So a small black box creates more clutter than a MacPro tower?
I'm not ignoring anything, you are just creating excuses now...
So a small black box creates more clutter than a MacPro tower?
I'm not ignoring anything, you are just creating excuses now...
Now you are just trolling.
If I didn't have the Mac Pro tower, there would be a PC tower & A Mac-mini. Which would be more clutter. Think before you post.
eSATA simply stands for external SATA, it is a SATA port that is able to be connected to without having to open up your case. Many new motherboards are starting to include it, and since it is a SATA port, and is run off the SATA chip, it is SATA speed, the only difference is that it is external.
They are the same connecter because they are the same thing. And honestly, in my opinion, your 'need' to spend $2000 more than you had to simply stems from you have some sort of compensatory issue where you couldn't imagine getting a slightly slower system (or even significantly slower, I don't know, you never mentioned the specs of your 2 year old desktop) than what you are currently using to do what? What exactly do you do that needs more oomph than the Core 2 Duo in the Mac Mini.
I am not saying that you are an idiot or anything, I am just looking for more clarification as to why you said you 'had' to get a Mac Pro and almost seemed to blatantly ignore the possibility of getting a Mac Mini, something that you could just tuck out of the way, and never have to actually see.
They are the same connecter because they are the same thing. And honestly, in my opinion, your 'need' to spend $2000 more than you had to simply stems from you have some sort of compensatory issue where you couldn't imagine getting a slightly slower system (or even significantly slower, I don't know, you never mentioned the specs of your 2 year old desktop) than what you are currently using to do what? What exactly do you do that needs more oomph than the Core 2 Duo in the Mac Mini.
I am not saying that you are an idiot or anything, I am just looking for more clarification as to why you said you 'had' to get a Mac Pro and almost seemed to blatantly ignore the possibility of getting a Mac Mini, something that you could just tuck out of the way, and never have to actually see.
That is incorrect. eSATA is a different connector.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esata#External_SATA
It's like you ignored all of my previous posts. Go back and read them.
The connector is a different shape, you are right, but it is the same thing. Much like how the miniDVI port on my MacBook is the same as a full DVI port, but with a different connector.
I did read all your previous posts, best as I could figure, you have some sort of thing against having a small box on your desk that is the computer, and next to that box, a 4 drive hotswappable firewire SATA enclosure. Instead you want a large, heavy, admittedly good looking aluminum box siting on your desk that you have to pop the side off of any time you want to fiddle with drives.
And you failed to answer my question as to exactly what the specs are of your current workstation that make the Mini so undesirable.
sourceninja
Diamond Member
- Mar 8, 2005
- 8,805
- 65
- 91
I personally hate rebooting. Bootcamp would be a major annoyance to check if something works in IE. Sure I could virtualize windows, but I almost never use it, so why waste the space. My separate notebooks for windows and mac work great. External drives are also perfect and my desk is very clean and not cluttered. If you like i could post a picture. Personally, from a business standpoint, it's not about extra cost, that is a consumer issue. You should think about the best possible technical setup to get your job done with the least amount of work, not cost. If we cared about cost, we could change vendors each year to who was the cheapest.
Ask yourself how often will you need to use the mac for support? Then decide if your full time machine needs to be a mac? The answer is probably no. So get a small mini or a macbook and tuck it in the corner until you need it.
It's like you want to make life harder for yourself on purpose. Take it from me, I've worked support for over 10 years, been a system admin for 4 years and now I'm a full time programer and system admin at a college. Even my basement setup blows most businesses out of the water. My house has a full DR setup. I'm a firm believer in one dedicated machine per OS. That is how I run it at work, and how I run it at home (although all my home desktops will soon be mac, and only the servers will be linux).
Oh and have you seen a mac pro case? It's HUGE I would not want one on my desk. Actually, I'm surprised IT people are still using desktops. The advantage of a notebook is huge. My D830 has a docking station at home and work for where ever I need to get work done. Which is a huge drawback on my mac, I wish it had a docking station.
Seriously, from a IT standpoint and as a person who makes these decisions for a large group of people, I'm going to say you have a solution looking for a problem. So, here is my suggestion. Get a mini and put it on top of your tower and remote desktop into it (no kvm required). You are only using it for testing/support, so you do not need power. If you must have dual boot and can't live with that, then get a imac and a small firewire or esata box to hook your hard drives in (a great one was linked on this thread). Then you can dual boot windows/linux/whatever, and hook your drives into a nice easy to access bay. Plus you have LESS clutter then a dell or mac pro.
Or, put the mac somewhere else like a server room and remote to it. It's not like you are going to need it that much. It seems your company doesn't deal primary with macs.
The whole point of getting a Mac is to use it every day and learn how the OS works so I can fix problems as they occur. I'm not sure what impression you got, but having a Mac in a server room I can remote to occasionally to troubleshoot problems is not even close to what I need.
The advantage of a notebook is huge, LOL. I've heard it all before. I'm very thankful that the company I work for hasn't fallen into the ridiculous idea of giving everyone notebook computers to replace desktops. I have a notebook. It's a fine computer, it's about as fast as a fast desktop was 6 years ago, and it will run almost everything I use on my desktop. But there is a reason we don't have 6 year old desktops. It's not because they won't run the software we use, they will- they just run it unacceptably slow. When an employee's time is worth $300/hour, merely waiting 15 minutes for the computer each day quickly adds up and justifies an upgrade.
Desktops are faster, cheaper, easier to maintain and support, and far more theft-resistant than laptops. That said, plenty of our employees have laptops, in addition to desktops. They have a purpose, certainly, they just don't make optimal primary PCs. Anyone who can get by with a laptop as a primary PC could also get by with a 6 year old desktop.
My "problem" is already taken care of, so your suggestions are a waste of time. Your assumptions are mostly false. The Mac isn't going to be used for testing or support, I'm not sure where you got that impression. I am going to start supporting Macs, and to do so effectively I want to use and learn the OS. Using a Mac as my primary computer every day will help me do so.
LCD monitors lose brightness with age. I can already see a huge difference between my 1 year old Dell monitor and the new one I have beside it, at home. I'd hate to be stuck with the same screen on an iMac for 4-5 years. Plus, even the high end iMacs would be a downgrade from what I have now as far as hard drive capacity and ram.
The advantage of a notebook is huge, LOL. I've heard it all before. I'm very thankful that the company I work for hasn't fallen into the ridiculous idea of giving everyone notebook computers to replace desktops. I have a notebook. It's a fine computer, it's about as fast as a fast desktop was 6 years ago, and it will run almost everything I use on my desktop. But there is a reason we don't have 6 year old desktops. It's not because they won't run the software we use, they will- they just run it unacceptably slow. When an employee's time is worth $300/hour, merely waiting 15 minutes for the computer each day quickly adds up and justifies an upgrade.
Desktops are faster, cheaper, easier to maintain and support, and far more theft-resistant than laptops. That said, plenty of our employees have laptops, in addition to desktops. They have a purpose, certainly, they just don't make optimal primary PCs. Anyone who can get by with a laptop as a primary PC could also get by with a 6 year old desktop.
My "problem" is already taken care of, so your suggestions are a waste of time. Your assumptions are mostly false. The Mac isn't going to be used for testing or support, I'm not sure where you got that impression. I am going to start supporting Macs, and to do so effectively I want to use and learn the OS. Using a Mac as my primary computer every day will help me do so.
LCD monitors lose brightness with age. I can already see a huge difference between my 1 year old Dell monitor and the new one I have beside it, at home. I'd hate to be stuck with the same screen on an iMac for 4-5 years. Plus, even the high end iMacs would be a downgrade from what I have now as far as hard drive capacity and ram.
sourceninja
Diamond Member
- Mar 8, 2005
- 8,805
- 65
- 91
Well then, my suggestion buy a mac pro and suck it up. That's life.
I'm sorry you guys won't spring for good notebooks. My D830 is faster then most of the desktops on this campus. I couldn't live with a desktop. It would be impossible for me to work outside in the sun or at a cafe near my house when I need to do some overtime. Sure it costs a little more (I think my notebook was 500 more then the desktops we buy), but to say they are as slow as a 6 year old pc is laughable. Again you make excuses about non-existent problems. BTW, I've used the same dell 2001fp for so long I can't remember. It looks just fine. Sure the new lcd's look much brighter, but it works great. I'm sure your company has a 4 or 5 year replacement cycle. So a imac will still be fine by the time it gets replaced. Besides, I'm sure they will be led screens soon enough.
I'm not sure what you need to 'learn' to support a mac. It took me all of 15 minutes. You know how to use unix? Cool you know a lot already. Now do you know how to read? Cool you know the rest. It's not like windows, there are no secret tips and tricks or black magic. We have 1 guy who handles ALL of our mac labs. His job is simply to install software on new machines and run system updates. IF something fails, he simply sends it in for replacement because it usually a hardware failure. On the other side, our windows techs are usually swamped with weird issues that make no sense. For example, we have some dells (exact same hardware as others) that will not install BO Enterprise client tools unless you copy the CD's to the hard drive first (network drive will not do). This is black magic, no reason why. Nothing like that has ever happend with our macs. In fact, our mac guys work load is so low that he was recently given our A/V support as well to help fill his time. These are machines used by students who are learning. The same students who can butcher a locked down windows box in a couple of days. The same students who are the reason we have all of our windows labs re-image nightly.
I read you as a guy who must have the biggest "thing" in the room. The guy who wants the 20 inch monitor when everyone else gets 17 cause he needs it? I know how it is, I was there once. My machine had to be dual cpu with 2 gigs of ram when everyone else was 512megs and a amd xp 2000. I needed it cause I was an admin. How could I work with those lessor machines? Are you the kind of guy that goes in and turns of services in windows? Do you think your work box needs SLI? When you buy a notebook for work, one that will only run office, notepad, and firefox, do you get the nvidia 8800 or the intel?
I backed out of buying a mac 3 times. All because I thought it wasn't enough computer. I even canceled one order for a 24 inch imac because I was sure the video would suck. Finally I evaluated what I really needed to do what I want with my computers. Then I bought what I wanted. I didn't bitch about it or make excuses. I found the tools I needed to do my job and I bought them. I evaulated using Linux, going back to windows, or buying a mac. The mac was priced competitively to laptops I would buy from dell and had all the features I like about linux with none of the drawbacks. However, you don't see me replacing my servers with xserves so I can be all mac. I use the best tool for the job.
Simply put, there is no solution for you. Even if apple released a 1,000.00 midrange tower, you would still find a reason to bitch about it.
I'm sorry you guys won't spring for good notebooks. My D830 is faster then most of the desktops on this campus. I couldn't live with a desktop. It would be impossible for me to work outside in the sun or at a cafe near my house when I need to do some overtime. Sure it costs a little more (I think my notebook was 500 more then the desktops we buy), but to say they are as slow as a 6 year old pc is laughable. Again you make excuses about non-existent problems. BTW, I've used the same dell 2001fp for so long I can't remember. It looks just fine. Sure the new lcd's look much brighter, but it works great. I'm sure your company has a 4 or 5 year replacement cycle. So a imac will still be fine by the time it gets replaced. Besides, I'm sure they will be led screens soon enough.
I'm not sure what you need to 'learn' to support a mac. It took me all of 15 minutes. You know how to use unix? Cool you know a lot already. Now do you know how to read? Cool you know the rest. It's not like windows, there are no secret tips and tricks or black magic. We have 1 guy who handles ALL of our mac labs. His job is simply to install software on new machines and run system updates. IF something fails, he simply sends it in for replacement because it usually a hardware failure. On the other side, our windows techs are usually swamped with weird issues that make no sense. For example, we have some dells (exact same hardware as others) that will not install BO Enterprise client tools unless you copy the CD's to the hard drive first (network drive will not do). This is black magic, no reason why. Nothing like that has ever happend with our macs. In fact, our mac guys work load is so low that he was recently given our A/V support as well to help fill his time. These are machines used by students who are learning. The same students who can butcher a locked down windows box in a couple of days. The same students who are the reason we have all of our windows labs re-image nightly.
I read you as a guy who must have the biggest "thing" in the room. The guy who wants the 20 inch monitor when everyone else gets 17 cause he needs it? I know how it is, I was there once. My machine had to be dual cpu with 2 gigs of ram when everyone else was 512megs and a amd xp 2000. I needed it cause I was an admin. How could I work with those lessor machines? Are you the kind of guy that goes in and turns of services in windows? Do you think your work box needs SLI? When you buy a notebook for work, one that will only run office, notepad, and firefox, do you get the nvidia 8800 or the intel?
I backed out of buying a mac 3 times. All because I thought it wasn't enough computer. I even canceled one order for a 24 inch imac because I was sure the video would suck. Finally I evaluated what I really needed to do what I want with my computers. Then I bought what I wanted. I didn't bitch about it or make excuses. I found the tools I needed to do my job and I bought them. I evaulated using Linux, going back to windows, or buying a mac. The mac was priced competitively to laptops I would buy from dell and had all the features I like about linux with none of the drawbacks. However, you don't see me replacing my servers with xserves so I can be all mac. I use the best tool for the job.
Simply put, there is no solution for you. Even if apple released a 1,000.00 midrange tower, you would still find a reason to bitch about it.
Clearly you are still the guy who has to have the "best", when you brag about how your laptop is better than the fastest desktops.
Basically the impression I get is that you can't stand the idea that I have a better idea of what I want and need than you. Get over yourself, you are an idiot if you think you know my situation better than I do.
If apple had $1000 upgradeable desktop equivalent to what I can get for $600 from Dell I would have jumped all over it, but neither the iMac nor the Mac-mini fits my requirements.
sourceninja
Diamond Member
- Mar 8, 2005
- 8,805
- 65
- 91
Last comment I make on this thread. I didn't pick out or order my laptop, it was ordered for me by the windows techs who make those decisons. Having used other computers on this campus, I have come to realize I am lucky to have such a nice laptop. It is just as fast if not faster then most of the computers we bought last year. You said notebooks are too slow to be usable, I was simply pointing out your comments are wrong.
I don't care what you do. I have given you every possible solution that would meet your needs as you described them. You have found none acceptable and have not given many technical reasons. I call it like I see it.
If the only solution for you is a mac pro and that is too expensive, then it is not a solution. So either pick a solution your company can afford, or if you can afford it, but the mac pro. I don't see how this is a complaint or a problem.
We have to replace our SAN this year as it is end of life. I really want the new generation xiotech. It costs 30-50 thousand more then what dell can give me. So if I can't justify the cost, this is not a problem with xiotech. This is a problem with my greed. Sure, I would love to tell everyone how I got the latest xiotech san with 20TB storage. But the truth is we don't need it, we can't afford it and there are solutions we can learn to live with in our price range, even if we use xiotech. My requirements are a super easy to manage 15+TB san. What I want is a self healing 15tb+ san with full web management and esx integration. My wants and my requirements are two different things.
I apologize to aphex. I honestly feel I have been constructive in my posts. But I'm done now, there is nothing else to suggest. Every mac solution has failed Chiropteran.
I don't care what you do. I have given you every possible solution that would meet your needs as you described them. You have found none acceptable and have not given many technical reasons. I call it like I see it.
If the only solution for you is a mac pro and that is too expensive, then it is not a solution. So either pick a solution your company can afford, or if you can afford it, but the mac pro. I don't see how this is a complaint or a problem.
We have to replace our SAN this year as it is end of life. I really want the new generation xiotech. It costs 30-50 thousand more then what dell can give me. So if I can't justify the cost, this is not a problem with xiotech. This is a problem with my greed. Sure, I would love to tell everyone how I got the latest xiotech san with 20TB storage. But the truth is we don't need it, we can't afford it and there are solutions we can learn to live with in our price range, even if we use xiotech. My requirements are a super easy to manage 15+TB san. What I want is a self healing 15tb+ san with full web management and esx integration. My wants and my requirements are two different things.
I apologize to aphex. I honestly feel I have been constructive in my posts. But I'm done now, there is nothing else to suggest. Every mac solution has failed Chiropteran.
When did I ever say it was too expensive?!
I ordered it last week it will be here in a day or two. It is the solution. It's overpriced, but it's better than the alternative of having 3 different computers on my desk with external hard drives hanging all over the place.
That word doesn't mean what you think it means.
Water for $100/glass is overpriced, but if you are dying of thirst and you can afford it, it isn't too expensive.
People buy lots of things that are overpriced, but they never buy anything that is "too expensive" simply because the act of buying proves that it wasn't really "too expensive".
But seriously, you apple fanatics are crazy. Arguing over stupid little details while basically conceding my real point.
/sigh
sourceninja
Diamond Member
- Mar 8, 2005
- 8,805
- 65
- 91
I'm glad to known that as someone who has only owned a mac for less then a month that I'm a fanatic. Price is relative. Personally I think my macbook pro is worth every penny and a MUCH better notebook then my dell D830. Even if i was going to only stick linux on it, I would still buy a macbook pro.
You could argue a BMW is overpriced. What you are really saying is you can't justify the price, thus it is too expensive. I get everything my buddies BMW has in my toyota, and it was MUCH cheaper. BMW must be fools right?
You could argue a BMW is overpriced. What you are really saying is you can't justify the price, thus it is too expensive. I get everything my buddies BMW has in my toyota, and it was MUCH cheaper. BMW must be fools right?
the car argument does not work. Apple uses the EXACT same components as any other manufacturer. The same cannot be said for cars.
sourceninja
Diamond Member
- Mar 8, 2005
- 8,805
- 65
- 91
There is a huge difference in construction between my dell D830 (2.5ghz 4 gigs ram) and my macbook pro (2.5ghz 4 gigs of ram). I think the car model works there.
Not really. The "car model" is based around the more expensive brands actually using qualifyably better parts. They are known to be better, everyone agrees they are better, and the reason the cheap cars don't use them is to save money.
That isn't really the case with apple. Apple doesn't really use any advanced parts that are unavailable or unused elsewhere. Rather, they charge a premium for their style. Other than the restrictions placed on Mac OS to require apple hardware, all you really get for your money is a fancy case.
I suppose if you wanted to use the car example Apple computers would be like a riced out Honda Civics. Costs a lot more than the base equivalent, looks shiny and flashy with chrome exhausts and spoilers, but the underlying hardware is inferior to what you can get for the same money if you don't care about the shiny case. Dell would be like a Ford Mustang- great HP for your money but not as refined. The high-end Lenova Thinkpads would be like the BMW's... you pay a bit more but you get the most advanced technology out there.
haha, yeah I am ignorant. Comming from the guy who doesn't own a mac, yet has bought the fanboy argument hook line and sinker.
You realize (i guess not in this case) the components are fucking IDENTICAL, right? Apple doesn't use some mythical parts that don't exist anywhere. They use the same damn companies in China/Japan that every other computer manufacturer does. The only difference is the case and OS, nothing else.
I honestly don't care if you're a mac nut job, but at least be one for the right reasons. Heck, I am looking to get one myself, but not because I think they developed some super secret hardware. The only valid argument is to say that you just plain love the OS.
TRENDING THREADS
-
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)- Started by DisEnchantment
- Replies: 25K
-
Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes + WCL Discussion Threads
- Started by Tigerick
- Replies: 24K
-
Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread- Started by TheF34RChannel
- Replies: 23K
-
-
Facebook
Twitter