Linked by Scot Hacker on Mon 17th Dec 2001 17:34 UTC
The story of how a BeOS refugee (and not just everyone, but the author of the 'BeOS Bible' book) lost faith in the future of computing, resigned himself to Windows but found himself bored silly, tore out half his hair at the helm of a Linux box, then rediscovered the joy of computing in MacOSX. Scot Hacker will describe his personal adventures with today's operating systems after he was set out to find an alternative to his beloved (but with no apparent future) BeOS. Update: Make sure you read the second part of the article, a rebutal, found here.
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Bravo Scot, excellent, well-balanced article!
This sort-of makes me wish I had the ~ $4300 Cdn I'd need to buy a "reasonable" bare-bones G4 box (since I can get RAM and disk MUCH cheaper than the Apple Store). I also think of OS X as the best desktop OS out there. It's just a pity it won't run on any of my hardware, even my Mac (a UMAX s900 dp180 clone, may I be cast out of the Land of Jobs forevermore).
I'm so sick of things not working in x86 land. Even something as basic as cut-n-paste is a total mishmash in Linux (also running Mandrake; 8.1, using KDE ask my desktop), and Windows is so bloody fragile... yeah, I'm running 98SE, but I "can't" upgrade to Windows 2000 or XP. My boxes are dual-processor, and I have SoundBlaster Live! cards; Creative has been unable to write SMP-safe drivers for their own hardware, despite Be's and Lunix's success in this area. And besides, I'm not convinced that 2000 or XP would solve any of my problems without introducing a myriad of new ones to contend with; most of my current problems are driver-related, since I mostly use my home computers for playing games these days.
I used my main x86 box all Friday afternoon (worked at home), no problems. Turn it on Sunday... oh look, Windows goes black instead of showing me the desktop. Cute. I don't have to time to screw with this crap, AGAIN, since the same thing happened a couple of weeks ago. Then, I'd re-installed my Radeon video drivers.
This morning, I turned the box on... it won't even give me video for POST. Hooray.
I like to think a Mac would behave better. $4300 Cdn is a lot to test that theory.
And yes, I know you can get "cheaper" iMac systems; I'm a "power user" who does a lot of actual work on his systems, in addition to playing games. I'm not downgrading from a nice 19" monitor to an iMac.
I should just throw out all this crap and invest in a GameCube for interactive entertainment. Dunno what I'll use for email and surfing, but hey, I'm sure I'd cope.
- chrish