Independant Computer Dealers

[Enforcer]

OS X frustrates me because it's too expensive for me and doesn't have big enough market share to attract developers. Oh and the one-button mouse thing. I can't stand useing a one-button mouse. Probably makes phone support easier though...

I should also point out that OS X is basically UNIX beneath its shiny interface, which is why I lump it in with Linux for techs as there are two major groups of Mac users: those who migrated from Linux and those who would buy a jar of Steve Jobs saliva if it was marketed in a white plastic shell with clear lacquer over it. These latter people rarely become techs.

1) Macs are expensive, but a good value compared to other PC manufacturers if you like the OS and free software that comes with it. Macs are definitely more expensive than a do-it-yourself box, obviously.
2) Any USB 2-button mouse works instantaneously with any Mac and the latest Macs all come with the Mighty Mouse, which might have only 1 physical button, but still lets you right-click. Even the new MacBook and MacBook Pro series allow right-clicking.
3) A third group of people who use Macs are those who like the interface better than Windows, see features in the Mac OS that they want and Windows doesn't have, and don't want to deal with spyware and viruses, but are still sane enough to acknowledge that all OSes have their positive and negative attributes and no one has created a perfect OS. Oh, and they're not die-hard computer gamers. Finally, they don't like being lumped into groups and their screen name on EN World is Enforcer.

It's possible to like Macs without being a Linux person or drinking the Steve Jobs kool-aid. I agree about the market-share not attracting as many developers though, hence not nearly as many games, but will qualify this by stating that I can run every program I personally want or need on my Mac, and many of these came for free with the OS. To each his own, however.

 

[Enforcer]

Oh, and to get back to the thread, I'm also a really big fan of newegg.com. I ordered my iBook's RAM upgrade from them and was really happy with the price and speed of shipping.

 

[Thanee]

Last time he bought a hard drive and had it installed, the guy split the 20 GB drive into ten 2 GB partitions. He said it was a more efficient use of space. While this is technically true (due to block size), it's also idiotic to have 10 partitions.

That's pretty funny!

Bye
Thanee

 

[reanjr]

2) Any USB 2-button mouse works instantaneously with any Mac and the latest Macs all come with the Mighty Mouse, which might have only 1 physical button, but still lets you right-click. Even the new MacBook and MacBook Pro series allow right-clicking.

Very true, but alot of Mac apps don't seem to take advantage of it (for obvious reasons).

Finally, they don't like being lumped into groups and their screen name on EN World is Enforcer.

There are two types of people: those who divide others into one of two groups and those who do not. You are obviously a member of the latter

It's possible to like Macs without being a Linux person or drinking the Steve Jobs kool-aid. I agree about the market-share not attracting as many developers though, hence not nearly as many games, but will qualify this by stating that I can run every program I personally want or need on my Mac, and many of these came for free with the OS. To each his own, however.

In all seriousness, the Mac community does not have many people who just chose it by comparing feature sets anymore. Because of Windows dominance it draws most people like that just for the feature of "it's familiar, supports everything everyone else is using, cheaper, and easier to get support."

Hell, I fall in with being a non-Linux person who likes Macs but dislikes Jobs-flavored kool-aid. I would love to be able to buy one as a second machine, but just can't make it a primary. Firstly, I'm a developer and there's just not alot of software out there for developers on Mac (unless they are developing FOR Mac).

And while you can always find an app on Mac to do what you need, you don't have the huge choice of exactly which app suits you best for the task. For example, I can use different Jabber clients on Mac, but can't use GoogleTalk. I can use different code editors, but not Notepad++. I don't know how their market share has changed over the last few years, but they haven't hit a critical mass since their slump post-Win95.

 

[Enforcer]

Very true, but alot of Mac apps don't seem to take advantage of it (for obvious reasons).

I'm relatively new to the Mac platform (I switched a few months before Tiger was released), but I haven't encountered a single program that doesn't have right-click contextual menus. *shrug* Maybe I just don't have the right programs (I use all of the iLife Suite, MS Office, Safari, World of Warcraft, and of course basic stuff like Address Book and iCal).

There are two types of people: those who divide others into one of two groups and those who do not. You are obviously a member of the latter

In all seriousness, the Mac community does not have many people who just chose it by comparing feature sets anymore. Because of Windows dominance it draws most people like that just for the feature of "it's familiar, supports everything everyone else is using, cheaper, and easier to get support."

Maybe not, but I did. Granted, my Dell's 2nd motherboard frying a month out of warranty gave me a reason to compare computers at the time, but still. As a semi-fanboyish aside...I've never needed support for my Mac.

Hell, I fall in with being a non-Linux person who likes Macs but dislikes Jobs-flavored kool-aid. I would love to be able to buy one as a second machine, but just can't make it a primary. Firstly, I'm a developer and there's just not alot of software out there for developers on Mac (unless they are developing FOR Mac).

And while you can always find an app on Mac to do what you need, you don't have the huge choice of exactly which app suits you best for the task. For example, I can use different Jabber clients on Mac, but can't use GoogleTalk. I can use different code editors, but not Notepad++. I don't know how their market share has changed over the last few years, but they haven't hit a critical mass since their slump post-Win95.

Yeah, I'm not a developer by any means, so I won't speak to that, but see this link for instructions on using Google Talk through iChat (Tiger only).

 

[reanjr]

Last time he bought a hard drive and had it installed, the guy split the 20 GB drive into ten 2 GB partitions. He said it was a more efficient use of space. While this is technically true (due to block size), it's also idiotic to have 10 partitions.

That's pretty funny!

Bye
Thanee

It would be funnier if true. While the boot partition cluster size is predetermined by the partition size, any other partitions can be set to whatever cluster size you want (well 512 bytes up to 64 KiB I believe). The person should have made one 2 GiB partition for the system and one 18 GiB partition for data with the cluster size explicitly set to 2 KiB (or whatever).

This is very a very common performance tweak for workstations that are made to work on a specific type of file. For instace, someone working on large graphics and video files should create a partition for those files and change the cluster size to 64 KiB for better throughput. If you have tons of files in the range of 256B to 2 KiB, lowering the cluster size is beneficial for disk space utilization. Files under about 256 B aren't stored in normal file clusters but directly in the Master File Table, so cluster size does not effect them as much.

This can be useful for home users as well. If you store all of your MP3s and movies on a single partition with a 64 KiB cluster size you can get a performance gain out of your disk usage with only a very tiny space hit. This CAN work for games as well if they have large textures to read out of packed files.

 

[ssampier]

... And the salespeople masquerading as techs. That's what got me to quit one of my jobs. I am not a service pusher. If someone came up and asked a question that I could answer while I was working on someone else's machine, I would just answer them, not try to push costs on them. We used to charge $40 (I think that was the number, might have been $60) to run msconfig, click on a tab, uncheck all the boxes, run a program available for free over the internet that required no real human input, and restart the machine. I just told the customer how to do it themselves and explained why it worked. Took less of my time and the customer was better off for it.

I don't see this as such a bad thing, really. Some people are more comfortable letting a professional do something. Like in my industry, we offer customer a service where we can setup our DSL at your home. Majority of the time it is plugging a phone line in, connecting the network cable, and calling the computer's MAC address in. This costs $35 for service. Could an average person do this without the technician? Sure and most do. There are a sizable bunch that want this service and don't mind paying the money.

Besides, telling the customer how to do this still cost you time. It is good customer service that you want to help your customer, though.

 

[reanjr]

I don't see this as such a bad thing, really. Some people are more comfortable letting a professional do something. Like in my industry, we offer customer a service where we can setup our DSL at your home. Majority of the time it is plugging a phone line in, connecting the network cable, and calling the computer's MAC address in. This costs $35 for service. Could an average person do this without the technician? Sure and most do. There are a sizable bunch that want this service and don't mind paying the money.

Oh, I agree. If they appeared apprehensive about doing something like this, I told them that we could do it for a fee. Some took me up on the offer, most did not.

 

[ssampier]

Oh, I agree. If they appeared apprehensive about doing something like this, I told them that we could do it for a fee. Some took me up on the offer, most did not.

Fair enough. I guess in my position I have seen people take advantage of "free" anything, so I like to see people paid for their effort.

I work at local rural telcom we support dialup and DSL. As a service, we clean spyware and viruses free of charge. I will try to advise the customer not to download every "FREE" thing or download the file sharing programs, but some just don't learn/listen.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Also, the post was supposed to be cheeky - I think you took it way to seriously. I figured the thread would attract people like me who have worked as techs and can find the humor in the statements.

Yeah. My apologies. It was a long, bad day and I was being needlessly snippy. Normally I would have at least allowed for the possibility of humor without smileys and just kept my mouth shut, if not a more civil tongue.

However, I was actually going to use my own parents as an example in my post yesterday but cut it short. They can use their computers but they really don't understand a single thing about them and haven't taken the time to learn. I used to provide just about all the tech support they needed before I moved out of state. I'd provided them with spyware cleaners, virus protection, and LOTS of instruction on how to use it and WHY it was necessary to use it. Yet every time I'd visit I'd still have to fix more screwups for them. Reload software. Find lost files. Get their printer working again. And of course clean out all the spyware and virii. After I moved, their laptop contracted a virus/worm that simply ate up IE files and I had to tell them to just take it to a professional computer tech and get it repaired. But in looking to get it working before that I found that the McAfee license had expired. It hadn't run a scan in 9 months. AND they'd obtained two other anti-virus programs, Norton and some unknown brand they'd downloaded or gotten off a CD. But even though I'd told them time and again they had failed to update the definitions or run any scans.

For them, if they take their computer to ANY tech, it is worth the money to them for the tech to simply say, "I will clean the spyware/viruses and install the software for a fee." That is NOT bad technical support - at least not for them. It is all the support that they need. Until they take an interest in and educate themselves about their own computers (and being retired with time on their hands I can't understand why they don't...) all the education the tech (that would be me ) provides them with is lost. I can tell my dad to stop downloading solitaire and mah-jhong games and and visiting every fly-by-night website he stumbles across because that's where the spyware and viruses are coming from but it falls on deaf ears.

And he's such a gadget freak and tinkerer too, just like his son. I don't know why he doesn't get into it more. Just something about computers seems to intimidate him. I can only guess it stems from the fact that back in his day, the guys who worked on computers were white-shirted, black-rim-glasses, IBM labcoat geniuses, and he was just a truck driver, and never the twain shall meet.