I'm Baaaaack!
Dear Friends-
A thousand apologies for being away. Shortly after my lastpost, I went into rehearsal mode for a show in the LA Area.
The day before the performance my laptop died and was not covered by the warranty. $3000 down the drain... Two weeks later, my desktop machine had a complete motherboard failure. that's another few grand out the window. In the process of these two tragedies, I lost a lot of work. As I can't afford to throw $5000 at computers, I went to a local computer builder, TopTek, and had then build me a VERY nice Intel box.
How could I do this? Go to the Wintel side of things? Easy: This machine outperforms ANY macintosh at its price point: $910.
The best machine I can get for that is a MacMini, which is slower and doesn't have anywhere near the feature set that this has
MacMini:
1.42 gHz G4 PPC
• 1GB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
• 80GB Ultra ATA drive
• 4x SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• 56K v.92 Modem
• Mac OS X - U.S. English
$924.00
My Wintel Box
3.2gHz P4 processor
1 gig DDR 533 SDRAM
120 gig SATA drive
128 meg ATI PCI-X video card
multichannel audio out
CDRW/DVDROM
DVD+/-RW
USB2
Firewire
$909.42
The downsides:
1. It runs Windows. Which is, without any doubt or hestitation in my mind the crappiest Operating System EVER. I console myself as best as possible thinking: when you're inside an Application, the OS doesn't really matter that much...
2. It's FREAKING HUGE. It's in a full size 6 slot tower. It's black and silver, so it's not really ungly, but it's not really beautiful, either...
3. it sounds like a B17 at take off. I'll have to get some better fans for it, or get longer cables and put it in the garage...
Does this mean I am going to STAY in the Wintel world?
No. What it does mean is that I am truly an OS agnostic. In 2 years the Macintel machines will arrive. I will get one of those, and then this box will be turned into a Linux experiment...
SO: in short, I am FINALLY back on something resembling even keel. May was a truly difficult month for me. I was very depressed for quite a while. But now I feel rejuvenated.
I have much to discuss. Note: I may be moving this blog over to BLOGSPOT.COM - just to simplify my life a bit, and hopefully find a larger audience for SPARK.
best,
HW
A thousand apologies for being away. Shortly after my lastpost, I went into rehearsal mode for a show in the LA Area.
The day before the performance my laptop died and was not covered by the warranty. $3000 down the drain... Two weeks later, my desktop machine had a complete motherboard failure. that's another few grand out the window. In the process of these two tragedies, I lost a lot of work. As I can't afford to throw $5000 at computers, I went to a local computer builder, TopTek, and had then build me a VERY nice Intel box.
How could I do this? Go to the Wintel side of things? Easy: This machine outperforms ANY macintosh at its price point: $910.
The best machine I can get for that is a MacMini, which is slower and doesn't have anywhere near the feature set that this has
MacMini:
1.42 gHz G4 PPC
• 1GB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
• 80GB Ultra ATA drive
• 4x SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• 56K v.92 Modem
• Mac OS X - U.S. English
$924.00
My Wintel Box
3.2gHz P4 processor
1 gig DDR 533 SDRAM
120 gig SATA drive
128 meg ATI PCI-X video card
multichannel audio out
CDRW/DVDROM
DVD+/-RW
USB2
Firewire
$909.42
The downsides:
1. It runs Windows. Which is, without any doubt or hestitation in my mind the crappiest Operating System EVER. I console myself as best as possible thinking: when you're inside an Application, the OS doesn't really matter that much...
2. It's FREAKING HUGE. It's in a full size 6 slot tower. It's black and silver, so it's not really ungly, but it's not really beautiful, either...
3. it sounds like a B17 at take off. I'll have to get some better fans for it, or get longer cables and put it in the garage...
Does this mean I am going to STAY in the Wintel world?
No. What it does mean is that I am truly an OS agnostic. In 2 years the Macintel machines will arrive. I will get one of those, and then this box will be turned into a Linux experiment...
SO: in short, I am FINALLY back on something resembling even keel. May was a truly difficult month for me. I was very depressed for quite a while. But now I feel rejuvenated.
I have much to discuss. Note: I may be moving this blog over to BLOGSPOT.COM - just to simplify my life a bit, and hopefully find a larger audience for SPARK.
best,
HW
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