What's Your Connection Speed ?

[John Fendel]

9,526 down and 1,462 up on AT&T U-verse

27,683 down and 2,780 up on hardwired Cox

[Bob Beamesderfer]

something about Mac reliability

i worked the cal poly pomona architecture dept's computer lab for 3 years while in college, and we had a 50/50 split of PC lab + Mac lab.

i think you would be quite surprised at which we had to repair more.

the only good thing i can say about the mac, is that it packages easily to ship back.

blah, quoted the wrong post.

Yeah, you quoted yourself but labeled it as something I said. Thanks. :mrt:

Apart from that, which machines were older?

More important to me is the ability to calibrate my monitor and my printer so that I can produce photographic prints that match the adjustments I make on screen. I can achieve that on my Mac because Colorsync is built into the operating system, and I can apply the calibration profile to the printer and monitor.

[Bob Beamesderfer]

9,526 down and 1,462 up on AT&T U-verse

27,683 down and 2,780 up on hardwired Cox

That's some serious gourmet speeds compared to the Taster's Choice connections most of us have.

[Jeff Shyu]

Yeah, you quoted yourself but labeled it as something I said. Thanks. :mrt:

Apart from that, which machines were older?

More important to me is the ability to calibrate my monitor and my printer so that I can produce photographic prints that match the adjustments I make on screen. I can achieve that on my Mac because Colorsync is built into the operating system, and I can apply the calibration profile to the printer and monitor.

yeah, i actually went back to edit, but because i was so fast at it, it didn't even give me the "last edited on _____" tag at the end.

the machines were all purchased at the exact same time. The PC's were custom assembled barebone systems ordered from Newegg.com, and the mac lab was full of the brand new (at the time) G3's.

the G3's even had more memory than the PC, and running Form.z (which was first developed for the mac, and then PC) kept crashing, as well as photoshop.

as far as calibration, you can't really say that mac is better at it than a PC. to really get any "professional quality" calibration, you'd need a hardware calibrator anyways.

[Will Kalman]

I had to maintain a fleet of Macs and PC's when I was working for GameFan Magazine in the late 90's. The Macs were at least as problematic as the PC's and sometimes maddeningly more frustrating (i.e. tracking down a wonky extension - crash-reboot-test-crash-reboot-test-crash-reboot-test-crash). Everytime a Mac person would taunt a Windows user about the Blue Screen of Death, I'd ask them about System Error 1 (or whatever it was that was never recoverable despite having a button that lead you to believe otherwise).

Color Sync has been in Windows since Win2k (as "ICM") and it worked very well. I remember taking one of our magazine page files home to print on my Epson Photo 700 printer - the output was virtually *identical* to the proof the professional print shop returned to us.

[Jeff Shyu]

apples to oranges, but still i find some similarities.

remember the first batch of "plug and pray" peripherals came out? when it worked, it was great, but when it didn't, you were pretty much screwed.
or you can go with the tried n trued IRQ jumper/dip switches, and know for a fact that it'll work, you just may bleed a bit while setting the jumpers.

kinda like the Mac.. when it works, it's great, but when it doesn't, you might as well throw it out the window.

[Sebastian Rios]

ITT: NERDS!!!

[Steve Ekstrand]

I remember a disaster in the office when the only remaining Mac in the organization wouldn't reboot after an OS upgrade. Of course, we didn't know how to support a Mac. And a Mac doesn't know much more than what makes it turn on. Pretty nice to put a sock in all his gloating over his precious little Mac. That computer cost more than the four PC's in the executive suite put together. Damn graphic artist types....

[Tom Tanquary]

Sorry, Bob. I have 2 MACs and 2 PCs. The MACs crash repeatedly and send me into fits of rage. If I never see the rainbow wheel of death again it'll be too soon. I know a lot of it is cultural but after being on PCs since they were invented, I can't get used to MAC's up is down, right is left, black is white environment. And a one button mouse? What's up with that? Even the wifi set-up - calling a password a key code. I mean really, they did that on purpose didn't they? I had to call a friend to find out how to open my DVD tray on the MAC PRO - no physical button on the machine or an icon on the screen. It's on the keyboard????? What the hell. Trying to get into the MAC was like entering the secret handshake club. I can see why PCs rule. Who needs the aggravation - just let me do my work.

And don't get me started on my piece-o-crap iPhone. Great toy for kids, really bad for business use.

[Bob Beamesderfer]

Who needs the aggravation - just let me do my work.

My exact feelings about Windows. See the PM I sent you.

[Bob Beamesderfer]

yeah, i actually went back to edit, but because i was so fast at it, it didn't even give me the "last edited on _____" tag at the end.

the machines were all purchased at the exact same time. The PC's were custom assembled barebone systems ordered from Newegg.com, and the mac lab was full of the brand new (at the time) G3's.

the G3's even had more memory than the PC, and running Form.z (which was first developed for the mac, and then PC) kept crashing, as well as photoshop.

as far as calibration, you can't really say that mac is better at it than a PC. to really get any "professional quality" calibration, you'd need a hardware calibrator anyways.

The early G3 sucked. So did the IIxf, although the dead one I bought for $5 turned out to be a great foot rest.

I don't have a hardware calibrator but my set up—screen vs. output from a Canon Pixma—is very, very close. I use either a scan of a Kodak color test target or a standard RGB test file produced by one of the paper companies, Hannemuhle I think. The variations are slight and only in a small range of greenish-blue. Remaining hues, tonal range and saturation are dead on.

[Bob Beamesderfer]

And a Mac doesn't know much more than what makes it turn on.

True of EVERY computer.

[Kurt Rahn]

Sorry, Bob. I have 2 MACs and 2 PCs. The MACs crash repeatedly and send me into fits of rage. If I never see the rainbow wheel of death again it'll be too soon. I know a lot of it is cultural but after being on PCs since they were invented, I can't get used to MAC's up is down, right is left, black is white environment. And a one button mouse? What's up with that? Even the wifi set-up - calling a password a key code. I mean really, they did that on purpose didn't they? I had to call a friend to find out how to open my DVD tray on the MAC PRO - no physical button on the machine or an icon on the screen. It's on the keyboard????? What the hell. Trying to get into the MAC was like entering the secret handshake club. I can see why PCs rule. Who needs the aggravation - just let me do my work.

And don't get me started on my piece-o-crap iPhone. Great toy for kids, really bad for business use.

I've found that you're really only truly comfortable on the machine you started on. I can deal with a PC, but I much prefer a Mac.

[Bob Beamesderfer]

Sorry, Bob. I have 2 MACs and 2 PCs. The MACs crash repeatedly and send me into fits of rage. If I never see the rainbow wheel of death again it'll be too soon. I know a lot of it is cultural but after being on PCs since they were invented, I can't get used to MAC's up is down, right is left, black is white environment. And a one button mouse? What's up with that? Even the wifi set-up - calling a password a key code. I mean really, they did that on purpose didn't they? I had to call a friend to find out how to open my DVD tray on the MAC PRO - no physical button on the machine or an icon on the screen. It's on the keyboard????? What the hell. Trying to get into the MAC was like entering the secret handshake club. I can see why PCs rule. Who needs the aggravation - just let me do my work.

And don't get me started on my piece-o-crap iPhone. Great toy for kids, really bad for business use.

I've found that you're really only truly comfortable on the machine you started on. I can deal with a PC, but I much prefer a Mac.

I started on an IBM System 3 Model 10, but the thing takes up a couple thousand square feet and requires 440 volts to run the disk drives and the printer. All for 128k of iron-core computing power. I used command-line Dartmouth Basic in college, now that's really fun. TRS-80, a few DEC PDP 11xx machines, several main-frame based proprietary systems using dumb terminals, ie, no internal computing power.

Other than Tom's issues, I see a bunch of stories of mis- or unmanaged assets. You let a graphics person update their own machine? Jumping to the latest OS or app version at the instant it's released isn't a good idea if the machine is critical to getting the job done every day. You blame the asset instead of the mismanagement of it? I managed about 12 Macs on the Business desk at the Times. We used them for stock tables, graphics, illustrations and production of color pages. I developed enough clout with IT that I spec'd the system and dealt with the editorial business manager when we were adding machines—we started with three when I got there in '94.

I don't agree that graphics is a niche use. Most medium to large companies have in-house graphic and Web design. Pretty common job functions for a so-called niche. If your definition of niche is anything less common than using Word to write letters, than there are a lot of niche functions.

Yeah, video editing on the high-end is niche and the software costs serious money. Image editing software designed for photogs is niche also. Photoshop doesn't do everything a photographer needs; that's way Adobe created Lightroom.

[Aaron Goldsmith]

I've found that you're really only truly comfortable on the machine you started on. I can deal with a PC, but I much prefer a Mac.

I started on a commador 64...

[Tom Tanquary]

Ha. Technically, I started on the ILLIAC. The first computer I owned was a KAYPRO II.

[Will Kalman]

My first computer was a VIC-20, then on to Commodore 64, Atari ST, and then PC's.

Did anyone here ever shop for Commodores at ComSoft Computers in Sun Valley or Atari ST's at Logical Choice for Computing in North Hollywood? If so, we probably crossed paths (or I worked on your machine - I did all the repairs at both shops).

[Craig Naylor]

I only wish I had the connections you all have! But it's finally an upgrade from the 256kb/s we had from the time we moved here in June '04 until last November SBC finally improved the connection. I'm lucky to have anything more than dialup as were more than 20,000 feet from the hub. Cable... not available again, to far from T/W closest hub! (Even our cable TV has a 7 second advance picture / ghost, most bazaar thing I've ever seen, due to the distance they claim.)



In our home we had two different progressions, the "kids computer" and Dad's computer, but we played games on all of them. We all started on a (don't recall the brand) single CPM machine running a 8" floppy drive. We dot a Vic 20, followed by Commodore 64 & 128. Dad moved on to a TSR80. We moved to an Apple IIe, dad built his own 286, moved on to a 486, then 486DX, I took the 486 to college where I bounced between my personal computer, and the computer labs Mac. I've built every IBM/Win machine I used ever since, but we had a Mac clone when Cindy was working on her Masters degree in the late 90's, because her teachers required all work to be turned in on disk (no wasting paper was their claim) at UCSD. Eldest daughters first laptop was a hand me down G3, now has win machine.

I prefer the working environment of Windows, the stability of the mac, but overriding both is the simplicity of building, upgrading the IBM based machines. But most importantly I dislike some of MS business dealings, so Win remains the only MS product I use.

[Steve Ekstrand]

I started on one of these.... I had all three ROMs--Basic,Forth, and Assembler. And four cassette drives.

I still have it.

http://oldcomputers.net/AIM-65-40.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Bob Beamesderfer]

A neighbor of mine in Mesa worked at GenRad in Phoenix. Loaned me an ITT dummy terminal with an acoustic modem built-in. Learned real fast that call-waiting was bad for modem connections!

[Kurt Rahn]

I've found that you're really only truly comfortable on the machine you started on. I can deal with a PC, but I much prefer a Mac.

I started on a commador 64...

TRS 80 and Apple II. But let me be more specific...if you started on Win, then you're more comfortable on Win. If you started out on a Mac, then you're more comfortable on a Mac. Obvious exception is if you're someone who works on computers in different environments daily or the type who build their own. Neither of these audiences are what Windows/MacOS were intended.

[Bob Beamesderfer]

I've found that you're really only truly comfortable on the machine you started on. I can deal with a PC, but I much prefer a Mac.

I started on a commador 64...

TRS 80 and Apple II. But let me be more specific...if you started on Win, then you're more comfortable on Win. If you started out on a Mac, then you're more comfortable on a Mac. Obvious exception is if you're someone who works on computers in different environments daily or the type who build their own. Neither of these audiences are what Windows/MacOS were intended.

I used both every day for several years at the Times, however the 486 PC was running a terminal emulator for the proprietary editing system, which ran on Tandem mainframes. Tandem made really and truly bullet-proof machines. Triple-redundant hardware with machine language fault correction. Mostly bought by the government and banks.

What Intel-based PCs really did was put an end to closed hardware systems. Even companies whose computing needs relied on mainframes wanted to use the cheaper, open hardware machines so they could run programs other than the proprietary stuff. That model continues to this day with server-side apps interacting with desktop PCs, which also run local software: Word, PowerPoint, Xcel, Firefox.

[Will Kalman]

I don't agree that graphics is a niche use. Most medium to large companies have in-house graphic and Web design.

I disagree Bob. You'd have to be a dedicated graphics professional before you're dealing with color gamuts and profiles. I do occasional web graphics for a corporate intra/extranet and have no need for anything high-end whatsoever. I don't think my job qualifies as a "graphics professional" job that puts me in the "niche".

I think the number of corporate cubicle pilots crunching on Excel and Word all day probably outnumber graphics professionals 100:1 or more unless the company's reason for being is graphics-related (magazine, news, web, etc).

[Mako Koiwai]

SOLVED !!!

Latest JPL Rocket Scientist Team Blew'er Andrew Bingham did a IT house call this evening to help Karen out ... and with his left hand he took care of my issues getting into web sites. Using some OPEN DNS addresses we performed an end run around TimeWarner, and voila ... I now don't have to wait seemingly endless amounts of time getting into web sites. Price ... one home cooked meal, with an option for a 2nd one at a later date.

Next up for him ... putting an external remote control HD camera on the Space Station. Hard to believe they haven't done that yet. They certainly have them in our spy satellites. I believe our Photoshop type Sharpening algorithms were originally developed for those cameras.

[Greg Peng]

A few of us already told you to try that solution weeks/months ago when you first posted about it. :mrt: