kirkswig
Jul 24, 2005, 3:30 AM
Post #11 of 14
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Wowsa, the hardware importation offer is very tempting. I don't think Apple will have any Intel machines out by then though, and if I go Dell it makes more sense to order from within Mexico given the excellent support they provide here.
Normally I like to build my machines from scratch, that is, buy the case separately, the motherboard separately, the CPU and the graphics card and the sound card and the memory and the hard drives and the DVD-ROM/DVD+R/CDR/floppy/whatever-else separately, both for the price as well as the performance you get doing it that way.
That's really hard to do when you're in Mexico though, because there are so many different components that all have to be shipped, and shipping stuff to Mexico can be a nightmare. Your RV sounds big, but were I to take you up on your offer, the number of components I'd be saddling you with -- any one of which if missing would foobar the whole deal -- would simply drive you nuts.
And I wouldn't want to do that.
Sadly, one *still* can't buy an Apple machine in Mexico. With NAFTA and all, I have to wonder, what's the problem?
The latest OS X is Tiger. I have Tiger on the Power Mac but I can't say I'm pleased but then I've had a huge chip on my shoulder ever since the switch to OS X so my opinions therein should always be suspect. If you have a really fast machine, Tiger is worth it. A PowerBook G4 will do well on Panther however; that's what I have on a separate partition on my PowerBook G3 and it is superb.
As for Mac on Intel, understand that they aren't locking it off so that you can't boot Windoze on Mac, but rather, making it so that you can't boot Mac OS X on anything but a Macintosh. This is what has Dell & Co. so concerned. Apple gets to do this. Apple controls their own OS. And ***a lot*** of people are getting frustrated with Windows what with the spyware and the adware and the malware and the spamware and the viruses and the trojan horses and the...
Here's a quick story.
When I go to the grocery store, as I do mostly every day, I walk, and I usually end up walking by several computer cafes. We all know how these work, you pay maybe ten pesos an hour to sit at Pentium box with a 15" screen that maybe displays 1028x768 and you get maybe 30Kbps throughput as you do your web mail, or about the throughput you'd expect from the kind of modems they were selling NOB over a decade ago.
There is this one cafe which doubles as a school, sort of, and there was a period of several months where I would walk by and I would see this woman sitting behind one of these machines, playing klondike.
For anyone who doesn't know, klondike is a game Microsoft includes with Windows, it's like solitaire. It's a game you could just as easily play with a deck of cards that costs maybe 5 pesos rather than a computer that costs maybe 5000 pesos.
Now, it would be sad enough to watch this woman playing solitaire on a computer she's paying 10 pesos an hour to use. But what really distressed me was the way she had to struggle through all of the adware as she was playing.
One time, when I realized what was happening here, I stopped for a few moments to watch her in her torment. These $#%^!& popup windows would appear every time she moved a card! I've seen this myself when forced to use the local cafe machines for email, and it is simply intolerable! You can't do anything without having some spammer somewhere putting up a window telling you to buy this! Buy it now! Buy it before it goes away! It's a special deal, just for you!
She just clicks through it. She clicks on a card, drags it to where she wants it to go, releases the mouse button, and then BOOM! Up pops the advertisement! And then she mouses over to the close button, clicks it, and goes on to her next move.
Ten pesos an hour she's paying for this.
You know, ten pesos an hours for me checking my email is nothing. Ten pesos an hour for her getting her jollies however is an entirely different matter. If we were all honest, we'd admit to each other that these stupid games Microsoft includes with Windows can be extremely addicting. I've personally spent so much time with Freecell that I actually managed to stumble on the unwinnable seed in that game!
Here's the thing though, I wasn't paying ten pesos an hour for the privilege.
It's enough to make me understand why some people want to write viruses. Seriously. I mean, what else can you do? Barge in there screaming -- in English -- hey you, what are you doing, go buy yourself a deck of cards for 5 pesos?
Let me reformat your hard drive and install Linux instead?
Why don't you and I get together for a nice game of Parcheesi?
That is the one nice feature of Mac OS X. The only game that's included is Chess. And if you're like me, it isn't addictive at all. Once the program has kicked your ass -- in easy mode no less -- it's hard to bring yourself back to the table.
Who wants to play a game you always lose?
To boldly go where no wig has gone before.
(This post was edited by kirkswig on Jul 24, 2005, 3:37 AM)
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