Apple

I'd be happy with a double-sized iTouch - that'd be just enough for basic communication when I'm in the middle of nowhere - but I doubt that they want to do that.

I just got an Atom machine myself - was my parent's Hackintosh before they got the new iMac for Christmas. I'm going to put Solaris or BSD on it and see how it does as a server.

i gots my imac, it's a wunnerful!

i really need a comfortable chair now that i clean off my desk and have something to sit in front of.

Ya eh? I still love my older 20". It has been my favourite workstation since I got it.

Anyways, CONGRATS!

the imac is awesome! i got an extra airport extreme to cover the property with wifi. got an N card for my mini and have my 4TB iomega ix4-200d on order:



and the cheap htpc:



and a couple long cat6 cables to upgrade the house backbone for 1gbe.

a nice start to a new year

but you're not thinking about running the forum on it?

The forum is running on it right now

...and it was done so smoothly that no one noticed.

As smooth as the change might have appeared to the those of us using nekochan, I'm sure it involved a significant amount of planning and effort to implement. Thanks for all the hard work!



So, are there plans for a VPro in Wadatsumi's immediate future?

Yep; it took about a week - most of it in configuration details. The IRC server was a newer version for example, so I had to translate the old, incompatible configuration file into the new format.



Maybe not immediate, but yeah - now I can play around with that hardware and have some fun with it

hex! i thought that you were joking neko

nekochan-dad is going minimal, sweet

(if you get bored of the tezro i'll take it together with that orange book )

When all is said and done, if the performance and end-user experience hadn't been there I wouldn't have gone through with it. I throughly tested everything beforehand to ensure it would be a smooth and seamless transition



Heh, I'm not abandoning the old beasties just yet, just cutting back on 24/7 power usage and noise

That little Acer reminds me of a souped up Thin Client. Neat little box.

I got myself a top-of-the-line 27" iMac with the i7 processor and an Intuos4 graphics tablet. No issues so far (but then I followed the advice on the Apple boards and reinstalled everything fresh after formatting the harddisk proper before even using it for the first time). My neighbour was so smitten that he also bought a 27" iMac.

Excellent machine. Pissed off that I haven't done this three years ago (as my mate said).

I recently got the 27" i5 iMac, still adjusting to the hugeness of the screen! My previous iMac was a 17" CoreDuo, nice but at 17" I was forever running out of screen space, with the 27" I almost have to crane my neck to see the top menu bar!

Yeah, I ran the "yellow tinge" test and also noticed that the hard drive seek sound is audible, but when one's been used to a roaring SGI these minor things matter not! I really can't notice the yellow tinge, it's so minor, and the HD noise I can live with. I was amazed at how so many people sent their iMacs back five times or more and still didn't get one without something "wrong", although we're talking minute imperfections here, nothing that would stop a normal punter from using and enjoying the machine, heck most people probably wouldn't even notice them.

A lot of people buy Macs (and pay the extra money) because they're used to "PCs have problems, Macs are perfect," so when there are imperfections (however minor) people are unhappy. I think this is completely understandable - I've recommended Apple desktop hardware to my employers in the past (despite its price) because when I had them buy some, I could be confident that it would be issue-free and I'd enjoy using it. But with the new iMac refresh having so many issues, I can't really do that anymore - the possibility of getting something with cracked glass, a discolored screen, etc. and having to waste time and money sending it back is just as great as with cheaper hardware.

Laptops, on the other hand, are a different story - I bought a newly refreshed (new graphics) 13" Macbook Pro last week and am extremely happy with my decision so far - even though I could get some higher-spec PC laptops for the price none even compare to the package as a whole (PC laptops seem to be battery life, decent CPU, decent graphics, lightweight/small, build quality, pick only 2). I also always recommend Apple laptops to my friends, family, and employers because really nothing compares.

One thing I find a little disappointing is the vertical grey shimmer the LCD screen has, something which seems to be common to all LCD displays. Apple make a big thing about the side-to-side viewing angles, but say nothing about the vertical viewing angle; I find that the bottom two corners have a noticeable grey tint to them with a black desktop background, this is not a fault but merely a characteristic of an LCD display (my LCD TV does the same thing) and although the display can be tilted there's no actual height adjustment (aside from a brick under the iMac foot).

The only problem with my PC laptop (IBM) now is that the battery is 6 years old and has 800+ cycles on it, so it only lasts for about 2 hours

The build quality is far better than anything apple could ever hope to deliver. Then again, apples are so cheap build quality doesn't really matter... look at their competition (dell, acer, gateway, consumer HP, etc). These companies try and charge less than the sum of the parts so quality is the first thing out the window.

What? The build quality on unibody MacBook Pros is impeccable - the only issue to speak of that I've ever seen is poorly specced disks failing, but the last two generations don't even seem to have that issue anymore. They're solid, free of creaks and play, and feel amazing. The same can't be said for the plastic MacBook, but apple "consumer" hardware has always sucked (remember the iBook G4? Yuck.). Apple's power management and battery design is also fantastic - even though the non-replaceable battery is a major minus, unibody MacBook Pros last a longer number of cycles than comparable PC laptops (and, for that matter, early-generation non-unibody/removable-battery MacBook Pros, which ate batteries for breakfast).

I would have bought a ThinkPad this round but Lenovo's website was too awful to let me buy what I wanted (I was about to call them and try to order that way when the MacBook refresh came out), so I just got the MBP (which was comparably priced anyway) instead. I don't regret it one bit - much as I love ThinkPad keyboards and the nipple/clit mouse, the metal case, best-in-class onboard graphics (Intel integrated really can't hold a candle to the nVidia part, sadly since Lenovo seem to be shipping discrete graphics less and less), and amazing battery life (rated at 10, I get 6-8 in real-world use) make the MBP better in my eyes.

It's all fun and games until the machine gets knocked off the desk or a cup of coffee spilt on the keyboard. My thinkpad has been dropped exactly twice... once the dog got tangled in the charging cord and sent the machine flying into the next time zone, actually just across the patio maybe 15 feet; and once I had it sitting on the coolant reservoir of my car when a gust of wind got a hold of it, or maybe vibration from the engine revving, tipped it into the driveway.

I'm pretty sure the mac would have been sent in for service after the first time. The typical catastrophic event that causes the death of a mac is when it is dropped two feet onto foam-backed carpet resulting in a cracked screen or the "yuppie mac user" spills his fruity drink into the keyboard (look at the bottom of a mac, you see there are no drainage ports. Where do they expect the liquid to go?). When you plan on keeping your machine 20 years or more (which I do, I bought it to last and there is no reason for it not to) you have to expect something like this to eventually happen.

I even put it in one of those wetsuit-sleeves before putting it in my bag and always keep it in its dock whenever possible. I also don't carry it around with me every day. What the hell do you need to carry a computer for 24x7 anyway?

I don't care about OSX, it is fun to play with but all my applications work the same on either OS so there is no competitive advantage.


edit: I just ordered a new battery. $27 (with free shipping) for a lightweight 4-cell with brand new sanyo cells. Since you only replace the battery and not the whole machine it is much better for the environment. Also, the old one is still good for 2 hours so it might be useful as a spare.

ok, unreal expectation. brrzzzt.

sadly, the truth of it is that there exist very few engineers of caliber necessary to produce the 'quality' everyone is ascribing to their favorite products. most are daily 9 to 5'ers on the job grind waiting for the weekend using reference designs as a crutch to meet your basic 'satisfactorily meets' performance review. from these meager beginnings the basis for the endgame of product quality emerges. if, in the event, the product manufacturing process yields an 'average product'' that the majority may base their biased opinions on, then that becomes to epitome of quality.

next, let's talk 'statistically significant sample'; ain't got it. end of discussion.

i love my apple products be cause, on average, they perform much better than the others.