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If only ABC News was Mac based, they could have avoided a trip back to the stone ages.

 

"Among companies affected by the worm and its variations were ABC, CNN, The Associated Press, The New York Times and Caterpillar Inc. In California, San Diego County said it needed to cleanse 12,000 computers of the bug. ABC News producers had to use electric typewriters Tuesday to prepare copy for their "World News Tonight" broadcast, according to spokesman Jeffrey Schneider."

 

Is their any doubt that Bill Gates is a huge fraud and that his company has produced the worst software in the short history of computers? Luckily Bill Gates is not a NASA employee, he would have had the shuttle en-route to Pluto.

 

R,

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Guest Tina Coggins
"I'll build you a nice PC laptop for $2,000.00 +"

 

Will you pre-instal the viruses?  Might as well, a PC will become infected with them the instant it's plugged into the net any way.

 

We Mac users are STILL waiting for the great Mac virus, and waiting.......

 

R,

 

Richard, Macs are cool that way, but they *can* get viruses, just not that many -- which would be nice if it were true of PCs as well. My school's graphics computer lab had one for a while and it was a real pain in the neck. I have to say, though, that I also rarely get viruses on my PC because I'm diligent and careful about what I click on and what I download, and then scan everything I download first, before opening. I have Trend Micro's PC-Cillin installed and get daily updates. I also scan for spyware regularly. It's not as much trouble as it sounds like, but it would certainly be nice if I didn't have to worry about it at all.

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Richard, Macs are cool that way, but they *can* get viruses, just not that many -- which would be nice if it were true of PCs as well.  My school's graphics computer lab had one for a while and it was a real pain in the neck.  I have to say, though, that I also rarely get viruses on my PC because I'm diligent and careful about what I click on and what I download, and then scan everything I download first, before opening.  I have Trend Micro's PC-Cillin installed and get daily updates.  I also scan for spyware regularly.  It's not as much trouble as it sounds like, but it would certainly be nice if I didn't have to worry about it at all.

 

Viruses are for nearly all intents and purposes non-existant on the Mac. I regularly use both Windows and Macintosh computers-- I have no bias. I can honestly say neither me nor any of my very numerous Mac-using friends have ever gotten a virus. I also volunteer at a site giving free Mac OS X troubleshooting. In the hundreds of cases I have reviewed, never have I come across a virus. Generally, the only way to get a virus on the mac is to have someone with specific malicious intent as well as administrator access to your computer mess with stuff.

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Viruses really aren't what people should base their OS choice off of; If you have proper antivirus installed that you update regularly (or set it to auto update, a common feature in pretty much every antivirus software available [even free ones]) your Windows system will be clean. I haven't gotten a virus in a long, long time.

 

I think Intel vs. AMD is a much more reasonable argument. ;)

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I have a Mac and am fine. But my question is : are LCD screens any good for color management? No, I really don´t think so. The angle of view will make an image look very different. Yet I hear of all these photographers working their images on Photoshop. Are there any truely realiable screens in the laptop world? Whats your experience? Thanks.

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On Invisible Bridges we used a iBook G4 as a hard disk recorder and went tapeless. However it is now aparent to me that the ibook g4's will probably suffer the same recall/fate or worse that the ibook g3's did... ie the mother board will burn up. Our G4 died two weeks ago... fortunatly it had 3 weeks left on applecare. With mac if you don't get applecar you are screwed. Plus Mac tech support is awful...had aplecare and a mac genous tell me data recovery was impossible... but it is possible... just twice as expnsive with less than half the features one would expect for NTFS.

 

There are some significant short comings in Mac archetecture... like not being NUMA aware and having a max of 2 processors. sure RISC is nice now but I think parallel processing is where it's going to be and the *nixs do that best...especially the free ones $$$ :)

 

Personally, I'm going 100% open source especially after my sound card manufacturer (Aardvark Audio) went belly up and gave all of us customers the finger by not GPLing the drivers. The main reason for the switch though is that there's no license fees :)

 

My personal laptop that I just bought for $30 is an IBM thinkpad 760 which I am finagelng linux onto. :) I only want it as a word processor though.

Edited by zekthedeadcow
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Hi,

 

I think we'd all like to go opensource if only all the software wasn't so hopelessly amateurish. There really is no competent replacement for Premiere/Vegas/FCP/whatever under Linux unless you're willing to pay huge money for one of the super-high-end systems.

 

Phil

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Just curious at what laptops you guys use?

 

I use a Dell Latitude D600 (XP sp2, 1GB ram, 1024x768 display) which I use to do some light After Effects, shot lists, camera reports and the like. My day job is in IT supporting Windows - so that's affected my decision. Also until I get more paying film gigs - my budget doesn't allow for a Powerbook. BTW, I'm still trying to get Avid Xpress Pro working on it.

 

I'm thinking of upgrading to a Dell Inspiron 6000 mainly because they have that hi-res screen that's something like 1600x1200. I'd load it up with 2GB ram. I've priced them out at a little over $1000 for a nice configuration. Don't know if Avid Xpress Pro will work on it though.

 

At home, I run a G4/400 upgraded with a Sonnet card to 1Ghz. Use that for FCP - not the fastest and it crashes weekly (probably the Sonnet). Also use a Dell Dimension 4550 (2.53Ghz P4, 1GB ram) for Avid Xpress Pro.

 

To be fair, if you went out a bought an Avid-supported dual processor PC, you'd probably end up spending about the same amount that you'd spend on a G5.

 

Hope this helps.

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Anyone familiar with the Alienware laptops?

They seem like they're supposed to be good for video

And support the Avid editing software.  Any opinions?

 

Alienware are the creme-dela creme in computers...

Anything short of speacilized industrial equipment can't outperform it.

 

Alienware is like the Orange County Choppers of motorcycles

They do custom jobs with computers

So they'll put in everything you need and nothing you don't want.

They also look pretty slick---I've got a custom green one... :)

 

They're probably the best laptop for editing...

THAT'S if of course you're comfortable with Avid Xpress or Premiere Pro.

If you're a Final Cut Pro user you might feel more comfortable with a Powerbook

 

What you should do is contact them

You should discuss what you'll be using the computer for

And they can tell you what you need or should get.

I don't know how it work for editing

I'm don't have my set up for editing---not interested in doing much postprod.

I use Premiere Pro in my desktop and it's okay--not better than Final Cut Pro.

 

What I must tell you however if you're a serious post production person

You might want to get a Desktop---Laptops aren't the best for hardcore editing.

 

Anyways I highly recommend Alienware they're the best--they beat PC or Apple

(but they'll cost you an arm or leg--they're twice as much as a Powerbook)

 

 

 

Good Luck

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the problem with mac's that will be driven by intel chips is the same problem with all intel laptops they will lack 64bit technology and they will be single core for at least one gen of the chip. which means they will be using dated technology, i'm not sureing about any of you but when dealing with thread intensive instructions the more cores the better. 64bit instruction sets on coming slowly but most new programming is designed for multi-thread/multi-instruction capability. which only leaves you with one cpu, the amd turion64 x2.

 

now when it comes osx and vista, osx is still a ported 64 bit operating system (ie its 32bit pretending to be 64bit) whild vista is a natural 64bit operating system. one thing that means is all the old 32bit viruses out there that attack current winxp systems can't touch a 64bit operating system. with mac's chip switch it opens mac users up to the same virus that can attack any x86 based computer, its all instruction sets. mac is also banking on their brand loyal customers to buy all new mac's with intel chips in them b/c they haven't put much into backward compatibility.

 

 

lastly 98% of virus infections are THE USERS fault. sure they happen more with pc users then mac users but there are more pc users by about a facter of 20 or so. to put that in perspective imagin if there were only two cars that you could by and 99% of people bought car A and only 1% of people bought car B. which one do you think would have the greater number of thefts? car A right. now you would probably have people who drove car B saying 'hey i don't even have to lock my doors look how safe my car is' which is just dumb all around. OSX isn't the holy grail of programming genius, its just less used and therefore less attractive to someone looking to shut down/or infect as many computers as possible. what make mac's as good as they is the same thing that makes a gaming console great at playing games; a mac is a mac is mac just like an xbox is an xbox is an xbox nothing changes so its really easy to write code that gets the best out of the hardware when you know the hardware is always going to be the same.

 

but in the end if you buy a turion64 x2 it will cost you less money give you the combatibility of a pc and the performance of a dual cpu system with average battery life.

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the problem with mac's that will be driven by intel chips is the same problem with all intel laptops they will lack 64bit technology and they will be single core for at least one gen of the chip. which means they will be using dated technology,

 

The only credible information we have is that Apple is switching from Power PC to Intel. Apple wants its developers to build Universal Binaries for Power PC and x86. A Power PC emulator called Rosetta will run Power PC applications on the Intel based Macintosh.

 

Intel manufactuers various different processors and a couple of different architectures. Apple has never stated which Intel chips they will use, and have never confirmed what architecture from Intel they will be using.

 

Anything you read about which chips Apple will use is purely unconfirmed speculation.

 

 

now when it comes osx and vista, osx is still a ported 64 bit operating system (ie its 32bit pretending to be 64bit) whild vista is a natural 64bit operating system.

 

Vista does not even exist as a finished or shipping product. Until Vista is on the market it is considered vaporware. Once it is shipping can you make real comparisons.

 

As far as OS X being a true 64 bit OS. It is not. But it does support 64 bit instructions. I was pretty excited about 64 bit computing a couple of years back. But discovered 64 bit instructions in some cases provide no boost in performance and in other cases can actually slow down some operations.

 

For example MS has XP 64 version. But there is little use for it, because there are few 64 bit apps, and few 64 bit drivers.

 

Because of this I've learned that Apple is making a slow transisiton to full 64 bit.

 

the same virus that can attack any x86 based computer, its all instruction sets.

 

That's not true, viruses don't attack the IA-32 instruction set. They are usually attacking weak links in API's like Direct X or Internet Explorer. Viruses that attack Windows are unlikely to attack Linux.

 

mac is also banking on their brand loyal customers to buy all new mac's with intel chips in them b/c they haven't put much into backward compatibility.

 

Apple does not support legacy to the same depth and degree as the larger PC world. But does support backward compatibility during a transistion.

 

Within the new x86 variant of OS X is a program called Rosetta which will emulate Power PC and allow PPC applications to run on an Intel based Mac.

 

When Apple transitioned from OS 9 to OS X there was an OS 9 emulator which allowed OS 9 applications to be run on the OS X desktop.

 

When Apple transitioned from 68K processors to Power PC emulation of 68K applications was provided in OS 7.

 

In all of these situations Apple will eventually end its support of the old architecture.

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Are there any truely  realiable screens in the laptop world? Whats your experience? Thanks.

 

No LCD screens are not that reliable on their own.

 

But what you can do is build a color profile for you screen using Apple's Color Sync software.

 

For more info: http://www.apple.com/pro/color/

 

Most photographers use a device that calibrates your screen and builds a color profile that adjusts your LCD screen to fit a printed picture.

 

For example http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/colorvisionmonitorspyder/

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