Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire New computers. Errrrrr

Haa, I guess our IT contractor raked us over the coals and blew smoke up our asses. Our new PC's are cool though. They're not a "Tower", they're a little tiny box that's 7"x 7"x 1 1/2" and really fast. It's pretty amazing. It's nice to know that you can still get Windows 7 though.

Lessee, I was about to buy an Apple in the early 80's when Apple decided to sell only in boutique stores and the price went WAY up. Then Apple became a closed system: you could only buy hardware from Apple, the hardware they thought you should have at their sole source price. The software worked in the way they thought it should, with Windows you have options. From what I've read they still have a "users are idiots, we'll protect them from making bad choices" attitude in approving apps for smart phones.

That's why their machines were disparagingly called "appliances." You get what Apple thinks you should have that runs the way Apple thinks it should run. The up side is they do indeed make good appliances for un-tech savvy. Makes them easier to set up and run for most people and less virus susceptible etc. Techies don't want or need the limitations. Or the higher prices.

Way back instead of Apple II I followed the Tandy Color Computer line with Motorola chips like the 6809E MCU, Much better architecture and instruction set than the competitors. And hacked my brains out, both hardware and software. Like I added a pair of generic floppies for less than an apple drive and I didn't have to deal with their weird proprietary disk encoding scheme.

But I "soured" on Apple decades ago so I may be all wrong now.

StoneCutter,

Yerch! Sounds like a thin client system. Don't like them at all even if you have enough server support that they don't bottleneck at high demand.

Once in a while you can find win 7 but be careful because microsoft keeps trying to update it to win 10.

You are making all excellent points and I will comment on them from my perspective/experience. It is true that the Apple system is a closed system, but it does come with a lot of benefits. The primary one is that they are dogmatic about stuff actually working with their hardware and software. If you want to offer something within the Apple system then it has to be compatible to the nth degree. This makes it far, far easier on the end user that has a life away from dicking with computers and integration all day.

This attitude about "knowing what is best for you" isn't solely on Apple's shoulders. Microsoft is one of the worst offenders with this. Take the "tile" format for Windows 8. Or any of their other major operating system upgrades. They want to change they way you find things and utilize their software because they "know what is best for you." They get a lot of pushback when they do this stuff.

The look and feel familiarity of an operating system is pretty much the Holy Grail in software design. This is where Apple actually listened to their end users as has Linux. They both state that the last thing they want to do is to change the look and feel. A lot of what Apple does is in the background. I can say with certainty that I have never had to spend a lot of time with anyone that has converted to an Apple explaining how to move around or navigate. They just seem to pick it up naturally.

A lot has changed over the last 20 years with Apple. Even more has changed over the last 20 years with Windows. The one thing that seems pretty constant is the look and feel for Apple. I know a lot of IT people that have Macs at home simply because they want a relaxing computer experience. Not one that they constantly have to mess with. They do that enough to suit anyone on Windows PCs.

The expense of Macs really isn't an issue if you do a straight across comparison. They are almost identical in price to a comparable PC. What you don't have is the ongoing expense of antivirus software, downtime, and general frustration with integration or the fear of a Window operating system change like has been a lot of this thread.

It's been my understanding that the free Microsoft Windows 10 upgrades ended close to a year ago. Since the free period ended PC owners with prior operating systems have to physically request and pay for Windows 10 operating system upgrades if they haven't already downloaded it. Doesn't make much sense that they'd still be trying to automatically upgrade without charging.

My son has a MS Surface. Swears he loves it - best thing since sliced cheese. But.... has returned it twice for a replacement and two other times for repair due to various failures. I also hear him swearing a lot over numerous glitches. Seems he just likes the Kool-Aid more than the machine. I have had a Lenovo Think Pad with Vista 32 bit that has never had a glitch been thinking of loading Linux on it to learn a new OS.

I've read that in time, Win 7 will be Win 10 through a long series of updates, piece at a time. I don't know if it's true but it wouldn't surprise me.

Valid points in so far as Apple makes a good appliance, for people who just want to do the usual things. I like to mess with electrons. I will differ on one point, maybe two::



More like Microsoft wants to keep you captive I think. Having had to dig through 8 Metro I found that the familiar OS was still there, hiding under that miserable GUI. My take is they wanted a universal GUI for all devices from smart phones up. Gee, that looks like my desktop, laptop, tablet and even my smart 'frige. I'll buy it! Microsoft rules the world. Remember oh, about Windows '95, when Gates et al. wanted Internet Explorer to be the universal interface? Yeah, people would forget how to access stuff except through IE. Fortunately it sucked badly enough to fail miserably.

The latest chapter is cloud/lease software and app stores (usually you can find open source for much of that) to make a continuing revenue stream. (Inevitably you have to effectively grant admin status, like your IT department has and I'd not do that.) So it's 'rule the world' and reap the profits.


Mmmm dunno. There's Firefox and their new every other day release schedule so they can more closely copy Chrome. The real downside here is code bloat for things you don't want and deleting/messing with configuration options, dropping plugins etc. Time better spent making it faster. People bitch about GUI changes but people like to bitch even if it's a good change just because they can.

For operating systems personally I don't worry much about look and feel so long as the structure is logical, like hierarchical, and lets me get to what I want easily. Like a flavor of Mint, somewhat different than Windows but logically constructed. Easy to adapt. In fact some ways better.

Oh yeah,

That's fine for them, I'd feel stifled. I'll use everything from desktop icons to command line to get to things, depending. But I'm old, I even like to fool with regedit.

Enjoyable conversation.

Microsoft says they will end all support including security updates for Windows 7 in mid January, 2020 so in less than three years they'll just completely walk away from W-7 anyway. They did the same with Vista back in April of this year.

Well
I finally got one up and running
A Lenovo 710 Yoga 2 in 1 I was hoping for a couple of good looking girls to come with it so I could watch them do Yoga but I am out of luck with that one.

I found out one problem was Earthlink my provider they only give me 1.2 MBPS max.
and at present time Earthlink is only putting out around 750 KBPS Their support told me that they could not do any better than that.
I think the new computer can not even read that slow. I have fought hard just to get a connection.

I am breaking down and getting a New provider and Cable they say they will give me a minimum of 75MBPS and up to 100MBPS
They install everything tomorrow .

Wish me Luck I need all I can get.

Count your blessings. You could've ended up with a Lenovo 710 Yogi - nothing but bad jokes and baseball hitting tips.

I've made the transition from Mac to PC and back. I spend no time cleaning registries, updating, updating, virus scanning, malware scanning, etc, etc, etc. With my MacAir, no physical hard drive to bugger up. Almost instant startup (lordy, do I love that part).

The only thing we STILL have problems with in the office is the WiFi part of the printers, but that seems to be the norm for all printers on all networks from what I read.

Still some limitations with software availabilty, but so far we can make everything work. Can't see myself ever going back to PC's.

Man Actually have a service that works is great
hit a button and zip hit another button and zip
I am going to get spoiled.