It's difficult comparing disparate architectures.
As it happens, I have here two machines of similar vintage. One is a
Sawtooth. It has a 400 MHz G4 on its 100 MHz bus, 256MB SDRAM, and a
10GB HDD. ATI Rage 128 in the AGP socket.
The other is a late model Asus Socket 7 machine. It has a 500 MHz AMD
K6-2 on its 100 MHz bus, 512 MB SDRAM, and a 10 GB HDD. ATI Rage 128 in
the AGP socket.
So the PC gets TWICE the RAM, but maybe has a slower disk interface.
Both of the cpus implement some form of vector architecture, though I
think Altivec is neater and more efficient. And there must be
differences in the cache configs (which might favour the G4).
What I notice is this:
With Tiger newly installed on the Sawtooth, it hums along nicely. The
machine just feels brisk, responsive, and useable. (I'm supposed to
sell it, but I'm strongly tempted not to.)
With XP SP2 on the PC, it feels like a dog. Everything is like swimming
through treacle. My sense is that it was okay with SP1, but SP2 has
overloaded everything (what with - background security checks?) so I'm
constantly waiting for the machine. This is not a pleasant machine to
use.
But I have other x86s of similar vintage running Linux and BSD, which
all hum along nicely.
I think there's a problem here. I think the problem is called Windows
XP.
GWW
On 8 Jun 2005, at 16:45, Tom Tubman wrote:
It's a very risky move, I think. Apple is a hardware vendor. It needs
to persuade people that its expensive Pentium boxes are worth paying
more for than everyone else's cheap generic Pentium boxes. The only
real difference will be the OS. This will be a hard sell.
Basically, you're saying that people buy a Mac because there's a G5 or
G4 inside of it, not because of Mac OS X or the iApps.
I have to strongly disagree with you. Most people buy because they
don't want Windows (and it's malware) or they think Apple's UI & iApps
are cute/easy to use. Possibly some power users (Gfx?) use Macs
because of the actual hardware underneath (Altivec), but I'll still
bet that it's either legacy ("Gfx was always the Mac's strength, so
I'm buying another Mac"), or they get more done with Apple's UI.
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