Windows 7 or Mac

[Zumbruk]

Fittster said:

jimothy said:

Fittster said:

jimothy said:

I work in IT and out of a team of 10, 9 of us have Macs at home because we want an easy life

I'd love to know where that stat comes from.

Read it again. The team I am in, consisting of 10 people, 9 of us have macs at home. This team includes developers, testers and support. Not a stat, I'm certainly not claiming 9 out of 10 IT people use macs, I am describing my team. And to clarify, we're doing windows development at work. There's a guy on here who used to be part of our team, not long after he left he got a new laptop.
Guess what make he got...

Well if it helps I work for a huge IT consultancy and no one I know of has a Mac. Quite frankly if I can get a telnet window to the servers I really don't give a monkeys about the O/S.

If you can get a telnet window to anything on "my" network, someone's going to be having a deep and meaningful conversation with their boss about security.

[CommanderJameson]

Telnet? Really?

Blimey.

>wavy lines<

>telnets to Gopher server<

>reads Anarchist's Cookbook<

[cyberface]

Zumbruk said:

Fittster said:

jimothy said:

Fittster said:

jimothy said:

I work in IT and out of a team of 10, 9 of us have Macs at home because we want an easy life

I'd love to know where that stat comes from.

Read it again. The team I am in, consisting of 10 people, 9 of us have macs at home. This team includes developers, testers and support. Not a stat, I'm certainly not claiming 9 out of 10 IT people use macs, I am describing my team. And to clarify, we're doing windows development at work. There's a guy on here who used to be part of our team, not long after he left he got a new laptop.
Guess what make he got...

Well if it helps I work for a huge IT consultancy and no one I know of has a Mac. Quite frankly if I can get a telnet window to the servers I really don't give a monkeys about the O/S.

If you can get a telnet window to anything on "my" network, someone's going to be having a deep and meaningful conversation with their boss about security.

Is that a challenge????



Anyway, methinks the 'huge IT consultancy' mentioned may have a culture of not admitting they use Mac hardware. Not knowing *anyone* who uses a Mac is pretty hard going, or at least living an *incredibly* sheltered life - if they were some sort of bizarre sect-like niche system then all these flamewars wouldn't exist. Apple have a decent marketshare for a single company, so with 5% or whatever it is of people using Mac hardware, simply not knowing *anyone* seems odd.

I work for an IT / management consultancy where every single employee uses Apple kit, just to add another anecdote to the non-data that's accumulating here.

[Technonotice]

I'm yet to use windows 7 so I can't comment on the pro's or cons.

If its anything like the extensive numbers of windows machines that I have used in the past I will be disappointed.

Does it require more than 2 GB of RAM to run at anything more than a snails pace?

Is it bloated with pre installed software that no one ever uses?

Does the OS still crash completely? Or can you force quit the program like in OSX?

[Ordinary_Chap]

Technonotice said:

I'm yet to use windows 7 so I can't comment on the pro's or cons.

If its anything like the extensive numbers of windows machines that I have used in the past I will be disappointed.

Does it require more than 2 GB of RAM to run at anything more than a snails pace?

Is it bloated with pre installed software that no one ever uses?

Does the OS still crash completely? Or can you force quit the program like in OSX?

No to everything there.

It's my new fav OS for getting things done, although I still love OSX.

Edited by Ordinary_Chap on Thursday 5th November 23:08

[Techn0]

Ordinary_Chap said:

No to everything there.

It's my new fav OS for getting done, although I still love OSX.

I'm hearing good things and I'm planning on using it with parallels or on a different boot partition when I get my next laptop

[cyberface]

Ordinary_Chap said:

Technonotice said:

I'm yet to use windows 7 so I can't comment on the pro's or cons.

If its anything like the extensive numbers of windows machines that I have used in the past I will be disappointed.

Does it require more than 2 GB of RAM to run at anything more than a snails pace?

Is it bloated with pre installed software that no one ever uses?

Does the OS still crash completely? Or can you force quit the program like in OSX?

No to everything there.

It's my new fav OS for getting things done, although I still love OSX.

Edited by Ordinary_Chap on Thursday 5th November 23:08

OC - how small can you make a sensibly usable installation of Windows 7?

I'm going to stick an install into a VMware virtual machine on my MBP and Mac Pro. I've got shed loads of RAM so that isn't an issue, but I run SSDs so disk space *is* an issue.

I don't want to hack it down randomly - may as well see Microsoft's best shot in its best light i.e. installed *properly* so it's nice and stable. However it'd be a right pain if the smallest properly usable install takes up 10 GB or something obscene. OS X is nasty like that and you have to know what's safe to remove... I'm not sure I know Win7 well enough to know what is safe to remove...

[Ordinary_Chap]

cyberface said:

Ordinary_Chap said:

Technonotice said:

I'm yet to use windows 7 so I can't comment on the pro's or cons.

If its anything like the extensive numbers of windows machines that I have used in the past I will be disappointed.

Does it require more than 2 GB of RAM to run at anything more than a snails pace?

Is it bloated with pre installed software that no one ever uses?

Does the OS still crash completely? Or can you force quit the program like in OSX?

No to everything there.

It's my new fav OS for getting things done, although I still love OSX.

Edited by Ordinary_Chap on Thursday 5th November 23:08

OC - how small can you make a sensibly usable installation of Windows 7?

I'm going to stick an install into a VMware virtual machine on my MBP and Mac Pro. I've got shed loads of RAM so that isn't an issue, but I run SSDs so disk space *is* an issue.

I don't want to hack it down randomly - may as well see Microsoft's best shot in its best light i.e. installed *properly* so it's nice and stable. However it'd be a right pain if the smallest properly usable install takes up 10 GB or something obscene. OS X is nasty like that and you have to know what's safe to remove... I'm not sure I know Win7 well enough to know what is safe to remove...

I believe 8.6gb is the minimum without hacking stuff off it and then i'd expect you'll need a 15-20gb partition (preferably more) for apps and the page file.

Windows 7 can actually run very well on 1gb of ram although it, like any other modern OS prefers more.

It's grease lightening on my work laptop with 3gb and my work desktop with 2gb. Boot time on my quad core machine desktop machine is less than 30 seconds.

I have a older laptop that can run 7 with it's older core 2 and 1gb of ram without issue.

[Noger]

CommanderJameson said:

Noger said:

CommanderJameson said:

Noger said:

The question was "Windows 7 or Mac". *OR* Do you understand that bit ? Or are you a bit "slow" ?

More specifically, iMac vs Windows 7 All in One.

Easy.

iMac, and install Windows 7 on it, Boot Camp stylee.

OS X for work, Windows 7 for play.

>Happy CJ<

But no touchscreen goodness. Although the magic mouse looks good.

I think the touchscreen would be a novelty that would wear thin after a while.

The problem with a touchscreen on a desktop computer, from a UI point of view, is "gorilla arm syndrome".

Or can you unhitch it and use it as a tablet? That'd be nifty.

Yes. Depends how close you are to the screen. I wouldn't want to type a 20 page document with an onscreen keyboard. But for casual browsing etc I think it works.

[thehawk]

Still waiting for someone to give me some genuine, sustainable use-cases for the touch screen computers using todays software.

[GnuBee]

thehawk said:

Still waiting for someone to give me some genuine, sustainable use-cases for the touch screen computers using todays software.

It's very context sensitive functionality.

In the average workplace running standard productivity applications it's very hard to think of a good reason for people to prod the screen.

For industrial control in harsh environments then it's a viable technology but then that's already been acknowledged and is in widespread use.

I'm not convinced that, at present, it's a technology worth focusing on to the extent that it would seem MS currently are - it all reminds me of the pen/ink API stuff that was crammed into Windows sometime ago because we were all on the verge of a paradigm shift in the way we used computers away from keyboards and mice and towards tablets and pens.

[thehawk]

GnuBee said:

thehawk said:

Still waiting for someone to give me some genuine, sustainable use-cases for the touch screen computers using todays software.

It's very context sensitive functionality.

In the average workplace running standard productivity applications it's very hard to think of a good reason for people to prod the screen.

For industrial control in harsh environments then it's a viable technology but then that's already been acknowledged and is in widespread use.

I'm not convinced that, at present, it's a technology worth focusing on to the extent that it would seem MS currently are - it all reminds me of the pen/ink API stuff that was crammed into Windows sometime ago because we were all on the verge of a paradigm shift in the way we used computers away from keyboards and mice and towards tablets and pens.

Sorry, I really meant to say in an office or consumer situation. Plenty of uses in industry and commercially.

But with Windows, Linux etc and most programs out there there simply isn't a point to having touch screen on a desktop, it's a gimmick.

[HiRich]

Touchscreen has merit in any situation other than desktop, although that is still far and away the leading usage even for laptops. So touchscreen begins to appeal anywhere that a physical keyboard gets in the way.

A big use is therefore where wall-mounted computers offer value:

• Point of Sale
• Display units
• Many industrial process-controlling systems (power plant, brewery, assembly line, etc.)

Tablet PCs also have a lot of potential. A laptop still really needs a surface to sit on (even if that's your knees), whereas a tablet in the crook of your arm gives you total mobility. Opportunities might include:

• Sales staff: Apple Stores (having just realised they have to use Microsoft tills) are moving sales onto iPhones. They will be able to check stock, take orders at the display rather than walk over to a till. The larger screen of a tablet would enable a more visual display (larger product images, GPS positioning in the storeroom (something Amazon would use for stockpicking).
• The same mobility benefits come through in any industrial situation where you want to use the computer on the move - line supervisors, maintenance engineers, etc. Back at their desk thay can always plug in a physical keyboard.
• Display guides: You go to a museum and pick up a tablet. as you walk round, as well as viewing items you get a full multi-media experience tailored to exactly what you are viewing. You can apply this to many activities (sitting in the grandstand you can wirelessly pick up the TV feed and timing charts.
• I can even see uses in the home. Imagine that you use a tablet rather than a Mac Mini for your multimedia hub. It rests in a hub. To call up video or audio, you gain an instantaneous screen, and flick through your iTunes albums in coverflow. You can take it to the sofa as you watch TV. You can programme your PVR (and do it without losing the live screen on the TV, so you can still be watching the news). You can carry it around the house.

Theoretically, the sky is the limit. Even if you think of the tablet as a super-sized iPhone, we've already seen the potential of that little device beyond just phone and internet. The added power and usability (with a larger display/touchscreen) opens many new opportunities.

The "typewriter" concept of PC will not go away, but there are many opportunities for a truly portable, walkabout device. It may be some years before the killer apps and the GUI are really sorted, but I believe the day is coming. Microsoft may be pushing it a bit much (it's not the only reason to upgrade from Vista), but it makes a change for them to be ahead of the curve for once - at least until the mythical Apple Tablet makes its bow. In fact, that might be the tipping point - us fanboys buy it because Steve told us to, then we realise quite how effective a device it is.

[st_files]

I have an iMac at home (have done for 3.5 years now) and use a PC at work. I use the home one purely for music, internet, downloads and a couple of spreadsheets. Its ultra reliable, extremely quick and very very simple to use. Its never crashed or frozen and has the wonderful ability to recognise whatever item you plug via a usb without having to download drivers which I always seemed to have to do on the PC.

The only area I can see the iMac being weaker is it doesnt have as many games but I'm not using it for that. Plus you're paying slightly more.

[Ordinary_Chap]

HiRich said:

GPS positioning in the storeroom (something Amazon would use for stockpicking).

Hows that work without clear skies?

[HiRich]

Ordinary_Chap said:

HiRich said:

GPS positioning in the storeroom (something Amazon would use for stockpicking).

Hows that work without clear skies?

Don't ask me , I still work with a fuzzy-logic analogue reference sytem (aka a map and a pair of eyes).

(Actually, perhaps a better solution might be triangulating off wireless points in the warehouse?)

[6655321]

HiRich said:

Ordinary_Chap said:

HiRich said:

GPS positioning in the storeroom (something Amazon would use for stockpicking).

Hows that work without clear skies?

Don't ask me , I still work with a fuzzy-logic analogue reference sytem (aka a map and a pair of eyes).

(Actually, perhaps a better solution might be triangulating off wireless points in the warehouse?)

What's wrong with Row 6, unit 3, shelf H?

[Ordinary_Chap]

HiRich said:

Ordinary_Chap said:

HiRich said:

GPS positioning in the storeroom (something Amazon would use for stockpicking).

Hows that work without clear skies?

Don't ask me , I still work with a fuzzy-logic analogue reference sytem (aka a map and a pair of eyes).

(Actually, perhaps a better solution might be triangulating off wireless points in the warehouse?)

GPS normally requires clear skies to lock onto different satellites (normally min of 3) and generally won't work in building although it does sometimes. It definately won't work in a steel building though like a warehouse.

Triangulating off access points wouldn't be acurate or work very well in a warehouse I suspect.

[TonyToniTone]

They use rfid tags

[Zumbruk]

cyberface said:

Zumbruk said:

Fittster said:

jimothy said:

Fittster said:

jimothy said:

I work in IT and out of a team of 10, 9 of us have Macs at home because we want an easy life

I'd love to know where that stat comes from.

Read it again. The team I am in, consisting of 10 people, 9 of us have macs at home. This team includes developers, testers and support. Not a stat, I'm certainly not claiming 9 out of 10 IT people use macs, I am describing my team. And to clarify, we're doing windows development at work. There's a guy on here who used to be part of our team, not long after he left he got a new laptop.
Guess what make he got...

Well if it helps I work for a huge IT consultancy and no one I know of has a Mac. Quite frankly if I can get a telnet window to the servers I really don't give a monkeys about the O/S.

If you can get a telnet window to anything on "my" network, someone's going to be having a deep and meaningful conversation with their boss about security.

Is that a challenge????

Naah, I meant the plonker who's fired up a telnet daemon on a server rather than the plonker who then connects to it.