Re: Question about TI-83+
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Re: Question about TI-83+
Vincent99@aol.com wrote:
> Okay, you bought no name components slapped together by a no name company who
> undoubtably did little testing to check their stability and compatibility
> with each other, and got them cheap. Now what happens if you have a problem?
> Are you going to get lifetime free phoen support from them?
OK, all the components are name brands, Intel CPU and intel chipset on an intel
video card, Maxtor 8.4gig hard drive, NEC monitor, USRobotics 56K courier
V.Everything modem, and a 5X Toshiba DVD, oh yah, I almost forgot the 192-voice
YamahaGX 32-bit wavetable sound card. Only the company I bought it from is a
noname company, and they give 3-year free tech support wich I haven't had to use
once because the thing runs perfectly, and I've had it since a month before
Christmas or so.
> Mac's have in
> the past been overpriced(years ago), but they aren't anymore. For $1599 you
> can get a 300MHz G3 with 64mb ram, 4gig HD, 16mb BRAND NAME video card(ATI
> Rage 128, 50% faster than a Voodoo II or so), and quality hardware and
> support from a real company.
Macs are still overpriced, your example proves it, it has a 300MHz G3, it's
clocked lower than mine, but I don't know much about G3 design all I know is that
it beat PII on ONE set of results of something that I have never heard of I think
but I didn't care enough to find out. has 32Megs less ram, 4.4gigs less HD, it
does have a better video card, but I never liked voodoo2s either, and I hate the
new voodoo3s. And all my stuff has tech support free for 3 years and if it brakes
before a year I can get a newer better one. And mine cost $1150, $450 less then
that G3!
> Sure you could get a Wintel with similar #'s
> for less, but the stat's don't equate at all. 64mb is plenty to run anything
> but Photoshop and similar apps, files and applications take less HD space,
> and 300 is in the range of a 400/450 PII in real world use (not 600MHz as the
> admittedly misleading 2x as fast ads would imply),
Ummm, that's debatable, it depends upon what you're doing generally, but overall I
would agree that Mac CPUs are better than pentiums but I wasn't thinking when I
got a PII, I would have preferred a strong-arm or Alpha, because I would like to
use linux but I can't because I don't have the Hd space for a partition, I'm
hoping to get a new one soon though.
> but the time wasted
> screwing around with making the computer work makes it cost far more in the
> long run than spending a bit more for better hardware and software.
My thing worked uot of box, required about 1/2 an hour of assembling mostly
because I don't read instructions so I plugged the wrong cord into my
subwoofer(also included with the computer).
> Anybody
> who doesn't agree can keep buying inferior hardware to run a crap OS(or
> Linux, which runs just as well here). The G3 minitowers all have 100Mbit
> ethernet,
mine has a 3COM 10/100Mbit ethernet card, but since I got this computer the two
others in my house have been moved away, one upstairs and one two rooms away and I
don't have cords that can reach the hub from those locations..
> Firewire(IEEE 1394 to others who licence it, since FireWire is
> Apple's name for the technology it created) for high end peripherals, USB for
> low end peripherals,
I have 2 USB ports
> and ADB if you want to use your old kbd and mouse or
> tablet or whatever. You also get either another 32mb of RAM or a v90
> internal modem with that, whichever you want, and the system you get has been
> extensively tested and designed with brand name parts that are often made in
> house. Macs are not just parts slapped together into a generic case
What does the writing on the case mean besides the amount of advertising, I
probably could've gotten my computer cheaper exept I desided to go with this
because I figured it would be reliable since it won PC Magazine's Editor's Choice
(or actually one of their other systems did before this was made, it was a PII 300
that won.)
> , nor do
> they come with chips with unique IDs on them to let anybody who wants to to
> see exactly who is visiting their page and who knows what else like in the
> PIII and late PIIs
I don't see why that's a problem?? elaborate!
>
> Now, onto the iMac. First, the $899 ones you may have seen are the outdated
> ones that aren't made or sold anymore; No stores have any stock left of
> them, so anyone you see is a demo model. The 15" screen in the iMac is the
> best you're ever going to see, 1024x768 @ 32-bit with either 65 or 85 Hz
> refresh at that resolution, and upto 120 or so at lower res, made by Sony and
> running on a 6mb ATI card. The processor is virtually identical in just
> numbers (333Mhz G3 750) to your 350, and is more than enough to do anything
> the computer is target to do(games, web, etc.) HD is 6gig, about equiv to
> yours since files and apps are again generally smaller on Macs. The target
> market generally doesn't need removable storage, and if they do they can go
> buy a Zip or SuperDrive. Floppies are of dubious value unless you have stuff
> on them from previous computers to transfer, which isn't the case in the
> target market. In response to "but they are quite pathetic and really
> promote stupidity among people by allowing them to be vegetables in front of
> what thy think is great and powerful", this is what people want.
But whether they want it or not doesn't mean you should give it to them, some
people wish more then anything that they could end their life, yet it is against
the law and if they try and fail what happens, they get sent to a prison with a
psycho ward, I know, my mother is a retired lawyer who still has clients and she
always used to work at home and I'd always here her on the phone with some
psychopath who tried to kill himself or another. Buying an iMac is like
attempting suicide, if you live through it then you should be sent to prison with
a psycho ward.
> But by
> putting a good machine in that box anybody can have the flexibility of using
> it as a normal computer to do almost anything a normal Mac can(not
> everything...no PCI or Firewire). The iMac is a hell of a computer for
> $1200,
It cost more than my computer and it does less, this is a hell of a computer?!
> and people/companies aren't going to spend hundreds more trying to
> make it work.
If they got my computer they wouldn't, but I must admit it didn't come with an
ethernet card, I got those when I whent to MIT to see my brother.
> It has been proven time after time that PC environments have a
> SIGNIFICANTLY higher cost to maintain.
Not if you're smart they don't, if you're not smart then get a PC and get
educated, what is the point to life if noone tries to learn anything new?
>
> And Macs in general. I can run MacOS, Windows95/NT, BeOS, Unix/Linux,
> PlayStation and any other console games, and virtually anything else with my
> G3/400, and I can swap between them while I'm running for all of those but
> Be, which I can just choose at startup. How many of those can you run with
> reasonable reliability(i.e. an emulator that works for all or at least most
> games in the console area).
I cannot run MacOS, and I have no desire to because I dislike it very much, it can
unfortunately run win98, which I regret having this thing come with, I'm planning
on getting Debion (I'm not sure of the spelling) when I get my new HD, and I dunno
about BeOS, and I have an emulator to run Playstation games off the original CDs,
and I have emulators for many other game consoles but I don't use them much and I
can run any emulator straight from windows.
Your PC cannot do anything that an iMac couldn't
> do with the exception of using archane hardware interfaces to outdated
> PC-only apps.
Well, yah, my PC can do a lot that an iMac can't, such as PRINT without having to
buy more crap, you complained about fixing up a PC, I've never had to, but in
order to print off an iMac you have to spend time and money to get crap that
sticks into that hole in the side of the thing, or you have to connect it to a
superior machine. Also iMacs couldn't run 3D-intense games with all the settings
on the best quality possible and on close to 1600x1200 resolution, some examples
are unreal:Max:1024x768x65K, motocross madness:Max:same as unreal,
Quake2:1520x???? I'm not sure about quake2 because I deleted it a week ago but it
was in the 1500s for the first one, and I'll extend the list if you really care,
but I was playing some crap simulator with absolutely horrible graphics at a
display iMac and you controlled some bad 3D image of a dinosaur and it was in
horrible resolution, I could see the huge pixels, probably about 640x480
resolution was my guess, and it was choppy!! it was a small 3D field and there
wer no other objects.
> In 14 years there's never been something I wanted to do or
> that I saw someone on a PC do that I couldn't do on my Mac's, usually
> easier/faster/better.
>
I'd like you to prove that to me because there's no situation where I could ever
want to use a mac because anything that I would care for it to do I could probably
to easier/faster/better on my PC.
>
> Since you seem to have little idea of the pricing:
>
> iMac $1199 333MHz 32mb 6mb video 6 gid EIDE 24x CD 15"
> monitor 5 colors to please newbies
The only selling point they stress is the colors! and it has pretty bad stats
compared to my computer and it still costs more.
>
> G3/300 $1599 300MHz 64mb 16mb Video 6 gig EIDE 24x CD
> Firewire Blueberry/Ice
Hmm, the video card is the only thing that's better then mine, the ram and CDROm
are worse and it costs $450 more than mine.
>
> G3/350 $1650 350MHz 64mb 16mb Video 6 gig EIDE 5x DVD
> Firewire
$500 more than mine, better processor, worse RAM, better video card, same DVD,
probably worse sound, not worth the extra.
>
> G3/350 $1999 350MHz 64mb 16mb Video 6 gig EIDE 24x CD
> Firewire
EEEK, $850 more than mine, better processor, worse RAM, better vid. card, worse HD
worse CDROM, in fact worse then the last example costing $1650!
> G3/400 $2499 400MHz 128mb 16mb Video 9 gig SCSI 24x CD SCSI
> card Firewire
$1350 more than mine, much better processor, better RAM, twice as good vid card,
hmm, I thought all Macs came with SCSIs, they used to be standard issue, I like
that HD though, worse CDROM except it's SCSI so it's probably faster ontransfer
rate but no DVD! Not worth the $1350 more, I could buy another one of my
computers!
>
> All configurations have 56k modems, 100Mbit Ethernet, USB, etc.
Same here except I got the ethernet card for free!
> You can
> custom order a G3 with any set of features you want at Apple.
mine was custom too
> I suspect your
> no name computer came with none of these, so that's easily another $50*3 to
> add those things which you will certainly need in the near future if you want
> peripherals. The PowerBooks also come in similar configs for a little bit
> more than an equivelant desktop.
>
> There is NO reason anyone within the target market for an iMac should get a
> PC, and there is little reason why anybody can't do virtually anything with a
> G3 minitower. The "stuff [you] do on [your] computer" could just as easily
> be accomplished on a Mac, and I probably do much of it. If a few companies
> (Kinetix(3d Studio), Parametric(Pro/E), etc) would get off their asses and
> write PowerPC versions of their apps there would be even less reason that
> people are forced to use PCs.
Generally, people aren't forced to use PCs, they are generally more powerful and
faster machines, not always, but they are cheaper for the most part.
> Right now I have a C app compiling itself into
> MacOS, Linux, and Win9x from one source base and one computer with one mouse
> click. I have Pro/Engineer running in a window with Linux in the background
> somewhere, and I don't get random crashes every day or two.
Even with windows suprisingly my thing hasn't crashed once, it gets kinda F*cked
up once in a blue moon and it says "please restart now" but I never do and
everything works the same.
> When it does
> crash I get a usually meaningful error message instead of a big blue
> screen.(okay, well I have the debugger installed so I get a screen full of
> register dumps and crap, but that's not something a normal user sees or needs
> to.) The Mac is a powerful, simple, friendly, and usable environment;
> that's why it's been around for 15 years, for people who want to get work
> done.
I get my work done and then some on my PC, it also depends upon the work you're
doing, I guess, I consider a Mac only useful if you're either typing a document or
playing baseball and someone accidentally hit the ball over the fence..
> Thousands of Macs from 5, 10, 13 years ago are still being used
> because they were designed well enough to have a much greater usable life
> span than typical PCs.
13 years ago they had those crap AppleIIs, if you can find me a situation where
that is useful then I'll laugh for hours. One of my friends who used to be a
Macky has an old mac from a few years ago, and it is slow, useless, and well
that's bad enough, except it supposedly begs him to end it's life every day
because it's in pain, according to him.
> Last year I was at one of those fancy hotels in
> Orlando with my class and they were using 3 ORIGINAL Macs to run the entire
> place. When was the last time you saw a C64 or 8086 or even a 286 or 386
> doing something useful?
>
Well, another one of my friends (a PC man all his life) mom works at a hospital
and they were using 286s up until a few months ago when my friend went their and
started screaming, now they have newer PCs and a nice T3 connection.
>
> That's enough for now...if you have any questions/comments, I'll be happy to
> "discuss" them in a "sociable" manner (off the list of course, this has
> nothing to do with Calcs anymore)
I agree but I'm putting it on the list anyways because I'm a jackass I guess,
maybe it's because I've had similar discussions before and I found it's a lot more
fun when everyone's against me. I once made the mistake of going into a marathon
newsgroup and being civil, then they got angry and started beating on me, then we
got into a platform war somehow even though the whole time I was saying that I
don't hate macs, I just think that they should grow up.
>
>
--The Rabid_Stick
>
> V
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