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Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 01-08-2000, 10:13 AM:
When we were ordering phone service for our new cinema we wanted DSL. The guy came and installed it in the same amount of time the other fellow installed the other two phone lines. We are running a 233 megahertz Pentium computer and it Rocks! I just downloaded 16mm from a platter from the picture whearhouse in 10 seconds. We are always on-line. We never have to sign in and we have had no problems so far. Our mail program can be on-line all day long. It checks for mail in 5 seconds. I never want to use a modem again.
Posted by Masao Garcia (Member # 184) on 01-08-2000, 04:15 PM:
A 233MHz Pentium rocks? We have one of those in our office at work, and it is so doggedy slow. I can't stand using that thing. Well, I guess that's natural, when you're used to a Celeron @ 594MHz...heh, heh.
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-08-2000, 11:34 PM:
At work, we have a Sun E6500 with 14 gigs of RAM (yes, RAM) and 8 UltraSparc processors. Now, THAT rocks! It would probably make a really lousy desk-top machine, though (particularly since it's the size of a typical theatre sound rack).
Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 01-10-2000, 04:21 PM:
That's nothing. Where I work, we have a Cray hooked directly to the Internet MAP backbone with an OC3 line........OK, ok.. I'm lying like a rug .... We have a network, but the Internet connection for everybody (30 people) gets squeezed through one 56K line. Pretty pathetic, consitering we make network test equipment...
Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 01-10-2000, 04:54 PM:
Get a G4. They're as fast as the first Cray Supercomputers. 1 billion F.L.O.P.S. sustained but with 'optimized' software it can go faster.For just your everyday webbing about, get an iMac DV, they're the most bang for the buck.
Twice as fast as a Pentium III/600!
Posted by Masao Garcia (Member # 184) on 01-10-2000, 08:37 PM:
But MacOS sucks so bad. Mac hardware ain't so bad, but the OS accounts for a lot too. And if you want more bang for your buck, it's all about overclocking your cheap Celeron 366A to 550MHz or more. And you won't be forced to use that shitester MacOS. Windows isn't that bad. Though it ain't the greatest, it's certainly better than MacOS.
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-10-2000, 08:58 PM:
Masao is obviously biased! I have both PC and Mac and love using the Mac for for editing, graphics and sound work. It hardly ever crashes. The PC is good for the everyday joe-average stuff like taxes. I just think the PC OS is ugly. But to each their own. If you enjoy a PC more, then stop bitching and use it, otherwise you sound jealous.I think I'll wait for the G5's.
Randy--I'm thinking about getting an iMac DV Special Edition (even though I hate iMacs) just because of the value! I could use a second Mac just for editing.
Ian-- If DSL is so great, why do you press the "submit" button more than once, forcing Brad to delete your duplicate posts? 
Actually a friend of mine has DSL and it rocks!
Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 01-10-2000, 09:48 PM:
Joe,Don't waste the $ on the Special Edition unless you really have to have the 'charcoal' colored case.
Buy the 'regular' iMac DV. It has 64 meg. of ram and a 10 gig hard drive. For your $ you get 3 gig of hard drive and 64 meg of ram when you buy the Special Edition. You can go out and buy 64 meg of ram and still have enough money left over to get a printer.
Both the 'regular' iMac DV and the Special Edition have 2 USB ports, ethernet and 'firewire'. They have the same cpu and clock. and they both kick any Pentium's ass all over the field.
As for all the people who don't like Apple for some reason. I'm not one of those guys who'll argue with you. Since it's a free country, you all have the right to go out and waste your money on a piece of shit computer if you want. 
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-10-2000, 10:19 PM:
Oh, no! Not another "my hardware/OS is better than yours" thread!
(As for me, I'm typing this on a 1992-vintage Sun Sparc 2 which is not a bad little machine for the $100 [used] price tag. Just try running a recent OS version [Solaris 2.6 in my case] on an eight-year-old Mac or PC!).
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-10-2000, 10:43 PM:
Thanks for the tips, Randy. Anything less than 128megs of RAM is too little.Scott, my OS/Hardware is better than yours! Wanna fight?
Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 01-10-2000, 11:53 PM:
I wasn't talking about how bad my computer was, I was talking about how big a pipe comes into my house. DSL is the biggest pipe on the block. With email and web browsing, it doesn't tax the processor. My business partner keeps hinting that the company will buy me a new computer. He just got an iMac. I'm looking for a laptop so I can screw up those Dolby settings.
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-11-2000, 12:41 AM:
Ian- Read my question to you again.
Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 01-11-2000, 09:55 AM:
Isn't it strange how the stuff you have at home is better than what you use at work?
At home, my girlfriend and I are hooked to a cable modem. She has a 200mhz pent and I have a 400mhz. We share a SCSI CD-rom burner.At work, I have a 166 pent and share a 56K line. I have to use a parl. port tape backup that takes forever....
Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 01-11-2000, 10:12 AM:
Joe-I told you about the nervous tic before.
Posted by Jason Burroughs (Member # 68) on 01-11-2000, 01:14 PM:
I miss my DSL :-(
Ma Bell needs to get off her duff and get in my area!
Posted by Masao Garcia (Member # 184) on 01-11-2000, 06:39 PM:
Hey, hey, I never said that the Mac was the most evil thing in the world. I'm not biased. I just tell it how it is. I've used Macs before, and they just have a slower feeling than a PC. MacOS cannot multitask as well as Windows 98/NT and it just feels slow. I know that G4s are as good as, or better than an equivalently clocked Intel/AMD CPU. The G4 450s can keep up with Athlon 750s or something. Granted, I've never used a G4-based Mac (I've used some powerPC 60XX variant or something), but MacOS hasn't changed much. When I browse the web, I have many windows open at once. I found this to be a big no no on the Macs I've used (w/ 90MB of RAM) while doing simple editing in Photoshop. With my PC (w/ 96MB of RAM), I find I can open up lots of IE windows and do simple photo editing in Photoshop, play an MP3/DVD, and rant about Macs/PCs, with no problems. Bottom line, I like them both, but find MacOS to be of much lesser quality than Windows 98/NT.
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-11-2000, 09:50 PM:
You used a 680x0 machine? Or Power PC? Both of those are fairly old. I can see why you thought it was slow. They were. It can also depend how the user had his memory set up. On a Mac, you can assign how much memory (RAM) each program is allowed to take up. Perhaps the Macs you have used had the partitions set way to high and it got sluggish and crashed. Default settings usually work best except for graphic intensive programs. And "virtual memory" was probably on, which uses hard disc space as a temporary RAM storage. If this is on the computer will run two to three times slower. Not to fuel an everlasting debate, but I edited each and every one of the pictures in the Picture Warehouse on this site with AOL, Netscape (refuse to use IE), PhotoShop, SoundApp, JPEGView, and Painter 4 open. I only have 128 megs of RAM. No probs. I am using OS 8.1 and have had 0 problems. Windows just feels clumsy to me. And it looks very very blah. Oh yeah, and I can run Windows on my Mac for those few files that I need a PC for. I can drag files to the PC desktop from the Mac desktop and vice-versa. Not quite as fast as a real PC, but it gets the job done. Also, I don't like using what "everyone else" is using. There is something to be said for nonconforming, just as long as it doesn't ruin productivity, which in my case, it doesn't.
Posted by Stephen Jones 1 (Member # 114) on 01-12-2000, 02:31 AM:
There is something to be said for a company that revolutionized the way operating systems are done. Look at a MacOS 6.0.3 that came out in '88 and then look at Windows95? See any similarities. Microsoft took the Mac Task bar and put it at the bottom, made the Apple Menu the Windows Start menu, renamed the trash the recycling bin, then basically copied the way a Mac runs to run on DOS compatible systems. That's why a Mac G4 running at 450 MHz can outperform easily an 800 MHz Pentium III. Mac's have a stigma of being slow or bad because not everyone owns one. PCs are good for games, but why buy a piece of equipment for $2000 when you can get a PlayStation or N64 for $90. Anybody that is running MacOS 8.5 and knows what's out there, it's easy to see why a majority of Media editing is done on a Mac. Don't get me wrong, there are things I like about PC, it's just that most of those things have already been done on a Mac and can be done better. But there's nothing I can say to a die hard Windows user that can persuade him/her. It's like trying to say that Spanish is a better language than English... it's all in our own preferences.
Posted by Jason Burroughs (Member # 68) on 01-12-2000, 12:51 PM:
My understanding is that alot of Mac's look and feel is built into the BIOS. Even when you run Linux on a Mac platform it retains quite a bit of the MacOS look and feel. I've not seen Linux running on a Mac, but I've heard it rocks.
I'd agree that Mac's are used for alot of graphics editing, however Amiga is the king of the graphics/audio realm, being the platform of choice for the professionals.
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-12-2000, 04:52 PM:
Ah the Amiga... do they still make those? I loved them when they were available. But they only had 4 audio channels 
As for what the PC can do well in my opinion that the Mac can't:
Run JBL Smaart Pro RTA, Dolby Load 500 and SDDS programs and the such. It's just that nobody has designed versions of this stuff for the Mac. People just don't design as much stuff for the Mac, but that goes for viruses, too. I have never had a virus because the people who make them go after the big targets.
Posted by Jason Burroughs (Member # 68) on 01-12-2000, 05:18 PM:
Joe, Yep, they still make the Amiga. They're available in Europe I know, from what I understand Gateway owns the rights here in the US now, and they plan to re-launch the Amiga sometime in the future.
You might want to check out their website which is (drumroll) www.amiga.com
Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 01-12-2000, 05:57 PM:
BIOS? Macs don't have it. Everything's either in ROM or in the system file.The "Mac is for making pretty pictures" is something that people who have PCs say when they've never actually used a Mac.
iMovie, for example. Basically, anything a Mac can do, a PC can do 1/2 as well and two years later.
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-12-2000, 07:36 PM:
iMovie? That is the only thing stopping me from getting an iMac. I guess I could just edit with EditDV and VideoShop. iMovie looks too featureless for what I like to do. Or I could go with Apple's $1000 Final Cut Pro which Lucas smoocher and producer Rick McCallum says "is just as powerful as the Avid editing system I paid $150,000 for 3 years ago."
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-12-2000, 07:50 PM:
Gee this is a differnt type of topic for this forum but here it goes...The winner is obviously a Macintosh. I have a 12 year old one and this brand spankin new iMac DV SE (sorry Randy, my old SE/30 was running on 20MB of RAM, the iMac DV SE comes with 128MB (double the standard DV)).
Who ever thinks the Windos OS is better than the Mac OS is nuts, it is bad knock off of the Mac.
But for those Windows/platter heads out there....i have Virtual PC...runs Win98 at the equivalent of a Pentium at 200MHz on my Mac, and it "boots" the Virtual PC with Win98 running inside of 15 seconds...can't do that on a real one that costs many times as much.
So there! <sticking tongue out>
Steve
------------------
"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"
Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 01-12-2000, 09:56 PM:
My old roommate is a 'professional' software engineer. As far as I can tell, he's in about the top 10 people in the world as far as Mac programming goes. I used to be one of his Beta testers and got to try to break his programs before he shipped them. That could be a lot of fun at times.One of his projects was for Articulate Systems, which made voice digitizers for Macs before they all had built in mics. My all time best Beta test story is this....
I programmed in a voice command to open a pre-prepared word processing document and FAX it to a pre-determined phone number....
The command sequence was "computer... PIZZA"
(The two part command prevents false triggering.)
The word processing doc. was "Please send a Large pizza and a 6-pak of Coke to 123 Anystreet...)
The phone number was for the FAX-in order line to my favorite pizza shop.
Essentially, when my friends came over, I'd ask, "Do you want some pizza?" Then I'd walk to the computer and say, "Computer... Pizza." It'd make a confirmation beep and fire off the FAX. 20 minutes later, the door bell would ring.
This was almost 10 years ago. I don't know of any PC that could have done that (without serious dicking around) and I know of few that could do it today.
Posted by George Roher (Member # 91) on 01-13-2000, 12:11 AM:
I'm glad to see that we have several Mac people on the forum Windows is just a rip off of Mac OS. And it looks awful. I've been a fan of the Apple Computer company for a long time. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs invented the first home computer in a garage. Many people have stolen ideas from them since.
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-13-2000, 12:13 AM:
Blame Ian Price, who started this non-film thread. But ya gotta admit... we ALL use computers.I just ordered a G4 earlier tonight (450Mhz) and that should run Virtual PC faster than all but the super top of the line Pentium III's.
What am I going to use the power of the G4 for? To post on the Film-Tech Forum! And maybe type some e-mail. And edit the occasional feature length movie. And let's not forget Film-Tech training DVDs.
Posted by Jason Burroughs (Member # 68) on 01-13-2000, 11:57 AM:
For those of you who think that the MAC was a first... WRONG...
Xerox had a computer back in the early 70's that had
GUI (graphical user interface)
Mouse
and if I remember right at least some form of multitasking.
Xerox abandoned this product because it didn't fit within their new "document reproduction" theme.
Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 01-13-2000, 11:58 AM:
I started this thread on DSL not the differences between Mac and PC. Your operating system doesn't matter when your on the web. By the way we got three 233Mhz PCs for free. Free is better than a Mac any day. Free will set you free. Free means never having to care about it. Free means never worrying that you bought too computer for posting to Film-Tech. Free means you can spend all of your money upgrading the projection booth.
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-13-2000, 03:21 PM:
I'm not spending ANY of my money to upgrade my projection booth, whether I have money or not!
Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 01-13-2000, 03:45 PM:
The difference between you and me, is that I own my Booth.
Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 01-13-2000, 07:36 PM:
You know, I like all computers. I'm using an Acer laptop in my boss's office, right now. It's actually pretty nice. It's got a 233/Pentium II and a 10GB HD. I don't have my own machine right now. If I want to use a computer for anything, I have to either go to work, after hours or to the public library. Problem is, they're all Windows machines. I'm constantly frustrated by them not being able to do things I'm used to doing on Macs. (Wanna' change printers? Click the chooser... Wanna' select text? Double/Triple click on it... There's a hundred things like that) I often come away from the machine(s) all spent and annoyed for just those reasons.Honestly, I could have had a couple of computers if I wanted to settle for PC's. I would just rather spend my money on something I like and can do work on better. I won't get a computer of my own until I can get a Mac. If anybody asks me what I'd recommend for them to buy, I'll say, "Mac" every time. I know too many people who bought other computers who come back to me and say they wish they bought a Mac.
I'll get off my soap box, now. No more Mac/PC arguements for ME for a while.