On Sat, 2006-11-11 at 21:06, Craig White wrote: > > > > > Basically a Macintosh is really cool hardware > The interface is stale - singular in view - stupidly conceptualized for > idiots with a single button mouse as Apple finally figured out that > there is a benefit to having a mouse with more than one button. Not only > the OS but most applications do little to implement alternate button > options because of Apple's lack of vision. You have to give them some points for itunes where they make the software do the right thing for you without much intervention. It is hard to beat subscribing to some podcasts with itunes set to collect and keep unlistened copies and an ipod set to sync them. When you've listened to one on the ipod, the next sync back sets the itunes 'listened' timestamp, then next itunes podcast refresh (scheduled or manual) will delete the listened items and pull any new available copies, and the next ipod sync will propagate the deletion and update the new versions. So, while I agree that a one-button mouse is dumb, and sharing a single menu bar on a big screen with lots of windows isn't great, they do understand that the programs should do the right thing _for you_ instead of making you do lots of selections and mouse-clicking in the first place. I have yet to see that happening in open source software which seems to pride itself in presenting an enormous number of choices without setting the most likely defaults. > > > Macintosh users typically have a rather interesting > > > perspective that theirs is the anti-Microsoft choice without considering > > > that there are too few contributors to porting OpenOffice.org because > > > they are happy launching an underpowered Microsoft Office 2004. > > > > Perhaps they noticed the OpenOffice users complaining about how > > the conversions didn't always work. > ---- > I guess I hadn't noticed much of a problem since OOo 2.0 A bad reputation is hard to live down. Many of those Office 2004 copies may have paid for themselves in time saved before OOo 2.0 was available. > Of course, I have a client in a world of hurt until we convert their > entire operations manual designed tightly on Macintosh OS 9 with > Word/Office 98 that fall apart upon conversion to Office 2002/2003 on > Windows, Office 2004 on Mac OS X and certainly no worse in OOo Microsoft doesn't like to be compatible with themselves... > Admittedly, I have a somewhat anti-Macintosh bias. I used to run the > local Apple Users group back in the mid 80's but that was then and this > is now. Pre OS X Macs weren't very interesting. Too expensive, too small, closed box, etc. Now they are just slightly on the expensive side and do all the unix-ish stuff we like. > Allow me to pose this conundrum to you... > > I have a non-profit client without a lot of excess funds. Having just > recently figured out how to implement roaming profiles on Macintosh via > LDAP/NFS/Netatalk it allows me to consider them as peers on a network > that has Windows and Linux desktop machines which already had roaming > profiles so I am relatively at peace with the Macintosh at the moment. > > They have several iMacs and G3 systems that are still running OS 9 and > are due to be updated. Do we upgrade them to Tiger considering... > - $ 129 per system > - most of them don't have a DVD drive and we would need the CD's and if > you go to > this page on Apple's web site > http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/requirements.html > you will see a link in the middle of the page to get CD media for just > an additional > $ 9.95 - the link has been dead for over a month > > or do I just say - screw Apple and install Fedora Core 6 on them? I'd guess that you'll have to add RAM and the cost along with the OS is going to approach a new Mac Mini with nowhere near the performance. And you'll likely see the same thing with fedora running locally. If you have a decent server available on the network, I'd give LTSP a try, running them as thin clients. I've seen people on the k12ltsp list say that they work fine. > In this instance, it's evident that if I don't have to run any specific > Macintosh software on these systems, Fedora it is - even if I can't > locate PPC based versions of things like flash/etc. As clients, you wouldn't have to worry about that since the apps run on the server. > By logical extension, the only difference between this client and any > other user is the willingness to spend money to feed the corporate > beast, whether it is Microsoft of Apple and to be honest, and to > paraphrase one of my favorite lines of all time...one is a monopoly, the > other is a monopoly wannabe. If you aren't willing to spend $100+ about every year to keep the OS up to date, you probably shouldn't even consider apple. But, if the employees are paid it doesn't take much time savings to make that back. If they aren't and you really have to go the cheapest route, take a good look at the k12ltsp distro which is essentially fedora with the ability to boot thin clients included in the base install. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
