Why do these damn Dell PC's keep getting faster?!

[RyanLang]

Film = 24 fps
NTSC = 29.97 fps

[homer]

That was a great post, RacerX! I have to agree with vanguard too. My 233 iMac just isn't cutting it anymore. I have to believe that once I get a PM this fall I'll be content for another four or five years. But in the meantime I have to gnash my teeth every time I hear how far behind Moto is.

[Nummi_G4]

I kind of agree with you Racer X. Sure... 2.53 ghz does not matter with email or word. But the PC guys might get so much more speed... the Mac will lose the pro design area. Print, web design, digital video, ect.

[boi]

what about that gateway? 2ghz, 128mb ddr ram, 40 gig hd, 15" monitor, 48x cd-rom & speakers for $800. add a 17" monitor and 24x10x40 and it's $1000.
that's a hellalotta speed for less than a grand.
while you are satisfied with your speed, i am not. i can't even scroll without it looking choppy, dammit, let alone minimize windows in OS X. what good are pretty effects if my system can't handle 'em? all i want to do is minimize a window and sometimes it takes up to 5-6 seconds.
and to continue with the 'speed limit' analogy: using high-end programs (photoshop, games, video editing, etc) there is no speed limit. and right now my g4 crawls in comparison to pcs.
okay, a pc doesn't run 'omniweb'. who cares? it has IE integrated into the OS so it's incredibly fast. every time i use a pc after using my mac (usin' os x) i get browser envy (not to mention scroll envy). i love os x. i love my mac. don't get me wrong... but these low prices at such high speeds are enough to make me sell my year old mac and get an even trade in for a brand new 2ghz PC.
please spare me the "fine, leave, we don't care. i hope you enjoy your peecee-- don't hang around here any more" comments. i'm not going to trade it. it's just food for thought.

[dricci]

fine, leave, we don't care. i hope you enjoy your peecee-- don't hang around here any more

[Edge100]

Its true. PCs are faster. If Apple/Moto dont get in the game soon, there will be some loss of market share in the high end (i.e. video and photoshop stuff). This much is true.

Meanwhile, Apple is gaining like crazy in the mid- and low-range. MacOS X, while not perfect, beats the pants off of XP and people know it. A G4 iMac is fast enough for 95% of everything, and people know it. A 700 MHz iBook is good enough for 90% of everything, and people know it.

I do a lot of audio stuff and my iMac G3/600 runs Logic Audio and Reason like a dream. Granted, I still have to run 9.2.1 to use it, but I can compose some intricate stuff with speed to spare. Bottom line: I get my work done FAST on a Mac. On a PC, who knows how long I will have to fiddle to get the same programs working (a long time! I know this from experience...it simply is not as easy on a PC).

I have used the Reason 2.0 beta on OS X and it looks like 10.1.4 can handle it nicely, even on my 1 year old iMac. My iBook 500 runs all the above softs well too and I can even watch a DVD if I want to.

The point? I am not a high end user. I consider myself in the mid-range. More than just Omniweb and email, but less than heavy photoshop and FCP. My Macs, old as they are, do the duty admirably. I would venture to say that I would not compose any faster on a dual 1GHz. Sure I'd get more plugins going, but I havent yet run out of CPU power yet.

People drastically overestimate the power they need. To the people who really need the power, it may make enough of a difference to give up OS X and go over to XP (please factor in the Wintel learning curve!). To others it may not. Apple does need to get it together in the highend. But for most of us, we have plenty of speed and we have the best OS in the world, hands down! I wouldnt give it up for anything.

[RacerX]

by boi
please spare me the "fine, leave, we don't care. i hope you enjoy your peecee-- don't hang around here any more" comments. i'm not going to trade it. it's just food for thought.

Why should you be spared? The point is that (and you seem to not get it) if a platform doesn't do what you want, then it doesn't matter how fast it is. In your case (and you pointed it out) a PC would be better for you.

By the way, show me were IE on Windows can spell check and read text within a browser window. OmniWeb renders pages more than fast enough for me, and it has features that I use that I can't find in another browser.

Edge100 and boi,

The fastest system in the world isn't going to increase my productivity if it can't do the things I need it to. As for Photoshop, I work for a number of publications where Photoshop, Illustrator and QuarkXPress are their primary apps. Of over 50 systems which I take care of (covering 5 magazines) only 6 are G4s, and only two of those are running at greater than 500 MHz. These people's livelihood depends on images created in Photoshop at greater than 600 dpi (web designers use a much small resolution I would point out), and I have not heard any of them screaming for more speed. Only a fraction of the tools within Photoshop actually require a system faster than a G3 at 350 MHz to complete within a short (usually less than a few seconds) period of time. Actual, memory is the best thing to help Photoshop, anything to keep it from having to write that much to the scratch disk improves performance.

I don't see any of these people (which represent the true high end) moving from Macs (or moving to Mac OS X while they don't have a native version of QuarkXPress). I don't even see them showing the need to buy replacement systems for the ones that are over three years old at this point. My print shop clients are always on the look out for faster RIPs, but the actual workstations they are using seem just fine for all their tasks. And the one client I have that does video wouldn't move to any platform that doesn't have Final Cut Pro on it (and here is a news flash, he feels more productive with Macs than any other system).

So, please pick a platform that works for you and stop complaining. For the rest of us, a Gateway is just a $1000 paper weight. In other words, a complete waste of money (not to mention the worst made systems on the planet).

[scaryfish]

Yeah, It'd be nice to have "faster" macs - but hey, I'm a student so it's not likely I'll be able to afford one any time soon anyway.

So to all you people complaning about your slow macs - I'm using a original iBook 300 mHz with 160 megs of ram. And it works fine. And I still prefer it to the PCs we have in the labs...