[Rhynri]

I hear you. That truely doesn't make sense. Believe it or not, i believe there is a system setting governing that (delay before caching to drive), regardless of how much sense it makes. Like i mentioned, I avoid the problem by simply turning swap off, I only enable it if I intend to play something like Supreme Commander, which is a monster game using massive amounts of memory.

 

[plus_c]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rhynri /img/forum/go_quote.gif I've heard if you allow your hard drive to fill OSX just slams into a wall (something that I can't say happens on the other two) and screeches to a halt as it is very virtual memory dependent. I can't confirm this, however.

I can. Came within a GB of running out of space on my iBook hard drive once - oh, OS X did not like that. The system ran dog-slow until I moved stuff off the hard drive onto the external.

I actually use three OS's - Windows XP at work, Mac OS X on the primary computer, and my fileserver runs Ubuntu 7.04.

 

[TheVinylRipper]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rhynri /img/forum/go_quote.gif This is LONG. There is a summary at the bottom, but all the information is useful for anyone deciding. between them, as in my wide experience i've tried to make this as fair as possible, and attack the three equally. Note.. they are all PC's - personal computers.. OSX, Linux, and Windows are SOFTWARE. They all can run on the same hardware, Macs included. Each has pros and cons. As I mention at the end, all suck, just differently. And all can use/need improvement in my view before they are "ideal".

Thank you, that was one of the most informative posts I think I have ever read.

I have an exquisitely sensitive BS detector and it didn't even emit a chirp.

Cheers,

Jon

 

[potato28]

XP for now, maybe Linux in the future for an audio box.

 

[TheVinylRipper]

I'm running XP with only 512 megs.

I often have two Firefox windows open with ten or twelve tabs each, and sometimes more than that.

On top of that I'm usually running some kind of DSP code in the background.

I really don't see all that much obvious disk caching behavior.

That being said, I helped my son in law a little while back when his main laptop got broken and had to be sent back to the manufacturer under warranty.

His backup laptop was an off brand bought at Walmart (don't ask) and had a one gHz processor and only 128 megs.

It was like watching molasses flow in January in Fairbanks..

First thing I did was take control over disk cache size from XP and increased it to a gig.

Then I went to that auction site that may not be named and picked up a 256 meg module for almost nothing (I can't figure out why laptop memory is so much cheaper than desktop).

Between the two things that little sucker woke up and became a real computer you could actually do something with.

My daughter is taking an online course in graphic arts and has a 2.5 gHz Celeron with 512 megs. One of her classes was computer literacy and she was asked to tell what kind of software she had on her box. She told the instructor that when she clicked on All Programs it filled all the screen and ran off the right side. The instructor basically gave her an A...

Her box runs pretty well for what it is and she has a 10.2 megapixel Sony DSLR and takes a *lot* of pictures and often opens dozens at a time in Photoshop..

It hasn't had a reinstall since she bought it and that was about five years ago.

I'm really not sure if she even knows what a defrag is and I'm certainly not going to fool with it lest it disintegrate.

 

[Rhynri]

If anyone is ever interested, I have a recipe for a very decent pc running about 250ish... sans graphics card (built-in chip + audio on board as well) using off-the-shelf parts and case from newegg. It runs a gig of ddr 400, AMD 64 3200+, and a 250gb wd hdd. All in all a dang good machine not possible a few years ago at this price.

@ TheVinylRipper - I used to have your daughters applications over the side of the screen issue. Then I bought a 24" Dell LCD running 1920x1200... Problem solved! XD Glad your BS detector approves. I tried to make it as unbiased as possible, because I knew the type who would go back and pick it apart... It's just my most honest observations off the top of my head. They are all great OS's... In their own way. I wouldn't run an OSX gaming machine, a Windows laptop, or a Linux pc as my 'author' machine... if you want to put it that way, they just each have their own niche i my pc world.

FYI - my poor MacBook got a little nick in the screen when something I was working with in a pc came flying off and smacked the screen. (Which, amazingly, wasn't anywhere near the PC...) :'(

 

[whoismilan]

Should really be a a poll where you can select more than one option:
Dual booting XP + Ubuntu 6.10

I chose Linux as that is the one I use more.

 

[wanderman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by whoismilan /img/forum/go_quote.gif Should really be a a poll where you can select more than one option: Dual booting XP + Ubuntu 6.10 I chose Linux as that is the one I use more.

I know checkboxes would be sweet.

 

[TheVinylRipper]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rhynri /img/forum/go_quote.gif @ TheVinylRipper - I used to have your daughters applications over the side of the screen issue. Then I bought a 24" Dell LCD running 1920x1200... Problem solved! XD '(

LOL, I download, install and uninstall so much software I can get to that point in about four months..

I've found that there is a lot of freeware and shareware that is better than the commercial counterparts.

If you have any interest in video at all check out the freeware VirtualDub and a plugin for it called Deshaker. Those two together can take video from a hand held digicam and make it look like it came from a Hollywood production except for the resolution. Deshaker acts like a steadicam and has adjustments that can nearly make video from a digicam held by a Parkinson's patient look like it was on taken on a tripod.

I'm also fairly convinced that a major source of malware is the big anti-malware companies.

There is a legal term: Qui Bono

It means "who profits".

Who profits the most from malware?

Follow the money..

 

[thebob]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheVinylRipper /img/forum/go_quote.gif And just how far can you upgrade the processor? Can you put in a dual core processor for multithreading applications? Could you put in a processor that was four times as fast as the one you removed? That is what I did, my computer is now at least four times as fast as it was before. Applications which used to take thirty seconds to load and display now practically blink onto the screen. Notice that I didn't upgrade the hard drive either, still the same old EIDE slug.

Question one you can use the latest intel CPU's see "Very nice quad to eight core upgrade". http://www.o0o.it/pro/

You can't do that with the G4/5's and that is exactly why Apple switched to intel.

Question 2 The minimum Apple sell now is a dual core. So yes. OSX is a 64 bit OS multithreading is one of the strengths. Vista comes in both 32bit and 64 bit versions, can't imagine why.

Question 3 You must of started with a slug? But start with an old core solo 1.5 Ghz MacMini and thump in a late core duo and yes.

The Macmini, iMac and MacPros all have Intel CoreDuo2 or QuadCore CPU's in sockets. These are just about to start being upgraded. The portable MacBook and MacBookPro CPU's are not replaceable.

 

[pkjames]

is there anything like foobar in mac/linux?

 

[TheVinylRipper]

Quote:

Originally Posted by thebob /img/forum/go_quote.gif Question one you can use the latest intel CPU's see "Very nice quad to eight core upgrade". http://www.o0o.it/pro/ You can't do that with the G4/5's and that is exactly why Apple switched to intel. Question 2 The minimum Apple sell now is a dual core. So yes. OSX is a 64 bit OS multithreading is one of the strengths. Vista comes in both 32bit and 64 bit versions, can't imagine why. Question 3 You must of started with a slug? But start with an old core solo 1.5 Ghz MacMini and thump in a late core duo and yes. The Macmini, iMac and MacPros all have Intel CoreDuo2 or QuadCore CPU's in sockets. These are just about to start being upgraded. The portable MacBook and MacBookPro CPU's are not replaceable.

As I said, the case was quite old so yes, I started with a slug.

I am speaking of upgrading a years old box today, not starting with a new one and then upgrading in the future.

I'm not sure how you can really significantly improve the performance of a box without upgrading the mobo, in my experience just upgrading the processor doesn't really do all that much since so many of the limitations on processing bandwidth have to do with things other than the processor.

I really don't know much at all about Macs other than those who use them seem to like them. As far as I'm concerned if someone likes a given machine then more power to them.

Discussions about various machines and OS'es so often seem to degenerate into flamewars that rival the Crusades for sheer intensity. I'm glad to see that isn't happening here.

I wouldn't touch Vista with a ten foot pole, BTW. I still have box sitting on the floor here in my computer room that runs Win98 and can still do useful work if you stick to websurfing, word processing and that sort of thing.

My wife ran a business entirely on the same 386/25 box running Win3.1 for almost ten years with nary a hiccup. The machine never went down once.

But then, after the business apps were loaded, the box was left alone to do its job and nothing more was added. Where I and lot of other people get in trouble is constantly adding new apps which often don't get along with their neighbors.

I'm pretty well resigned to doing a reinstall about every nine months or so, but it's entirely my own fault because I love to fiddle with the thing.

I *have* learned to burn an image of a fresh basic install with all my most used apps and keep that as a backup.

 

[Zanth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pkjames /img/forum/go_quote.gif is there anything like foobar in mac/linux?

Cog might be the best out there for OS X, Quodlibet for linux...though many like Amarok (KDE) or Listen (Gnome).

 

[Rhynri]

What is foobar's function for you? Knowing that might better assist me in looking for a linux replacement. You might also be able to run foobar in wine/cedega and use it as if it was still in windows.

 

[BushGuy]

I've zero interest in moving to Vista bloatware. If I eventually feel a need to move away from XP Pro - it will be to Linux. Not Vista.