and there are expensive PC's. So to argue that Mac is "more expensive" is a bit foolhardy, although it's fair to say Apple are amongst the most expensive home computers on the market. What's wrong with that? People pay what they are willing to pay.

When something is your hobby, you are happy to invest money in it. Personally I dont want to waste my life staring at a busy pointer - I spend a long time infront of my computer - so to me a slow computer is equivellent to directly wasting my life doing nothing whilst I stare at a busy pointer. I actually moved house with one of the big 3 reasons being speed of internet... Money is irrelevent in the context of what computer to use.

Now regarding OS core. There are faults in both, but to mock Apple for having a 1970's OS is just a week jab.

OSX will build and compile executeables for 32 and 64bit processors, Windows still requires an entirely seperate OS, drivers, and software to make use of 64 bit processing - an approach which has stunted it's roll out for a long time.

Windows still has a central registry, the single worst concept ever developed for an operating system. Talk about a free access pass for malliscious software writers! It's an attrocious concept and it has laid at the heart of Windows for far too long and it's still there giving out free bus tickets to virus writers, botnets authors, and ad-bot-scammers the world over.

OSX has a nice and well considered interface, Apple for all their woes still get this right. For example the way OSX escalates to root permissions for OS changes is just 'right'. Windows is either flaming annoying or totally insecure. These touches make the Apple far less frustrating and more pleasurable to use.

Windows is woefully insecure for an inexperienced user, and even us more computer literate users can still on ocassion be caught out or off guard. OSX just doesnt have these fundamental core weeknesses.

So yes Apple has it's place in the market, and there really isn't a cause to mock that.

As for me, I currently run a few Windows based PC's and two iPhones... I tried Linux, it wasnt for me. I've previously owned an Apple, and I will again. At the end of the day if I had the choice i'd have an up-to-date Amiga anyway and sod the lot of you...

oh on the Macbook Air, there are tiny PC laptops too without DVD drives and the like... Like I said, PC's are not a manufacturer. The comparison is an invalid one - although sadly is one perpetuated by Apple themselves.

Comparing brands to brands tho... Cheapest Mac Air £1149.. Tiny Dell Netbook laptop £289 or Dell XPS full featured laptop £1100... Dell is far from the cheapest brand...

At the end of the day you pay for the brand which is made up of some white plastic and an OS made almost entirely up of open source free to use Linux/Unix and other free parts.. Basically Linux with a NeXT shell and a few bundled i apps... NeXT also runs inside Windows NT thru GNUStep for free...

So all the cost is to have an Apple logo on a Linux box with a pretty shell?...

As i said earlier, I dont really care.. They both have their plus and minus points and windows probably pisses me off more than OSX would... Id buy a Mac if i needed one, But theres nothing i have found that a Pc doesnt do yet that a Mac could...

Also, OS 9 was a different OS altogether.. Support in 10 for Multi CPUs got added in Tiger... Snow leopard 10.6 is going to fix it so it works properly... 10.6 also has the same system requirements as Windows 7? Not very streamlined if it needs the same as a bloated Windows release to run...

EDIT: I was also running OSX on my pc thru Ideneb for a while before i upgraded to Win7.. OSX is nice, but i think ill stick with Win7...

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

... Macbook or Macbook Pro's are where stuff become useful.

No, the whole Apple laptop line has been driven to shit quality and performance wise. Unibody engineering, meh. Glossy screens, meh. No user-replacable batteries, meh. SD card reader instead of ExpressCard slot, Jesus Christ on a hooverbike, is this is supposed to be a pro model?

That said, there isn't really any good laptops available on the market so it's a moot point.

Mac Pro is the only cost effective solution if your job consists more than blogging where Textedit on a G4 is enough.

But then again after using Win7 the OS X feels dated and I'm having doubts whether Snow Leopard will help that situation as Adobe's shaky bloatware is the bottleneck anyway in my profession.

EDIT: The 2008 model MBP is sitting next to me with a slightly ashamed look on its face.

I have to say I thought the pricing was pretty good in the UK for win 7. However, after seeing the pre-order rates then seeing the US version, it really pissed me off!

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/wi ... buy/offers/pre-order.aspx

In the UK, pre-order is £99.
In the USA its $99
(both for the top version)
USA OFFER

why we pay so much more pisses me off, for the same thing!

Because Microsoft are biased towards their American market, you only have to look at Xbox Live UK and then see how many more features (for free) US get when europeans have to pay for it.

European versions don't have IE and are not upgrades but full packages. In a way, it's even a better deal for you guys...

not being funny but if you havent got a memory stick or anything and u buy this and install it as new so format your hdd how the heck are you meant to get on the internet if it comes without an internet browser?

I was wondering the same. Maybe in the release installation options it has a built-in mini browser to get you to a download page for your browser of choice. But that doesn't seem very Microsoft somehow

I still don't get why MS doesn't let the user choose what stuff he's wants during the installation (like we had till win98)...

This would get rid of most of the problems and spare us some of this bullshit like the "N" versions.

Having said that, I don't want 90% of the pre-installed software (mostly even just trial versions) every new pc comes bundled with.

Because I think the last thing Microsoft want is to get the rap because Firefox keeps crashing, or because Lynx wont display images etc.

I'd imagine it's only the retail versions who get caught in this situation - OEM's are allowed to install whatever browser they see fit.

I don't see how limiting features helps consumers, though - all the consumers I speak to want more Windows features out of the box rather than not knowing how to do something, or ending up with some buggy shareware which doesn't work right.

I find it odd Apple is immune to this, though...

EDIT - PC World are one of the retailers selling 7 for £49.99 / £99.99 so at the very least i'll get it for 10% off that so i'm happy. If the Upgrade versions work for more than one PC i'll get the pro version - if not then i'll buy the home premium copy.

doesnt windows have some wget equivalent of some sort?

Yes - it's called uget and there are already FTP servers ready for this where Firefox is hosted - whack some code in a batch file, run it and the installer starts in a few mins.

Same thing for IE - just haven't seen a link yet...

Quote from Shotglass :

doesnt windows have some wget equivalent of some sort?

You can go find a native version of wget on the internets somewhere, toss it into your windows directory and you can use it anywhere from a command line.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

You can go find a native version of wget on the internets somewhere, toss it into your windows directory and you can use it anywhere from a command line.

Aren't you missing the point here: how would you get this native version of wget "from internets somewhere"? The point is that we need something builtin that can download other stuff.

Regarding that, Windows explorer can open www pages no problem, though this is on Wins with IE, if it depends on it, it might not work...

You could also 'telnet host_IP 80' and use GET command, but you'd have to know the exact link. Not sure how to store the output either...

Windows explorer depends upon IE to display pages.

I dont actually think 7 will come without IE (as it's a core part of the OS afaik) - rather there will be no shortcut or exe for the browser part.

No. Jakg: Microsoft has made a effort to remove as much of the IE engine from the core of Windows as possible, as the EU are being irritating ****s.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

No. Jakg: Microsoft has made a effort to remove as much of the IE engine from the core of Windows as possible, as the EU are being irritating ****s.

Finally something we agree on.

Yeah, all the EU need to do to make Windows decent it to force Safari to be the default browser. Breaks the monopoly by having Microsoft and Apple co-exist. (****, Safari supports a lot of the new Windows 7 crap (taskbar tab previews and a progress bar for downloads) before Firefox did )

I think it's rather amusing, the EU obviously wanted users to be presented with some sort of menu to choose a browser, MS have just laughed at them.

I imagine IE will come with Win7, but on a seperate disc or something so that the user has to choose to install it.

Even if it doesn't come with IE most people will still download and install IE anyway This won't really change anything, IMO. People that don't like IE are usually a bit more computer savvy and won't use IE whether or not it comes as the default browser. And people who hardly know anything about computers will just choose to install IE.

Quote from obsolum :

Even if it doesn't come with IE most people will still download and install IE anyway This won't really change anything, IMO. People that don't like IE are usually a bit more computer savvy and won't use IE whether or not it comes as the default browser. And people who hardly know anything about computers will just choose to install IE.

Not sure about that. Since PCs stopped shipping with IE as the only installed browser, it's useage has dropped. When given a choice, the world seems to have chosen Firefox as its favoured browser.

I still use IE, but thats because I don't like installing alot of stuff on my computer.

I like to keep my computer as streamlined as possible all the time. I even run a seperate hard drive for my page file. I've seen at least a small increase in speed from that, and ontop of an already well optimized PC, I run windows XP on a P4 3.2ghz HT faster than some people will see it run on dual or quad cores. Simply because they install crap.

I learned very quickly how much it can benefit you to learn how to keep your computer clean, I was running games designed for hardware two generations newer on my older computers. I ran decent frame rates in Half-life on an 8mb pci card when others where struggling to get 10fps on a 16mb agp card.


One thing I am worried about in windows 7 is that some of the tools I use won't be the same. When I first started using windows XP it pissed me off that defrag changed, and got alot less reliable than it was in 98se. I hope they finaly made a new defrag app that works as good as the old one, and kept alot of the other neat tools that I use regularly.

Hmmm about the IE issue

"Important: E editions of Windows 7 do not include Internet Explorer. We recommend that you get an Internet browser from Microsoft or another software manufacturer and have it available on a CD/DVD or other media so you can install it after you install Windows 7."