Wilsons Sandbox

> Umm. I'm not a mac person, but I do have to question a couple of things in > that last sentence. Inferior? Ahem, Macintosh processors usually have a > higher speed than the best thing money can buy by Intel.

Not so. They don't have higher clock speeds, they just use a lot more (expensive) L2 cache in their CPU. Besides, who uses Intel? AMD is where it's at. See: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2495427,00.html Not trying to say

> that Intel is hard to beat or anything. But, frankly, Macintosh stuff is > not usually inferior.

Inferior monitors and graphics accelerators (Does anyone make a 3D accellerator for the Mac?) (Ever benchmarked a mac for 3D and CAD?) , inferior economic choices for any upgrade one wishes to make.

>Proprietary OS? Well, as you point out, you're > trapped in the MicroSlime evil empire. Sounds pretty proprietary to me if > you want to break free, but can't seem to do it. Linux can be run on a > Macintosh just as easily as it can be run on a PC. It's just that the

stock

> software that comes with the hard drive is a lot easier to use than some > other kernel you have to install and give up all your familiar programs

for.

>

Last I checked, on a PC you can still run DR. DOS, UNIX, OS/2, Sun, and yes, Windows. I was actually happy with DOS and win 3.11, but my wife is newer to computors and likes Win 95. I have seen a Mac run Linux, and Win 95, but both times that was through a mac kernal. Hey, I might be trapped in Windows, but I like it and have very few complaints about it.

> Office sucks. It's got insanely high overhead (more overhead than emacs > counts as insanely high in my book), Excel isn't all that great a > spreadsheet, and if it's got a flight simulator in the code, that seems a > little, ummm, over the top.

Yeah, I actually much prefer Lotus 1-2-3 and Lotus Office Suite in general, but I have to stay compatable with my school and other people I collaborate with, and Office is the best integrated software to work with for that. I have projects that use Word, Excel, Mathcad, Photo and Equation Editor all in the same report, and I don't know that Lotus can do that as easily. Actually, I know that it can't, as I ran into problems importing stuff from Mathcad into a Wordpro document. Hey, I'm not a geek. (No offense to you programers out there.) I'm a user, not a code writer, (Although I used to be a gamer and I'm taking my second C++ class right now.) so I don't really care how it works, so long as it works and works well. I haven't run into a single problem with Office 2000 (yet that is, but I did have a few with Office 95). For the last 6 months, I've been having to generate at least 2 reports per week, averaging about 20 pages per, with charts, tables and figures, and all while using Office. Sure, its bloated, but with a 20Gb hard drive selling for under $150 these days does it really matter? (I'm also running it from CD on my laptop.) The thing I hate is that I can no longer transfer documents doing the floppy shuffle, and have to use a Zip drive.

> Frankly, the smugness of Macintosh users, and the snotty tone they use > whenever there's a Windows virus, really mostly makes me want to become a > virus hacker and aim it at Macintosh and target that flabby market that > doesn't expect the Spanish Inquisition! Don't ever tell me I should use a > Macintosh. I use what I use, and I haven't caught a single computer virus > yet. And I've been online continuously since 1990. (Oh no, I have no life! > Must go riding...) >

Just make sure to name it "PC Virus Alert" and it will go real far!

Gino, Fred, and Bob, Thanks for all of your efforts in making this the best Get-Together ever. The best of all: -- Performing Skip's fuel tank mod under his expert oversight. -- The steak dinner at the Old City Park -- Picking up various accessories dropped from Kurt's bike on the Schafer Trail. -- The chili dinner. -- The friendship of folks we only see once a year. -- Seeing ranger Alyssa in the flesh. The not quite as good: -- Because of our discussion with the BLM, the process of disorganizing our organized rides. -- The heat, quite a change from the snow I went through last year in Monticello on the way home. -- Did I mention it was HOT. Bill Wright Hotlanta, GA (but its a wet heat) Adventure Tourer - 98 KLR 650 - "Special K" - 36K miles Sport Tourer - 00 ST1100 - "KeSTrel" - 5K miles