iMac or Mac Pro

[RogerS]

Gower
Be prepared for a very different way of working.

Whenever I sit at a Mac I get a feeling like when you try to write with the wrong hand or drive a left hand drive car or something.

You've got to get way outside the "windows" mindset to get on with MacOS.

Good point. Apple have this article on switching. While you're not intending to go the whole hog (or though you might after you've seen the light :wink: ) it might be helpful.

Roger

 

[Gower]

Thanks Roger & Bigshot. The Mac on Ebay was up to £550 just before the auction ended and it's not what I had in mind price wise. Maybe something about 5 or 6 years old. I'll keep looking on Ebay.
Cheers,
Jim

 

[BigShot]

Gower - it might be worth asking around some of your friends.

My sister has an old Mac they no longer use (moved to PC as it happens - funny how these things go) and I'm trying to get that off her.

It could be you can get something to try and have a play with for a few bob, a few points or if you're lucky, for the asking.


RogerS - I dunno about "seen the light".
Those folk who have tend to need articles about switching to Linux.

Haha.

I'll be having a look at that article when I get that Mac off my sis! Haha.

 

[Gower]

BigShot, thanks for the thought. Trying a Mac is pure inquisitiveness on my part. I'm not a computer expert but have had a keen interest since my first PC in 1984 a Tandy with twin floppies running MS DOS to which I added a huge 10GB Hard Drive mounted in a PCI slot. I have an old PC to which I've loaded a Linux OS all for free and I'm impressed but reluctant (lacking in courage) to ditch Bill Gates all together. He needs my money as much as Steve Jobs. It is strange but I don't know anyone who has a Mac so in the interests of science :lol: I'd better try one. I'll be able to join a pretty exclusive club and poke fun at PC users!
Cheers,
Jim

 

[RogerS]

Jim

If it's the actual user interface/usage that you're wanting to try out then maybe a mac Mini from ebay is a low cost option. You should be able to use your existing screen IIRC but I'm not too sure. Would need to research more. What sort of money did you want to spend on your 'experiment'?

 

[BigShot]

I'll be able to join a pretty exclusive club and poke fun at PC users!

Or you could go for the even more exclusive one and poke fun at PC and Mac users.

Nice to hear Linux impressed you - what distro did you install?

I was pretty taken with openSuSE when I tried it and am thinking of putting the latest version on (I believe it's a bit more lightweight than the one I've got installed). That said, I've got a mind to try some others too - so much choice!
Still not made the jump and got rid of Windows though. I only really need it for work but even then I'm still in XP more than Linux at the moment - mainly because I don't have to reboot after work that way, but I'm using Linux more and more anyway.

I remember the first PC I used. Had two 5 and a bit inch floppies and no hard drive. MSDos came on a floppy and you needed to put that in before you did anything else.

Learned to use basic elements of MSDos aged about 8. It's surprising I'm not some sort of computer-whiz now. I just never really got into power-using and programming (despite studying the latter at A-Level).

 

[RogerS]

......

I remember the first PC I used. Had two 5 and a bit inch floppies and no hard drive. MSDos came on a floppy and you needed to put that in before you did anything else.

My first computer I designed and built. It had a Motorola 6800. Two seven segment LED displays for output. Eight toggle switches to set up the data byte (1 or 0...nothing complicated) and another eight toggle switches to set up the address. Then a read and a write button. And a reset. After you'd added a couple of numbers together you'd pretty well much exhausted its' capabilities!

Then I designed and built a better one with more memory and designed to feed a VDU I'd built based on the teletext receiver featured in Wireless World and designed by a work colleague.

Then came the Zilog Z80 and you could by an assembler/editor in PROM. That seemed really cool at the time.

Flirted with S-100 systems for a customer who I was moonlighting for installing a mailing system for him for his business.

Then along came a couple of guys in a garage. Wozniak and Jobs. The rest is history. Bill Gates was still an unknown.

 

[BigShot]

My first computer I designed and built. It had a Motorola 6800. Two seven segment LED displays for output. Eight toggle switches to set up the data byte (1 or 0...nothing complicated) and another eight toggle switches to set up the address. Then a read and a write button. And a reset. After you'd added a couple of numbers together you'd pretty well much exhausted its' capabilities!

Add a pretty white box, a good monitor and you've got a sly but completely not serious joke about Apple computers there.

Then I designed and built a better one with more memory and designed to feed a VDU I'd built based on the teletext receiver featured in Wireless World and designed by a work colleague.

Then came the Zilog Z80 and you could by an assembler/editor in PROM. That seemed really cool at the time.

Flirted with S-100 systems for a customer who I was moonlighting for installing a mailing system for him for his business.

Then along came a couple of guys in a garage. Wozniak and Jobs. The rest is history. Bill Gates was still an unknown.

That's all a bit before my time. I'm not so sure I'd have been interested in computers back then, it's interesting the way things developed and a testament to the enquiring nerd's mind that they progressed things enough to develop the personal computer, but I'm not sure I'd have been one of them.

I think I like "outside" too much (gotta love those sweeping stereotypes).

 

[Gower]

Bigshot,
I use Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope, the latest release I think. New one due out in October. I love the weird names they give the versions. Reading you and Roger's posts, I'm in a different league but I enjoy it. They do a version for Intel Macs I think.

Roger, I hadn't heard of the Mini Mac and just did a search - looks interesting. Might be the way to go. I'll do a little reading and let you know.
Cheers,
Jim

 

[BigShot]

I tried Ubuntu a while back and was impressed. In fact, it was that which turned me on to Linux. I was already open to getting a new OS, but Ubuntu made it seem doable.

Oddly enough, I didn't actually install Ubuntu, instead going for SuSE.

Now Apple have move to Intel hardware a lot of Linux distros have made their way onto their hardware.

As for different leagues... I wouldn't be so sure. I can talk a better game than I can actually play. When it comes to getting my hands dirty with code and things like that I'm not all that great and need a fair bit of help (which, thanks to the SuSE channel on the FreeNode IRC server - I can get plenty of)

The bits about MSDos were all I knew and knew just about enough to get the games I had running. My dad was the professional, I've just been a user my whole life so am comfortable, but not all that tech.

 

[TrimTheKing]

...my first PC in 1984 a Tandy with twin floppies running MS DOS to which I added a huge 10GB Hard Drive...

In 1984? Are you sure? Don't you mean 10MB?

 

[Gower]

Just testing peoples powers of observation, honest

 

[TrimTheKing]

Just testing peoples powers of observation, honest