Bill Gates in Heaven

[T'rr'll]

Bill Gates in Heaven

When Bill Gates died, he went up to Heaven, where
Saint Peter showed him to his house; a beautiful 20
room house, with grounds and a tennis court. Bill Gates
was pleased, and spent many months enjoying the
amenities of Heaven.

One day, he was enjoying one of Heaven's many fine
parks, when he ran into a man dressed in a fine tailored
suit.

"That is a nice suit, my friend," said Gates. "Where did
you get it?"

"Actually," the man replied, "I was given a hundred of
these when I got here. I've been treated really well. I got
a mansion on a hill overlooking a beautiful hill, with a
huge five-hundred acre estate, a golf course, and three
Rolls Royces."

"Were you a Pope, or a doctor healing the sick?" asked
Gates.

"No," said his new friend, "Actually, I was the captain
of the Titanic."

Hearing this made Gates so angry that he immediately
stalked off to find St. Peter.

Cornering Peter, he told him about the man he had just
met, saying, "How could you give me a paltry new
house, while you're showering new cars, a mansion, and
fine suits on the Captain of the Titanic? I invented the
Windows operating system! Why does he deserve
better??!!!!"

"Yes, but we use Windows," replied Peter, "and the
Titanic only crashed once."



T'rr'll

[Alby]

heheh..

[Steady Foot]

I enjoyed that, T'rr'll. Where did you hear that one?


Well, Alby, I may have you beat. 2 Macs, 2 PCs, the use of one laptop and I play Clan Lord on a Mac Emulation on a PC and I enjoy every minute. [:)]

Ohhh I do have a real life. Just ask T'rr'll. [:)] Are families are from the same area. My wife wonders at times though. [:)]

[Goric]

1 Mac!!!!!

I hate PC's and I dont expect to ever own one. hate em hate em hate em!!!

Forever MAC!!

HTF Sir Goric

[Kiriel]

Between my hubby and I we have 3 macs, 2 pcs with Windoze (for games), 1 pc laptop running Windoze, 1 running FreeBSD, and 3 Linux boxes (web server, mail server, and workstation). I pretty much never touch the PCs, and since my hubby got his TiBook, he doesn't use Windows very much either.

[Twilth]

It's funny, I keep hearing how much more superior PCs are to Macs. But when I tried using a Windows 95 laptop.... I have never experienced a slower or faultier computer in my entire life.

That's why I'm a mac guy. :)

-TWC Twilth

[Hidden]

I was Mac-only for almost 11 years, then I finally got tired of running my favorite games at 3 frames per second (not everything needs to be like CL!) and tried out a new PC that was half the price of my Mac. I was shocked at the difference. I'm a PC guy now, keeping my Mac around to Clan on (I figure at the current rate of progress I'll be long dead before my Mac will stop running CL)

Windows XP is better than all it's predecessors with the possible exception of 2000.

[Finnias]

I am the proud owner of 3 SGI Indigo 2 xtremes, an ancient PowerBook, a 266 G3(heavily modified - runs at about 550Mhz) and a late '01 iBook. My wife has a Gateway. I spend more time fixing and troubleshooting her PC than I spend on all my other computers together.

At the studio I work at, I maintain about 8 G4's and a smattering of iMacs (a secondary part of my job) and 1 PC (for the accountant). I spend more time troubleshooting and maintaining that 1 PC that gets used once a week, than I do all the other computers.

Anyone seeing a pattern here?

[Delirium]

And now for the opposing view, we have...[;)]

Well, maybe not totally opposing. I probably just have different priorities than HWC Hidden. I evaluate computers and OS's by how well I can get my job done with them. Periodically, I try microsoft products because someone tells me that this version is so much better than the last. Every time, it's been the same: after many crashes, Microsofts products convince me they still haven't learned to make software that is not crap. I just went through this about a month ago with Word for OS X, so I'm feeling in a particularly anti-microsoft mood right now. I've had other programs crash under OS X, but the only two that were designed for OS X are Word and IE. The others were either Classic or newly ported Unix apps. The basic problem with microsoft is that they are more interested in adding whiz-bang features than thinking about the overall design and usabiity of their programs. Many PC people said Windows 95 was so much better and more stable than the previous versions. I had a Win 95 system on my desk for about 6 months and I've never used a worse OS for longer, except maybe windows 3. That win 95 box was so bad, I wound up installing Linux on it and becomming very happy with the box after that. Right now, OS X is working great and I haven't touched the Windows NT box the institution gave me for e-mail since I figured out how to forward it all to my mac.

Just to be clear on what my computational needs are - I develop and apply metods for heavy-duty number crunching and I have several programmers and students working for me. I have a cluster of rack-mounted Linux PC boxes (best price/performance for brute raw number crunching) and then I have a Unix workstation on each peson's desktop to make debugging & testing easier. I started out with Alpha's, but after Compaq killed the Alpha, we looked at the alternatives, and, with our benchmarks using our analysis software, we found that the Mac beat the Sun in our price range. I'm sure we could have gotten a nice Linux box for the price too, but Linux isn't officially approved here, so it takes extra time & red tape to get Linux boxes. Also, people's personal tastes matter - I start by asking people whether thay want a Unix-type box in their office in addition to the institution-supplied windows PC and then, if they say yes, I try to find out what they want and like to use. I'm paying my people way more than I'm spending on the computer for each of their desktops, and them being happy has a bigger impact on my group's productivity than a little more CPU speed, ram, or disk space. In fact, a system that doesn't get used adds nothing. I'm going to be getting two more systems soon, and both of the people they are for are leaning towards Macs.

As someone who wrote Unix shell scripts before there was a Macintosh, I'd have to say I'm firmly in the camp that thinks OS X is the best Mac OS X ever. Prior to OS X, it was my oppinion that Unix/Linux was best for number crunching and Mac was best for word-processing and the like. I wouldn't be surprised if I did a detailed comparison and found I agreed with Hidden's clicker that Windows PC's do better as game-playing machines. That's not even on my list when I buy a computer.

[Hidden]

Finnias, I think it's all about competence with Windows PCs. They certainly don't allow as much room for error as a Mac does, and when you screw one up it's really gone. I've been a PC user for about 2 months now, and had one system crash in all that time, as opposed to 2 or 3 per month on my Mac.

Delirium, I would certainly agree with you that UNIX is a far superior OS to both the Mac OS (discounting the BSD part) and Windows, but I have different priorities as you said.

Getting basic tasks like e-mail, web browsing, and the occasional essay written:
So far I still use my Mac for e-mail and writing, but mainly because I haven't equipped the PC for either. Web browsing is a million times better on the PC than it is on Mac or UNIX, because IE actually responds when you click, as opposed to freezing up for a few seconds (which REALLY gets on my nerves.), and it actually uses the cache when you click the back button. UNIX e-mail clients and web browsers are so absolutely intolerable that I'm not going to even dignify them with a chuckle. Verdict: PC.

Gaming: The PC is the superior machine, no doubts there.

Web design: The jury is still out on this one. I set up an Apache server with PHP and MySQL last night and so far haven't had any problems besides crappy instructions (which was also a problem on the Mac). I have yet to do a detailed comparison of text editors, but I have a feeling it will be a close match. UNIX beats them both in this aspect, but luckily I have my Mac/UNIX hybrid server ready to resurrect at a T3 line near you. Verdict: UNIX.

Programming: I haven't done any PC development yet beyond installing some compilers I borrowed from my company, but I've been so far very satisfied with the programming experience I have on the Mac, and I doubt anything on the PC is going to change that. UNIX beats them both.

Graphics: PC wins flat-out. The GIMP is a crippled photoshop (pun intended), so UNIX/Linux is knocked flat out. Photoshop is very slightly better on the Mac, but not noticeably. 3ds MAX and Maya are exclusive to and more complete on the PC, so it wins the category.

User experience: So far I'd have to say the PC is in the lead. The fact that every program comes with working, centrally accessible uninstaller is one huge plus, as well as the responsiveness of the system in general. I have yet to find one thing the Finder was better at than Windows Explorer.

[Phelps]

Originally posted by Hidden
Finnias, I think it's all about competence with Windows PCs. They certainly don't allow as much room for error as a Mac does, and when you screw one up it's really gone. I've been a PC user for about 2 months now, and had one system crash in all that time, as opposed to 2 or 3 per month on my Mac.


I have to wonder if some of this is the traditional "compare the brand new PC to the three year old Mac" deal. I've had my XP laptop at work for about 9 months now, and the pattern is pretty stable. It takes about 90 days for your first BSOD, and then you will get them in spurts. You will go a couple of weeks without one, then you will get 15 in three days, and then you will be good for another couple of weeks. Windows isn't stable -- it just clumps the instability together better. If you do a format and reinstall, you are good for another 90 days.

I really don't think that Windoze is better at anything -- there are just some vertical markets that aren't serviced by anything else. My $2000 Dell desktop at work is about the same speed (user-wise) as my $2000 G4. (The G4 is more fun.) I'm thinking of buying a cheap PC for my brother to work on at home (that I can dual boot to a *nix) but I figure on having to spend $1000 of my time to make the *nix match up to the other two.

What it comes down to is that people don't <b>choose</b> Windows. They settle for it. Kinda like how most people get married.

[Mjollnir]

How did this discussion creep in here? shouldnt this be in the OOC discussion page

[Delirium]

Hidden - to me discounting the BSD/Unix side of OS X is like saying "except for that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was they play?"

Like you, I used to get 2 or 3 crashes a month under the Clasic systems (systems 6 thru 9 for me). 9 times out of 10, these crashes were caused by Microsoft products. Microsoft never has been able to follow the specs, and under clasic, their programs didn't play nice with others. I got both MacWrite and Word with my first mac (an SE/30). Because of the problems with Word, I quickly learned to use MacWrite by default and only go to Word when I wanted a feature that wasn't available in MacWrite. By the way, that SE/30 remained in active use for 10 years (with upgrades to 20MB RAM and a color monitor along the way), and the reason I stopped using it was that the floppy drive died, not that it wasn't still useful for some tasks.

Under OS X... lets see, I have 3 machines running it, a DP 500MHz G4, a powerbook G3 500MHz (firewire), and a 933Mhz G4 (office, travel, and home machines). I don't think I've had any system crashes since 10.1 came out. I tend to keep them all running 24/7, except the PB gets to sleep when it travels. I had maybe 2 or 3 crashes before that, but even then, I was doing some fairly unusual stuff, and it was only the agua interface that crashed - I was able to log in from the net and recover the system without hitting the reset button. Also, I've had a number of programs crash without taking OS X down, but like I said before, these were all classic apps or Microsoft products.

The fact that Microsoft publishes buggy software isn't the only reason I don't like to use their products. I'm fairly honest - the licence agreement for office says you can install it on 2 machines if they are used by 1 person. I have 3 machines that I use, so I got a 2nd copy of office X. As it happened, my lap top and my home computer were installed with the same copy. The other day, I opened up a readme file that was in Word on my lap top, then went off to do something else and forgot about it. Later, I sat down at my desktop and tried to open up a word file someone had sent me. Up poped a nasty message that another copy of this licence had been detected and I was in violation of the licence agreement. I shut down the copy on my laptop and was then able to open the doccument on my desktop. That means Word is at least brodcasting to the local net. The only reason to put code like this in is to go after software pirates. It's there for Microsofts benefit only and does no good for the honest end user. Depending on how they are doing the bradcasting, it could even cause me harm, by degrading my network performance or creating a security hole. The latter concerns me because some of the data I deal with is confidential. It also irks me that they take the trouble to put code like this in, but don't properly debug their table functions. I also don't like that Microsoft seems to put zero thought into their file formats. I see no valid reason that adding a few tables to a text file should increase it in size from, say, about 100k to several MB. Yes disk space is cheap and a non-issue, but if it is a doccument I am collaborating on via e-mail, then that is a problem since some mail servers bounce large files.

In my experience, the versions of Windows I've used have worked reasonably well with Microsoft products, but I can't do everything I need to do, even excluding the heavy-duty analysis packages I use, with Microsoft products. There are lots of things I need 3rd-party apps for on a PC or a Mac. Every time I've had to use a Windows PC, there's been some mission-critical task for which I couldn't find a reliable program. I've yet to have that problem on a Mac. By the way, there was another PC opperating system I used, and it was pretty stable: OS/2.

[Hidden]

Originally posted by Delirium
Hidden - to me discounting the BSD/Unix side of OS X is like saying "except for that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was they play?"

Ok, I'm definitely keeping that around :)