Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

[deckart]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

Fight!.
washu,whoa,please.I don't give a fig about what I run,just I've been using Macs and PC's for a long time,flip I'm even a hardware/software engineer servicing Windows machines and the biggest headache I've got is trying to convince people that running GX270/280's may not be a good idea.
On the topic of Starcraft,this you can pick up here:http://us.blizzard.com/support/artic...earchQuery=mac
and run in Rosetta if you want,or as I've mentioned,get your self a PC copy and if you have a legit XP/Vista/7 beta boot into Windows via Bootcamp and run as a standalone OS.With no emulation hit.
I still play MOHAA using my 5 year old Mac discs,it runs in Rosetta fine,but I have a MacPro,so maybe I do not notice too much of a performance hit.
Any other game playable on a PC will work on a Mac in Windows partition,all depending on whether or not you can figure out the legacy of its vintage.

[washu]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

Sorry deckart I wasn't trying to pick on you.

I wasn't aware that there was an OSX client, the original Mac release was for MacOS. My point still stands, it's only because Blizzard is being nice that you can play. Windows users don't need an updated release, the original works fine.

Same goes for Marathon, the original release is dead because Apple doesn't care about backwards compatibility.

I guess Starcraft and Marathon aren't the best examples because there are newer binaries or workarounds. That doesn't change the fact that there are thousands of Mac apps for which free updates have never been released. They are all useless on new machines.

[Topcat]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

Starcraft runs fine on my G5. Diablo2 won't, because I have the 1.0 disks ( actually pre-ordered it and had it about 2 weeks before it's official release date), they didn't support Mac until 1.03 I believe, so to play D2 on my mac, I'd have to replace the disks with newer ones. SC's problem in Win7 is a video problem, appears to be DX related. All the menu screens appear in 16 colors, but the game actually displays and plays fine once you start one. I haven't really looked into yet, I'm sure there's a cure for it already, as there's a lot of D2 and SC players out there, so I'm not too worried about it. Win7 is growing on me, but not enough yet that I'll mainstream it on my daily use system. It'll take time. I puttered around with XP for a couple months before migrating my main system to it from win2k. Like I said before, I'll wait for the first service pack, which will likely cure a million quirky things. I just hope the first service pack isn't like vista's, which hosed it worse than it already was.

Another Win7 thing that really pissed me off.......no quick launch toolbar. You have to manually create it. How retarded!

[washu]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

TC: Are you running the original SC in Classic mode or the newer OSX binary? The original one can't run on an Intel Mac, your G5 is the last type it works on.

Quick launch isn't setup because you don't need it anymore. Just pin things to the taskbar.

Edit: Let me clarify that this is way better than the quick launch. For example, pin Word and you can right-click and get a list of recent docs. Pin Remote Desktop and you get at list of recent connections. Some apps like media players put controls into their taskbar menus. It's great.

[Topcat]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

TC: Are you running the original SC in Classic mode or the newer OSX binary? The original one can't run on an Intel Mac, your G5 is the last type it works on.

My mac is an Imac G5 powerPC (not intel based), 2gb ram. Its running OSX 10.5 leopard. I had to download a patch from blizzard to get it to install, that was it.

I'm so used to the quick launch, its strange not seeing it there anymore..... my desktop is a clusterfck of icons too....I'm a compuslob....

[kc8adu]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

did you try running the exe in a xp compatability mode?
i tricked a cricket broadband modem into running on 7 by setting its exe to run in vista sp1 mode.this thing is my friends only internet so she was real happy to be able to keep 7.her work gave her the laptop because they could not stand vista.
keeping her happy has fringe benefits ;-)

[Topcat]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

^

I haven't tried that yet, I'm still learning my way around 7. I have some learning to do still.

Fringe benefits......Made a few service calls back in my TV repair days, and been offered trades more than once....some I accepted, some I passed on.

[ratdude747]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

I also like win7, but I'm finding a lot of small things about it that are really pissing me off.

1) diablo2 won't work. installs, but come time to play, it bitches and spits errors out about the CD. dick around with the error for a few, and it'll finally run.

2) Starcraft menu screens are all hosed, game runs, but the menus look like they're in 16 colors.

3) bitched and whined about my old ass version of office (office 2k)

4) won't install if the boot device controller driver isn't MS digitally signed. in my case it was a silicon image sata raid controller. win7 didn't have an embedded driver, the vista driver didn't work, and their published win7 driver didn't work. I finally tricked it somehow into using an xp 32 bit driver (how I dont know, it just accepted it after fumbling with it a while), then win update had a newer driver upon install completion.

4) it hates my A/V software and will not run it at all. symantec corporate 10 (32 and 64 bit edition)

5) nero burning ROM works, but win bitches and whines about it

6) still hogs too much RAM. OS uses about 1.2gb, task manager says system has 'cached' an additional 3gb, leaving 1.5 or so available for apps (system has 6gb)

7) my MP3 ripping software won't run on it at all. In fairness, XP wont either after SP3, some digital right crap kills it off, so I do all my ripping from an XP SP2 system I have here.

8) power DVD doesn't run

Theres more, but thats all I can think of at 3am. do I like win7? yes. Do I like it enough to dump XP Pro on my main system and use it? hell no.

1). diablo2= DRM= you arnt supposed to. 99% of the time, drm is there to screw you up and have to buy new.

i doubt wine would work, but i will check the app db for it. virtualbox would work though.

2) see #1

3) did you try open office? its just like mcrosoft office only free. also has a handy pdf export. and since its open, ubuntu has it by default!

4) linux doesnt need it, linux is an antivirus in itself. its unix like class 3, since it acts like unix, and therefore has its security benifits. pwn2own proved it.

5) brasero is included, no issues. or, you can buy nero for linux, as the new software manager in ubuntu will have non free software in the repo's. as it is now, you can buy and manually install, which is straightforward and easy afaik.

6)linux is more lightweight than windows ever was (at the same period of time- dos is faster than ubuntu 9.10, but get real). no ram issues.

7) in the repo's for ubuntu there is an app called sound converter that will do that for you. mp3 encoding take a couple steps but is easy and no problem to set up.

8) install libdvdread4 after the ubuntu install, and you can use totem to watch all your dvds. free, too.

Quick launch isn't setup because you don't need it anymore. Just pin things to the taskbar.

Edit: Let me clarify that this is way better than the quick launch. For example, pin Word and you can right-click and get a list of recent docs. Pin Remote Desktop and you get at list of recent connections. Some apps like media players put controls into their taskbar menus. It's great.

FYI, ubuntu has that pinning too. since it first was created in 2004 ans part of gnome, which had it even sooner than that. granted, recent "stuff" isnt there, but a menu exists for places and you can ad links to a panel or drawer in the panel to all your important docs. most ubuntu apps have a recent docs in the file menu anyway.

[ratdude747]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

wine has no listing for diablo2.

starcraft has been rated gold for the demoware, full, and expansion pack. the campaign editor was rated platinum. for linux, it seems starcraft has issues in fullscreen (parts cut off) and multiplayer mode has been hit and miss. otherwise, it works great, or so the review says.

[washu]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

6)linux is more lightweight than windows ever was (at the same period of time- dos is faster than ubuntu 9.10, but get real). no ram issues.

Sorry ratdude, but this has NEVER been true until Vista came out. For a full Linux desktop (not a stripped down minimal version) has always required more hardware than windows pre-Vista.

FC1 (came out not long after XP) recommends 256M / 400 MHz VS XP at 128 M / 233 MHz. Both those numbers are full of crap, but XP can run fine on 256M, FC1 can not.

Go back to the Win9X days and the gap is even bigger. There is never been a GOOD DE (like KDE/GNOME) that could run on 32 MB reasonably, something Win9X did fine. Because of things like pixmap caches and other X bloating there is no way a full Linux desktop could approach the memory usage of older versions of Windows. Things like sound servers and other bloat that Windows simply doesn't need made Linux even worse.

Yeah, you could run TWM or a minimal FVWM config in 16 MB, but those make win 3.1 look sophisticated by comparison. A proper desktop with GNOME or KDE, even older versions just can't compare to windows of the time.

Also remember that Linux has a much worse cache policy than windows by default. This requires more RAM. Not Vista level, but more than XP and below. Yeah you can change it, but most desktop users never will.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

I fail to see how FC1 [released 2003] needing more hardware than XP [released 2001] proves your point.

That's like comparing Win98 to W2k. - "Not long after"

[370forlife]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

I would never run XP on a 233mhz.

The minimum requirements are a 233mhz with 64mb ram.

I ran a old Abit BX6 with a slot 1 266 celeron with 64mb to see what Microsoft was thinking.




I don't know what they were thinking.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

MS's stated minimum requirements are always bogus, way lower than realistic.
You have to 2x or 3x the CPU and 3x or 4x the RAM over what they claim even to get to usable.

[washu]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

I picked FC1 as I could find it's official specs quick. Linux didn't magically use 75% less RAM two years prior.

How about Redhat 8. Only 1 year after XP. Recommends 192MB which is BS just like XP recommending 128.

Redhat 7.2 would be the correct version around the XP release. I can't find the official specs with a quick google search, but there is no way it magically ran fine in 64 or even 128 MB given how close the included desktop software is to 8. My point still stands.

[washu]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

MS's stated minimum requirements are always bogus, way lower than realistic.
You have to 2x or 3x the CPU and 3x or 4x the RAM over what they claim even to get to usable.

MS wised up with 7. The requirements are perfectly reasonable. Lots of people run it just fine on 1 GB netbooks with slow CPUs. I've run it on a 1.2 GHz P3 and it's perfectly usable, and that's slower than most Atom CPUs. Sure it runs better with more, but 1 GB on 7 is not like 128 MB on XP.

[ratdude747]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

ubuntu runs great on my eee pc. specs:

eee pc 1000he best buy edition

1.6ghz n270 cpu (should have been n280 but bb stripped it to cut costs)

1gb ddr2

160gb sata seagte hd

10.1 " screen, 1024x600

runs great. now, if only the really nice z250 based units had a linux driver...

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

FC and Redhat are intended for servers.
Redhat 8 should be compared to W2k3 or W2k8, not XP.

I've been running Ubuntu 8.04 [Released 04/2008] on a 1.2 Ghz P3 Laptop w/1Gb Ram.
Kicks butt over XP on a 2.8 Ghz P4 w/1GB RAM.

.

[NxB]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

Slackware w/ gnome ran about as well as 2k on a 266mhz 256mb laptop way back when.

you can use totem to watch all your dvds

Totem sucks, tons of better media players out there.

[Topcat]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

I don't want linux on my daily use system, just not feasible. its free for a reason, and thats because most stuff doesn't work on it without jumping through hoops, and if that's the case, I'll stay with Windows. Linux has its uses, and thats servers....hell this site is ran from a FC server. This isn't going to turn into another linux debate either. Thx.

[washu]

Re: Apple-spend thousands instead of upgrading

FC and Redhat are intended for servers.
Redhat 8 should be compared to W2k3 or W2k8, not XP.

I was comparing the DESKTOP RAM recommendations from FC/Redhat. They were meant for desktops as well as servers. It's not like even Ubuntu fixes the stupid Linux cache policy on their desktop versions, it's the same as the server releases. MS at least fixes that between desktop and server.

Find a distro from 2001 which a) Recommends 64 MB or less for the desktop version b) actually runs properly in 64 MB and c) isn't a stripped down minimal version with a crappy GUI, full KDE or GNOME only. Such a thing doesn't exist.

I've been running Ubuntu 8.04 [Released 04/2008] on a 1.2 Ghz P3 Laptop w/1Gb Ram.
Kicks butt over XP on a 2.8 Ghz P4 w/1GB RAM.

.

If this is true you've done something very very wrong on your XP machine. There is no way full Ubuntu (xubuntu mabye) can run as well as XP on the same hardware, let alone such a disparity. Ubuntu recommends three times (384 MB) the RAM XP does and that number is just as much BS as MS's recommendations. I always thought the shouts of "switch to Ubuntu" were funny back when Vista came out. Vista was slower than XP but then again, so is Ubuntu so you would gain nothing switching. XP is lean and fast compared to any modern Linux distro.

ratdude: 7 Runs fine on that config too, what's your point?