Post #1,835
7/15/01 12:06:01 AM
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Well thats it - time for some big changes !!!!!
1. Dumped Windows notebook for an Apple iBook for wife
2. Dumped Net-bloody-Scape 6.01 (bloated trash) for Opera
3. Purchased VirtualPC for Mac & about to purch for Intel as well
Details ......
1. Wife wanted a new PC - was fed up with her Win98 notebook and all the hell associated with using it & sharing a printer with me on the home network. At first we looked at Sony Vaio with transmeta chip & Windows - looked great but then it dawned on me the 2/3rds of her frustration is the Windows environment so I started looking at Apple G3 iBook - yesterday we bought one (was cheaper that matching Vaio) & thus far after 24hrs, she is very happy with it & we are both impressed at how easy everything is to do. For the 1st time ever she was able to install all the software & devices & didn't need constant help from me.
Loading software is very easy (so far).
Adding drivers is very easy (so far).
The 1 button mouse is easy for wife to work (she never quite knew the what & when 2nd button use)
Even bought her a cheap (under US$ 125 - but fantastic) Epson 680 Color inkjet - damn thing prints as good and as fast as my big office MFC unit that cost 5 x as much. Wife printed a colour photo on 720dpi paper & it was flawless. Also so easy on the iBook. She was never able to do this on Windows due to the implicit complexity. Our Sony Cybershot digital camera plugs right into the iBook USB port & she knows how to access it. A 'too-hard' task on my Windows PCs.
2. Was initially optomistic when Netscape 6.01 came out so have used it for 2 months. But the more I used it the more lock-ups - waits - frustration - anger etc: etc: - so last week I switched to Opera which lives up to its name as the fastest browser in the world - have kept a copy of Netscape 4.76 for accessing banks that go squiffy with Opera (am assuming is due to security & javascript issues) - I flatly refuse to use MSIE for anything other than testing - it is ok execept for its bad habit of letting VB viruses in - esp with MS mail system.
3. Got CONNECTIX VirtualPC V.4 for $US100 locally (Mac version) it seems to be a very good product & will allow me to run Linux & a number of diff & concurrent virtual Intel PCs (Win98 & Win2K & Linux if ever needed) on the iBook.
I want to get a copy for my Win2000 machines as I have discovered that important software I need (MF Cobol Workbench) wont install & run on Win2000 unless I shell out 1000s of $ for a Win2000 version - is cheaper & simpler to buy VirtualPC and install Win98 or WinNT as a Virtual PC and install the older MFCobol Wbench under that - memory & disk are cheap & I have 900mhz processor so I might as well exploit it. Am wanting to try Linux on this config.
PS we are sticking with OS 9.1 but have dual installed OS X - will wait until it is stable before deciding to switch from 9.1 to X on a more permanent basis.
Cheers
Doug Marker
Will let you know how this all turns out.
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Post #1,838
7/15/01 9:28:28 AM
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Yay from a fellow iBook owner who hasnt PC'd in 5 weeks :)
On and on and on and on,
and on and on and on goes John.
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Post #1,870
7/15/01 11:55:28 PM
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Ah, the Apple mouse... (a bit OT)
>>The 1 button mouse is easy for wife to work (she never quite knew the what & when 2nd button use)
You've come up with the exact reason Apple went with the single button in the first place. They did test multi-button mice, but found that testers would hit the wrong button and/or not be sure what each button did.
Sounds like you're having a great time with it, though. Be sure to let us know if you have any questions or problems.
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Post #1,874
7/16/01 1:56:32 AM
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Re: Ah, the etc: - Installed Win98 under VPC
Must admit though that wife wasn't impressed
"Why did we buy an Apple if you are going to install windows on it - are you messing up my nice new machine ? - I don't want it on there !!!"
I assured her I was just trying out Virtual PCs and that there were one or two (etc: :) ) programs that she needed that we hadn't bought mac versions of (we did reluctantly buy the Mac Office 2001 set - Open Office for Mac will be for Mac OS X & is not ready yet). She accepted that !! :)
Anyway I installed the Virtual PC software (hereafter refered to as VPC) and it comes with one VPC set up for Dos2000. It went in very quickly & the config stuff is pretty clear & straight forward.
I then created another VPC for Win98 & in the config told it that it had a bootable CD - I booted the VPC & mounted the Win98 CD & sure enough booted it & installed it just like normal. It allows me to run Win98 just as expected. Perf is acceptable (had allocated 128MB of the available 256 to the W98 VPC). VPC allows me to config the Win98 window as 640 x 480, 800 x 600 & 1024 x 768 (which is mac normal). When the Win98 window is same size as mac's you can hide the Win98 window when you want to go back to mac. I ended up setting Win98 for 800 x 600 & that works fine.
It took me a couple of hours to do the install.
Now to try RedHat & perhaps WinMe (though am not sure what I can do with WinMe)
I will be trying a WinNT install at some time. I might even try that Mandrake install that I just couldn't get to run on a real PC - maybe it will work on VPC.
Am interested to see if Win98 can network & print as normal (VirtualPC docs assure me it can - says the VPC can see all the same peripherals that the mac does, incl sound etc:)
You can drag & drop from one desktop to the other & can hide the VPC desktop. Also the VPC sees all the disk the Mac has. When allocating disks you don't have to specify a size - they are dynamic & only take the space used. The software tells you that each disk is as big as the original hdisk.
I think that VPC would be best on a G4 based mac. VPC v4 is said to be specially optomised for G4 proc. Wife's iBook is a 500mhz G3 PowerPC proc.
Cheers
Doug
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Post #1,904
7/16/01 10:03:45 AM
7/16/01 10:06:04 AM
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VPC and Macs
Actually, VPC is a good way to run Windows, since it emulates "ideal" Wintel hardware which you rarely find the real world. Thus Windows is noticeably more stable under VPC than in real life. (In my experience, anyway.)
Edited by tjsinclair
July 16, 2001, 10:06:04 AM EDT
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Post #1,945
7/16/01 4:24:17 PM
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Most interesting comment!
If that is somewhat 'demonstrably true' - I mean ~ that someone has taken the time to say, try to crash BOTH native base-98-load on Intel + identical nastiness to an Apple running VPC (??)
WHY - surely that information could.. be a final nail in coffin - for the very many who have had it with Windoze, especially their licensing - and quite irrationally but Most-sanely: with Billy n'Bally!
No?
ie IF.. you have this One or maybe Three Windoze aps which simply - you must use AND you despise having-to: how much of a hardware-cost premium (+ VPC and other Apple-only additional s/ware) might you be willing to pay, to become Free At Last from the entire Evil Empire?
Linux is of course the direction many believe, hope might accomplish the same end via creeping gradualism, refinement of StarOffice et al - constant fixing of the intentionally sabotaged file formats and other lock-ins..
But Linux scares the folks who most need surcease from the "up"grades and don't know shit about ANY of the platforms - and haven't much understanding of such issues as, "ownership of your own data VS M$ ownership of it all" and related conundra.
Apple should also appeal to those thoroughly steeped in the religious dogma of Capitalism: a place to 'own' the logo AND a place to BLAME - if/when it goes wrong. (Even - a left-handed way to dis them long-haired Commyunist Linux Loosers AND STILL: diss the Evil Empire!)
So IF.. there are such data (re stability, compatibility = demonstrable overall performance of VPC on Apple) - should this not be [ugh] fucking marketed to a fare-thee well ???
(I can already think of two local businesses who might want to run with this.. after a little investigation)
I mean: THIS is NEWS! Ain't it ??
Ashton
who still remembers the resentment generated by the insufferable young-twit Jobs -- now merely an insufferable older-twit and.. heavier. And especially: the arrogant pricing and *service when they thought They had a 'monopoly' in GUIs (all stolen from Xerox-Parc as all know).
(And Andy et al will describe how it was all along - to BE an Apple Dealer. I'll bet that THIS feeling has hardly disappeared, out there?)
Always - it's a trade-off when dealing with the mercantile mind, the greedy entrepreneur: ALL of them. {sigh}
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Post #1,948
7/16/01 4:43:58 PM
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Ideal Wintel hardware
What exactly is "Ideal Wintel Hardware" anyway?
None of the Packard Bell or Compaq or Dell or Gateway boxes, I take it?
Just name brand hardware with brand names on it, not generic cheap knock-off cheapie PC Clones that nobody knows where to get support from as the OEM didn't put their name on the hardware or address or phone number in the manual (which is written in broken-English anyway)?
If you mean that VPC emulates ABit Motherboards (Award BIOS), with TNT2 AGP display adapters, 3Com network cards, Creative Labs Sound Blaster 128 cards, etc instead of the Niehan-Deska Generic PC crap that nobody can ID to find new drivers for, or the proprietary Name Brand systems that are Packard Bell Reborn? Is that what you mean?
The good "Ideal Wintel Hardware" should run fine with any Windows version, and not suffer from hardware bugs or problems with the drivers.
Even if you have "Ideal Wintel Hardware" or an emulator that emulates "Ideal Wintel Hardware" you still have to put up with DLL-Hell, and other stuff that the software suffers from. Hardware is only like half of the issues.
| "I can see if I want anything done right around here, I'll have to do it myself!" | Moe Howard |
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Post #1,963
7/16/01 6:40:33 PM
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Agreed
HW is only part of the story. DLL Hell is still a real possibility. (But remember people are using VPC for only a few apps part of the time. Otherwise why not just buy a PC?)
As for what 'ideal' means, I have no clue. I only know that I ran Win95 for about three years without a single blue screen and discussions with other VPC owners showed they had similar experiences.
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Post #1,979
7/16/01 9:14:28 PM
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I have an idea what Ideal might be.
The most stable Windows 95 installation I ever had was a 486 Vesa Local Bus PC. I had such a beast at work for several years, initially with DOS and Windows 3.1, but I got to upgrade it to Windows 95 during our first forays into supporting Win95 on the LAN, at the time, Banyan VINES.
I never had to re-install it. Ever. And it had numerous beta-issue Windows VINES drivers installed and de-installed. I suspect Microsoft had just such a platform in abundance for developing and testing on. Hence the stability.
Wade.
"All around me are nothing but fakes
Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
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Post #1,905
7/16/01 10:03:49 AM
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VPC
Very nice software. I run it myself on my PowerBook.
Printing - VPC prints through MacOS, so you don't have to set up anything on the Windows side. If you can print from MacOS, you can print from VPC, automagically.
Networking - Similar deal. You can set VPC up to share IPs with MacOS so that no additional configuration is required under Windows. This is handy for a portable, since as you change locations/networks on MacOS, VPC still works just fine.
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Post #2,184
7/18/01 8:39:37 AM
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Re: OPERA - on verge of dumping it - need advice
Two big problems otherwise it seems ok (apart from those bloody flashing ads - yup I know - I pay the fee they go :)
1) Can't seem to print any e-mail - just waste two good bits of paper each time I try.
2) Can't access my banks - they all reject OPERA
Any advice re the printing - I can always use Netscape 4.76 for the banks
Cheers
Doug
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Post #2,285
7/19/01 1:24:57 AM
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Some suggestions.
I don't know what Opera's email client is like because they came out with it after I switched to IMAP and it doesn't support IMAP. My advice is perhaps find another email client? I normally use Eudora - there may be a Mac version of that.
As to the Banks thing: firstly, email them and ask them what you can do to convince them to retool their web pages with proper, compliant HTML. Mention that you are using Opera because it's better than IE and NS6. And at least as compliane as IE. Secondly, try setting Opera's agent string to IE. That also enables a few more Javascript objects for code expecting IE, although it doesn't enable faulty Javascript code.
Wade.
"All around me are nothing but fakes
Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
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Post #2,306
7/19/01 10:42:36 AM
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Eudora for MacOS
There is indeed a version for MacOS. In fact, there are three:
Eudora Lite - freeware, but (to my mind) kind of limited
Eudora Pro (sponsored mode) - also freeware, but a full-blown, nicely designed mail client. The only catch is you have little ads down in the corner of your screen. All the functionality is available.
Eudora Pro (full version) - Same as the previous, but with no ads. I don't remember what I paid, but I was so delighted with Eudora that I paid gladly. (I was looking for a substitute for OE.)
There's also a version that runs on OS X. You can even use your OS 9 settings files so you have seamless transition between 9 and X.
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Post #2,312
7/19/01 11:01:36 AM
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Agent string setting
Does it really enable more objects, or does it just lie to the server to fool the gits that refuse to serve anything but IE?
White guys in suits know best
- Pat McCurdy
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Post #2,395
7/19/01 9:04:49 PM
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Yes, it enables more objects.
But only enough for JavaScript that looks for IE to find what it is looking for.
The information can be a shade tricky to find on the web, but they do document it. From the Help file: "The second thing to note is the "Identify as MSIE 5.0" setting. If enabled, Opera will attempt to execute scripts that are of JScript kind. Also, the browser will respond to document.all and document.id calls if this is what Opera identifies as."
Wade.
"All around me are nothing but fakes
Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
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Post #2,394
7/19/01 9:02:08 PM
7/20/01 11:29:51 AM
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Look at what can be in your future.
[link|http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/20506.html|Workplace Shell]
Well, not exactly. But, if you liked OS/2 Workplace Shell, this might be "just the ticket" when you move on to OSX.
I wonder what Steve Jobs will think of this?
Alex
Edited by a6l6e6x
July 20, 2001, 11:29:51 AM EDT
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Post #2,432
7/20/01 9:40:13 AM
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That's for Windows
It gives Windows similar functionality to the IBM Workplace Shell
It wouldn't surprise me if Brad picked that name due to OSX.
Darrell Spice, Jr.
[link|http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
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Post #2,451
7/20/01 11:32:32 AM
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You're absolutely right!
Sorry about that. I didn't read all the not so fine print.
Alex
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