New computer on the way

[johnridley]

In pieces, should be assembling on Wednesday. Pretty much as posted previously. Went up a bit, after deciding there's no point in spending $550 on almost the best components I can get instead of $600 on THE best. Bumped up from 2 to 4 GB, faster RAM, a little faster CPU, and a little nicer case and a more efficent, cooler running power supply.

I'm going to try Windows 7. A friend at work sez he's sold on it, and he dislikes Vista too. He's USED Vista for a while so to him Win7 looked OK. I've used Vista for only a few minutes total, so Win7 looks frightening to me, but I guess I'd better get used to it.

Comments

okay, i'll bite

[isherempress.livejournal.com]

so why then is Win7 "frightening" to you, SuperMan? I am fully prepared for all of my illusions to fall by the wayside here...

Re: okay, i'll bite

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Strange and unusual interface. You know that the unfamiliar is frightening. The rest of the world has been looking at Vista for a few years now. I took one look at it and turned away from the ugly; I'm still running XP which is from 2002 I think. I just need to get used to the unfamiliar. In reality I'm sure it's not much different than what I'm used to, except for some new dancing clowns.

Mainly though I am sure that Win 7 can do a much better job of managing the power in the new system; XP can barely handle 4 cores, and can't really handle 4GB of RAM.

If I can get over that, I might even look at OS X. I don't really want to run it, it's just another OS and I don't think it'd be any better or worse than what I'm used to. It's just that once in a while someone wants me to help them with something on a Mac, and it takes me several minutes of randomly bashing things with a jawbone to even make a web browser launch on a Mac currently.

I'd even buy a copy of OS X to try out, but since Apple says that it would be illegal to run even a paid-for copy of OS X on non-Apple hardware, I might as well just steal a copy. I don't know if I'll bother though, since it's just by way of a learning experience, and I already have too many of them, and if they really want me to not run OS X that badly, I'll probably go along with their wishes.

Re: okay, i'll bite

[isherempress.livejournal.com]

Why not just go open-source and forget Windoze entirely? What's the appeal? Is it that necessary?

And what is it with Apple saying you can't run the OS on a non-Apple box? (Do they really? Why not? Who does it hurt in the long run -- Apple?)

[philosophical rant] I'll probably regret saying this, but I sorta think you can never have too many learning experiences. Isn't that what life is all about? some people, and you are sane enough to likely be one of them, are good at learning stuff in one go-round {"matches = hot : fingers = burned, therefore, don't play with matches"}. You already KNOW I was not that kind of kid.

Re: okay, i'll bite

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Because open source operating systems are more about the operating systems than about getting things done. I've long since outgrown playing with operating systems for their own sakes. The computer and OS are just tools to run software; what matters is the software.

I've spent about 13 years running Linux at work, I make my living on it, and I've tried probably a dozen times to run Linux at home. It always winds up with me spending more time screwing with the OS than getting things done. The job of the OS is to get the hell out of the way and let me do stuff. Linux is pretty but it doesn't do that.



The appeal to Windows is that I've been running Microsoft operating systems since before the Mac existed, and I know them really well. And I don't care what anyone says, one damn OS is as good as another if it does what I want it to do.

What's the appeal in NOT running Windows? I get it for free via my MSDN subscription, and I know it already. Again, it doesn't matter what OS you run; if you can get your work done, that's the end of the story.


OS X licensing forbids it being run on non-Apple hardware. The reason for this is simple; Apple is a hardware company, OS X is simply some software that runs on it.

The truth is that the machine that I'm building is every bit the equivalent of a $2600 Mac, in both performance and quality (OK, except for the cheapo case I'm using). Apple knows that, and they want to be able to keep charging $2600 for a machine that cost them $400 to build (maybe). OS X is their only leverage in this regard; they simply couldn't compete in the PC hardware market, so they forbid OS X running on non-Apple hardware.

In point of fact, the machine that I'm building will run OS X just fine; in fact with one small tweak OS X can't even tell it's not running on genuine Apple equipment.




I can only have so many learning experiences per day. Learning OS X would take me days to weeks to get fairly familiar with it at a superficial level, a few months to get intimately familiar with it. When I'm done, I'll know a new operating system. So what? I don't need to know a new operating system, it does me no good. It would be nice to put a LITTLE time into it so that I can help my friends, but I have a ton of other, more interesting and fun things that I could learn during that time.


At the end of the day, the answer is "because I don't really give a damn what anyone else is doing or what's cool, I'm just trying to get some stuff done, and this doe that."