Generic Horizen Ramblings
Posted : 19 Nov 2003
Welcome to the latest technology and Apple news and views from Horizen. I have been pretty busy lately (moving house soon) and have only been emailing out when major stuff has been happening. Like today ! I hope to update the Mac and PC on-line price lists this week as they are both getting increasingly out of date. Until they are updated pls check my previous email updates as they include all the latest pricing.
Big update today and lots of info I have
splurged it out all at once. Excuse me. Hic !
---
Apple continues with rapid fire updates. This week : 20" iMac, a new dual processor G5, price drops and software updates. See below for detailed info. With prices dropping in the PC world quite dramatically over the last 12 months, it is good to see Apple continuing to update it's own range and although it has always adopted a premium brand pricing policy, stay relatively in touch with PC pricing. The eMac range with prices from $1,349 inc GST are just about the best value products from Apple ever. As always you need to add more RAM but otherwise they are great out of the box. 2nd hand pricing is pretty good also and old Mac's hold their prices much better than PC's.
I do quite a lot of PC work these days in addition to my normal Mac stuff and it is interesting to compare and contrast the 2 different platforms. I think it can be summed up as simply as this. Mac's cost a bit more but just work and have effectively no virus or security concerns. Nothing particularly wrong with PC's, in fact Windows XP is a good OS. But the ongoing minor glitches with hardware and software with PC's can drive you to distraction and the ever present trauma of having to keep protected against virus and security issues is a real drama. Most businesses big enough to have IT staff have locked down their networks and impose severe restrictions on local users wrt viruses, etc. All of which comes at a substantial cost, effort and inconvenience to both administrators and users. So while Mac's seem more expensive they generally are actually more cost effective as the infrastructure required to support them is less. When you factor in substantial software licensing costs from MS this becomes even more evident. See below (after everything else) for 3 personal anecdotes relating to these issues.
Initial glitches with external
FW800 drive cases and the built-in data encryption in OS X 10.3 have pretty
much been sorted with the release
of 10.3.1 update.
All drive case manufacturers have updated the firmware on their drive
cases and all currently shipping drives will work fine. Good to have
those issues
resolved. Definitely something to be said for not being an earlier
adopter I reckon. Let everyone else find the bugs ! There have been sporadic
reports of other firewire bugs with 10.3 but there seems to be nothing
widespread
and the causes are likely to be unrelated to 10.3. More info to follow
as (if)
it comes to light.
Apple professional multi-media apps, Final Cut Pro 4, Shake 3 and DVD
Studio Pro 2 have been optimised to fully support the G5 processor.
These are
free updates available via software update or downloadable from Apple
or version
tracker. Bluetooth software has also been updated.
Apple Australia has a series of promotions offers at the moment. See here for details :
http://www.apple.com.au/promo/
The best ones are for Adobe In Design 2.0 and Final Cut Express. But have a look and see if anything tickles your interest.
Bench testing programs indicate only slight improvements of the single processor G5's over recent model dual processor G4's. In other words if you already had a dual processor 867MHz or above G4 there seemed to be little performance advantage in getting a G5,just for the sake of having a G5 unless you went for the dual processor model. Now with the price point of a dual processor G5 down to $4,400 inc GST from $5,500 the purchase of a G5 becomes a lot more attractive for existing G4 owners looking to upgrade and get a substantial performance boost.
iPods continue to sell well, especially with an ongoing nation wide advertising blitz. If you haven't seen, or listened, to an iPod yet, do yourself a favour and check one out. Amazing sound. Really. Best product in its niche by a long, long way. Sony, Dell and Samsung have recently released or are about to release iPod clones but the original is still the best. In combination with iTunes software, music sharing over networks, enormous capacity, outstanding build quality and excellent design it really is one of the best things that Apple have ever released. At home I have my music library on my G4 and share this library over the network to my PC and the kids' G3 with iTunes. No apparent performance hit and I only need to have 1 copy of my music files (apart from backups of course). Get your kid's (or yourself) an iPod for Christmas and they will love you forever (or a day or so anyway).
More and more people are integrating computers with their entertainment needs at home. With the advent of cheap and fast wireless technology and even faster networks you can do some amazing things at home with your computer. Speaker technology has advanced substantially the last year or so and you can get some excellent speakers for under $200. I am particularly impressed with the Monsoon, Altec Lansing and Logitech ranges.
Broadband Internet adoption has increased dramatically over the last year with most businesses finally getting it and a larger proportion of home users also jumping on the bandwagon. Some people find it hard to justify but when you consider that a typical modem dialup account costs, say $300 per annum and if you call up to check email approx twice a day then you are typically going to be paying around $50 per month for modem Internet access. More if you are a heavy user or get dropouts. ADSL and cable plans now start at $50-$60 per month. For speeds often 10 times faster (or more) than 56K modem and for only a fraction more the cost - well, what are you waiting for ! Guaranteed that your use of the Internet will change dramatically when it becomes a pleasure to use rather than a pain.
I have recently found a good quality (and flexible) ADSL provider after being unhappy with the major players (Optus and Big Pond). They have a wide range of plans to suit all needs.
A quick summary of ADSL plans
:
256K download/64K upload, 1 GB limit : $55/month inc
GST
256K download/64K upload, 4 GB limit : $70/month
*256K download/64K upload, no limit : $75/month
512K download/128K upload, 4
GB limit : $85/month inc GST
512K download/128K upload, 10 GB limit : $99/month
*512K download/128K upload, no limit : $99/month
Line connection $119 inc GST
Single port ADSL modem/router $165 inc GST
* No limit plans have contention ratios and are for metropolitan regions only.
Contact me for further info on ADSL and networking. When you consider that a wireless network costs around $800 for 2 computers or a fixed cable CAT 6 Ethernet network can be setup for around $175 per point, it is worth considering networking your house and sharing your Internet and files with the rest of the household. Gone are the days when houses just had 1 computer, I find it increasingly common for houses to have 2, 3 or even more computers. With a wireless network you can roam around anywhere within 50m of your base station. Lounge by the pool, etc... all with Internet access. Although some would rather leave their computers at work, many more have embraced the digital lifestyle. I have some home users with servers even, supplying 3-4 computers with info, Internet access and shared resources like scanners and printers on both Ethernet and wireless networks.
On a similar vein, home automation
while still somewhat expensive and needing careful planning
and implementation
is becoming
more affordable
each year.
Want to program the lighting in your house, have
the blinds go down when the sun is out, set the
toaster to popup each
morning,
play
music at
random times
to make the house seem lived in while you are
out? These things are readily achievable.
---
Anecdote 1
I used to do all the Mac administration for Motorola
in Melbourne for several years until they got
rid of all their
Macs (long
story related
to Steve
Jobs stopping the Mac clones). They had 5 or
6 professional IT PC admins looking
after their servers and and PC's. I used to
look after all the Mac's. They had around the same
number of Mac's
as they
did PC's.
I was
there roughly
1 day a week looking after the Mac users. Biggest
problem they had was with their
security and virus software. Caused all sorts
of glitches with the Mac's and PC's and slowed
them
down dramatically.
Which
is why I
have never
liked encryption
as it causes all sorts of issues which I wont
go into here. Anyway you work it out. 1 guy
working 1 day a
week supporting
the same
number of
computers as 5-6 full time guys on PC (although
they did have range of servers to
look
after). What would the cost in labour saving
be
to go to Mac's... And Mac's with OS X are FAR
more reliable
than
the Mac OS of
those days.
Anecdote 2
Monash Uni, Chemistry department, 400 computers
- 250 PC's, 150 Mac's. 1 guy (not me) looking
after the lot.
Yes he
was busy,
although a
lot of the
staff,
etc. were self starters with computers and
could do much of their own support stuff.
He spent
less than
half the
support time per
Mac than
he did per
PC. And he had all the figures down in black
and white to support
him. He was
that sort of guy also... Again what is the
support cost? Look beyond the initial
purchase price and what do you see. Most
PC support staff have NO idea about Mac's but
continually
spout
uninformed
fear,
lies and
innuendo
about Mac's.
Must be worried about their jobs and department
budgets or something if they bought Mac's...
Some of the
stuff I have
heard them come
out with
! Many
really have no idea what they are talking
about wrt Mac's. So don't you listen to
them either ...
Anecdote 3
Local PC user, Intel Motherboard, Intel processor,
Windows XP Home OS. Internet explorer glitches
and wont open.
This is a
problem
cos all Windows
updates
have to come through IE. Can use Netscape
for browsing but cant get updates unless
IE works.
Reload IE
with latest update
- no
change.
Reload and
update Windows - no change. Get out my
best PC expert, fiddles for 2 hrs - no
change. Hmm. What next? Call Microsoft.
Wait 30 minutes. Wait some more. Get a tech
from MS, pay for the privilege, fiddle
some more - no change. Ok, give up. Backup, reformat
and
restore data,
major job
as there
is lots of
software installed. 6 hrs consulting to
setup and restore
everything. And I have
several
more along
the lines of this problem. For many reasons
this just doesn't happen with Mac's, would
take a
far shorter
time to pinpoint
and much
quicker to reload.
And as
for the headache of trying to find where
MS hides their mail data and back it up
for reloading.
Grrrr.
Ok I'm done bashing PC's. Truce....