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 trying to say that Intel is hard to beat or anything. But, frankly, Macintosh stuff is not usually inferior. 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. Buy the tool you need for the job you're going to do. If you're an artist, use a Mac. If you're a coder, use a sun box. If you're a slave to a large corporation/government, use a MS box. If you're a hacker, use FreeBSD. If you're me, use a Windoze laptop (because I'm just too darn lazy to write a LCD screen driver) and a Linux box at work (which has a LCD screen driver that makes the resolution almost as good as Windoze on my laptop, but requires 2 screens...) If you're most of my friends, use Macintoshes.>Still, that doesn't seem to be an adequate reason to buy inferior >proprietary hardware that will only run a proprietary OS at near double the >cost, with far less performance and flexibility as my home assembled PC.
*spew* Oh, sorry, lemme get all that coffee off you guys... So sorry. 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. Outlook. Well, it's mostly a target for viruses simply because it's so widespread and so easily exploitable.>and let's face it, MS Office >2000 is a pretty good software package (for what I paid for it, at the >educational discount rate.)
See, I also have a problem with all those smug, self-satisfied, sh**-eating grins on Macintosh users faces. And whenever the news strikes about a virus, they say "I use a Mac, you should dump your crappy OS" Well, I'm sorry. I don't use a Mac. It wouldn't make sense for me. I don't create art or music, which is where Macintosh really has its strengths and advantages. I do code, which means that I want hardy networking software (ftp clients, ssh clients, emacs) and I don't really give a good gol-darn about what OS my local computer is using. I don't click on attachments strange people send to me. Every single attachment that comes over this KLR list is suspect and scanned for viruses before I consciously decide if the description sounds tempting enough for me to risk catching something. Usually it doesn't, and I delete all those pix that take forever to download un-looked at. I would be much happier if people just put them up on egroups website. 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...) ---o&>o--- Sarah Barwig sarah@...>but it just didn't make economic sense to me on my budget, and over >time I have built a system capable of doing CAD work at home.