a recording program for both mac and pc?

[elevate]

Obviously, many artists do prefer the mac for 3D rendering

Whoa there. NOBODY prefers RENDERING on a Mac. You do realize that creating 3D art/animation is different than rendering, right? I also never said nobody uses Macs for 3D. ILM and a few others do have some Macs running Electric Image, but they still don't render on Macs - that'd be like using a nail file to cut down a tree.

Did you believe Windows 2000 was sub-par when all you had was OS9? You're also the first person I've ever heard that thinks that OS X is faster than any Windows flavor. Unaccelerated UI?...nice.

 

[T.J.Hooker]

Uh...why is that? Wasn't Virtual PC created because of a shortage of apps on the Mac platform? Why else would you run it?

Just because certain apps aren't made for the mac platform doesn't mean there is a shortage.

There was always the option of a PC processor in certain models of Macintosh computers, Reason being so you could get work done that needed to be done, without having to waste space or have another computer running, wasting precious energy. You know what the word convenient means right?
Also in my opinion, probably so apple could say they could do something with their machine, that couldn't be done with a PC. Sort of a thumbing of the nose at the competition, saying "we can what your doing, but you can't do what we're doing."

Virtual PC was created so you could Have that option on any Mac, Thus making the optional secondary PC processor obsolete.



And it's too bad because all argumants aside, "ANY" professional knows that with software being made for this and not for that, it pays in the end to have the best of both worlds. Using both platforms with an open mind is what gets shit done when your a busy man or woman, and you don't really have time to be such a geek about what the processor is saying to the ram. It's all unnecessary knowledge to a busy recording engineer or a musician. These are the people most qualified to judge your little 100 year old debate here. The people that aren't corrupted by knowing what is going on in the computer. The people that sit and use both systems side by side daily for a living. Yes, I do realize this is "HOME" recording, not "PRO" recording. All I'm saying is, Fuck the benchmarks, and reviews, and shit. Until you have open mindedly used both systems fluently side by side. Your not qualified to say which one works best for production. Both are needed in a producing functioning fully digital recording house. So that being said, too me, being able to run both platforms on one machine is the true "shit". That's all you'll here from me. Lunch is over. Get back to work you guys!

T.J.Hooker

 

[N8theGr8]

"Apparently you "LOVE" your PC." .....? anything to stay away from a microsoft OS. when i made the switch to mac i was still used to windows and wanted virtual pc, tried it, and now i never use it. yes, its slow. does it run kazaa? nope. direct connect on aim? dont even try it. "RUNDLL ERROR!!!!" a friend told me that the whole point of switching to mac was to stay away microsoft, and im glad i did.

"I love the part where he can finally see the benchmark, and even though it shows a (currently) $600 Athlon 1533 absolutely creaming a (currently) $1800 867 Mhz G4"
wonderful. it did take some time to actually see the benchmark though...thanks to geocities' great linking abilities. sure, in that particular benchmark im sure that the mac G4 was slower. HOWEVER, macs do run certain apps lots faster than pc's which have a much higher mhz rating. go ahead, say i need a link but quite frankly im sick of this. penguin and i have posted sites and polls and news clippings, whereas you give me one benchmark chart. whenever i say something wrong, you bash me for it. yet you seem to "overlook" the references i make, such as the award apple won at the grammy's for changing the course of the relationship between computers and music, as well as the poll results how almost half of the people out of 1600 who currently own a pc would like to purchase a mac. just curious, how many of you actually own and use a mac (with OSX) right now? it seems like im the only one here with both and using both, which lets me easily compare them not for speed, my pc is old and my mac is new, but for the OS.

"Anyway, not all of those benchmarks have "old" G4's" - im talking about the processor here. all G4's are old, no matter their speed. the point im trying to make is that the G4 processor, NOT the G4 350 which you can call "old" in terms of speed, was introduced to the market around the same time PIII's were popular, and have had to endure pentium 4's, amd thunderbirds, and amd XP's. once the G5 makes its appearance a more accurate processor speed comparison can be made. but until then, im just fine with an 800mhz G4. i can play my games, play my music, edit my movies, soon mix my music, and maybe later i will get back into a little 3d, but it performs all of these functions fast enough in my opinion, and i personally would not sacrifice OSX for windows XP if it meant i can render a 3d picture 30% or someodd percentage faster.

 

[penguin341]

Wow charger you completely missed the point. What Nate was saying is the G4 has been around for a while, and thus is an older processor. The Pentium 4 was released much more recently, and thus is a newer processor. And I don't see this "low performance" you are refering to. Why don't you look over here http://www.techtv.com/products/hardware/story/0,23008,3339307,00.html
TechTV recently ran there own benchmarks, which was pretty indesicive. The P4 did win 4 out of the 5 tests, but overall, the G4 came out 3% faster (as it crushed the P4 on the last test, while the 4 victories were somewhat marginal) I think TechTV sums it up nicely when they say "The dark side of benchmarking computers is that anyone can put together a scenario in which one computer is shown to dominate another -- aka selective benchmarking. Only with well-written and equally optimized applications for differing platforms can one hope to come away with any meaningful results." Just because one of your benchmarks was done by a Mac faithful does not mean that anything anti-mac must be true. I'm hoping that personal bias does not filter in to these tests when they are performed. I've seen so many different benchmark tests with so many different outcomes, showing me one where the P4 "destroys" the G4 does not affect me at all. And charger, you talk as if you have actually bought a mac. Don't make asinine comments if you have no conclusive evidence one way or the other (and I mean conclusive evidence, not biased opinions). I love how the site you're referring to states "The data presented here are simplifications of benchmarks, which in themselves are simplifications of the entire performance picture.  The data presented here are not proof that one processor is faster or slower than another." I'm not denying that half of Jobs's "Megahertz Myth" is a huge marketing ploy. But from my experience, G4's perform just fine. And when the G5 does come out, it'll probably perform even better. Elevate, if you feel the hardware is lacking, thats your opinion, but I'm glad you hold nothing against the OSX platform (which is the main reason I'm a mac fan). Charger you could probably learn something from elevate and brzillian in terms of arguing your point...

P.S wyastarr, if PC's did squash macs i would lose a good amount of money, because I do have apple stocks =) ... Although I'm pretty sure arguing on the Mac side won't affect the platform or the stock.

 

[penguin341]

Gah so many replies so little time... Elevate, my comment about it being faster may be linked to the fact that I am quicker on the mac platform. But from my experience, I can do tasks a lot quicker on my OSX running iMac than my Win2k running PC. I also prefer the Aqua interface over XP's Luna, which for me, induces nausea. And I'm not sure what you mean by "Unaccelerated UI," if you could explain to me what that actually means that would be good, because I haven't found any significant problems with OSX's UI.

 

[N8theGr8]

well put penguin
"The dark side of benchmarking computers is that anyone can put together a scenario in which one computer is shown to dominate another" so true

 

[brzilian]

LOL - so much for OSX being a better alternative and Aqua being better than the older MacOS GUI:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=75&75&e=12&u=/nf/20020422/tc_nf/17365

I particularly like this segment:

The Aqua interface of Mac OS X has been praised for its slick animations and gorgeous icons but criticized for its monopolization of the processor and for some user interface (UI) behaviors.

"The larger the print shop, the more likely they are to have their own research for evaluating and adopting new technologies, including software revs," explained Friedman.

"Putting a piece of software into the production flow is never a function of the 'what's cool' factor," he added. "If it's cool and it's highly productive, it's in. If it's cool but not highly productive, it waits on the sidelines."

 

[charger]

So what about the "price" benchmark?

Surely nobody here can argue that whatever minimal differences in performance/OS/trendiness there are justify the ridiculous Mac pricing scheme.

I know y'all think I am a PC lover, but I own two PCs--AND a Mac G4 933. My two PCs (and a bunch of new hardware I bought recently) cost me far less than the Mac. It pisses me off, because the Mac is not worth $2200 in sheer computing power terms. The only reason I bought the damn thing was to run Pro Tools TDM, and it works amazingly well for that, because all the processing power is offloaded onto my Pro Tools MIX cards. However, I can easily see the power differential when I start throwing on RTAS plugins (which use the CPU). Simply put, I get more plugins on a 24-track session on the PC than I do on the Mac.

Another nice thing about the PC is that in 3 months, when new insane hardware comes out, I can throw $200 into it and have a new, superfast machine. That's something I can never do with my G4... essentially, I had to decide that it was OK for myself to spend $2200 on a computer that would basically do one task in my studio, and would not be future-proof. Is it worth it? Yeah, because I get to use McDSP plugins, which are the best plugins on earth, and the Sony Oxford plugin when I can afford it, (the demo was beautiful). But at the same time, I wish it did more, cost less, and had a simple upgrade path.

So when I go off on the Mac, it's not because I hate the platform. It's because I think Mac "fanatics" (who by the way are probably only 5% of Mac users) are some of the most pig-headed people on earth. When you hear the analogy of the dead whale in the living room that everyone's ignoring, those people are Mac fanatics, and the dead whale is the line that Jobs has sold them over the last few years, to get them to worship things like the iMac, and accept that the processors hardly ever get revved, and accept a pricing structure that for most people is prohibitive. An analogy would be if you asked a bunch of PC fanatics if their PCs ever crashed, and they all told you it never did. Of course it does!! That's a dead whale too, and those people are just as bad.

[added] And BTW, I don't use OS X. I tried it the first two times I booted my computer, but it was too slow and not enough of my apps were supported on it. I'm still using 9, and I will until Pro Tools TDM supports X. Even then, I might not go there, because the processing overhead for all that pretty stuff is too high at this time (maybe Apple will streamline it in the future, who knows).

 

[elevate]

HOWEVER, macs do run certain apps lots faster than pc's which have a much higher mhz rating.

The only app that I've seen where Macs have a clear advantage is RC5 (benchmarks are on that Geocities page), which isn't really of any use to the user (like SETI). The Mac advantage is due to RC5 doing most of it's work through the Altivec unit. A similar gain might be seen in the P4 if RC5 was heavily optimized for SSE2. Other apps that show advantages for Macs are usually due to Altivec optimizations, and they're usually encoders - mp3, mpeg, etc... For every encoding app that kicks ass due to Altivec, you can go find another that kicks ass due to SSE2. A plus for the Mac is that the Altivec unit is generally easier to program for than Intel's SSE2, but then SSE2 is more complex and capable of doing more. I'm of the opinion that these vector processing units have zero to limited applications and really just add to the cost of the cpu.

yet you seem to "overlook" the references i make, such as the award apple won at the grammy's for changing the course of the relationship between computers and music

Your "references" seemed more like baseless claims to me. The fact that Apple won a grammy means nothing. Where's the grammy for Amiga, or Commadore, or Atari? These guys were the real pioneers.

once the G5 makes its appearance a more accurate processor speed comparison can be made.

Why is that? We're comparing what is available now. What if the G5 comes out next week. Why then could I not say we can't make an accurate comparison because AMD's Sledgehammer is coming soon?

and i personally would not sacrifice OSX for windows XP if it meant i can render a 3d picture 30% or someodd percentage faster.

The OS has little to do with how fast you're going to render something (aside from OS X's paltry SMP implementation), which was the whole point of this - the hardware, not the OS. BTW, it'd be more than 30% faster, depending on hardware.

Only with well-written and equally optimized applications for differing platforms can one hope to come away with any meaningful results

Agreed. Please refer to my 'number crunching' link for more info. I mentioned that a Mac user was leading the project just to cast away any doubts to the legitimacy of the results - he also happens to be a Mac driver developer at ATi, and has repeatedly revealed that he knows more than most. Take it for what it's worth, but I trust his assessment of Mac performance more than yours or mine, which is why I linked to his benchmark.

The data presented here are not proof that one processor is faster or slower than another.

I disagree. The number crunching link deals with a pure cpu benchmark - no other subsystems are involved, not even memory.

But from my experience, G4's perform just fine. And when the G5 does come out, it'll probably perform even better.

Agreed. If I came across as implying that G4 perform poorly, I apologize. That's not what I meant. The G4 is a very good processor - it's efficiency per clock is probably the best in desktop computing, and yet, this efficiency has been its undoing as it makes the chip harder to reach higher clock speeds. My stance is that the G4, while performing well at its given clock speed, is too expensive and too slow to compete with the latest x86 offerings. That does not make it a bad processor. The Alpha and G4 are similar in that they both perform great at their clock speeds, but were hard to clock up and cost a lot.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Unaccelerated UI,"

The Quartz display layer in OS X has no built in hardware acceleration. This differs from Win2k and XP as they have a hardware accelerated UI, which means that some of the work is offloaded to the GPU. You really are the first person I've heard that finds the interface in X to be responsive. Everyone else I've heard has said it's painfully sluggish compared to OS9. The 10.1 update improved this a bit, but it's still slow. I did agree with you on Luna - I switched to the Win2k theme initially, but I've since come up with a color scheme I can live with and I've found there are enough usability enhancements to warrant using it (Luna).

 

[penguin341]

brzilian, You really seem to be searching for any little anti-osx tidbit you can find. I can do the same thing, all though it doesn't really help my argument... "Windows XP was supposed to make life easier, but it's made some people's computing experience a living hell." This is from CNET, here is the link. http://www.cnet.com/software/0-6688749-8-9696202-1.html
Heres another interesting article "Waiting for Windows XP - XP's poor performance under heavy load should prompt industrial-strength users to stick with Windows 2000.(Evaluation)"
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0IFW/44_23/79558777/p1/article.jhtml?term=windows

The fact that Mac OSX "does not synchronize with the traditional publishing house workflow" Is really of little concern to me. I don't run a traditional publishing house, and I don't think you do either. The fact is, my 400 mhz G3 runs OSX just fine. It boots up faster than OS9 did, and I can do my every day tasks at a similar speed. I can't say the same thing about XP and my gateway of comparable age, since when I tried installing XP the computer nearly killed itself. None of you actually use OSX in everyday use, and yet you claim its so slow. And charger, are you grouping me with these "mac fanatics?" because i'm not a big fan of being called pigheaded when all i'm doing is arguing against the Windows platform. I'm not as pro mac as I am anti-windows =).

Secondly, charger, Macs are upgradable. Hard Drive, graphics card, sound card... The only road block currently is processors. But a spokes person from sonnet (one of the major manufacturers of G4 processor upgrades) said "As the new G3 and G4 chips become more available and prices start to fall, the economics will be better, and processor upgrade manufacturers will be able to offer products at affordable prices that make sense to the consumers."

Yes Powermacs are more expensive, an entry level power mac 867 mhz will cost you around $2000. Yet Apple's iMac line is extremely affordable, considering the $1500 and $1900 models come with a DVD-Burner and a 15-inch flat screen monitor standard. I just know customized 2 computers, a Dell and a Powermac with as identical specs (down to the mice) as I could get them:

2.0ghz P4 933 mhz G4
80 gb 80gb
256 mb 256 mb
DVD-R/CD-RW DVD-R/CD-RW
GeForce 4 Ti GeForce 4 Ti
Mediocore speakers Mediocore Speakers
Home Movie editor Home movie editor

PRICES AFTER REBATES:
$3083.99 3257.00

Where is the gigantic gap? I don't really see one. Now I know not all of you would buy a Dell, and definitely not all of you would get all the parts from Dell (i.e you could probably get a cheeper screen and DVD-R / CD-RW drive) but the same holds for the mac (I wouldn't buy Apple's 17 inch flat screen monitor, Sony makes a similar one for $200 cheaper) But you guys are definetly exaggerating the price difference. Yes, the Mac is more expensive, but not by much. ::waits to be flamed::

 

[penguin341]

I have to say this is one of the best PC vs. Mac debates I've seen, everyone is being pretty mature and name calling is down to a minimum... On a lighter note, according to this link http://members.truepath.com/objective/propaganda.html Apple is a company of satan worshiping commies... I honestly couldn't stop laughing after the "chmod 666" part...

elevate, OSX is more sluggish than OS9, but I don't find that it hampers the overall OS too much after 10.1... 10.0 was a different story...

 

[brzilian]

2.0ghz P4 933 mhz G4
80 gb 80gb
256 mb 256 mb
DVD-R/CD-RW DVD-R/CD-RW
GeForce 4 Ti GeForce 4 Ti
Mediocore speakers Mediocore Speakers
Home Movie editor Home movie editor

PRICES AFTER REBATES:
$3083.99 3257.00

Just strolled over to the website of a local reputable computer retailer here in upstate NY (www.jncs.com) and priced am Intel system like you describe:

P4 2.0Ghz with Intel mobo, fan, 256 Mb of RDRAM - $611
400W Case/powe supply - $139
80Gb Maxtor HD - $189
DVD-RAM drive - $358
GeForce 4 MX440 - $148
SB Audigy Value - $74
Altec Speakers - $59
Adobe Premiere 6.0 ~ $600
WinXP Pro - $169

That still only puts me at $2350!!! Thats a whopping $1100 less than your Mac system and I guarantee this system will outperform that Dell you quoted.

I could have added a nice Matrox, ATI or even 3DLabs OpenGL card and an Audiophile 2496 and I would have still come under what that G4 costs...

See, this is the whole point - I can actually select every component that will go into my PC. It even turns out to be cheaper!!!

 

[N8theGr8]

"The OS has little to do with how fast you're going to render something (aside from OS X's paltry SMP implementation), which was the whole point of this - the hardware, not the OS. BTW, it'd be more than 30% faster, depending on hardware."
- no, that isnt what i meant. let me make myself clearer, i would rather stick with mac and osx performing relatively good rendering speeds etc. than to use a pc with any windows version on it. what i meant was that it would mean i would have to use windows, the hardware change (which definately is responsible for the speeds) would force an OS change. more than 30%? i dont care, as represented when i said "someodd" for me, its still not a big enough difference.

"It pisses me off, because the Mac is not worth $2200 in sheer computing power terms."

im just gonna take a stab at this, pretty basic concept here, but for those of you who saw "you've got mail" they bring up this same principle. the nice little small bookshop is forced to sell books for outrageous prices, whereas the huge chain bookstore can sell the same books and more for cheaper.

"the line that Jobs has sold them over the last few years, to get them to worship things like the iMac, and accept that the processors hardly ever get revved, and accept a pricing structure that for most people is prohibitive."

ill agree with you that there are plenty of mac fanatics as well as pc fanatics, but dont diss Jobs. he is a major part of where the macs are today, and right now macs are definately making a comeback.


"The only reason I bought the damn thing was to run Pro Tools TDM" - hey now, name calling? i started this thread mentioning how i believed that no pc came close to the mac in terms of stability, and look where that got us i wont say anything back...

 

[N8theGr8]

"That still only puts me at $2350!!! Thats a whopping $1100 less than your Mac system" no, 900, pull out that calculator of yours buddy and im sure you could find even cheaper too! just hop on to pricewatch.com and we could play this game as long as you want. i have dealt with horrible e-companies before and went through hell returning an athlon 1.2ghz system, and im sure there are possibilites of other problems to arise if you opt for that route. 2350 is darn good for a local sale, pre-built or in parts? and any warrantees? i pondered over making my own pc and after my bad experience with pricewatch.com i decided it wasnt worth all the effort.

 

[elevate]

i would rather stick with mac and osx performing relatively good rendering speeds

Operative word there is 'relatively'. I think if you ever had to render complex 3D models you'd change 'relatively good' to 'tolerable'. Then again, it's simply harder to work with complex 3D models on Macs due to the lack of any serious 3D hardware.

i have dealt with horrible e-companies before and went through hell returning an athlon 1.2ghz system, and im sure there are possibilites of other problems to arise if you opt for that route.

That's your fault for not doing research. Pricewatch is a great resource, but equally great is Reseller Ratings. I've never had a bad experience with an online vendor due in large part to Reseller Ratings. Of course, you really could just head over to Newegg and not worry about it; great prices and great customer service.

 

[N8theGr8]

"That's your fault for not doing research." making assumptions again....i never said i didnt do research. i came across the company through pricewatch, yes, but i asked some friends and found 2 of them who ordered computers from the company and said they were fine. in my case, they lied about when my order was received, i called them numerous times to make sure they got it, and they said they did, but apparently its production didnt start until 3 weeks later. (they had promised in about 2-3 weeks from ordering date, the comp would arrive) I finally received the computer 7 weeks from purchase date. then it would freeze up every 15-20 minutes, even while not running any apps. i asked questions on forums everywhere and nothing helped. i said i wanted to return it. they didnt let me. they said it was up to them to decide whether the computer could be returned, and they sent me new memory. i knew that all they were trying to do was make the computer go past its 30 days-then no returns date, and i had to force them to take the computer back on the phone. they made ME pay top shipping in order for them to receive it in time, which was a total of 70 dollars. in addition, i also pay for the shipping of the memory to here, and overnight shipping for the way back to their company. 2 months later, the refund appeared, and not for the original 850 dollars, but 650. i lost over 300 dollars because of that company and it convinced me to only stay with local e-stores or places like compusa and the mac store.

 

[charger]

Yes Powermacs are more expensive, an entry level power mac 867 mhz will cost you around $2000. Yet Apple's iMac line is extremely affordable, considering the $1500 and $1900 models come with a DVD-Burner and a 15-inch flat screen monitor standard.

Check again. The $1599 (not $1500) model comes with a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive. The $1899 model comes with the Superdrive (and if you up it to 512MB RAM, it's $2099--from Apple).

Also, the entry level PowerMac is not an 867, it's an 800, and it's $1600, not $2200.

On pricewatch.com I've seen DVD-RAM drives for as low as $109. I've seen the Pioneer model that is the Superdrive for $300 at my local computer superstore. Add to that the price of a 15" LCD screen (~$300). There's 600$ worth of stuff. So I'm left with $1299 with which to buy my computer. OK, here's what $1299 buys you in the PC world...(http://www.microexpress.net/cgibin/configurator?system=ATH1900&table=Desktops&cartid=). Note that you can remove the monitor (-$150) and then upgrade the processor to a Athlon XP 2000+... Or remove the CD-RW (remember, you have $already purchased your Pioneer DVD-RW drive) and the monitor, save $230, and do a host of other upgrades. You can pick and choose whatever the hell you want, and you can do it all for the price of a loaded iMac.

Now, I understand that the iMac is cute, but I absolutely cannot use a computer that doesn't have PCI slots. It just won't work with my hardware. And Firewire is not an adequate substitute for a PCI slot.

 

[brzilian]

"That still only puts me at $2350!!! Thats a whopping $1100 less than your Mac system" no, 900, pull out that calculator of yours buddy and im sure you could find even cheaper too! just hop on to pricewatch.com and we could play this game as long as you want. i have dealt with horrible e-companies before and went through hell returning an athlon 1.2ghz system, and im sure there are possibilites of other problems to arise if you opt for that route. 2350 is darn good for a local sale, pre-built or in parts? and any warrantees? i pondered over making my own pc and after my bad experience with pricewatch.com i decided it wasnt worth all the effort.

Jncs is not some trashy e-business like the crap on Pricewatch. I can acutally go in there and buy stuff in person. They even burn in/test the motherboard for 24 hours before you buy it. They make recommendadtions on the site as to what hardware works best with other pieces of hardware

Did you even bother to look at the site before replying? They list their business hours and warranty info right on there...


"We specialize in providing tested Motherboard Bundles, shipped UPS Ground at no extra charge. These are motherboard / CPU / Memory combinations pre-configured and pre-tested before packaging and shipping.
We are pleased to offer quality components at good prices with excellent tech support available. We appreciate both the new visitors to our site as well as the many of you who return regularly. We welcome your toll-free phone calls for tech support, questions, and sales...

...Directions to J&N Computer Services


JNCS is located at:
3 Railroad Street
Fairport, NY 14450

Although we do keep many items in stock, it is best if you call before stopping by to make sure we have the item that you need in stock...

...All items sold, with the exception of items that are clearly represented to be "used", "as is", or specify a different warranty period, are covered for one year by our exchange or repair warranty. We will repair the defective item or exchange it, at our option.

During the first 30 days, the item will be exchanged. If the item is no longer available to us, it will be exchanged with an item of equal or greater value.

After the first 30 days we will decide, with our customers input, the best course of action:
1) repair (item will be returned repaired)
2) exchange (item will be exchanged with same, equal, or better item, at our option)
In general, most items will simply be exchanged as repair is really not an option. Some mechanical items such as hard drives may be repairable, and these we would want to send to the factory for factory repair or exchange... "

 

[T.J.Hooker]

"Apparently you "LOVE" your PC." .....? anything to stay away from a microsoft OS. when i made the switch to mac i was still used to windows and wanted virtual pc, tried it, and now i never use it. yes, its slow. does it run kazaa? nope. direct connect on aim? dont even try it. "RUNDLL ERROR!!!!" a friend told me that the whole point of switching to mac was to stay away microsoft, and im glad i did.

I guess I lied before when I said "That's all you'll hear from me"

For audio recording, I agree on the Virtual PC thing. I was just making the point that it can be done.
Anyway, You said "anything to stay away from a microsoft OS"

I don't get it. Is'nt NT(The OS on your PC) made by microsoft. And running a Mac doesn't keep you away from microsoft. Take a walk through your "extensions" microsoft is there, hell their all over like rabbit shit. They've got their hands in everything from calculators to rubbers. Regardless, I'm glad you switched too. I prefer a Mac for all my basic computing needs, I'm on one right now. But I can't do everything I want to do in my studio without the PC. Both systems have their ups and downs. It's a well known fact that "FOR ONCE" the PC's clock speeds are beating macs right now, But I'm confident that will change for little while upon the arrival of the G5. But, even if it doesn't, who gives a shit. They still do what's needed. So, you boys just quit all your pecker measurin', and benchmark bickerin'. Use both, and smile.

P.S. I've learned from experience that asking about Macs around this bbs will get you nothing but a crucifixion. These guys are "useless" to a Mac user.
Check out this link bro: http://acapella.harmony-central.com...forum=MacOS&number=19&DaysPrune=30&LastLogin=


80's captian kirk wannabe,
T.J.Hooker

 

[elevate]

i never said i didnt do research. i came across the company through pricewatch, yes, but i asked some friends and found 2 of them who ordered computers from the company

Asking a couple friends is research? Wouldn't you prefer get the opinion of a few hundred people, rather than a few?