New computer..

[jvencius]

Widgets? There are thousands of them. and if you can't find an apple widget you absolutely, must have, try yahoo widgets (the original widgets), and see if its there.

I'm waiting till they start shipping MacBook pros with the 4 core processors.

I used widgets as a generic term referring to features like Time Machine, et. al., not the MacOS-specific term. I'm still learing about Mac's--sorry...

 

[Maxtor]

You guys that have Mac's have never had to network them. Mac's are a good stand alone system. Vista will have teething problems just like the 6.0 engine did, and probably the 6.4 engine will have.
After doing extensive testing, I found that the hard drive on my new computer was defective. So Dell is sending me a replacement. Mac has a lot going for it out of a network environment. It is a solid operating system, especially os 10.
PC's have by far more software available and have many advantages over the mac. I retired as Network Supervisor of a large company that had 31 servers and 5000 workstations. Most all were PC'S because of networking ease and speed. We did have some mac's that were stand alone. Both are good in their own way. Yes the early years of PC's that used DOS, were not user friendly, but that is old history, and since windows 95, XP and now VISTA, ease of use is really not a problem. My first computer was a Commodore Pet, then IBM PCAT, then went through all the OS's from dos 3, 95,98,me,2000,xp and now vista. Both PC'S and Mac's have had their backward compatibility issues.
Since most all computers are built out of this country, quality control might be more of an issue in the future. Time will tell. I have heard that some of the larger hard drives are having more problems than a few years ago. Companies balance price with quality, and sometimes quality suffers.

 

[Digital Oxygen]

You guys that have Mac's have never had to network them.

I'm confused by what you're trying to say. I can vpn into my home network from anywhere in the world. It took me less than 5 minutes to set it up, and most of that time was getting my damned router to accept my mac address as a trusted address.

PC's have by far more software available and have many advantages over the mac.

And that software would be... what, mainstream games? Because last I checked, I have all the big name software I used to use on my PC on my mac now. Adobe products, quick books, entourage (msft outlook for mac, basically), etc. etc. Is there PC software that's not available in mac binaries? Certainly. But chances are, you'll find something similar that was written for os X that will work as well. Remember, most linux code will run on a mac if compiled under OS X.

I retired as Network Supervisor of a large company that had 31 servers and 5000 workstations. Most all were PC'S because of networking ease and speed. We did have some mac's that were stand alone. Both are good in their own way. Yes the early years of PC's that used DOS, were not user friendly, but that is old history, and since windows 95, XP and now VISTA, ease of use is really not a problem.

Sadly, Ease of use with OS X has been there for years. : About time microsoft folded their ears the right way... if you know what I mean.

My first computer was a Commodore Pet, then IBM PCAT, then went through all the OS's from dos 3, 95,98,me,2000,xp and now vista. Both PC'S and Mac's have had their backward compatibility issues.

Can't argue on the bacwards compatibility.

Since most all computers are built out of this country, quality control might be more of an issue in the future. Time will tell. I have heard that some of the larger hard drives are having more problems than a few years ago. Companies balance price with quality, and sometimes quality suffers.

Sadly, hard disk manufacturers can make damned near perfect drives with no bad sectors on them, and damned near 100% reliable drives. Only problem is, reliability and no bad sectors don't sell.

 

[Maxtor]

When I talk about networking machines, I am talking about a large number of machines on a large network. Sharing files with many users is accomplished much faster and easier on a PC.
I know talking Pc and Mac is like Ford and Chevy, but trust me, I have had many years of working with both systems in a large network environment.
Mac is a great stand alone machine. Very few virus's have been made for the Mac. The reason is the bad guys want the most bang for their time, so they go after the PC, because there are more PC's than Mac's by a large margin. There is a reason for this. Software availability, and network ease and speed.
Enjoy your Mac, and others can enjoy their PC's. It seems that computer technology changes drastically about every three years, so who knows what our computers will be able to do in the next few years. Apple and Microsoft might join forces, and take the best of each to make a great machine.

 

[Digital Oxygen]

When I talk about networking machines, I am talking about a large number of machines on a large network. Sharing files with many users is accomplished much faster and easier on a PC.

Huh? Explain this to me. what's the difference between windows TCP/IP stack and a mac TCP/IP stack? Transferring files over a network between two machines is done over a network protocol. What's so different about the two? Aside from the fact that the Mac TCP stack is better? Sorry. It just is.
Ever hear of SAMBA? I'm sure you have. So where EXACTLY is the bottleneck on a mac transferring files as opposed to a PC?

I know talking Pc and Mac is like Ford and Chevy, but trust me, I have had many years of working with both systems in a large network environment.

Uhh... Network protocols are pretty much all the same. FTP, www, etc. No FORDs or Chevy's involved. I understand the analogy your are alluding to, but it's applied in error.

Mac is a great stand alone machine. Very few virus's have been made for the Mac. The reason is the bad guys want the most bang for their time, so they go after the PC, because there are more PC's than Mac's by a large margin.

Um... Hate to say this, but you Sir are in error... again. I would think you'd know more about white hat hacking than what you're showing here after working as an admin all these years.
Allow me to explain a few things about viruses, and why they are so much more prevalent on windows machines than Mac machines. Got your coffee handy? No? Go get some, this will take a while.

First, look at the two factors that cause email viruses and worms to propagate: social engineering, and poorly designed software. Social engineering is the art of conning someone into doing something they shouldn't do, or revealing something that should be kept secret. Virus writers use social engineering to convince people to do stupid things, like open attachments that carry viruses and worms. Poorly designed software makes it easier for social engineering to take place, but such software can also subvert the efforts of a knowledgable, security-minded individual or organization. Together, the two factors can turn a single virus incident into a widespread disaster.

Let's look further at social engineering. Windows software is either executable or not, depending on the file extension. So if a file ends with ".exe" or ".scr", it can be run as a program (yes, of course, if you change a text file's extension from ".txt" to ".exe", nothing will happen, because it's not magically an executable; I'm talking about real executable programs). It's easy to run executables in the Windows world, and users who get an email with a subject line like "Check out this wicked screensaver!" and an attachment, too often click on it without thinking first, and bang! we're off to the races and a new worm has taken over their systems.

Even worse, Microsoft's email software is able to infect a user's computer when they do something as innocuous as read an email! Don't believe me? Take a look at Microsoft Security Bulletins MS99-032, MS00-043, MS01-015, MS01-020, MS02-068, or MS03-023, for instance. Notice that's at least one for the last five years. And though Microsoft's latest versions of Outlook block most executable attachments by default, it's still possible to override those protections.

This sort of social engineering, so easy to accomplish in Windows, requires far more steps and far greater effort on the part of the Linux user. Instead of just reading an email (... just reading an email?!?), a Linux user would have to read the email, save the attachment, give the attachment executable permissions, and then run the executable. Even as less sophisticated users begin to migrate to Linux, they may not understand exactly why they can't just execute attachments, but they will still have to go through the steps. As Martha Stewart would say, this is a good thing. Further, due to the strong community around Linux, new users will receive education and encouragement in areas such as email security that are currently lacking in the Windows world, which should help to alleviate any concerns on the part of newbies.

Further, due to the strong separation between normal users and the privileged root user, our Linux user would have to be running as root to really do any damage to the system. He could damage his /home directory, but that's about it. So the above steps now become the following: read, save, become root, give executable permissions, run. The more steps, the less likely a virus infection becomes, and certainly the less likely a catastrophically spreading virus becomes. And since Linux users are taught from the get-go to never run as root, and since Mac OS X doesn't even allow users to use the root account unless they first enable the option, it's obvious the likelihood of email-driven viruses and worms lessens on those platforms.

Unfortunately, running as root (or Administrator) is common in the Windows world. In fact, Microsoft is still engaging in this risky behavior. Windows XP, supposed Microsoft's most secure desktop operating system, automatically makes the first named user of the system an Administrator, with the power to do anything he wants to the computer. The reasons for this decision boggle the mind. With all the lost money and productivity over the last decade caused by countless Microsoft-borne viruses and worms, you'd think the company could have changed its procedures in this area, but no.

Even if the OS has been set up correctly, with an Administrator account and a non-privileged user account, things are still not copasetic. On a Windows system, programs installed by a non-Administrative user can still add DLLs and other system files that can be run at a level of permission that damages the system itself. Even worse, the collection of files on a Windows system - the operating system, the applications, and the user data - can't be kept apart from each other. Things are intermingled to a degree that makes it unlikely that they will ever be satisfactorily sorted out in any sensibly secure fashion.

The final reason why social engineering is easier in the Windows world is also an illustration of the dangers inherent in any monoculture, whether biological or technological. In the same way that genetic diversity in a population of living creatures is desirable because it reduces the likelihood that an illness - like a virus - will utterly wipe out every animal or plant, diversity in computing environments helps to protect the users of those devices.

Linux runs on many architectures, not just Intel, and there are many versions of Linux, many packaging systems, and many shells. But most obvious to the end user, Linux mail clients and address books are far from standardized. KMail, Mozilla Mail, Evolution, pine, mutt, emacs ... the list goes on. It's simply not like the Windows world, in which Microsoft's email programs - Outlook and Outlook Express - dominate. In the Windows world, a virus writer knows how the monoculture operates, so he can target his virus, secure in the knowledge that millions of systems have the same vulnerability. A virus targeted to a specific vulnerability in Evolution, on the other hand, might affect some people, but not everyone using Linux. The growth of the Microsoft monoculture in computing is a dangerous thing for users of Microsoft products, but also for all computing users, who suffer the consequences of disasters in that environment, such as wasted network resources, dangers to national security, and lost productivity (note: the link is to a 880 kb PDF file).

Now that we've looked at the social engineering side of things, let's examine software design for reasons why Linux (and Mac OS X) is better designed than Microsoft when it comes to email security. Microsoft continually links together its software, often not for technical reasons, but instead for marketing or business development reasons (see the previous link for corroboration). For instance, Outlook Express and Outlook both use the consistently-buggy Internet Explorer to view HTML-based emails. As a result, a hole in IE affects OE. Linux email readers don't indulge in such behavior, with two exceptions: Mozilla Mail uses the Gecko engine that powers Mozilla to view HTML-based email, while KMail relies on the KHTML engine that the Konqueror browser uses. Fortunately, both Mozilla and the KDE Project have excellent records when it comes to security.

Further, the email programs themselves are designed to act in a more secure manner. The default behavior of the email program I prefer - KMail - is to not load external references in messages, such as pictures and Web bugs, and to not display HTML. When an HTML-based email shows up in my Inbox, I see only the HTML code, and a message appears at the top of the email: "This is an HTML message. For security reasons, only the raw HTML code is shown. If you trust the sender of this message then you can activate formatted HTML display for this message by clicking here." But even after I activate the HTML, certain dynamic elements that can be introduced in an HTML-based email - like Java, Javascript, plugins and even the "refresh" META tag - do not display, and cannot even be enabled in KMail.

Finally, if there is an attachment, it does not automatically run ... ever. Instead, I have to click it, and when I do, I get a dialog box offering me three options: "Save As ..." (the default), "Open With ...", and "Cancel". If I have mapped a file type to a specific program - for instance, I have associated PDFs with the PS/PDF Viewer, then "Open With ..." instead says "Open", and if I choose "Open", then the file opens in the PS/PDF Viewer. However, in either case, the dialog box always contains a warning advising the user that attachments can compromise security. This is all good, very good.

For all these reasons, even if a few individuals got infected with a virus due to extremely foolish behavior, it's unlikely the virus would spread to other machines. Unlike Sobig.F, which is the fastest spreading virus ever, a Linux-based Virus would fizzle out quickly. Windows is an inviting petri dish for viruses and worms, while Linux is a hostile environment for such nasties.
Some caveats

There is one Linux distribution that is ignoring many years of common sense, good design, and an awareness of secure operating environments in favor of a Microsoft-like deprecation of security before the nebulous term "ease of use": Lindows. By default, Lindows runs the user of the system as root (and it even encourages the user to forgo setting up a root password during installation by labeling it as "optional"!), an unbelievably shortsighted decision that results in a Linux box with the same security as a Windows 9.x machine.

If you go to the Lindows Web site, they state that it is possible to add other, non-privileged users, but nowhere in the operating system do they advocate adding these other users. Yet they claim their distribution of Linux is secure! In an effort to emulate Microsoft and make things "easy", they have compromised the security of their users, an unforgivable action. No one in the field of security, or even IT, can recommend Lindows while such a blatant disregard for security is the norm for the OS.

Yet some Linux machines definitely need anti-virus software. Samba or NFS servers, for instance, may store documents in undocumented, vulnerable Microsoft formats, such as Word and Excel, that contain and propagate viruses. Linux mail servers should run AV software in order to neutralize viruses before they show up in the mailboxes of Outlook and Outlook Express users.

Security is, as we all know, a process, not a product. So when you use Linux, you're not using a perfectly safe OS. There is no such thing. But Linux and Mac OS X establish a more secure footing than Microsoft Windows, one that makes it far harder for viruses to take hold in the first place, but if one does take hold, harder to damage the system, but if one succeeds in damaging the system, harder to spread to other machines and repeat the process. When it comes to email-borne viruses and worms, Linux may not be completely immune - after all, nothing is immune to human gullibility and stupidity - but it is much more resistant. To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work on it. I know which one I'll trust. How about you?

There is a reason for this. Software availability, and network ease and speed.

There you go again with this network speed thing. You want speed? Why are macs shipped with gigabit ethernet ports? Been shipped like that long before PC manufacturers started doing it.

Enjoy your Mac, and others can enjoy their PC's. It seems that computer technology changes drastically about every three years, so who knows what our computers will be able to do in the next few years. Apple and Microsoft might join forces, and take the best of each to make a great machine.

Oh, Sir, I plan on enjoying my Mac. And my next one. And my next one, and so on and so forth. Will I ever have a windows install on my next Mac? sure. Will I use it often? no.

As far as what the future holds for computing? Well...

Our consumer grade computers have pretty much hit the speed cap. This is why intel and the other CPU manufacturers are going to dual and quadruple core technologies. Silicone can only handle so much without burning up. Friend of mine at Intel showed me a 4.8Ghz chip several (read 6) years ago. He said it ran great... for about 12 hours, then it burned up. This was with N2 cooling.

There are other technologies on the horizon, one of them being a DNA based computer. Neat stuff, but even if it ever works, I predict it won't be here for at LEAST 10 years.

There is the optical computing idea. That's more plausible than DNA Based computing.

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to get into a pissing contest with you. I respect your experience, but IMHO you sir are wrong on several aspects of what you've posted here.

 

[DaveBen]

... Yeah, yeah, I know I could buy a Mini now and swap processors for a Core2, but I don't feel like going through the hassle of taking a Mini apart (it looks to be no fun at all) to swap processors on a brand new 'puter.

The bottom snaps on and off. It is simple. I looked at mine and I could not see how it came apart. I am a new convert. No Vista for me.

Dave

 

[jharvey]

Dang, I didn't mean to start a war Digital no needs to get all riled up, if I had my way I'd still be running Novell 3.1

I'm a recent convert to Mac so I can not say Mac is better than PC (windows), I managed a windows network, 120 PC's and 4 NT (I discovered that really stands for "not today") servers across 6 states, worked well most of the time but when it had issues they were serious issues that kept even MS tech's wondering.

When I got my PowerBook G4 last year (yepper a classic now) I had no problems talking to my windows network, as a matter of fact it was much easier than I had thought and the learning curve I was dreading just never appeared. The when I bought the iMac same thing, no problems talking to windows machines, router, printers, NAS drives. (saving for a 4TB LaCie now hehe)

As far as software goes, there's Office for Mac, Quickbooks, Firefox, Outlook and a whole slew of PC stuff available for macs. Neo Office actually eats Windows Office up once you get used to it. But the biggest prompt for me to switch to mac was for the graphics capability and my photography, sure I could have built a PC that would do almost as well but why, the price would have been within a 100 bucks or so.

So Max, enjoy and learn vista well, maybe you could take your early learning with it and contract out some of that experience as a migration specialist or trouble shooter, help fill the cookie jar up in the new RV

 

[Maxtor]

Windows vs. Mac

Mac TCP/IP and Windows TCP/IP are now very similar. I do not believe I would say one was better than the other, other than netbeui does have its problems,but you can substitute "IPX/SPX" for "NetBEUI". Unix is a very stable operating system that has been used for years to run very stable servers. I had Unix, Novell, and Microsoft servers.
First of all, I do not want to get into a long winded discussion with you on the merrits of Mac or Windows platforms. I do not know the exact numbers, but there is something like 90% windows and 10% other operating systems for home and business computers. Yes Windows has been written badly, but that is not the main reason for the flood of virus's . Do you believe that if there were 90% Mac's and 10% windows users, that the bad guys would take the time to develope a virus for the 10%.? I agree that Unix and linux are more stable and more difficult to breach. Back in 2001, I would have to reboot our Windows exchange server every two months. Our Unix and Novell servers would be up for six months or more before rebooting. What you forgot to say was that win95 was a clone of the Apple operating system. Vista is a clone of Mac OS 10. Both plus's for Mac. Bottom line is, both systems are good, and it is a matter of choice in which you choose. As a Network Administrator I chose the Windows platform as did most of the nation. I retired in July 2001, and there as been many advances since then. Maybe some day, there will be another operating system that will prevail. It is interesting that you talk of the dna based computer. I have ideas about it, but not the time to discuss it. Maybe someday we will meet and have a long conversation. Gigabit nics did not come out until fiber. Before that 10/100 nics were the norm with CAT 5. Back in the 1990's, (can't remember now,, getting to old) Mac's were at 10 megabit appletalk protocol. Things have changed since then.
Anyway.. Happy computing.

 

[jharvey]

Ok I'm gonna date myself here....I remember..........10 Base T coaxial networking

Ok I'm thru making you guys laugh...gonna go fire up my Morrow Designs CPM machine and hope my Hayes 300 baud modem will connect one more time to the Heathkit BBS system............which I think is run on the venerable PDP11........hope they put the tape back in

 

[Maxtor]

But the biggest prompt for me to switch to mac was for the graphics capability and my photography, sure I could have built a PC that would do almost as well but why, the price would have been within a 100 bucks or so.

So Max, enjoy and learn vista well, maybe you could take your early learning with it and contract out some of that experience as a migration specialist or trouble shooter, help fill the cookie jar up in the new RV

I agree with you that Mac had and still has a better graphics capability. What I said and still say, is that networking pc's, has been up to when I retired 2001 much better than mac. Since mac os 10, the playing field has been more even. I think os 10 came out in March of 2001. If you want to become a network Admin for Mac, you might starve.
I used to set up networks for business, but I decided that I liked retirement to much, and found less time for messing with networks. I have been out of it for six years, and technology changes drastically about every three years, so I am sure I am behind the times.