Mac Vs. Pc Commercials
- Thread starter TogaMario
- Start date
TogaMario
First Post
I remember watching a special on the "Odyssey" where the guy who invented it also happened to invent the gun-controller too. That man is my hero.
Since this conversation has trailed into more happy territory, I might as well ask the Q. Anyone else have the Mario Bros / Duck Hunt / Track and Field game for NES and the light gun / way-pre-DDR pad that went with it? It's no surprise to me that the Wii has come forward in the ranks of next-gen. Those people at Nintendo know when (and how) to spice it up
Since this conversation has trailed into more happy territory, I might as well ask the Q. Anyone else have the Mario Bros / Duck Hunt / Track and Field game for NES and the light gun / way-pre-DDR pad that went with it? It's no surprise to me that the Wii has come forward in the ranks of next-gen. Those people at Nintendo know when (and how) to spice it up
Henry
Autoexreginated
The only experiences I've had with Macs, to be fair, have been with bad ones, ones badly out of service, or badly configured for what the user wanted to do with them.
In one case, a Mac we had at work had been in storage for a few years, and the company wanted to see if we could get use out of it. The operating system was something like OS6 or OS7, no modem or network card, and the equivalent of a 486 (one of those Motorola 680486 or whatever processors). I couldn't make any software work for it because of damaged system files, and while apple offered downloadable disk images, the Mac had no decompression software, and because of the forking file structure, my decompressing them on a PC ruined the files. In the end we tossed the sucker because it wasn't worth putting money into. Would've been nice to have one to play with and compare, though.
In any case, we use Dells for our business, and they perform stellarly. Their single most breakable part for us is the power supplies, but to be fair our plant environment is harsh on ALL computer power supplies, so I can't fault 'em. Otherwise, we're had no more or less problems with them than with any other PC manufacturer -- pretty minimal.
In one case, a Mac we had at work had been in storage for a few years, and the company wanted to see if we could get use out of it. The operating system was something like OS6 or OS7, no modem or network card, and the equivalent of a 486 (one of those Motorola 680486 or whatever processors). I couldn't make any software work for it because of damaged system files, and while apple offered downloadable disk images, the Mac had no decompression software, and because of the forking file structure, my decompressing them on a PC ruined the files. In the end we tossed the sucker because it wasn't worth putting money into. Would've been nice to have one to play with and compare, though.
In any case, we use Dells for our business, and they perform stellarly. Their single most breakable part for us is the power supplies, but to be fair our plant environment is harsh on ALL computer power supplies, so I can't fault 'em. Otherwise, we're had no more or less problems with them than with any other PC manufacturer -- pretty minimal.
TogaMario
First Post
Power supply failure is getting a lot more common than it used to be. I've had two friends that had to replace their power supply a month after buying pre-made PCs and another more recently that had to replace one in a PC he built after a power blink (not even during a storm) and he was on a newish surge protector. I guess if I had to replace anything, I'd rather it be a ~$100 purchase than the whole computer, still makes you wonder if it's because we're travelling into the 650+ watt range or if the manufacturers are cutting corners or something?
Also, to add fuel to the embers
Last night my Mac started acting loopy right after I turned it on. I went to open Illustrator and the icon bounced insatiably for a few minutes, so I force-quit it and tried to open something less demanding, like Safari. Bounce bounce bounce, etc. So I get angry and start clicking on all the programs, making them dance in the midnight air. I force-quit finder, hoping it might recover (possibly from a one-time glitch from startup). No such luck. I tap the power button on / off to see if that'll recover it. Nope. Hold the button in for five seconds and start anew. Ahhh, I love my PC
Also, to add fuel to the embers
Last night my Mac started acting loopy right after I turned it on. I went to open Illustrator and the icon bounced insatiably for a few minutes, so I force-quit it and tried to open something less demanding, like Safari. Bounce bounce bounce, etc. So I get angry and start clicking on all the programs, making them dance in the midnight air. I force-quit finder, hoping it might recover (possibly from a one-time glitch from startup). No such luck. I tap the power button on / off to see if that'll recover it. Nope. Hold the button in for five seconds and start anew. Ahhh, I love my PC 
tonym
First Post
TogaMario said:Also, to add fuel to the embers
That's another thing I like about Macs. When there is a problem, the solution is often turn it off, turn it on. There are no layers of complexity and esoteric options and technical phonecalls and asking your friends and reading books to figure out what is going on, like with PCs.
With Macs, if it starts acting weird, 95% of the time the solution is turn it off, then turn it back on. You never need to know what happened, or care.
With PCs, problems repeat, so you need to track down the problem to eliminate it. Macs just act wonky once in a blue moon.
If problems persist with a Mac, here's how most problems are fixed:
* Update the OS.
* If that doesn't work, then open the Utilities folder, open Disk Utilities and click repair permissions.
* If that doesn't work, open console.log to see which application was causing the problem, then delete that program or update it.
* If that doesn't work, you probably need to have the machine repaired by somebody.
Last month I spent several hours problem-solving on my daughter's PC before I got "Kitty Luv" to run. Hours! And nowadays, with a different game, the cursor sometimes zooms to the bottom left corner and stays there, even after the game is force-quit. On another game, the cursor turns invisible sometimes. Another game it played great once, but never ran a second time. And one of the best programs on the PC stopped working after I installed the System Pack 2 update for XP. Gah!
Yeh, if I had all the time in the world, I could probably fix all these problems by typing arcane instructions on a command line, then deleting a certain line of code from System file, then downloading a new dll file and copying it into the Win32 folder, and then do other esoteric things...
But I don't feel like spending the hours and hours needed to learn how to do those things.
Truly, I abominate troubleshooting.
Tony M
