Windows 7 Laptops Ridiculously Cheap Right Now [Archive]

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CameraQuest

10-09-2011, 09:53

If you have not noticed

Windows 7 Laptops are out of fashion and Ridiculously cheap right now.

For example, I just bought a 17" Sony Vaio with the i5 processor and a Blu Ray drive for $600. About a year ago it was about $1200 if memory serves.

Prices seem to be low due to

1) Windows 8 is coming out, so it costs less to discount Windows 7 laptops than call them back and install Windows 8

2) ipads and tablets are so popular laptop sales are going down, with manufacturers reducing stock

3) some makers like HP getting out of PCs - at least if Meg does not reverse that decision

tablets may be smaller, but laptops sure do a lot more !

All I need is an Apple Logo to tell people I am the proud owner of the new, larger, improved, ipad 3.

Stephen

charjohncarter

10-09-2011, 11:31

Good news, I wish I needed one. I do leave my Ipad laying around to look cool, but I hardly ever use it.

jcrutcher

10-09-2011, 11:39

Any recommendations for a fast post processing computer?

buzzardkid

10-09-2011, 11:54

Any recommendations for a fast post processing computer?

Any MacBook qualifies!

You can always install that Apple software thingy that makes is possible to run Windows whenever needed, forgot the name of it...

Rogier

10-09-2011, 12:08

Get a life, get a Mac ;-)

stompyq

10-09-2011, 12:22

Bought a Toshiba with a AMD A6 for $420. I couldn't believe how good that deal was

raid

10-09-2011, 12:41

What is the lowest cost MAC these days?
I would like to try out a MAC, after using only PC's.

Matus

10-09-2011, 12:52

Raid, Apple has THE simplest offer of computers, so it will not take you more than just a few minutes to check their webpage and figure out how much is what (try that with HP ... a joke ..).

As much as I like ( I really do) my 3 year old 13" MacBook (the alu body is really great and touchpad a dream, the OS is stable), but I would still say - just get what you need to get your work done and what you are comfortable with. There is more hype than healthy running around Apple today and it screens the (still very positive) true picture. There are no "perfect" products out there (though many crappy ones ;) )

Roger Hicks

10-09-2011, 12:56

Alas, in France, the keyboards are all AZERTY, not QWERTY. Also, I'm not sure how much processing power I need in a laptop. What do people do on the road that requires much power?

Cheers,

R,

digitalintrigue

10-09-2011, 13:13

Please don't give me a Windows laptop. It will cost me more in time and virus prevention/cleanup and OS re-installs and driver updates to pay for a couple of MacBooks. :)

Trius

10-09-2011, 13:14

I liked (to my surprise) Windows 7, though it still has some habits and conventions that I find annoy me. We have a small desktop PC running Windows 7 with 4GB RAM and a 1TB drive, and it is reasonably quick.

But I much prefer my new MacBook Air. I know the hardware isn't really comparable due to different processors and the SSD in the Mac.

Field

10-09-2011, 13:16

The only windows computers worth having are still not at crazy low prices. The only windows machines I would touch are Lenovo T series thinkpads. Aside from that I would prefer System76 (Ubuntu) or Apple (even though their OS is largely annoying most of the time).

Right now I run Ubuntu on an old Thinkpad T60. Works great. Better than most newer computers.

Trius

10-09-2011, 13:16

Roger,

For me, my laptop is my main machine. So I need the power. I chose the Air because, with a disability, I need as light and compact as possible. Need will vary for each individual.

Steve M.

10-09-2011, 13:17

It's not just the laptops. I just bought a PC on the sucktion site (or is it auction site?) that had 2 gig memory, 3 ghz processor, 160 gig HD, Windows XP Pro, and a CD/DVD player/burner. $60, incl shipping. Got my Sony Trinitron ($50) hooked up to it, and it's really, really neat.

I NEVER get viruses or trojans, and I go to some pretty sketchy, questionable sites. That has nothing to do w/ having Windows or not having Windows. That's just Mac-Speak. Put an antivirus program on your PC or Mac, that's what they're for. Been running the free version of Avira for years now, and no slowdowns, and never a virus. Never.

GaryLH

10-09-2011, 13:32

Actually Mac os kernel is unix based. If u come from the old unix world get into the unix terminal on Mac os and u an do everything from the command line.

That being said, for me the main reason I left windows was that every so often window registering problems would pop up and it would either take for ever to fix or u needed to re-image the hd.

Windows gets attacked by more viruses than any other os because it is the most popular. Now that Mac os is getting popular, I suspect it will be targeted as well.

Gary

Field

10-09-2011, 13:45

Actually Mac os kernel is unix based. If u come from the old unix world get into the unix terminal on Mac os and u an do everything from the command line.

Who the hell is that even in reference too?

Personally I prefer a hot stick in the eye over command line anything.

GaryLH

10-09-2011, 13:48

Who the hell is that even in reference too?

Personally I prefer a hot stick in the eye over command line anything.

Too each their own. Hot stick in the eye and all. Their are some things that u can only do in the cmd line for your ubunto and the Mac os that will get u out of trouble that the nice friendly gui that u love in ubunto cannot

Gary

axiom

10-09-2011, 13:59

Who the hell is that even in reference too?

Personally I prefer a hot stick in the eye over command line anything.

That means you restrict yourself to only those functions that the qt/gtk coders allow you to click on?

RObert Budding

10-09-2011, 14:33

swoop

10-09-2011, 14:46

I want a new laptop. Mine is 2 years old, and even then it was a slower ultraportable. I realize I really don't need a 3lb laptop and would like to get something more robust. But I really don't have the funds right now so I'm just going to make do with what I have and deal with the 24 seconds it takes to export an image from lightroom.

Field

10-09-2011, 15:02

That means you restrict yourself to only those functions that the qt/gtk coders allow you to click on?

I surf the internet, look at photos, and that is about it. Soo yeah, why would I give a rat's ass about geeking out with stuff I don't care about? Everyone that uses any other OS does what the coders allow you to click on. There are those of us that just want to use the machine, instead of exercising all of its capabilities because we can.

If I am utterly forced to use terminal I will. However the latest Ubuntu editions have basically entirely circumvented the need. It is a benefit though, being able to fix your computer with a wealth of knowledge not particularly available for MacOS. With Windows you just have to format, there is no fix, most of the time.

CameraQuest

10-09-2011, 20:28

I wouldn't pay $50 for one. ;)

Arrogant attitudes like this are the biggest thing I see wrong with too many MAC owners. It gives me the impression they need to justify the extra $ they spent on Apple products by knocking Windows to in order to feel secure about their purchase.

maybe I should mention I own two top of the line MacBook Pros plus an Imac, along with Windows machines. My $600 Sony has a MUCH better keyboard than my $3500 MacBook Pro. On top of that, the Sony play Blu Ray DVDs while the Mac does not even offer Blu Ray, not to mention more USB ports on the Sony.

Stephen

David Murphy

10-09-2011, 20:33

I bought my wife a superb Acer at Walmart recently for a bit over $400 - runs Windows 7 and is now the fastest computer in my house - light too. It also has an HDMI video output port so I'm hoping to plug it into my flatscreen TV sometime when she's not home and try it with Youtube and the like!

GaryLH

10-09-2011, 20:36

Actually I think they did a lot of things right in windows 7.

Btw. How much memory came with your new win 7 setup. Outside of CPU and graphics card performance get as much memory as u can afford. On Mac I know somewhere between 8 to 16 seems to be sweet spot. Not sure where it is on win 7.

I think that iPad like devices killed the low end pc market, but an i5 is a different animal.

Gary

JOE1951

10-10-2011, 03:23

Arrogant attitudes like this are the biggest thing I see wrong with too many MAC owners. It gives me the impression they need to justify the extra $ they spent on Apple products by knocking Windows to in order to feel secure about their purchase....

I hate to suggest this, but it does seem that way.

I've used Macs at work for 15 yrs, doing photo-editing for the employer, and would come home at the end of the day and do my personal photo editing on a PC.

Since leaving that job, I've rarely used Macs, and but have never had a compelling reason to purchase one. The iPad is interesting, but my experience with playing with friends iPads and other tablets, tells me I'm not getting a tablet.

I'm presently considering a new laptop, and it will be a PC, w/ Windoze whatever.

Uncle Bill

10-10-2011, 03:31

Any MacBook qualifies!

You can always install that Apple software thingy that makes is possible to run Windows whenever needed, forgot the name of it...

+1000

I love my Macbook Pro.

kully

10-10-2011, 04:05

:) I'm typing this on a Macbook Pro running Windows 7 via Bootcamp. Havn't booted into OSX for months.

Before you upgrade to a new computer/laptop - think hard about getting an SSD for your existing setup - it made a massive difference to my old 2Ghz core2duo laptop which I still use for my Lightroom (and can't imagine upgrading until it breaks horrifically).

ruby.monkey

10-10-2011, 04:09

+1000

I love my Macbook Pro.
Honestly I'm tempted to buy a MacBook (probably an Air) for my next laptop, simply because it's the only range where choosing a model isn't just one long exercise in confusion and frustration. The older I get, the more attractive Apple's limited-but-focussed offerings become.

rxmd

10-10-2011, 04:17

That seems very expensive to me - when I can buy an airbook for only 400 more.

It looks more like he's in the market for a desktop replacement rather than a super-lightweight carry-around piece, seeing that he wants a bigger screen and a drive.

Maybe it's just me; after all Steve Jobs earned billions by not listening to what customers said they wanted, instead telling them what it was that they should want. But suggesting a 70% more expensive Macbook Air just because it's a Mac seems to me like talking to someone who wants a pickup truck and suggesting a Tesla Roadster just because it's nerdy.

rxmd

10-10-2011, 04:20

Honestly I'm tempted to buy a MacBook (probably an Air) for my next laptop, simply because it's the only range where choosing a model isn't just one long exercise in confusion and frustration. The older I get, the more attractive Apple's limited-but-focussed offerings become.

I'd consider them if they had non-glossy screens on more models, and if they had a more reasonable international warranty policy that doesn't make me fly to Moscow to have my computer serviced. IBM got that one right back in the day.

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 04:20

The perpetual argument between Mac and PC users.

My wife would walk into a store, click three keystrokes on a Mac II, and then whisper to me "we have to leave now, they need to unplug their computers."

I have never used a Mac, and never will. Professionally, I use DOS or nothing at all. DOS gets out of my way and lets me program the hardware directly. Win98se, booted into real mode. Disable Interrupts while running, execute reserved instructions, and undocumented instructions. Phar Lap extended DOS when I need a lot of memory, wrote all of my own low-level support routines for interrupt handling and bypassing their "Shadow-Interrupt vector table". It was too slow. As far as finding hardware to run on- custom made.

Texsport

10-10-2011, 04:29

So, I'll looking for a computer to hook up to my Nikon Coolscan 9000 and Epson 4900.

Will both work with Windows 7 and Mac?

Do I need separate computers?

Texsport

MaxElmar

10-10-2011, 04:57

There are lots of really cheap cameras out there, too.

And Brian Sweeney gets the "totally hardcore" award for the day!

btgc

10-10-2011, 04:57

Since prev. year I ran Mepis6 on 512MB RAM which were twice-thrice as it needed. Some Linux distros are well thought, efficient and not resource hungry - I wouldn't pay for Windows or Apple if job wouldn't provide licences.

But those catching viruses on Windows - install good free antivirus (Avira I like), stop visiting XXX un cRaCkZ sites and enjoy life :)

MacOS? I like to be able to throw in interface card (I know, MacOS has some aboard), swap HDD for bigger/faster/quiter or cooler (and no, I don't really like external HDD's) so Apple machines are not appealing to me. I know, Apple guys do upgrades, they swap whole unit like people sell 12mpix DSLR to buy 16mpix DSLR.

Sparrow

10-10-2011, 05:17

I thought the Market always came up with the correct price for everything? ... maybe it's only worth $600?

Jamie123

10-10-2011, 05:27

So, I'll looking for a computer to hook up to my Nikon Coolscan 9000 and Epson 4900.

Will both work with Windows 7 and Mac?

Do I need separate computers?

Texsport

I don't know about the Epson but I can tell you that a new Mac with OSX Lion will not run Nikon Scan. You can download Vuescan to run your scanner, though.

I'm happy with my MacBook Pro and even though it's a bit of a POS, I'm also fairly happy with my Win 7 desktop machine I got a few years ago for $500. However, if Win laptops get any cheaper I'll seriously consider getting one as a dedicated scanner station.

rxmd

10-10-2011, 06:14

I have never used a Mac, and never will. Professionally, I use DOS or nothing at all. DOS gets out of my way and lets me program the hardware directly. Win98se, booted into real mode. Disable Interrupts while running, execute reserved instructions, and undocumented instructions. Phar Lap extended DOS when I need a lot of memory, wrote all of my own low-level support routines for interrupt handling and bypassing their "Shadow-Interrupt vector table". It was too slow. As far as finding hardware to run on- custom made.

Once in school in CS class I wrote a demo that had to do fast graphics output for sprites, so I needed a figure out a fast way to write sprite data to video memory. The fastest way to write stuff into memory was using PUSH instructions with fixed data values, with which I could in two clock cycles write 32 bits or four pixels to the stack. This was on a 386 and there was no acceleration from the graphics card.

So I wrote a routine that read in all sprites and transformed them into assembler code that consisted only of PUSH instructions (and stack pointer increases for line breaks and for sprites with holes in them). This worked well, and PUSH is also a really compact instruction - the 32bit prefix, the opcode (0x68), and the four data bytes. So on average for a sprite containing N pixels with no holes, the assembled sprite routine for this pixel would be 1.5 N bytes in length. Sprites with holes were smaller.

Whenever I wanted to draw a sprite, I'd put the stack pointer on the video memory segment at 0xA000 and called the respective sprite routine, which wrote the whole sprite to the stack. After the sprite was written, I'd put the stack pointer back where it belonged (which required a bit of a hack, too, because obviously I couldn't save the old stack pointer location to the stack or else there would be no way to get it back). Anyway, this method allowed me to write four pixels in two clock cycles, and a hole in a sprite was another clock cycle increasing the stack pointer for the length of the hole (as opposed to the traditional method which uses a comparison for every pixel). Two pixels per clock cycle on average. There is no faster way to write stuff to the screen, the limit is the bandwidth to the VGA card. Of course there was no way to do page-flipping etc., because all memory access I had was the single 64k segment at 0xA000.

This worked really nicely, except when there was a timer interrupt. This usually happens 18.2 times per second in plain DOS and there was no predicting it. Whenever there was a timer interrupt when a sprite was being written, the interrupt routine would write some junk to the stack, which ended up in video memory as randomly-coloured pixels and all the subsequent rows of my sprite would be off. You can set it faster than 18.2 times per second, but not slower. So what I had to do was to disable RAM refresh while a sprite was being written, because on our hardware that would disable the timer interrupt, too. Except that one shouldn't leave it disabled for too long, because one would end up with memory errors. But for one sprite at a time it was fine. Of course this was utterly incompatible with EMM386, Windows, or DOS extenders, because the virtual 8086 mode didn't allow putting the stack in random locations where it didn't belong.

It was a big hack, but when it worked, the graphics were really, really fast :)

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 06:28

Way Cool!

"DI" and "EI".

The last code I wrote required that the Timer Interrupt be disabled during the entire run, 30 minutes at a time. Last thing the software does is to reload the interrupt driven DOS clock with the battery-backed realtime clock. The 18.2/s interrupt was killing the realtime portion of the code. Humorous note: I reused some routines for the battery backed clock written in 1990. The realtime clock required a bit to be "OR'd" in to set a base of 1980. Left mysef a note in 1990 that this would no longer be required in the year 2000. I am a big believer in code re-use, thinking ahead 21 years... Other humourous note- Battery-backed clock, BCD. DOS clock- Binary.

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 06:49

I am happy to be out of management.

Now- a decent day is 100 lines of code, great day is 300 lines.

Hit 500 lines in one day, take the rest of the day off.

GaryLH

10-10-2011, 08:24

I am happy to be out of management.

Now- a decent day is 100 lines of code, great day is 300 lines.

Hit 500 lines in one day, take the rest of the day off.

+10000000

I have been an embedded SW developer my whole career. That pretty well sums it up. :)

Assembler and c coding I my world... Mainly unix based tool sets and cross compilers for real target. Lately with popularity of Linux, we are seeing vendor create cross compilers for Linux as well.

Gary

Ps if assembler quotes, Brian u got me beat by a long shot.

shadowfox

10-10-2011, 09:19

a Windows laptop to me is = a Linux laptop.
I always dual-boot, leaving the originally setup Windows 7 alone to run Lightroom, and everything else (coding, web-browsing, writing) on the Linux side (in a pinch, I can use darktable and gimp to edit photos).

Having said that, I love Windows 7. It's the most stable and make sense version of Windows since Windows 2000.

And about good deal on laptops, I think used Thinkpad W500 or W700 are some of the best bargains out there currently. The screen is high in resolution, very stable, and is often good enough for photo-editing.

For CPU selection, this website is very useful: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 09:24

Ps if assembler quotes, Brian u got me beat by a long shot.

I'm showing my age. I learned "EI" (enable interrupts) and "DI" (Disable Interrupts) on the Z80. When the 8086 came out, the assembler used "STI" (Set Interrupt) and "CLI" (Clear Interrupt). I never liked those mnemonics, so I defined EI and DI for MASM.

digitalintrigue

10-10-2011, 09:35

Where did I say anything about Macs?

Granted, I use Macs. My point was that most "Windows laptops" out there that are this inexpensive... Are also just plain cheap. You need to spend a lot more for a quality laptop. And I'd run Linux or Solaris on it. ;)

This.

Besides the OS differences (as pointed out, every Mac can also be a PC) Mac laptops are just built better. Windows laptops are $600, because, well they are built to a price, not to a quality level. It's kinda like comparing a Mercedes to a Kia. Compare resale prices of Mac laptops vs PC laptops...that's the ultimate gauge.

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 09:43

Computers might as well be disposable these days. I use a 1GByte disk drive on my Pentium Pro at work to back up the 2GByte main drive. the 1GByte drive is 18 years old. It will outlast the 500GByte drive in this HP Laptop.

Why use such an old computer at work? If it can run realtime on the 333MHz processor, it will have no problems on the 800Mhz embedded processor. Plus I am old, and vindictive.

f16sunshine

10-10-2011, 09:43

How is the build of these less expensive Windows 7 machines. Yes, compared to Mac for example. My latest gen MBP17 is my desktop for all intensive purposes. The build of the thing is amazing. Same the Macbook Air 11" latest. I'm curious as my folks need an update and have always run Windows machines (my sis works for MS). They are not easy on devises and both hate "cheapy stuff" as my mom says. Thanks for input.

Thardy

10-10-2011, 09:57

Funny how a thread about inexpensive Win 7 laptops draws in so many Mac Heads. It's like a religious cult sweeping in to 'save' us. I've used a number of OSes and I've found Win 7 to be very stable. And I haven't been hit by a virus since the 1990's.

I think it's funny how computer and religious heatherns try so hard to avoid saving. Until it's too late. LOL

Thardy

10-10-2011, 10:03

I thought the Market always came up with the correct price for everything? ... maybe it's only worth $600?

$299 and they have a deal. It's kind of like keeping a Visa card for the few companies that don't take American Express.

Peter Wijninga

10-10-2011, 10:04

Yeah the original message drowned by apple-lites. Even though they should know, by now that they are paying a surcharge for the little logo. The product is made by FoxConn as are many Windows puters.

ruby.monkey

10-10-2011, 10:11

Yeah the original message drowned by apple-lites. Even though they should know, by now that they are paying a surcharge for the little logo. The product is made by FoxConn as are many Windows puters.
Feh. MacBooks are the Leica to Windows' CosinaVoigtlander. :D

digitalintrigue

10-10-2011, 10:12

Yes, just like the lemmings pay a surcharge for the red dot. :)

Peter Wijninga

10-10-2011, 10:45

"Fast forward five years and see which one you're still using - and how much they're still worth, respectively"

Apple will be history by then.

emilsand

10-10-2011, 10:48

Apple will be history by then.

I'll bet you $1000 they're alive and kicking october 1st 2016.

Send me PM if you're up for it, and we'll exchange details.

back alley

10-10-2011, 10:49

sorry, no wagering allowed...

digitalintrigue

10-10-2011, 10:57

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6174/6231237955_8c7686855e_o.jpg

f16sunshine

10-10-2011, 10:59

Oh these Holy wars are so adorable. Don't you just want to pinch there cheeks and give em a squeeze?

Bartender, if you are still reading. I would be very interested in your opinion of the overall build of your $600 17" machine. Do you think it would hold up over time for people like my folks who are a bit careless and tough on things? You've piqued my interest.

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 11:04

Funniest thing I've seen is when one of the Mac Zealots from where I work saw my wife and I come out of a restaurant, came up to us and started a conversation. This was well over 20 years ago. It got onto computers, and how he was trying to get me to try a Mac. My wife looked at him straight in the face and announced "Not only don't I like Mac's, I don't like the people that use them, either." My wife used to debug the compilers on the Cray supercomputers. When I took Nikki to see Tron 2010, the scene showed a Cray Supercomputer. Told her, "That's Mom's computer."

I still debug my software using a logic analyzer and o-scope.

All computers have to have a boot loader. I lose interest after that point. I'm disappointed that Apple went to the Intel architecture rather than staying with PowerPC. That chip has a nice instruction set. Nice assembly language. Intel assembly is okay, I use it, but RISC is closer to microcode.

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 11:08

The build quality of my HP Pavillion G series is good, bought it 6months ago for $550 from Radio Shack. Nice keyboard, great 17" monitor.

When i bought it, told the salesclerk that it cost as much as the 5.25" Dual-sided 320KByte floppy on my Xerox 820-II. That CP/m computer had a 4MHz Z80a, 64KByte RAM, and two 320KByte floppies. It still works. $2500 over 30 years ago. I did image processing on it. In 1981. Ran the Microsoft FORTRAN compiler, Macro-80, and Wordstar. i need to buy some Zilog microcontrollers. Great assembly language, glad Zilog is still around.

btgc

10-10-2011, 11:18

People, put away MTF charts for a moment and read what Brian Sweeney writes. Especially generation, living in belief Java is first programming language.

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 11:19

A fellow Z80 programmer.

Remember the Radio Shack Model II- Motorola 68K. 512KBytes of memory!

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 11:23

People, put away MTF charts for a moment and read what Brian Sweeney writes. Especially generation, living in belief Java is first programming language.

Yes, but remember that I always give programming advice followed with "The worst that can happen is the computer will burst into flames". "But that has only happened to me twice". "Fortunately, the HALON fired."

PROGRAM! Like a KLINGON!
(by Brian Sweeney, NRL)

1. Execution speed is EVERYTHING!

2. The system library is a challenge to all those using the computer to write their own faster and better routines or to bow to the superior strength and skill of a true master.

3. The only code that you can trust is that written by yourself or by your Chteas.

4. FORTRAN is used to design weapons! Other languages have lesser uses.

5. Those who did not pass their final exam deserved to die!

6. The Final Exam of KLING U.: You have just defeated an enemy in combat. They were strong and brave; they fought with honor, and did not hesitate to strike the first blow! You have beamed aboard their ship as your own is no longer capable of supporting life or firing its weapons. All aboard are dead, and you find that an energy surge has corrupted the code in the main memory of the warp core magnetic containment feedback processor. You have access to the computer system console. You have between 10 and 20 minutes to isolate the bad section of code and write a new control routine.

7. CASE tools are for those whose blood does not burn with the desire to program when they sit in front of a console!

8. The only error message that a user requires is a blank screen and locked keyboard!

9. A true parallel computer does not contain a scalar processing unit. The shame of producing slow runnning code will drive lesser programmers to find a platform to which their skills are more suited.

10. It is a mandate that all software developed for the KLING military utilize Object-code Oriented Programming techniques. Code which serves those who fight must be FAST and RESPONSIVE! Documentation must provide a count of clock cycles required to perform functions so that a commander may anticipate his ship's every reaction. The programmer is expected to install, serve, and, if the situation dictates, DIE aboard the ship which is chosen to test his code.

Moriturii

10-10-2011, 11:43

Apple computers are sort of like Leica cameras of the computer world, overpriced and underperforming. "Leica is a commodity, contax is a tool" someone once said.

People pay big bucks for design, even if it has very low specs, and feel like they are in the 'in' group, otherwise can't live with themselves or something.

You like OSX? Get a non-apple laptop with twice the specs of apple stuff at half the price and install OSX on it.

Peter Wijninga

10-10-2011, 12:07

10 Oct 2016.

ampguy

10-10-2011, 13:04

a friend of mine, Chip Rabinowitz wrote a utility like that back in the day, you basically were prompted to hit space, and in a few seconds your floppy was formatted, ready for another disk to be inserted.

I wrote a replacement for the dos cd command, called d.exe which let you change directories, but also displayed your ram and disk stats.

Another utility I wrote was chkdsk.exe, more robust version that came with dos.

I use mac's and pc's. macbook air when traveling, PC's around the house. Both are good. I have an old 14" dell from 2006 that still runs well, and has a native 1440x900 that mac's didn't have back then, but I don't think they make them like that anymore.

I'd go for a light notebook with ssd, whether windows or mac, over a larger standard drive system. Also, for me, I like a lot of pixel density, 1440x900 or FHD on 13 or 14" or smaller, please.

I re-wrote the "FORMAT" command once. Instead of taking something like 30+ seconds to format a floppy, it did it in mere seconds. A little C, sprinkled with some assembler and direct access to the OS/hardware... Voila.

I also wrote my own image/text routines once because the built-in routines were too slow by putting characters directly into the memory of the video card. Even extended it to make my own version of HTML's <center> tag...

1) X = 80 - length of string / 2
2) Place text at X
3) Profit!

Good times. :)

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 13:05

Using a Leica camera is closer to using a computer by programming it in assembly language than using an Apple, or other "Windows-Icons-Mice-Pointer" type computers. The latter is akin to an Autofocus Point and Shoot, press the button- the camera does everything for you.

With an M8, M9, and M7- maybe closer to using a computer with a Compiler, when you use auto-exposure. Take it off of Auto when required, back to assembly. Picture out of focus, miss the exposure, blame yourself.

Probably why I use Leica's and other manual focus, manual exposure cameras.

http://www.ziforums.com/picture.php?albumid=190&pictureid=1795

Computers have changed in the last 65 years, that's for sure.

I miss heavy metal.

And the Z80.

http://www.ziforums.com/picture.php?albumid=190&pictureid=1810

Just remembered- I still use an original Microsoft Mouse at work, bought in 1986. $150. Works great. I wrote my own device driver for it.

tyrone.s

10-10-2011, 13:44

Utor a computer proinde EGO sum?

digitalintrigue

10-10-2011, 13:52

Apple computers are sort of like Leica cameras of the computer world, overpriced and underperforming.

Seeing as the chipsets are the same, this is a difficult argument to push. :)

People do value aesthetics and build quality, the market has proven it to be so. This doesn't mean everyone wants or needs either, of course.

ampguy

10-10-2011, 13:55

You seem to me, the type that would build their own box from parts from Newegg, or wherever, and tweak the heck out of it! ;)

The build quality of my HP Pavillion G series is good, bought it 6months ago for $550 from Radio Shack. Nice keyboard, great 17" monitor.

When i bought it, told the salesclerk that it cost as much as the 5.25" Dual-sided 320KByte floppy on my Xerox 820-II. That CP/m computer had a 4MHz Z80a, 64KByte RAM, and two 320KByte floppies. It still works. $2500 over 30 years ago. I did image processing on it. In 1981. Ran the Microsoft FORTRAN compiler, Macro-80, and Wordstar. i need to buy some Zilog microcontrollers. Great assembly language, glad Zilog is still around.

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 14:07

You seem to me, the type that would build their own box from parts from Newegg, or wherever, and tweak the heck out of it! ;)

Do that at work, and they pay me for it.

At home- tweak the lenses for close-up/ wide-open, baby.

The M8/M9 use a Renesas processor, info courtesy of JAAPV. 16-bit, RISC-like architecture. Nice instruction set.

Roger Hicks

10-10-2011, 14:11

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 14:18

Thankyou, Roger.

You should have seen the "Honey-DO" list that I would get. Mostly supplying her with FORTRAN subroutines. She did give me co-author on her publications, things like "Comparison of Wavelet and Fourier Analysis on Truncated Chromosone Sequence Recognition". That "Chick-Stuff"...

Timmyjoe

10-10-2011, 14:35

What do people do on the road that requires much power?

My "road" computer is a previous generation 11" MacBook Air, with Aperture 2 installed. After a shoot, I dump the cards into Aperture, do some minor adjustments, export them in the two different sizes my editor wants, Zip them, and off they go to the paper.

When I want to do serious PP on images I use my desktop MacPro (or whatever it's called), which also has Aperture 2, along with CS3 Photoshop and a few other goodies.

Best,
-Tim

gavinlg

10-10-2011, 14:51

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 14:56

I liked the original Macs that burst into flames because they did not have a fan, which were considered "noisy". They overheated, and the power supplies went up. Really smelled bad when this happened. One of the departments at work still uses one of these- as a door stop.

People- this is getting stupid. I have Windows Laptops bought 14 years ago that survived field trips and Nikki's hospital stays. Still running, and not the "ToughBook" variety either. I still have two Micron Trek II's in full operation. And some Pentium Pro Towers. I used to buy Panasonic Toughbooks 5 at a time. They are as rugged as a Nikon F. Every key on the Trek II's still work, the touchpad, everything.

digitalintrigue

10-10-2011, 15:18

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 15:23

Bob Johnson's Computer Stuff.

http://bobjohnson.com/

I have bought at least 30 Panasonic Toughbooks from him.

Great to deal with. I needed Win98se on them, no-problem! I use a Panasonic CF-50 with a Pentium-IV, works great-priced right!

I'm realy sick and tired of the Apple vs DOS, Mac vs Win debate.

Windows machines are cheap because of the Tablet style computers and do-everything Phones.

At some point, the MAC computers will come down in price to compete with Pads.

Computers are like Barbie Dolls. Sell the doll cheap, make money off the clothes for Barbie and Software for computers.

They should be in vending machines next to the cokes and twinkies. Insert a $20 bill, get a computer.

Roger Hicks

10-10-2011, 15:29

Brian, where can I get a Toughbook for $600? :)

This thread is going all over the place. A cheap laptop doesn't necessarily mean it will fail, even after 14 years. But I did happen to see a Yugo actually driving (motor running) on the street the other day. :)

I don't recall a Mac laptop that didn't have a fan. The Cube definitely did NOT have a fan but it was a desktop. I do recall some Mac laptops that ran hot; just like I remember Windows laptops with exploding batteries.

And why not? It's a Fiat Panda/Seat Marbella clone, an incredibly simple motor car. Well, at least the one I had was. I wish I'd never crashed it. Look after it, and it should last half way to forever.

Cheers,

R.

digitalintrigue

10-10-2011, 15:31

OK, used. :) Got me there, Brian!

Looking at new, the cheapest 'semi rugged' are $1900+ outfitted with Bluetooth and backlit keyboard and smartcard reader (outfitted similar to the cheapest Macbook Air, which also has SSD.)

I bought a Dell laptop in January 2008 for $2500, sold it a year later on ebay and it got $800. One good thing about $600 Windows laptops, is the most they can depreciate is $600. :)

digitalintrigue

10-10-2011, 15:41

I'm realy sick and tired of the Apple vs DOS, Mac vs Win debate.
At some point, the MAC computers will come down in price to compete with Pads.

It's not really a debate, just a discussion.

As I said before, Apple machines are built to a standard, and Windows machines to a price. This is of course speaking in general...there are always exceptions, like Toughbooks. Or, the Mac Mini, which is a $600 box...even at $600, though, it has real aesthetics (and Thunderbolt to boot.)

And one has to admit, Brian, that you are not the typical user. Most users do not have the background and skill that you do. You could use any machine; this is not the case for many millions of others.

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 15:42

There is no need to spend more than $600 or so for a good computer these days, unless you just like spending lots of money. Figure they are good for the warranty period, then replace them. Cheaper than leasing.

Technology changes that quickly. And it doesn't, read an assembly language manual and you see that things have not changed that much in 30 years. Clock-rates are much higher, but computer architecture has not changed much in decades. The most sophisticated computer "architecture-wise" that I ever used was a multi-processor vector computer which could process entire images, even sub-images within an image, with one assembly language instruction. Built in 1971. I never made the cross-over to the Cray after programming the ASC (Advanced Scientific Computer).

It also cost $8M.

Macs were originally advertised as the "computer for the rest of us". That group does not include me...

coolness factor of the ASC: fetch memory operands 25 clock cycles before presenting them to the arithmetic pipelines. Fetch 8 words at a time with a 256-bit wide memory bus. triple-buffered memory input, dual-buffered memory output. I'm always in awe of that machine.

Okay. If anyone else is in half-awe of this, you are a computer-geek.

gdi

10-10-2011, 15:49

Surcharge for the logo? I think not.

Compare apples to apples (no pun intended). You'll pay about the same for a Macbook as you will a high-end Windows laptop. These cheap laptops just don't compare... Fast forward five years and see which one you're still using - and how much they're still worth, respectively.

The comment about Foxconn is irrelevant - as you point out, they make stuff for everyone. And what they do in China is not MY problem. I got enough to worry about over here.

When I was pricing high end laptops, I found that a MacBook Pro would cost almost double the price of a good quality Win 7 machine with better specs in some components. But the monitor on the Mac is the best I've seen.

I like Macs - and nothing compares style wise, so I was still tempted to temper my requirements to justify the Mac. But I have some professional requirements that demand a native Windows machine.

Compare a good builder's (maybe XoticPC) price on a high end Asus, for example, to a Macbook Pro. So windows 7 laptops are a pretty good deal.

digitalintrigue

10-10-2011, 15:50

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 15:58

Okay. Nikki has used Win98, WinXP, and Win7. No problems.

I installed Office 2000 on her $450 HP 17" laptop, works and runs- does everything she needs for the 7th grade.

I did help her import the HPGL graphical output from a FORTRAN program into Powerpoint for her 5th grade Science Project, using Coreldraw as an intermediary. But she did all the typing, and layout.

gdi

10-10-2011, 16:02

Keith

10-10-2011, 16:03

I'm in the market for a new computer in the near future and this thread is making my head spin! :p

I have fairly specific use for a computer and that mainly involves post processing digital files ... my current PC is six years old at least and struggles with my D700's files so an 18 or 24 megapixel camera is out of the question for me. My son can build me a kick arse PC for bugger all that will more than fill my needs but I'm sort of drawn to a Mac ... though I'm not sure why? :D

digitalintrigue

10-10-2011, 16:04

This is why it is great that there are many consumer options...let the market decide.

"When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” - S. Jobs

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 16:08

And yet, he is the person that objected to fans in the original Macs, and they caught on fire as a result.

The ASC is out of production. It was all downhill after that. Macs and PC's use the same processor. If you know how to use a PC now, you have a learning curve for the Mac. If that is not an issue, and spending more money for the same processor speed is okay, go for it.

Trius

10-10-2011, 16:11

I don't recall a Mac laptop that didn't have a fan. The Cube definitely did NOT have a fan but it was a desktop. I do recall some Mac laptops that ran hot; just like I remember Windows laptops with exploding batteries.

I don't think the Airs (at least current generation) have a fan, but I could be wrong. If so, it's damn quiet, can't hear it in a silent room.

Macs had battery recalls too, if I remember. OEM suppliers are not totally under the control of the computer manufacturer.

digitalintrigue

10-10-2011, 16:19

I have owned probably 200 Macs over the years, starting in '84, none of them burned due to lack of fans, except when we were fiddling inside them with our boosted CPUs. :) The Powerbook 5300 is probably the laptop you are referring to, Brian. That model was a definite problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_5300

It was in the model lineup when Steve was at NeXT.

The Airs definitely have fans...I'm using one right now.

Brian Sweeney

10-10-2011, 16:21

I'm thinking of the original Mac (128KBytes of memory). One of the engineers bought it as a replacement for his Lisa.

A number of people bought NEXT machines at work. All of them had the OS overwritten in one evening from an Internet attack.

I was asked to do software development for the NEXT, and just laughed.

These days- Win7, Mac, etc- after watching Nikki use a Windows machine since she was 4, I don't see how either can be very hard to learn. Very few assembly programmers these days, those of us that like it have to find a niche.

But the gap between PC, Mac, Pad, etc- seems very small to me. 4x price difference, at least with a Leica M9 I know where the money goes. Mechanical precision is expensive. Between computers, the difference between this HP and the Mac laptops that co-workers use- not much.

Rogier

10-10-2011, 16:31

Apple bought NEXT in order to develop OSX.

digitalintrigue

10-10-2011, 16:31

Yes, the original Mac 128k didn't have a fan. When some got a few years old, the CRT flyback transformer would commonly fail. I fixed many. Be careful of that big a** capacitor.

Every Apple now has some NeXT in it.

GaryLH

10-10-2011, 19:53

I'm showing my age. I learned "EI" (enable interrupts) and "DI" (Disable Interrupts) on the Z80. When the 8086 came out, the assembler used "STI" (Set Interrupt) and "CLI" (Clear Interrupt). I never liked those mnemonics, so I defined EI and DI for MASM.

8008 i think it was... Could have the model number wrong... Old age bad memory --> lab course while I was in college. Forgotten all of that now. Been on big endian microprocessors since I left school including the original risc embedded CPU.

Actually hated macs originally. I only came over after osx and after I fixed my wife's xp registration problem for the third time in one year.

Windows 7 I think they got right.

Gary

GaryLH

10-10-2011, 20:00

rxmd

10-10-2011, 21:45

Hmmm... I actually like things that are built and designed well - 98% of windows laptops and desktops are built like a sardine can - rickety and rattly pieces of junk!

My latest gen MBP17 is my desktop for all intensive purposes. The build of the thing is amazing. Same the Macbook Air 11" latest. I'm curious as my folks need an update and have always run Windows machines (my sis works for MS). They are not easy on devises and both hate "cheapy stuff" as my mom says. Thanks for input.

As I said before, Apple machines are built to a standard, and Windows machines to a price.

Compare apples to apples (no pun intended). You'll pay about the same for a Macbook as you will a high-end Windows laptop. These cheap laptops just don't compare... Fast forward five years and see which one you're still using - and how much they're still worth, respectively.

I am typing this on an IBM Thinkpad X60s, one that still says IBM on it. I bought it when it came out, it is now five and a half years old. It's an ultraportable that weighs about three pounds. Back in the day I had the choice between a Mac and the IBM, and boy am I glad I chose the IBM.

It's built like a tank. I've been carrying this laptop through years of field research in six countries with -stan in their names. I've worked in archives with no insulation at -5°C in winter and +45°C in summer. Once in Tashkent the zipper of my shoulder bag failed and the laptop dropped five feet on asphalt and landed on the lower right corner with a very ugly sound. I thought "that was it", stepped aside with a feeling of quiet despair, opened the laptop and switched it on. It booted up normally, with screen and hard drive intact. That was when I found out that it was worth every penny.

I got a four-year, world-wide, next-business-day, on-site warranty with it, for $250. I need this because I work in strange countries and the price was a joke for what you get. Once when there was a problem I called IBM service from Uzbekistan and they walked me through the problem, saying that if their walkthrough didn't fix it they would send me a technician with the spare parts from Moscow to Tashkent with the next plane, for free. Once in the fourth year it had a loose keycap on the the keyboard. I called service, the next morning a technician came to my home with a replacement keyboard. He looked at the laptop and said, "Your screen backlight has gone a bit dim, would you like a new screen?" and pulled a spare screen out of his bag and gave me a new screen for free. (That was after the drop, they could just have refused to service it altogether. Many manufacturers would.)

The Thinkpad has the best laptop keyboard in the world. I prefer my keyboards from companies that have been building heavy-duty typewriters since 1935, rather than from companies that make them look backlit and pretty. I'm looking at you, Apple. In all fairness Apple used to make good keyboards back in the day; the Apple Extended Keyboard from 1987 is fantastic (I still have three) and it wasn't cheap at $180 - but for some reason they abandoned this great tradition for the sake of looking pretty.

I can download the hardware maintenance manual for the IBM for free. It's a 240-page document that contains information like the recommended torque for the body screws. I can completely tear down the laptop using only a Phillips head screwdriver. A few weeks ago the now five-year-old fan started to make some noises. I got a replacement fan and heatsink assembly, part number 41V9748, for $40. Changing it required a complete teardown of the laptop down to the motherboard. Taking apart the laptop, changing the fan and heatsink assembly and putting it together again was a 90-minute job at the kitchen table. For all practical purposes, the laptop will work forever until something like the motherboard fails.

It has a lot of little things that make me appreciate it. The screen is non-glossy, so I can work with it when I have a window in my back and see something else than whether I'm shaved or not. The keyboard is lit from above with a little LED, which has the advantage over a backlit keyboard that (a) you can build better keyboards, and (b) you can see something else with it than just the keyboard, such as handwritten field notes. I can swap the battery when I'm in the field; usually I had two with me that gave me 15 hours of work without an electrical outlet. When the old batteries started to go weak after four years or so, I could buy a new battery and just swap it in.

An Apple would have had an advantage or two. The main advantage of the Apple is OS X, which is a reasonably nice operating system. I ran OS X on the Thinkpad for about a year. It worked well. Eventually I got bored with it because there was little that made me more productive with it than I would have been on another platform. I now run Windows XP and Debian again.

Admittedly the IBM is a high-end machine and not a $600 laptop. Back in the day I paid close to $2000 all in all. That was on a student budget and I worked three months for it in order to get a machine that would get me through my PhD. It was worth every single cent of that money. But if I had chosen a $2000 Apple instead, I would have been worse off in every respect. I couldn't have written 150.000 words of final text, plus the notes that I wrote it from, plus some 25.000 lines of code for data processing on that keyboard. I'm not convinced it would have survived what happened to it. Service would have been shorter overall, and worse in the regions where I need it (I have plenty of colleagues who find out how "world wide" the Apple Care plan really is when something happens in the middle of nowhere).

I am admittedly a fan of the IBM in a way that extends to few other products. However, I'm a rather critical customer and they have deserved their place in my esteem over and over. It's my third Thinkpad, and the first new one after a used 240 and a refurbished T20. (I can still get the maintenance manuals, download drivers and find replacement components for these machines, even though they came out more than twelve years ago.)

In the high-end to high-end comparison, Apple comes out a distinct second. They are just not up to the same standard. If you want camera equivalents, the IBM is the equivalent of a Leica or a Nikon F, while an Apple would be the equivalent of an Olympus Pen F or a Fuji X100 - pretty, well-designed with ergonomics in mind, in some respect outstanding, but not up to the same sheer proven industrial-grade quality.

I'm looking for a replacement now. While I am considering Apple, it is a distinct third-rate consideration, behind a Toughbook and another Thinkpad. I'm unsure about the newer Thinkpads because I don't think Lenovo service is as outstanding as IBM service was. The MacBook Air is pretty, but that's about it. I don't trust them; I have two friends with the older 13" MacBook Airs that developed problems with broken screen hinges during the second year. I also have no experience with Panasonic world-wide service. Not an easy decision!

gavinlg

10-10-2011, 21:58

Time is money...this is why I no longer can assist friends and family that run into problems with their Windows boxes. And being in the computer industry (designing circuit boards) for 20+ years, and providing technical support to the end users, I get asked...often.

This is why a $600 laptop is not the right decision for many, many people. It's a false economy. For those people that know what they are doing, no problem...but millions don't.

My mom is 88 years old and uses a Mac Mini. There is absolutely no way I would ever inflict a Windows machine on her...the pain would be mine.

Exactly.
It's not about the specs, its about how the components, the build and the OS work together in harmony, and that's what apple has got NAILED.

But the gap between PC, Mac, Pad, etc- seems very small to me. 4x price difference, at least with a Leica M9 I know where the money goes. Mechanical precision is expensive. Between computers, the difference between this HP and the Mac laptops that co-workers use- not much.

For the price of an m8 body, you can have a 5d, a 28mm, 50mm and 85mm canon lenses. It'll be arguably more reliable, give arguably better image quality, and allow you to adapt pretty much any SLR lens ever made to it and is basically the same size.

Doesn't mean everyone buys a 5d though...

mw_uio

10-10-2011, 22:05

ThinkPad keyboard design is second to none and typing is a joy!
IBM did it right! I look at every other key board on notebooks and the IBM is
superior. Plus IBM had international warranties!

Mark
Quito, EC

rxmd

10-10-2011, 22:40

I don't know about the keyboard on the older think pads by IBM but I absolutely adore the keyboard on the macbook pro. To add to that, the current lenovo think pads have that horrible little pencil eraser mouse in the middle of the keyboard which you have to manipulate with the tip of your finger - not exactly ideal when you compare it to the large glass trackpad of an MBP - which has the best 'feel' of ANY laptop.

Well, I do know about both. In direct comparison I much prefer the traditional keyboard. (Actually the first MacBook Pros in 2006 had a halfway decent keyboard, the newer ones are where they started to go downhill. But then I'm an arguably critical about keyboards because much of my work is centered around text and around code.

Regarding the rubber stick, I see what you mean. I also found it hard to get used to in the beginning when I first used it 12 years ago. It's the type of thing that people find terrible and confusing when they first try to copy a file on someone else's computer - a bit like the first time using a manual-exposure-only camera when you're unfamiliar with using a light meter. After the first week or so I wouldn't have gone back, it's just so much more precise and easier on the wrists because I don't have to move my hands from the keyboard to use it. For keyboard-centered users like me it's the better solution. What counts is not the first impression of "feel" for me, but the ergonomics under heavy use. Trackpads are OK and it helps to have a larger one (I think the larger Thinkpads pretty much all have one, too). But for longer desk work I would use an external trackball anyway, it's better than both.

But it sounds like you feel more comfortable with a windows laptop - maybe a new lenovo? It doesn't matter either way - just use what you like :angel:

Actually I don't care about "windows" laptops - that's just the operating system and I'd pretty much use the same operating systems on any hardware (I'm the sort of person who does run OS X on non-Apple and Windows on Apple hardware).

What I do care about is solid hardware, and I don't mean the "it doesn't creak when I try to bend it" kind of solid (I take that for granted), but the "years on the road in third world countries while getting dropped and wet and dusty" kind. I care about getting good support wherever I am, which includes places where the next company office is 2000 miles and two countries away. And I care about being able to service stuff myself with simple tools if need be. I won't get that from a $600 Windows laptop, sure; but I won't get it from the $2000 machines from some manufacturers, either. Everything is not equal at the high end.

gavinlg

10-10-2011, 22:47

What I do care about is solid hardware, and I don't mean the "it doesn't creak when I try to bend it" kind of solid (I take that for granted), but the "years on the road in third world countries while getting dropped and wet and dusty" kind. I care about getting good support wherever I am, which includes places where the next company office is 2000 miles and two countries away. And I care about being able to service stuff myself with simple tools if need be. I won't get that from a $600 Windows laptop, sure; but I won't get it from the $2000 machines from some manufacturers, either. Everything is not equal at the high end.

Correct, so maybe a panasonic tough book or a thinkpad for your next one. Apple doesn't really compete in the ultra durable 'tough book' style laptops, but thats not to say that their laptops aren't durable. just different markets.

Ronald M

10-11-2011, 00:05

Please don't give me a Windows laptop. It will cost me more in time and virus prevention/cleanup and OS re-installs and driver updates to pay for a couple of MacBooks. :)

Why I switched to Mac.

13" book, 24 iMac, 27 iMac with 16 GB ram i7 processor and the screen calibrates color perfectly and density is between two click positions. Not a big deal.

All run photoshop without a hitch. Keep in mind, no laptop of any brand has a color calibratible screen. Forget the tech reason, but you can only get so far. I am no techie.

I use the MacBook just by depending on the color from the camera is correct. I never really have color issues with my digi Nikons anyway. Have 5 and all produce very nice color straight from the box if you stay off auto WB.

Matus

10-11-2011, 00:08

You guys just can not stop the fruit wars :D

C'mon - different systems have different strong and weak points, there is slightly different software available, the user interface is different and on top of that there are very different user needs and expectations. Differences in security are mostly defined by the abundance of the different systems on the market and by the user approach (do everything as ROOT and it may give you troubles).

Everything out there can be hacked within few minutes at most - check out the Pwn2own (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwn2own) competitions.

We already had a guy here that worked long years with Apple and used happily Windows at home, I know a guy who had that the other way round.

I like my MacBook, my wife does NOT (I swear I did not know that when I married her :p) - she prefers Windows (we both worked in physics research for 7 years). We both have different reasons for our choices and have different personal preferences.

... makes me wondering that if our Head Bartender did not include the last sentence (and woke up the dragon) in his original post this thread would have been 100 posts shorter...

rxmd

10-11-2011, 00:18

Keep in mind, no laptop of any brand has a color calibratible screen.

It doesn't have to be. You usually don't calibrate the screen directly anyway, you calibrate the colour lookup table used by the graphics card. What the laptop displays for a 80-80-80 pixel may not be neutral gray, so the graphics card is made to display something else instead that does produce a neutral gray on the laptop screen. In other words, the software compensates for whatever colour bias the screen has. That's how tools like the Spyder work, and that is how colour calibration software works in general, laptop or otherwise.

Laptop screens have other disadvantages - higher directional sensitivity, narrower colour gamut - so they are the wrong tool for colour-critical work anyway. If you want colour fidelity, use a good external screen. But for quick field work, you can calibrate your workflow easily enough on a laptop monitor, too.

whitecat

10-11-2011, 00:39

I found that anyone who is a photographer really wants to have a Mac. The screen is like the viewfinder in a Zeiss 35.... Brilliant with no comparison.

Brian Sweeney

10-11-2011, 01:34

Jezz what year was that? Actual NeXT hardware? I owned a Cube, but never had it on the net.

Of course in the early 90's there was too much trust for sure -- too much now.

had to be the late 1980s. I was still doing consulting work part-time for a few groups, mostly writing graphics programs. My work was an early adopter of networking, had a fiber backbone in the 1980s.

Brian Sweeney

10-11-2011, 01:44

At about the time of the Mac, I bought a Zenith Z241, 6Mhz 80286 with 80287 co-processor. The Motorola coprocessor was late by several years. Upgraded the Z241 to a 16MHz 386 for a "mere" $1000. Added an 80387, then a Cyrix coprocessor. Took all the parts from the upgrade, bought an empty case and power supply, used the old parts to rebuild the Z241. Made a parallel cable to connect the two computers via the parallel port, and programmed the Z241 to be a graphics accelerator with an IBM PGC, 640x480 256 colors circa 1984. Added an Orchid PGA, which used an 80186 for a graphics coprocessor. The Orchid did EGA nd PCG, you hooked two screens to it. I had three screens for my setup, all under my control. Used it for image processing. I used a similar setup for stop-frame animation using a Panasonic TQ-2026 Laser video disk recorder. that thing cost $25K. When I saw co-workers attempting to write code for a MAC II- yeah, right.

Roger Hicks

10-11-2011, 02:01

I found that anyone who is a photographer really wants to have a Mac. The screen is like the viewfinder in a Zeiss 35.... Brilliant with no comparison.

Gosh. After around 45 years of photography, 15 years of Photoshop-and-scanning, 10 years after trying my first digital camera (and deciding to wait until they were usable), and well over half a decade of running digital cameras, it comes as a bit of a shock to learn that I'm not a photographer. I'd be grateful if you didn't tell my editors, as they might stop running my pictures.

Seriously, yours is the kind of insupportable overstatement that gets Mac users a bad name. Yes, I've used Macs. In fact I gave away my last Mac a few weeks ago, because I hardly ever used it. I've also used mainframes, and 'portables' going back to the days when they were the size of a suitcase with tiny CRT screens. Stick a good screen on just about anything, and it works. It's just that some are faster (and easier to use) than others.

Cheers,

R.

Keith

10-11-2011, 02:03

At about the time of the Mac, I bought a Zenith Z241, 6Mhz 80286 with 80287 co-processor. The Motorola coprocessor was late by several years. Upgraded the Z241 to a 16MHz 386 for a "mere" $1000. Added an 80387, then a Cyrix coprocessor. Took all the parts from the upgrade, bought an empty case and power supply, used the old parts to rebuild the Z241. Made a parallel cable to connect the two computers via the parallel port, and programmed the Z241 to be a graphics accelerator with an IBM PGC, 640x480 256 colors circa 1984. Added an Orchid PGA, which used an 80186 for a graphics coprocessor. The Orchid did VGA nd PCG, you hooked two screens to it. I had three screens for my setup, all under my control. Used it for image processing. I used a similar setup for stop-frame animation using a Panasonic TQ-2026 Laser video disk recorder. that thing cost $25K. When I saw co-workers attempting to write code for a MAC II- yeah, right.

I was able to fix a clock radio once ... does that admit me to your club?

:p

Brian Sweeney

10-11-2011, 02:06

Did the clock radio use Nixie Tubes... Or Digital Tumblers...

You're In.

I have a calculator from 1968 that used Nixie Tubes and a card reader. Cost as much as a 1968 Shelby GT500 Mustang.

Core memory, about the size of a briefcase.

Sparrow

10-11-2011, 02:12

I was able to fix a clock radio once ... does that admit me to your club?

:p

... thankfully the video-recorder became obsolete before I mastered it's programming ... much like the PC is likely to do :D

ferider

10-11-2011, 04:25

You guys are funny. Leica vs non-Leica, Mac vs PC, it all sounds the same :)

Nice. Yes, this was SJ's company while he was ousted from Apple. Intended for the educational market. Turns out, Tim Berners-Lee created the WWW on one... The NeXT OS basically formed Mac OS X. The first versions (the betas and Rhapsody) looked nearly identical to it. Remember, a big part of NeXTstep was the APIs, etc. and the underlying part of the OS was ported to SPARC, Intel, etc. So it was easy to run it on PPC. This was around 1999-2000. In 2001, Mac OS X 10.1 came out, standing all on its own.

Let's get one thing straight: NeXTstep and Mac OS X are based on FreeBSD, which was developed and ported to different platforms independently of Jobs. Apart from that, NeXTstep with its Postscript interface and Max OS X are quite different beasts.

The biggest strength of the Macs is just that, the underlying UNIX. No blue screens.

The biggest strength of Windows is invisible to most here, it's the Microsoft C++ development environment.

For laptops, I myself have been using Thinkpads since almost 20 years, only half by choice. Running Linux, either natively or via vmware. Our developers use Linux or Windows machines, a couple have Macs, depending on the mood. Depending what you pick, you gain some, you loose some. Nobody argues which is better.

Roland.

ferider

10-11-2011, 04:43

Don't get me started on Objective C - the iPhone's biggest weakness if you ask me ... :)

thegman

10-11-2011, 05:28

I use both PC & Mac, both have advantages and weaknesses. If I had to have only one computer, I'd get a Mac as you can run Mac OS X and Windows if you want.

Mac OS X is the reason to get a Mac, the hardware itself is just a matter of taste between that and high end PC.

Some may feel that Macs are a rip off and some feel they are worth the money, it only matters how you feel about it really, I'm amazed at how passionate people still get over the PC vs. Mac thing.

ferider

10-11-2011, 05:28

Which brings me back to my more important question above, are you running a graphics or photo processing business on Thinkpads running Linux and how do you like working with it (e.g. the Gimp, scanners, etc)?

At work, we do graphics, yes, heavily, actually, but nothing photo-related, Fred. For both Windows and Linux machines we develop on top of QT and OpenGL.

At home, I have a hybrid Linux/Windows machine and use the Windows side for my hobby/photo stuff. A Mac would be OK, too, but frankly I bought my machine several years ago because it was the first platform I found at an affordable price to run multi-CPU, 64bit Linux on.

Roland.

rxmd

10-11-2011, 07:17

Seems everyone loves the IBM keyboard.

I keep wondering what a keyboard has to do with the Rangefinder Forum or photographic work in general - as I read about all this typing. Are you guys writing photo processing code (well I know Brian is). I barely use my keyboards in photoshop other than for shortcuts.

Well I don't keep separate laptops around for image editing and for text- and code-centered work. So obviously the computer I use for image editing needs a good keyboard. It's as easy as that.

A keyboard needn't be clicky for me, it just needs to provide good tactile feedback. The Model M with its microswitches and buckling springs does that, but for desktop use I currently use a relatively quiet Siemens ergonomic keyboard without microswitches that does it too. It's all about how key travel is designed mechanically. Whenever I sit at a recent Apple for extended amounts of time, it feels like a ZX Spectrum all over again. The one thing that feels even worse for me is typing on a touchscreen.

It's not much of a religious question for me either. It's just a question of whether a computer does what I need in terms of portability, durability, ergonomics and service. I have pretty specific requirements about those and that makes it actually easier to make choices.

Regarding multiple monitors, if one was stuck with a PC back in the day multi-monitor support was one of the reasons to keep using Windows 98SE, which had multi-monitor support, over NT which hadn't (well at least until Windows 2000 came around). Also, PCs could be picky about what graphics cards would work as secondary cards. With a Mac you just didn't have that sort of problem. I still keep a Matrox Millennium II around that I bought in 1998, because as a second or third card it was compatible with pretty much everything. Also it had a RAMDAC with outstanding image quality, and the drivers supported things like driving the monitor sideways so you could use a CRT as a portrait monitor.

shadowfox

10-11-2011, 07:49

Heh, NT 4.0 was the last Windows I actually used (and mostly for 3D Studio Max). SGI... Now we're talking. I picked up an Indigo2 High Impact (the purple Barney box) back in 1997 or thereabouts - still have it. What's amazing is how well it handles OpenGL with the dedicated hardware... Still blows away anything I've seen today - and this was nearly 15 years ago! Ahh, Irix... Have to say, the Magic Desktop (4WM) was... Unique. SGIs were similar to Macs in a lot of ways (or vice versa). Real shame what became of SGI in the workstation market. Luckily I never bought into the O2, Fire or Tezra workstations - as nice as they were.

I used to drool looking at those SGI Indigo's at the mechanical engineering lab. Then I got an on campus job using one of those at the Vet-Med lab.

rxmd

10-11-2011, 08:24

ferider

10-11-2011, 08:52

Check out the movie, "Peacemaker" (1997) with George Clooney sometime - chock FULL of Indigo2 and Indy boxes. They even had one in Jurassic Park ("Hey, this is Unix. I know this.").

The cool thing in Jurassic Park (the book at least) was the Connection Machine.

Brian Sweeney

10-11-2011, 09:07

We had a Connection Machine 2 and later a Connection Machine 5 at the Lab, but i never used them.

I had a personal Intel Hypercube with 4 attached array processors. Cool personal computer.

I generated fractal based imagery with it.

Sometimes I really miss doing image processing with parallel vector computers.

ferider

10-11-2011, 09:11

I used a 1k node CM5, a 64 node Intel Paragon (i960-based), a 1k node Fujitsu AP1000 (Sparc), and a 64 node Intel iWarp, Brian; in all cases sitting for a week or so in rooms next to the computer rooms. I also was the first to port and use C++ (cfront) onto the Cray XMP. Those were the times ....

Sparrow

10-11-2011, 09:15

Whod'a thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh? .............. ;)

Brian Sweeney

10-11-2011, 09:16

Geek Fest 2011.

I'm just happy to get paid to write code.

30 Years ago I was using the Internet to connect to the Supercomputer to do my Computer Science homework. And get paid to write code.

ferider

10-11-2011, 09:18

I'm too old, Brian. I manage :)

PKR

10-11-2011, 09:49

with all the cyber brain power on here - are any of you working in the econophysics world? Just curious.

Thardy

10-11-2011, 10:35

Maybe one of these cyber brains can help me make one of those net book hackintosh computers. ;)

digitalintrigue

10-11-2011, 10:39

My preference would have been a BeBox.

I still have a copy of BeOS R4 lying around.

BeOS!

Need to google Jean-Louis and see what he's been up to...

RObert Budding

10-11-2011, 14:42

I found that anyone who is a photographer really wants to have a Mac. The screen is like the viewfinder in a Zeiss 35.... Brilliant with no comparison.

Silly statement - and untrue. I'm a photographer, and I don't want a mac. And there are millions of people just like me.

What I dislike about Macs is the limited choice on the desktop. I could buy a mini and suffer from a lack of expandability, and l'd have to live with a case that's really difficult to open. Or I could buy an iMac and live with a glossy monitor that I dislike. But, hey, it's a great solution if you can't figure out where to plug in the cables!

Then there's the Mac Pro - I don't want to buy a server chip to get a case that's easy to open.

Brian Sweeney

10-11-2011, 14:58

One of my first "real" jobs was managing PDP 11/24 and VAX 11/780 boxes, later a MicroVAX II. The "network" was a BlackBox patch panel for 9,600 baud VT100 and VT220 terminals. The RL02 disk drives were like washing machines... LOL.

Anyone remember the Rainbow 100 "PCs" of the day? Heh. Mainly CP/M boxes, but also ran DOS (barely). I still have stuff on RX50 diskettes that I'd love to retrieve (VAX BASIC and C code).

I had a Xerox 8/16 that ran both CP/M and DOS... latter was barely, had an 8086 plug in board.

I had a Dec VT-180 with 4 floppy drives, later a DEC Pro 350- basically a PDP 11/23 with a horrible OS to make it useless. PDP 11/35, PDP 11/34, VAX 11/750, VAX 11/780. The 11/780 had a Deanza IP8500 Image processor and a Ramtek, Matrix image recorder. Never had the Rainbow 100.

One of the engineers that I worked with applied Fourier analysis to the stock market in the mid 1980s, trying to predict the swings. We talked about "Kondratiev Long Wave Cycles" and such. I never got into it, preferred image processing and "Scientific Visualization".

So what's the point of all of this? A Pentium Pro 200Mhz was about the same speed as a Cray XMP, which cost ~$6M. The ASC had 4MBytes of memory, and required 128,000 ECL memory chips to implement. Not that long ago. So a computer with an Intel I7 core and 8GBytes of memory- well, running Win7 or whatever OS here in the 21st century... not much faster than that Pentium Pro running DOS.

Trius

10-11-2011, 16:01

Correction: Airs do have a fan, at least mine does. Heard it for the first time tonight, it is pretty quiet.

Brian Sweeney

10-11-2011, 16:03

I saw one ruggedized computer that used a sealed case and Thermo-electric cooling.

Steve Jobs would have liked TEC's. Quiet.

ampguy

10-11-2011, 16:17

Used to sell WordPerfect for the Rainbow to DEC.

I worked on the first compilers for the 8088/8086: C, C++ (pre-standards, and ANSI), Fortran, Smalltalk, Objective-C, Prolog, Modula-2, Pascal, various BASIC compilers and interpreters.

Pretty sure that Bill Duvall's (Consulair) C was the first mac/lisa c compiler, which he developed on an Alto. I used to visit him.

From 84-86 I consulted for Xerox PARC, and Apple, and worked on products, some that were never released. I visited Bandly 4 twice a week (now Infinite Loop 4).

Prior to that was DG's. PDP-8s/11s. Pretty sure I'm the oldest fogy here.

The last piece of hardware I designed was equivalent to about 100 Cray's, and it ran in a half rack.

One of my first "real" jobs was managing PDP 11/24 and VAX 11/780 boxes, later a MicroVAX II. The "network" was a BlackBox patch panel for 9,600 baud VT100 and VT220 terminals. The RL02 disk drives were like washing machines... LOL.

Anyone remember the Rainbow 100 "PCs" of the day? Heh. Mainly CP/M boxes, but also ran DOS (barely). I still have stuff on RX50 diskettes that I'd love to retrieve (VAX BASIC and C code).

ka1axy

10-11-2011, 16:20

I used to drool looking at those SGI Indigo's at the mechanical engineering lab. Then I got an on campus job using one of those at the Vet-Med lab.

Funny you mention the Indigo. I just resurrected one I found being used as a footrest by a co-worker. Thing came right up. I found adapters to use it with PS2 KB and mouse and a VGA display. Even got it on the network with a 10BASET AUI adapter (remember those?).

It's a real neat little Unix box. I don't know what I'll do with it, but it does give a bit of a retro vibe to my office :-)

Oh, one more thing: it has two PCBs in it; one graphics and one CPU board. They each weigh about 2 lbs and have 1.5" square PGA chips on them! Old tech at its peak.

ampguy

10-11-2011, 16:33

In 2005, I was the product manager for this water cooled one-off for a magazine:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/files/linuxjournal.com/linuxjournal/articles/082/8292/8292f2.resized.jpg

Have also used convection cooled, peltier active cooled, and evaporative (spraycool) technologies for specific projects, as well as production systems.

I saw one ruggedized computer that used a sealed case and Thermo-electric cooling.

Steve Jobs would have liked TEC's. Quiet.

willie_901

10-11-2011, 17:49

.... Put an antivirus program on your PC or Mac, that's what they're for.

if you own a Mac, whatever you do don't ever put an ant-virus program on it. They always do more harm than good in OS X.

willie_901

10-11-2011, 17:54

Apple will be history by then.

You're on to something. Apple only has $80 Billion dollars of cash on hand. They'll be bankrupt in 5 years for sure.

plummerl

10-11-2011, 18:00

You're on to something. Apple only has $80 Billion dollars of cash on hand. They'll be bankrupt in 5 years for sure.
... and that would be 80 billion, donated by Mac owners?????

willie_901

10-11-2011, 18:07

... and that would be 80 billion, donated by Mac owners?????

Actually millions of PC/Windows owners bought and continue to buy iPhones, iPods and iPads. So the money came from both camps.

But it doesn't mater where the money came from. What matters is how does a company with $80 Billion in cash go out of business in 60 months?

gavinlg

10-11-2011, 18:10

This is eye opening...

http://thingsappleisworthmorethan.tumblr.com/

rxmd

10-11-2011, 18:37

But it doesn't mater where the money came from. What matters is how does a company with $80 Billion in cash go out of business in 60 months?

Ask Apple, they know. Between 1991 and 1997, they went from being a company that people believed infallible, to being a third-rater that was deep in the red figures and had to be bailed out with $150 million, incidentally by Microsoft. For people who invested in Apple stock in 1990 or so it took well over a decade to break even again.

All thanks to a few misguided product decisions, an unfocused R&D strategy and corporate hybris that nothing could go wrong and that the future was only up, up, up.

Nothing is easier than haemorrhaging lots of money fast. A $380B market capitalization is not worth much when the next dotcom bubble is already going on. At least Apple makes something; you can't say that about some other companies that are on paper "worth" more than some countries. It's 1999 all over again.

willie_901

10-11-2011, 18:44

Funny, I never mentioned Apple's market cap.

Do you really believe it is possible (let alone probable) for Apple to flush up 80 billion dollars down the loo in 60 months?

Trius

10-11-2011, 18:50

Yeah, it's possible. But they won't.

Trius

10-11-2011, 18:50

Unless the Cardinals win the series this year. LOL

rxmd

10-11-2011, 18:57

Funny, I never mentioned Apple's market cap.

Gavin did.

Do you really believe it is possible (let alone probable) for Apple to flush up 80 billion dollars down the loo in 60 months?

Of course - money is easily lost. A large-scale acquisition or two gone wrong, misguided large-scale R&D like they did in the 90s before Jobs came back and axed it all, losing a few software patent lawsuits, shareholders demanding that Apple start paying out dividends from those $80B, shareholders forcing Apple to support their own stock price with large-scale buybacks in a hypothetical collapsing tech market - the sky's the limit, or rather the ground in this case.

Apple is conservative about what they do with their cash, and that's a good thing, but the reason why they're conservative is because a cash crunch was exactly what happened to them in the mid-90s. Let's hope for them that they have a good institutional memory.

Pablito

10-11-2011, 18:59

digitalintrigue

10-11-2011, 19:31

Do you really believe it is possible (let alone probable) for Apple to flush up 80 billion dollars down the loo in 60 months?

Only governments can waste that kind of money, and they can do it a lot faster. :)

Rico

10-12-2011, 02:00

My preference would have been a BeBox.

I still have a copy of BeOS R4 lying around. Now that was an operating system. The demo where you would drag three video files on the surfaces of a rotating cube (and the OS would display all three at once at 25fps) always left people with their mouths open.
Multi-threaded user space is fun, although programming requires some discipline. :) BeBox had two CPUs, so real-time interaction between threads was possible, and mistakes could be a bitch to debug. I worked for Be, and the best hardware to enter the office was a special prototype of the DayStar Genesis MP. This one had eight CPUs of the PowerPC 604 flavor! A kernel was hacked out for this beast, and then the demos and benchmarks were launched. It was way cool to see the CPU usage meter with eight bars. My demo was a Mandelbrot generator that pegged every CPU. My regular development setup was less spiffy: vanilla BeBox, Power Computing clone, PC, a two external drives, all hooked together on a shared SCSI cable.

Brian Sweeney

10-12-2011, 02:06

Denelcor "HEP", Heterogenous Element Processor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterogeneous_Element_Processor.

Never programmed it, but read the assembly language manual and architecture guide. Used that model for programming some parallel computers. I spent most of the 1980s using parallel computers, and "computers in parallel"- networked them together and put code across them doing QIO's.

But- with $600 dual Pentium I5 processors, hard to justify spending $1M on a computer these days.

gdi

10-12-2011, 02:41

Only governments can waste that kind of money, and they can do it a lot faster. :)

Or Apple could be so moved by the OWS protests to just give that $80B away to the 99%... :p

btgc

10-12-2011, 02:47

When I read 80B dollars I have to scratch my ear....dollars, dollars...oil is real, food is real, but are dollars real? I hope in five years money still will be able to buy real things.

Sparrow

10-12-2011, 02:51

Well, I for one think this is getting way too political ........... :eek: ;)

gdi

10-12-2011, 02:52

When I read 80B dollars I have to scratch my ear....dollars, dollars...oil is real, food is real, but are dollars real? I hope in five years money still will be able to buy real things.

Of course it will, you'll just need a lot more of those $ to so.

Brian Sweeney

10-12-2011, 05:22

$80,000,000,000/ $600

They can buy 133,333,333 Win7 computers.

And with that note, back on topic.