The future of computing...

That's right. That's why we shouldn't complain about whatever whatever company trying to manipulate the market, cuz' u'll do it too if u were them. Sometimes we mustn't really critise companies so much... they are trying to earn a living also...

Even though we say that monopolization is inevitable, we have to remember that it is competition that drives technology. Where would we be without a company like AMD pressuring market dominating companies like Intel, or the same for Linux and Windows. This constant pressure is what drives companies to produce better products and not to simply lie back and make second rate products.

We need all these small 3rd party programs to stay alive and continue making products superior to Microsoft's generic versions, such as the System Restore (copy of Norton ghost, Powerquest, etc.) and Messenger, and the list goes on and on.

I say long live competition and capitalism!!!

long live capitalism!

IBM is using Linux for their Server market. But what needs to happen is a major manufacturer to start using Linux for home pc's.
Lindows® also looks promising; the ability to use M$ software like Office is a plus. Star Office is less than comparable unfortunately. There's not enough competition for other \/\/indoZe software

I would love to see a major company incorporate Linux into their home PC's! IBM did the right thing, I believe, by switching to Linux which outperforms Microsoft in networking performance.

I am interested in seeing what Lindows has to offer, for it does seem to be able to contend with Windows by solving the major compatability issues that has doomed StarOffice.

Most of the time it's not the networking performance that counts, it's the usability as a desktop machine. That's why MS still has the upper hand in that market now.

Exactly!!! While Linux has the upper hand in certain areas, Microsoft still has the upper hand in user friendliness. This is why I wish someone would produce a user friendly Linux that normal home users can use that is on par with Windows or Mac OS X.

Let's just hope that this happens soon!

While Mac OS X has a beautiful UI to please users; the hardware to run it is too expensive. Even the iMac is way higher than anything that I'll spend on a normal PC!

Then again, if Apple changes their mind to port OSX to the PC platform, things will change dramatically... Doubt that'll happen though.

I agree completely. The Mac computers are way overpriced. I also agree that running the OS X on a PC platform would be great, but the architechture is completely backwards so it slows your computer down dramatically. You can run OS X on a PC using an emulator, but like I said it is very slow so there is no real benefit.

I do love the fact that alot of Macs come with the superdrive with I wish the PC world would adopt.

What do you mean by the architecture is completely backwards? Has this gotta do with the fact they're using the FreeBSD kernel for OSX? I agree that if you run OS X on a PC via an emulator, it would definitely be REALLY slow. But if it was ported to the x86 platform/architecture, I think it will run just as fast as the other OSes.

Aren't SuperDrives just DVD-R drives?

The superdrives are CDR, CDRW, DVD-R, and DVD-RW all in one drive. For a PC a DVD-RW costs about 400 dollars by itself.

The architecture is different meaning that PC run little indian artichecture meaning if you have four number 1 2 3 4 it reads them like 4 3 2 1, while on an Apple the architecture is big indian the opposite of little indian as the apple will read 1 2 3 4 as 1 2 3 4 in that order.

This is why it is so slow on an emulator because the emulator has to reverse every single operation done by the computer.

OUCH. That's nearly the cost of my entire system!!!!

OIC. So that's the case. Sorry for my lack of understanding, but why can't they "convert" from big endian to little endian when porting to x86?

My knowledge stops about here, but I'll give this one a try. I would imagine that Apple could convert over to x86 with enough help from major companies, but I believe that Steve Jobs has too much pride to do that. To him it would be like giving in to Gates.

I would think it would be pretty hard to convert all coding that OS X runs on over to little indian architecture, but not impossible. It is just the way Apple has made their chips since they started their company. Right now the enulators are the closest thing we can get to running OS X on a PC, and I believe it will stay this way for a while.

And yes, I also think that the price for a DVD-RW is ridiculous. I'd like to get one, but not until the prices come down ALOT!!!

geez! for me I don't even have a DVD-ROM, not to say a DVD-RW. I didn't know what you can do with DVD-Rs and DVD-RWs. I only know that CD-Rs and CD-RWs can be used to transfer files from computer to computers without the need for an extra device, with DVD-Rs and DVD-RWs needed at least DVD-ROM, which isn't too common now

I don't think so. If Apple could convert OSX to x86, it would be much like giving a HUGE wakeup call to Bill. I'm sure there are plenty of corporations out there that wish to see a powerful and trusted OS apart from Windows

I believe it took at least 5 years for the prices of the CD writers to come down. Hopefully the time taken for DVD writers will be considerably less

IMO, DVD-RWs should come in handy for video editing studios where they xfer gigs of files a day. But then again, since DVDs aren't really that fast, I suppose they'll stick back to removable hard disks.

The only reason I see to use a DVD drive is for MSDN

For a start, apart from OS differences the Mac uses Motorola CPUs which are RISC(Reduced instruction set computer) processors. While on the other hand x86 CPUs are CISC(Complex instruction set computer) based.
What this translates to is a different set of instructions for processing code once it is in the low level required for that processor. With RISC it may take more instructions to execute something, but since they are simpler they can be dispatched more rapidly. With CISC it may be a more complex instruction that takes longer but does the same as the multiple RISC instructions.

This article explains the difference a bit more clearly and provides some examples

Porting code from CISC to RISC

I agree that another OS to compete with Microsoft could be great, but I still think Jobs is too into his creation of Apple. I personally would not want to redesign my entire OS to accomodate PC users when I would be trying to rather lure them to start using my Mac computers.

Apple is also trying to sell computers, software, hardware, etc etc. along with their OS, so they would in essence have to redirect their entire company towards PC users and compete directly with Microsoft, instead of trying to improve upon their current situation and try to lure new computer users to use the Mac OS instead of Windows or Linux or BeOS etc.

Is anyone using Linux here? Can I download it somewhere? i wanna try it out. (Hope i dun mess up my partitions, though)

It depends what version of Linux you want to try.

A couple of sites are:

www.linux-mandrake.com

www.suse.com

www.redhat.com

Just to name a couple. I'm not sure of a site to download all types of Linux versions, but I'll look and see if I can find one.

I personally haven't used Linux much, but I've tried Redhat and Mandrake Linux.

Search the 3dspotlight Alternative OS forum

Install Linux for the first time (Dual Boot)