A well balanced argument on why you should use a Mac...
by Scott Lowe
If you Wintel users would look up from your monitors and check out what else is available to you, you would realize that your OS is akward and poorly designed, and a bad rip-off of early versions of the Mac OS. I'm not just speaking from Apple manufactured pro-Mac propoganda, I used DOS and Windows before I had been introduced to the Mac OS, and currently I have a PC running Win95 in my room (I would much rather have a Mac, I have the PC temporarily for free), so I have all of the facts and know what I'm talking about. I have even had an inside tour (my Mom is good friends with an employee's wife) of Microsoft's "Campus" in Redmond, Washington.
It's well known that the Mac OS is far easier to use than Windows, and you can't even argue that PCs are more powerful if you look at the facts. <getting MacWarehouse catalog> Gee...when I look in this copy of MacWarehouse(volume 73)(, I see a Power Mac 9600. 350mhz PPC 604e processor, 64mb of RAM (expandable to 728mb), 4gig HD,Built in Zip Drive, 1mb L2 cache, 8mb VRAM that supports 1600x1200 pixels, 24x CD-ROM drive, a graphics accelerator card, 6 PCI slots, expansion bays, and built-in 10Base-T and AAUI Ethernet connections; all for $5399. <picking up copy of "boot" (motto: PURE PC POWER) magazine> Now I look on the cover of boot (issue 13, Sept. '97, and it appears the editors are excited, because on the cover it says "We blueprint and hand-build the ultimate $5K PC...Dream Machine 97 (with a pic of the comp)". I go to page 44, eagerly awaiting news of their "dream machine"...I soon discover that you have to build the <insert vulgar word here>' thing yourself, the components you need to add to your Fry's shopping list are: a Pentium II 300mhz processor, a dual Pentium II motherboard, a 3d Sound Card, an internal Zip drive, a 12x CD-ROM drive, a 56k modem, a mouse, a keyboard, a monitor, a Tower Case with a power supply, a ATI card, a 4.3 gig HD, a 19" monitor, a joystick, a floppy drive, a cooling fan, speakers, Win95 OSR2, and get this: a CP-VUE Early Warning System that sets off an alarm if the computer gets too hot for safe operation (case in point: electrical fire). Of course, you have to put it together yourself (impossible if you're a newbie, and even if you're very advanced, it would take days to build, not including shopping time). I also read at the bottom that since the 300mhz P-II isn't out yet, they had to substitute a Pentium 266mhz processor and then overclock (overclocking can sometimes lead to electrical fires without sufficient cooling) it to 300mhz. Hmm...you decide which system has more power...350mhz straight from Apple or 266mhz if you build it yourself?
If those systems are a little bit out of out of your range and you were considering a PC, you can get a cheap, yet still powerful Mac clone for a great price. You might want to try UMAX's SuperMac C600 series. For a SuperMac C600 with a 240mhz processor, and 80mhz bus, an AV monitor,a scanner, ethernet, a 33.6 kbps modem, and a 12x CD-ROM, and 32mb of RAM. You might be surprised to find out that such a powerful system would be only...$1,999! A comparable PC would be the Micro*X MXP 5060 (actually 7mhz slower and without a scanner. But to be fair, it has 1.3 gigs more memory.). The Micro*X system is actually $370 ($2,370) more than the Mac. Hmm...
While I am an avid Mac-user, I remain open-minded (unlike some people) and would want to use the OS that is the best for my needs. If you have a response to "My Wonderful OS" please feel free to e-mail me whether or not you're a PC person or a Mac person or whatever. If you want a different perspective, go to my friend Saman's Site and go to the "Macs Suck" section.
Mac Links
(more coming soon,these are just the ones that I could remember off the top of my head)
Don't let yourself be assimilated!
