November 22, 2004
An End to Home Computer Frustration
Well I had a particularly frustrating weekend trying to work with my photographs on my aged PCs. Let me give you a little background about my two geriatric Dells.
I bought them with a part of an accident settlement from 1997 for the sole purpose of being able to have LAN gaming parties at our home. I was photographically burned out during this period. I eventually added a third Dell that later found a new home. At the time – six, almost seven years ago – they were top of the line Pentium II 450s and they were fully loaded. Much fun was had with them. Many awesome game weekends were held, sometimes with as many as eight people. Some guests brought their own PCs and plugged into my hub. Later, when my burnout ended, many photos were worked on and digitally processed, but alas no more. They have aged and aged poorly beyond photographic usefulness. Technology has advanced beyond them faster than the speed of light. I have been keeping them alive – barley – by performing regular disk scans and defrags, by keeping the hard drive as space free as possible, by running Ad Aware and Spybot on an almost daily basis, and by eliminating any and all software that I haven’t used in months. Those efforts have delayed the inevitable, but now it’s time to relegate the Dells to big word processors and homework machines. That's a step up from massively huge paperweight, but not much. For my current photographic and game purposes the old Dells are comparable to competing in the Tour de France on a big wheel. Now back to the weekend of frustration. I spent and wasted a good deal of time trying to sort through and compile my photographic catalog into a manageable system and onto a CD that I can use to promote myself to fine art and photographic galleries. I also tried to work on some photos to make a finished product. Apart from general molasses-like slow performance - five minutes to load a RAW format file is insane - I had three BSoDs** and four total lockups and I lost some work despite saving and saving often. Jenne sensed my level of frustration and we had a very productive talk about getting a new computer. So we pulled the money I had received from my surprise birthday party, the little that I had been squirreling away, cash from the sale of old Nikon zoom lens, the profit I made from the gallery show, and the money Jenne had put aside for my Christmas presents – not only did my birthday come early, but so does my Christmas – and I ordered a new computer. This may come as a shocker to some, but I am leaving the Intel/Micro-shaft world and…
...I ordered an iMac G5 1.8GHz, with 20” monitor, 1 gig of memory and a 250 GB hard drive. The new baby will arrive in approximately 1-2 weeks. Now that a new computer is ordered and soon to be on the way it is so hard to wait. I was itching for it the second the order was processed Sunday afternoon! Here’s to an end to home computer frustration and a happy bye, bye to Micro-shaft based PCs!
** Blue Screen of Death
Phentermine.
Phentermine.
Welcome to the CULT my friend, you will be very happy!!!
Posted by: mm on November 22, 2004 02:16 PMGooble gobble, gooble, gobble. One of us, we accept you, one of us. Gooble, gobble, gooble, gobble!
You're so going to love your iMac. Once you have iMac you never go back!!
Posted by: Johnny Appleseed on November 22, 2004 02:55 PMThe third Dell found its way to my home. I has since been replaced by a HP.
Posted by: Clark on November 22, 2004 03:51 PMI once used a Mac and I went back. Twice, in fact. Of course, neither Mac was actually MINE, but that is just a minor detail. If anyone wants to give me a Mac to see if the third time will be a charm, I'm game. :-)
All jokes aside, good for you! Just don't become a Mac weenie on me, 'kay?
Posted by: Jeff on November 22, 2004 04:11 PM"Mac weenie"
explain...
Posted by: mm on November 22, 2004 04:20 PMYeah, what's that "Mac weenie" comment? Humph!
Good for you, Will. You are my second friend to decide on that machine in the last week. If I only had money, I'd buy one, too.
Jeff, I've got an older Mac you can have. It's a couple of generations old (a G3) and not very fast (only 266MHz), but it does run well.
Posted by: GerenM on November 22, 2004 06:55 PMIf you can't imagine what such thing as a Mac weenie could be, you are one!
Posted by: Jeff on November 22, 2004 07:32 PMVat's DIS? Already vit de weenie labels? I have gotz your weenie RIGHT HERE and it'z zee MAC DADDY! ;-)
Posted by: Will Burnham on November 22, 2004 11:01 PMWeenie comments? Oh that's too easy. tee hee Congrats on the new iMac. Surfing porn with a 20 inch wide screen monitor is awesome. You'll love it! I love mine. The iMac I mean. Okay and the porn too. tee hee.
Posted by: SuzieQ on November 23, 2004 09:06 AMMy opinion of Macs has gone WAY up with the newest generation. They've positioned them better price-wise, and they've got a real operating system now. I've been looking at laptops, and the Powerbook is at the top of the list.
For desktops, I'm still attached to Windows world for day-to-day computing (a Mac that supports the screen real estate I'm used to is still out of my budget), and I always keep a Linux box spinning for development and coding work.
Congrats on the new toy. Let me know if you ever get in the mood to explore the niftiness that is the bash shell and all the BSD goodness that sits underneath the pretty pictures.
Posted by: Rob on November 23, 2004 02:34 PMThink different, my friend. And as was stated prior, welcome to the Cult of Mac. It's kinda like the Cult of Atkins. Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.
For what you need a computer for (photography, image processing, etc.), a Mac is the way to go. And you'll still be able to access most of your Windows stuff, as well as surf and blog. I too have had Mac envy and I finally went to a Dual PowerPC G5, 1.8GHz Processors, 256MB RAM, 80GB Hard Drive, 8X DVD-RW SuperDrive. Also got dual Studio 17-inch TFT LCD monitors.
Here's a screenshot:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/skareiva/mymac.jpg
Actually, I pull your leg boys.....
I think I'm running an AMD K6 2100 single processor with 512mb of RAM. Dual 17" Viewsonic CRT monitors hooked to an ATI dual-head video card, CD drive, Sony Dual Layer DVD drive, Hauppauge 250 Personal Video Recorder card and a combined 150GB worth of storage (for now). Plus some extras here and there.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/skareiva/DSCN1374.JPG
(My acutal workstation in my office)
WinXP OS hacked to accept third party visual styles (namely Apple OS X and Panther) and ObjectDock (http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/) makes a launch/task bar that matches the one in OS X/Panther. And you can get all sorts of ported Mac icons for it.
I've even got a knockoff Mac keyboard and Kensington Studio Mouse to complete the illusion. Have to get a Mac style case next.
I'm just in waaay to deep on this x86 box to get a Mac. So I pacify my envy this way.
A Mac user came over once and had to use my machine. He flipped out for 5 min. trying to comprehend how I got a Mac in a beige box.
Posted by: Steve K on November 27, 2004 12:01 PM