Macs

Discussion in 'Computer Science & Culture' started by piirx, Jul 14, 2003.

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  1. piirx Registered Member

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    I've been thinking about getting one, especially since the g5 just came out. Anyone think that it's worth it? Also, has anyone here run across virtual pc? And if so, how is it performance wise?

    Thanks,
    piirx
     
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  3. Blindman Valued Senior Member

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    Power for money is not one of the strong point for MAC's

    Games, if you love em, is not the domain of MAC's

    World largest software domain is not for MAC's

    Go for it and buy a MAC... See you in two years sitting infront of your over priced MAC as us PC users have fun.. Please, unless you have money to burn, don't buy a MAC.
     
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  5. safXmal Registered Member

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    Have you ever used a Mac?

    Blindman,please stop trying to misinform people about Macs.

    Power for money. Macs are not more expensive as PC's for the same abilities. The cheap PC's you see on the market are made with slow and cheap parts and very prone to crashing - completely useless. When you take a Dell comuter with the comparable quality of parts as a mac it will not be cheaper.
    Altough it's true that the G4 is slower (in Mhz) as a pentium 4 the speed of use is very comparable to a PC - I wonder how the Pentium 4 will compete with the soon to be released G5

    Games. When will a main stream PC outperform a Mac for playing games? You would have to buy a top of the line PC with a very expensive videocard to do that.

    Software. All the software you need as a homeuser is included when you buy your new Mac. And even you would not dare to say that it's crappy software.
    And in every field of professional software Mac has his share of programs

    And for your last statement. A Mac keeps his usablility for a much longer time than a PC. Not only do the programs on a PC get so much bigger and slower with each new version you need to buy a faster PC every 2 years just to keep up but the register used by M$ makes sure that your PC slows down over time.

    No Piirx. If you are a home user buy an iMac - You'll have fun creating things instead of trying to install things.
    If you have to use it professionaly go for the G5 - you'll be able to do what you want in an efficient way and not have to hire an engineer just to keep your PC running

    Btw please excuse my spelling. English is not my native language and because I'm typing this on a PC at work I have no sytemwide spelling checker
     
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  7. testify Look, a puppy! Registered Senior Member

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    I think he meant that there are so very few games released for macs.
     
  8. Blindman Valued Senior Member

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    safXmal.
    Come now who are you trying to fool.

    PC Pentium 4, 2.7Ghz, 1G RAM, ATI 9700 128M (dual head), DVD burner, 80G Hard drive, new 19inch Monitor (Using old monitor as second 19inch), Dolby 6.1 speakers. Every port from Blue tooth to Firewire. (second hand chassis and power supply with neon lights and groovy look. Stands out in those LAN parties ).
    Total price assembled $2600AUS

    Extra for Dual processor. $120AUS more for motherboard and Approx $500AUS for second processor. (5.4Ghz for $3220AUS) Pisses over the G5. PC Mother boards with 4/8/16 cpu slots can be found if you really need the speed (but the price does rise dramatically ) G5 fastest PC is a blatant lie from Apple.

    G4 power book 1Ghz,512RAM,60Gb Hard disk and a 17inch monitor.
    Total price $6095AUS

    Then to the G5 which I can't get a firm price on but I estimate that the top of the line G5 with the full 4Gig RAM will be well over the $6000AUS <b> (edited) </b> mark.. Great it’s a true 64Bit system, and it has handles.

    My PC still amazes me. 120frames per second 800*600*32 anti aliased power, Games from C&C Generals to Warcraft 3, Every type of Racing sim’s from cars to planes to space ships. Endless list of online multi player games. I have not tried a game yet that has given my $600AUS video card a hard time.

    Pointless argument. No one is forcing PC users to upgrade.
    iMac New $3795US, Ordinary PC with same power $1200 new. All the software you would ever need installed in the shop. You would never have to install anything on the PC. (but life would be boring if you did not install a game or two every now and then)

    Piirx. Work out what you want your PC to do and then go to your local PC supplier and they will build you a PC fully setup with software for a fraction of the price of a MAC.

    (AUS) Australia dollars $1AUS buys $0.65US
     
    Last edited: Jul 15, 2003
  9. Blindman Valued Senior Member

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    Opps apples and oranges don’t mix..

    Should not have quoted G4 powerbook price as it is a laptop. Sorry.

    PowerMac G4/1.25Ghz 256/80Gb/SuperDrive SPECIAL $2720AUS A little better price but has only a fraction of the power of a PC for same price.
     
  10. mouse can't sing, can't dance Registered Senior Member

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  11. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    PC versus Macintosh

    If you get a Macintosh you're going to use it. If you get a PC, you're going to spend about one third of your life learning to be a software mechanic. If you don't happen to have the aptitude to actually be a software mechanic, make that two thirds of your life. That's why 98 percent of artists use Macs. They want to create art, not argue with their damn software and look for lost files. Go into any corporate headquarters anywhere in America and find their advertising department, where all the artists work. The whole rest of the building is a PC shop, but the artists insist on having Macs to work on or they simply won't take the jobs.

    My wife has a Mac (a G4 Powerbook) and I have a PC. I know whereof I speak. I'm saving my money to buy her a G5 so I can inherit the G4 and throw this piece of garbage in the garbage.

    If you need to run business software, VirtualPC is finally available. I think somebody else has a question posted asking for feedback on it. Perhaps it isn't all it's cracked up to be because it's Version 1, but it won't take Apple ten to fifteen years to get its software working like it does Microsoft.

    If you're looking for games I probably can't help you there. I'm about four times your age so I play games like Tetris and Accordion Solitaire. But my wife is more into the slash-and-burn games than I am, and she has more games than she knows what to do with.

    So keep your old PC to play games. Most of them don't require state-of-the-art hardware to run right.
     
  12. Blindman Valued Senior Member

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    Totally wrong, you have let your brand loyalty cloud your perception of PC's.

    You buy a PC, put on your desk and start using it to work or play. There is no time spent learning how to be a software mechanic ?.
    I consult for two successful art oriented companies, an architectural visualization company with 25 employees and a small brochure design studio (winner of several design awards). There is not a single MAC in either of these companies and there never will.

    If either of these companies had to spend 1/3 of their time fixing things they would not be in business any more. These types of business are very competitive and every hour counts.

    PC software covers every aspect of art related work.
    3DSMAX5.1, Painter5,Photoshop, Premiere, a host of audio software, and just about every arts related application you can think of.

    Don't be fooled by the MAC is better people because they don't know what their talking about.

    PC's are stable, reliable and cheap. If you know how to use a mouse and a keyboard you can use a PC. My 72 year old mother uses an old 95 machine to design patterns for her sewing machine, my 80 year old dad creates DVD's of all our family get togethers on his XP machine. My 92 year Oma (Dutch for grandmother) communicates with us via email on a really cheap 95 machine.
     
  13. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    No, you must have missed the part where I said we have a Mac at home. It's a dream. My laptop PC itself isn't so bad, it's an IBM, the cream of the crop. But the garbage Microsoft is able to peddle as software makes me want to scream.
    Lucky you. I've been using PC-architecture machines with Windows for more than ten years, and I have yet to acquire that comfortable feel of mastery that the Mac delivers in a few weeks. My laptop crashes a couple of times a week. My desktop machine at the office manages to stay booted, but even the company's crack troubleshooters, who are probably about your age and sworn PC fanatics, can't always help us figure our way out of a corrupted Word document, an Excel spreadsheet with random formatting gratuitously added, or Outlook directories that vanish.
    Congratulations on being a successful beginner. I have spent eight years consulting for Fortune 100 companies and before that I was an in-house consultant for a public sector agency with a $13 billion annual budget and an IT staff of 2,000. I spent six months consulting for one of the country's largest retail chains. Their IT department alone has several hundred employees. Their advertising department is one hundred percent Macintosh. I've used CorelDraw on a PC and I can get it to work. But every print shop in our town uses Macs. I went to the annual craft fair at the Washington DC Convention Center last year. The booths that were staffed by the clerical support person for an artist with a big company had PCs. But the smaller-production artists and craftsmen who were there in person all had PowerBooks.
    My firm is stuck in the PCs-are-better mindset and we get by, with about ten full-time troubleshooters. The Windows 2000 upgrade was a giant migraine headache that had to be halted and restarted. The first PC that was migrated was offline for a whole week. When the expert came and did mine, two of my most important software applications were missing and one of my e-mail directories that was "safely backed up twice" disappeared forever.
    Yes, and Fiat makes a full line of automobiles. That doesn't mean that they have a QA process that matches Daimler-Benz. The PC platform is still the same piece of crap that was designed twenty years ago for an 8080 chip, an environment with no telecommunication, a monochrome text-only monitor, and a megabyte of memory. Piling Windows on top of that little pebble and then piling 21st Century applications on top of Windows is like pinning a calendar to the wall with a thumbtack and then trying to hang a steel bookcase off the bottom of the calendar with masking tape.
    I haven't been "fooled" by anyone. I had to browbeat my wife into setting up the Mac I bought her after it sat in the closet for six months. She practically cried when she realized how much easier her life would have been if she'd trashed her Compaq the day we brought the Mac home. I used to hear a steady stream of curse words coming out of her home office. Then after about two weeks with the Mac it changed to humming and laughter. Then she made a mistake that I just couldn't talk her out of: installed MS Office for Mac. The curse words started up again immediately. As for other sources of my opinion of Macs, it is from seeing the results I get from photo, print, and graphics shops that use Macs, not from interviewing their employees.
    Yes yes yes. I've had a diesel Mercedes for 25 years, it still runs like new and doesn't emit a wisp of smoke. Individual experiences don't make a reputation. Microsoft has no QA process. They release software that barely works and then let their customers find the bugs. After ten years some of the programs post a Mean Time Between Failure measured in months instead of days. But their imperious, user-be-damned attitude has no place in the American economy. I'll give you the example I give everybody and they all look away sheepishly. How do you turn off a PC? By hitting the Start button. That preposterous defect has been in Windows forever, and Microsoft refuses to repair it because they just don't give a damn about their customers. They've gotten so good at scamming us that a lot of people consider it a rite of passage into a secret guild, something to be proud of. Once you know how to turn your computer off, you're part of the Microsoft "in" crowd. They actually have scammed paying customers into feeling special because they can do something as idiotically simple as turning their computer off. Something a three-year-old child can do on an Apple by intuition.

    PCs may be a salvageable architecture if you're running Linux and enough people start writing software that makes it possible to use a computer without having to patronize Microsoft.

    But a man who is well on his way to becoming the world's first trillionaire, and who got there by using the whole world as his gamma test site, is a symbol of everything that is wrong with American business. And people who buy his software, and then giggle over the "undocumented features" and play solitaire while they wait half an hour on hold on the Microsoft help line, are dragging this country down.

    Come back when you're fifty and we'll swap war stories.
     
  14. testify Look, a puppy! Registered Senior Member

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    That's your problem, right there. Who the hell buys Compaq? Being such an experienced computer person you should know better than to do that. I mean...shame on you!
     
  15. Blindman Valued Senior Member

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    It sounds like you have had a run of bad luck.



    As far as turning off the machine, get your self a good Microsoft keyboard and press the Sleep button. The desktop and apps are dumped to the harddrive and the system shuts down. Next morning press the power button and 30 seconds later you back were you left of. Don't see how that is so hard. My 3 year old nephew can turn on the PC, start his fav game and then turn it off all by himself.

    People with a servere cases of Tall poppy syndrome, create the mostly unfounded reputation.

    How many time must I hear this as an argument against Microsoft. So what.

    Compaq is a bastardization of the PC. I owned a compaq presario some years back an have to say it was the worst computer I have ever owned. Compaq still sell the stupid PC abominations which is doing no end of harm to poor PC users. Compaq systems are not 100% compliant. Their dirty little fingers have modified everything from the BIOS to the endless list of DLL's and crap drivers. Many of their drivers still don't have Microsoft certification

    Thats strange, Im typing on a fully connected, dual monitor, 6speaker power house that can display millions of fully anitaliased type faces a second. I have at the moment five IE windows, MAX5, Painter7 (with a 10000/10000 pixel image), two Microsoft paints, MSword and winAmp all running on my desktop. Win XP is a 32bit operating system and has almost nothing to do with the original PC's.

    Upgrading from 98 to 2000 is a bit of a challenge and should only be attempted by a experienced experts, but that is a problem of 3years ago, XP is the operating system of choice and its really simple to upgrade from 2000 to XP. As for missing data there is only one person responsible for the integrity of your data and that is you. Even MAC's lose data,every computer user should know that there is no such thing as 100% secure data. Be it MAC or PC you must backup your data, don't just copy to a new directory but put your data on a different media. Especially If your going to change the operation system.

    What??? Name the offending product. Believe me if you get a fully compliant system built by and experienced expert you will not have any problems. Systems become fucked up when people start stuffing around with drivers. How many times have I seen non compliant drivers installed by well meaning friends who where told that there would be a 2% speed increase only to see their machine crash every time they start word or whatever. If people fucked around with their MAC's as they did with PC's you would have the same problems.

    So if you want a MAC go ahead there is nothing fundamentally wrong with them. But if you want value for money, performance, gaming, and the largest most diverse software base of any machine ever buy a PC. There's nothing a MAC can do that can't be done on a PC but theres a lot a PC can do that MAC's can't.

    PS. Dont buy a Compaq PC.
     
  16. safXmal Registered Member

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    Hardware and OS-Software

    Perhaps we're mixing up the qualities of the hardware with the quality of the software.

    I'm sure that PC's are good computers too altough it's hard to find a company where they sell you good ones for a decent price.
    As Compac knew most users don't know anything about them so it's very easy to sell them substanderd pieces. The only thing people look at anyway is the number of Mhz and the price.

    A lot of company's can get away with this by telling everybody when the computer crashes that it's the fault of Microsof by not supporting the crappy parts they put in it.

    Not that Microsoft get's away shotfree: they will tell you that when you have trouble with their OS it's the fault of the building company's.

    Apple doesn't have this luxoury: When something goes wrong they can not blame somebody else. Besides Microsoft that is. Installing any M$ programmes on a Mac guaranties you some headaches and a lot of swearwords.

    As a Mac is used by consumers as well as proffessionals it has forced them to make good performers as well as easy to use computers - hence the very good OS and the quality of the computer parts.

    PC users at the other end are much more divided. Proffessional users buy state of the art machines at a high price - or build them themselfs - while consumers tend to go for the cheap crappy computers.

    Now M$ had - to be the marketleader - provide an OS that could work on all of these machines. A little bit anyway.
    They solved this problem by giving a minimum of support to all the different low cost machine that are out there by restricting your options in workflow.
    This off course limits the useability for the high end users but they figured that most of these would know how to tweak the OS to work the way they wanted.

    Now if you want to continue this discussion could we agree on the fact that both computer platforms are good if you pay the cash for it and that the biggest difference lies in the OS.

    Offcourse for me Mac OS X rules
     
  17. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    Compaq; Microsoft

    We've got a good discussion going and I don't see any purpose in repeating the same points back and forth at each other with different supporting examples. Good stuff has been said by all and anyone who reads this can make up their own mind.

    Your arguments are worthy of respect; reasonable people can disagree. I would just like to say that everybody jumped on my wife's Compaq a little too hard. Yes Compaqs are not particularly good computers, well actually they're pretty crappy, and on top of that they are just absolute knuckle-busting bitches to tear down and work on. But her problem was not with the hardware. It was the software. Windows, MS Office, IE.

    I do not hold Bill Gates's money against him. What I hold against him is his attitude, and I admit that I am just using him as the highly visible shit-hook for his entire generation. The PC community regards everything that was done in the mainframe era as quaint ancient history. As a result they have to reinvent every single wheel. To this day PCs have problems that were banished from Univac 1100 mainframes thirty years ago. Deadlocks. Application layer software causing the operating system to stall or fail.

    And my personal forehead slapper, viruses embedded in data. On an 1100 data was in the data bank and instructions were in the instruction bank, and never the twain did meet except for the instructions to operate on the data according to the rules in the firmware. It was physically impossible to store anything into the instruction bank, and it was physically impossible to execute anything out of the data bank.

    The other thing they still have not grasped is that software development is a process, not an adventure. Perform a risk analysis on your project to decide whether it is even realistic to attempt, and in the process identify your worst risks and decide how to avoid, mitigate, or accept them in advance. Gather requirements, including the unstated ones, and then spend several days inspecting them for conflicting, incomplete, vague, impossible, or stupid. Estimate a realistic schedule and budget using function point metrics. Have end users involved at every step or don't take the assignment. Inspect specifications, design, and code, don't expect to "test quality into the product." If you find that defects evade detection and correction through two project phase boundaries more than occasionally, fix your process before you tackle another project. If more than one serious defect sneaks into a production release in one year, fire your IT manager, or better yet shoot him so he doesn't go build software for some other hapless company.

    It's possible to build zero-defect software. The last airliner you rode on is chock full of it. Would you board an airliner whose embedded software was built to Microsoft quality standards? I understand that it's not cost-effective to build life-support quality into MIS applications, but we are in no danger of getting even close to that decision point.

    And we never will as long as people like Bill Gates are regarded as software development gurus.
     
  18. grazzhoppa yawwn Valued Senior Member

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    Being a kid, with lots of free time over the summer it's easy to configure windows to suit what I want to do with it. If I was pressed for time, I wouldn't want to be screwing around with the operating system or looking for "tweak sites" on the Internet to get the pansy Windows OS to be a beast that it can be.

    I can't count the hours I've spent "tweaking" this god damn OS. For example...to have Windows Messanger stop popping up and slowing down my computer's start-up, I must go into the Group Policy, navigate through branches of technical crap, and finally read 3 paragraphs making sure I won't destroy any important stuff, then finally disable that. Now, I never knew there was something called Group Policy in WinXP, nor that you have to use the command prompt and type "gpedit.msc" to get it to show!!!! Hello Microsoft, it was nice you to make it so f&cking difficult!!!!!

    Another example is that WinXP "reserves" 20% of you Internet connection bandwith....why? I DON'T KNOW!!!!! You have to go into the registry (and make sure not to change ANYTHING except the registry key your looking for or Windows will die or a program won't run).

    Microsoft likes to hide all the important stuff so they can market Windows as an "idiot-proof" OS for the masses, which would put it in competition with how Mac is marketing their OS. WinXP is great only if you have the time to cut through Microsoft's bullshit that they put in the OS. And what happens when you spend $300 for WinXP....you get the OS and the crap Microsoft bunldes with it (Internet Explorer, Windows Messanger, Windows Media Player). There are FREE programs (Opera, IRC, Real Player) that are better than what Microsoft gives you. While Mac offers quality programs with its OS, as does most Linux OS's, and the option not to install them.

    I imagine you don't have to screw with the "registry" or "group policy" to make the MacOS do what you want it to do.
     
  19. DonSL777 Registered Member

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    Once you've gone Mac, you'll never go back.

    99% of the time when I stumble across a forum question about the difference between the Mac and PC platforms, I ignore it. My experience has been that virtually ALL of the anti-Mac flame posts are written by 14 - 17 year old boys who not only have never actually used a Mac, but cannot carry on an intelligent conversation. The ususal discussion post consists of a Mac enthusiast explaining why he or she finds the platform and GUI to be superior, then an avalanche of pro-PC responses spouting "the usual" issues (however wildly incorrect or just laughable they may be).

    So allow me here to briefly outline why I prefer the Macintosh to the PC platform. And yes, I have many many many years of experience on both platforms, both in an office and a home environment.

    1) Macintosh GUI. Windows is a blatant copy of the Macintosh GUI, and a poor copy at that. Mac's GUI is silky smooth (there's no better way to describe it). Mouse movement, intuitive window deployment, and a Unix shell. If you've ever used a Macintosh, there is simply no argument about ease-of-use and overall appearance (not to mention simple and infinite customization and color options).

    To be fair, Apple (specifically Steve Jobs) virtually stole the GUI from Xerox back before many people reading this post were born.

    2) Interoperability with EVERYBODY. Don't believe the flame posts. Why? Because I can emphatically tell you that I have used Mac (secretly at times) in a public relations company to correspond with people all over the world using many different platforms. My Macintosh computer can create hands-down unbeatable text, graphic, audio, video, spreadsheet, or presentation files and save them in ANY known format. Period. This is not an opinion, it's a fact.

    3) Running PC applications. The first (and perhaps not as obvious as one might think) question is, "Why would you want to run a PC application?" There seems to be in the back of my mind an instance where I needed to use a PC application many years ago, but honestly the reason escapes me. I think it had to do with connecting to a CICS mainframe or something obscure like that. I digress. If I found myself needing to use PC programs, there would only be two reasons for it. a) There is no equivalent Macintosh application. b) The PC application is superior to the PC application.


    Those are my pro-Mac points. There are a gazillion other points I could make, but you've probably heard them before (ease of use, automatic no-computer-science-degree-necessary system software updates with a simple click of the mouse, beautiful ultra-high-resolution video smoothing, blah blah blah).

    An anti-Macintosh platform comment. If you're a serious PC gamer, then buy a PC. While there are many great games for Macintosh, including some written SOLELY for the Macintosh, the mainstream gaming industry is solidly in the PC camp. Why? Better performance, graphics, sound, or playability? No. There are simply far more PCs in the market than Macs. Software companies are out to make money, and it only makes sense to write for the masses.

    I have to stop writing now because I feel like I'm about to go off on a huge tangent about the overall power of the platform and the many professionals who steadfastly swear by it (world-class musicians, cutting-edge biotechnologists, writers, marketers, architects, and so on).

    Last point. The G5 is the fastest personal computer on the market. Period. No argument, just a fact. The benchmarking tests from historically pro-PC publications have grudgingly agree. Enough. I'm outta here.
     
  20. PacingYourName Registered Senior Member

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    lack of compatible games for macs makes me say " THEY SUCK ASS!"
     
  21. DonSL777 Registered Member

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    As mentioned at the very top of my original thread, this is exactly the reason I cringe when it comes to posting an intelligent discussion on a forum board ... the embassador from the 14-year-old boys of the nation has voiced his opinion in the expected manner!

    And, "dude," I stated that if you're a gamer you shouldn't go with Mac.
     
  22. cjard Registered Senior Member

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    Re: PC versus Macintosh

    I agree with this inasfar as:

    Yeah youre gonna use it, there isnt much learning involved because there isnt much to be learned. You can buy a bread toaster that has a timer on it.. you turn the timer, the heater comes on, and if you guessed right, your toast is done well routinely..

    Or you can buy one of these computerised breakfast-everything machines.. more power, more flexibilty, more buttons, more need to read the manual..

    I dont deny that macs are easier to use, but thats cause all the hard, powerful and flexible features are well hidden or inaccessible..
     
  23. cjard Registered Senior Member

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    and pc or mac.. i wish they stiill made Amigas, (well, they do.. but not quite to a competitive edge, unfortunately) cause thats the only computer ive ever had that was actually _fun_ to use and learn about.. Macs are numb, and PCs are irritating, despite having come a long way since win95
     
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