Im a perenial believer in MS Windows. But I do have a
Mac... An old 2004 vintage Dual G5 that I run Final Cut Pro
on to edit video. It still works just fine for what I need,
but I cannot run any newer FCP versions past 5.1.7 as they
only run on the new Intel platform Mac... But I had that at
work and its a really nice machine... The hardware is a work
of art!
Machines of any kind are not obsolete until they stop doing
what you want to do!
Disclaimer... Im a contester. For logging, I have not found
anything in either Mac OS or Linux that can beat either
WinTest or N1MM for functionality. So the decision is
pretty easy for me... Windows is the OS of choice at W4LT,
running N1MM Logger 98% of the time.
As far as hardware age, I have a slew of cast off from work
Dell GX280's. These were literally thrown away from my
former employer, and I gave them a good home. They are
circa 2004 vintage with 3.4Ghz hyperthreading Pentium 4's
and 2GB of RAM and a 40GB HD. They have dual monitor cards
and GigE LAN, too. This is what I use for both my personal
machine, the machine that runs my WinRadio, my local Cluster
using VE7CC and both my wife and my own personal desktop,
each dedicated to their own "purpose".
These "older" boxes all run Win XP SP3 (one is running Win7,
another one is slated to run Win8 (when my MS employed
Brother in Law gets me a copy) and they do everything I have
ever needed to do. These boxes run Elecraft apps just fine,
do rig control with MicroHam uRouter and run N1MM perfectly.
These can be purchased on the internet from several "off
lease" vendors for the cost of the OS... You basically get
the hardware for free. Our club also runs 5 of these
machines in all 5 operating positions and has done so for
three years now with no complaints.
Before you go and spend $3k on a new Mac, consider spending
$170 (or less, in my case, $0) for some off lease hardware
that usually comes with a licensed copy of the OS and see
how that works for you. It works for me here and at our
Multi-2 operation at the Tampa Amateur Radio Club just fine.
I strongly recommend that you get a machine and dedicate it
to Ham Radio applications... This is the way to go not only
for safety, but for maximum flexibility. Hardware is
getting so cheap now that its real easy to use dedicated
machines for dedicated uses.
And you end up getting to be pretty good at setting up
workgroups while youre at it!
Lu Romero - W4LT
Tampa - K3/P3/K1
Riding out the two storms... Issac and the RNC!
Message: 26
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2012 11:40:10 -0400
From: "Joe Subich, W4TV" <li...@subich.com>
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Windows vs Mac
To: elecraft@mailman.qth.net
Message-ID: <5037a05a.4000...@subich.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> Mountain Lion will not run on machines that have a 32-bit
EFI (bios).
> It has nothing to do with the processor type. My going on
5 year old
> Core 2 Duo Mac Book Pro runs just fine with 10.8. My 2007
Quad Core
> Mac Pro does not, because it has a 32-bit (rather than
64-bit) EFI.
> Time passes, technology changes. You might be able to load
Windows 8
> on some ancient machine, but getting it to run in any
useful way is a
> completely different issue. And realistically, most
computer systems
> are getting pretty ancient at the 5 year mark.
Windows XP was a screamer on a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo, Vista was a
hotrod
on that processor, Windows 7 is the most stable operating
system ever
on that platform ... all on a four year old Mac Mini that
Apple will
not support with Mountain Lion. Even the Windows 8 preview
runs just
fine on another system with similar processor/RAM although
it could
probably benefit from another couple GB of RAM.
I certainly do not consider those systems "ancient" by any
means *but*
it means that I will not be running OS-X on anything for a
long time.
I will probably wipe the Apple operating systems from the
Mac Minis
in the house and convert them to Windows 7 or Windows 8 and
enjoy the
far greater choice of amateur software as well.
73,
... Joe, W4TV
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