The "Mac vs Pc vs Floppy Drive" Post

[Wally]

To hell with XP get a mac.. Make your life a lot easier..


AFAIK Novell and Microsoft dont make good products together. Slow and jerky they can be.

Mac hardware is always the highest quality hardware which is why they are expensive.. Has anyone seen a 386 being used in the markets??? No because they deserve to be sledgehammered

[Kazer0]

To hell with XP get a mac.. Make your life a lot easier..


AFAIK Novell and Microsoft dont make good products together. Slow and jerky they can be.

Mac hardware is always the highest quality hardware which is why they are expensive.. Has anyone seen a 386 being used in the markets??? No because they deserve to be sledgehammered

Ah ha ha ha ha ha.... you have no idea what your talking about.

Mac OSX = BSD/Linux = Built on a 386.


EDIT: I forgot. More markets and buisnesses use Windows Server more than any Mac servers. Actually, Linux servers are more common than Windows servers.
Mac hardware is always a generation behind. The only reason Macs are more stable is because they are hardware locked machines. And the Linux/BSD OS is what makes them seem faster.

[Wally]

MAc hardware isnt a generation behind..

Look at Pcs these days. THey still have floppy drives. Macs dont....
Apple dropped them out in 1998 and PCs still have them?? No point to be honest.

You gotta be kidding me. Mac is not more stable because they are hardware locked. If a PC was to be stable it would only be with linux.

Mac OS X was not built on a 386.. More like a G3 which is like a Pentium 7

[Kazer0]

MAc hardware isnt a generation behind..

Look at Pcs these days. THey still have floppy drives. Macs dont....
Apple dropped them out in 1998 and PCs still have them?? No point to be honest.

You gotta be kidding me. Mac is not more stable because they are hardware locked. If a PC was to be stable it would only be with linux.

Mac OS X was not built on a 386.. More like a G3 which is like a Pentium 7

Wow, you are an idiot. Just strait out. Go look things up before you speak. Mac OSX was built on FreeBSD, which was coded on an x86 machine.

Floppy drives are still useful. At school, I can transfer my documents on a floppy and print them at school without having to install drivers for a USB key.

And if you think that macs are better off being hardware locked, have fun wasting money when your computer becomes obsolete.

[Dogbreath]

MAc hardware isnt a generation behind..

Look at Pcs these days. THey still have floppy drives. Macs dont....
Apple dropped them out in 1998 and PCs still have them?? No point to be honest.

You think that *not* having floppy drives is a sign of advanced technology? "Hey, look at me, I'm going to be even more modern than Mac! I'm selling a computer with no power source! How you start it, I don't know, but at least it doesn't have any of those old fashioned gadgets!"

I have the entirity of my High School work (homework, essays, tests, etc. etc. etc.) stored and organized on a series of floppy disks. Currently, it's the absolute best method of small (under 1024 kb) file data storage outside of a hardrive. Floppies are also very sturdy - I have 15 year old game disks that still run perfectly. CD's are more expensive, waste about 5 MB of space each time you record (even if you're only storing 10 kb of info!), and are harder to organize than floppies. They also scratch, and break.

So why, tell me, is it more technologically advanced to use a data storage format that costs 10 times as much and holds 5,000 times as much space as you need to store a 10 KB file, when a floppy would work just as well, and cost you almost nothing?

Windows machines have CD-ROM drives that are just as good as MAC machines, and not only that, but they also have floppy disk drives which work much better for certain things, and allow you to access data that was stored before CDs were invented. Removing floppy drives was just stupid and inpractical.

You gotta be kidding me. Mac is not more stable because they are hardware locked. If a PC was to be stable it would only be with linux.

My PC is stable, and, while maybe not as fast as the newest of macs, has more than enough power to do whatever I want. Wanna know what's best about it, though? I built the entire thing at the cost of $180 from parts I salvaged from other computers, e-bay, and a printer and moniter from a garage sale. The fact that I can modify my computer in pretty much any way I want, and, in fact, with pretty much any brand or type I want (switched RAM type from SDM to DDR, went from AMD brand to Intel brand (though I still prefer AMD) without having to buy a whole new machine is great.

Mac OS X was not built on a 386.. More like a G3 which is like a Pentium 7

Though I'm no hardware buff, AFIAK, there is no such thing as Pentium 7.

Wally: I wouldn't agree with Kazer0's proclamation that you're an idiot (though it is somewhat tempting), but you're definately arguing from an ignorant standpoint. This argument hasn't really proven that Macs suck, just that you don't really have a clue what you're talking about.

And from my experiences with him, I can say that Kazer0 knows more about computer Hardware (Apple and PC) than you can imagine. That doesn't mean that he knows everything, or in fact, that he's even right. But it's probably not a good idea to treat him as if he were stupid, or make stuff up about things that you don't understand.

If you don't understand something, next time just politely ask someone to explain it to you instead of being a jerk. You'll learn a lot more, and people will generally treat you better. (Unless you're asking dosraider, but we've already discussed that in this thread)

[GameMaster.EXE]

MAc hardware isnt a generation behind..

Look at Pcs these days. THey still have floppy drives. Macs dont....
Apple dropped them out in 1998 and PCs still have them?? No point to be honest.

Another of the many ways you are wrong. If future PC's do come out I'm hoping that they have a floppy disk drive. Most of my dos games are on floppy disks and they come in handy when you're tight on hard drive space.

Continueing this conversation/arguement any further will be futile. This thread will be locked, and I do not want that to happen.

For my thought, ever since I used computers it was a PC with Windows installed, so I grew on Windows and used it ever since. I had never used or came in contact with a Mac before, so I'm hesitant to try it.

Well, back to topic.

[Wally]

Everyone grows on windows these days, same as money growing on trees *Sighs*

You people dont get it.. If you were to use floppy disks. There is no point having an internal one as you can buy a USB one for $20 anyhow.

as for using floppies at school. Most schools have Cd burners these days which you can use CDs for multisessions.

Since floppys perhaps arent reliable why bother with them?

[Sovi3t]

You people dont get it.. If you were to use floppy disks. There is no point having an internal one as you can buy a USB one for $20 anyhow.

Wtf... Why would you prefer an external drive over internal? Would you prefer an external DVD drive over internal?

as for using floppies at school. Most schools have Cd burners these days which you can use CDs for multisessions.

No.

Since floppys perhaps arent reliable why bother with them?

They are reliable. Maybe not as much as optical media, but they can easily retain data foor 10-15 years. 99.9% of school computers let you read and write from them. I'd estimate that less than 10% of school nationwide have CD burners available on lab computers.

Just because it's not the most recent technology doesn't mean we should abandon it.

[Dogbreath]

Everyone grows on windows these days, same as money growing on trees *Sighs*

Grows on Windows?

You people dont get it.. If you were to use floppy disks. There is no point having an internal one as you can buy a USB one for $20 anyhow.

Tell me. Why exactly would I want to shell out $20 for a USB cord and an external floppy disk reader? (Plus having to piss away a perfectly good USB slot, which I already use for my wireless LAN reciever) It'd also clog up my desk, when there's a nice, dandy slot near center of my case for it to sit.

as for using floppies at school. Most schools have Cd burners these days which you can use CDs for multisessions.

Did you even read my post? Nope, guess not. Go read the freaking paragraph I wrote about why CDs are impractical and expensive for storing school data before you reply with mindless garbage like this again. (I'm not talking about taking things into school, if you were too stupid to notice, I'm talking about preserving information in a disk format)

Since floppys perhaps arent reliable why bother with them?

Floppies? Unreliable? *Sigh* I'm trying hard not to flame, but it's getting pretty hard. Why do you think floppies are unreliable? For me, at least, they're roughly 30 times more reliable than a CD, but that's about the amount of CDs I've had burn improperly as compared to floppies (which always seem to record and store data perfectly for me).

Answer the points I brought up in my previous post, and with actualities, and I'll be more than willing to discuss this with you. Make stuff up and act like an asshole just because you're too proud to admit you might not know everything about computers, and you'll just earn the scorn of everyone in this thread.

[Wally]

There is no such thing as a pentium 7 i know but i am refering to the G5 processor here.

2) IF you were to use floppy disks for backup up stuff well you are crazy.. Cds are more reliable if you get the right brand an all

AFIAK windows XP is just a beefed up version of 2000

Dogbreath: If i was to ever buy a packet of floppies again i would die.. Im sticking to USB memory. i would rather have 1 memory stick (128mb) to 88.8 floppy disks

[Sovi3t]

2) IF you were to use floppy disks for backup up stuff well you are crazy.. Cds are more reliable if you get the right brand an all

Who said anything about using floppies for backups? If you were to use it for backups, a good floppy will last you 20 years, a CD 30.

Dogbreath: If i was to ever buy a packet of floppies again i would die.. Im sticking to USB memory. i would rather have 1 memory stick (128mb) to 88.8 floppy disks

Just because you prefer to use a USB drive doesn't mean you are always able to use it. Many computers are still running W98 or lower... which means your USB drive will either not work at all, or you'll have to carry a drivers CD (...or floppy?) around with you.

Fixing computers requires you to have some floppies because the older computers won't boot up from a USB drive or CD.

[Dogbreath]

There is no such thing as a pentium 7 i know but i am refering to the G5 processor here.

So how does the G5 processor relate to this imaginary Pentium 7 thing you pulled out of your ass?

2) IF you were to use floppy disks for backup up stuff well you are crazy.. Cds are more reliable if you get the right brand an all

Who said I was using it to back up my files? I use my CD burner for that. If you would just read my post (which you've failed to do... twice) you'd see I'm talking about storing small (under 1 MB) documents from school in an ordered fashion, something CD's would utterly suck at (You burn up around 5 MB worth of space every time you burn, no matter the size of the file, doesn't store as well, and costs 10 times as much)

Thumb drives are probably the best thing, but they're also expensive, and I'm a bit paranoid about breaking one. Not to mention they don't interface with all (real) computers, and are probably more suspect to memory loss. Floppy disks are neigh indestructable, unless you're trying to ruin one.

So why spend 10 times as much money to use a format that is, at best, only as good as floppy disks, which I can use just fine for 1/10th of the price?

[CPT Worm]

I'm getting an iMac G5 for school.
It makes me sad because it doesn't have a floppy drive. =(

I can get one at Wal-mart for like $15, though. I just might.

I almost got an Intel-based machine, but I couldn't stand using Windows XP for two years. I doubt I could get a copy of Windows 2000 without pirating it, and I'm too impatient to wait for Mac OS X for x86.

[Sovi3t]

Linux is always an option

[dr_st]

Having missed most of this thread I only have two things to say:

1) The claim that Windows 2000 is more stable than Windows XP isn't any truer than the opposite claim.

2) The claim that floppy disks are reliable is downright ridiculous. These things die if you look at them funny. You can have a brand new floppy, format it, copy one file on it, bring it to the PC next door and - boom - data error, file corrupted, try to reformat floppy, track 0 unusable, throw floppy to garbage bin. And old floppies tend to develop "sector not found" errors and just plain bad sectors. You can treat a floppy right and it will still die on you. And that's unreliable in my book. Of course, with all that, I still find them useful for the exact same things mentioned earlier - moving small files in the absense (or unusability) of a flash disk.

[Kazer0]

I dont agree that Floppy's are reliable either, but I don't agree with CDs being very reliable either. Neither do I rely on USB Keys. I have a bunch of points to make here from this topic. Standby while I go through them.

Floppys break easy, sure, but they are damn useful for small files like documents and pictures, as well as small programs for any computer science high school course, or a database or two from any computer buisness course. Almost all computers in schools have floppy drives for this purpose, and my courses even REQUIRED 2 or more floppy disks. No where in any school have I ever come across a CD burner that students could use. Wally, do not make up facts like that. Floppys are still incredibly useful in schools and at home for files like mentioned above. Moreso than a CD or DVD, even if it is rewritable. MACs removing Floppy drives was a horrid idea. I remember we had to stop using the computers in my grade school when we got iMacs. We couldnt save any documents, there was just no way to save them securly.

As for new Dell PCs comming out with no floppy drive, that is only by default. When you buy a PC, you are given the option to have one, and the cases still have the port for you to put one in yourself.

As for Wally saying he prefers a $20 External Floppy. Wow, what a horribly made up comment that completely destroys your own argument. Why wouldnt you take the $3 internal floppy that DOESNT use a USB port, DOESNT take up desk space, DOESNT need to be installed, and DOESNT have such a high risk of breakage/loss?

As per wally saying Backups on Floppy was a rediculous idea. Welcome to the year 2005 you ditz. You really think were that stupid? We know that backing up on CD is a better option. You dont need to make obvious points in the hope that it will make you seem smarter than you are. If you want to get technical, creating a backup partition is a better idea than using a CD. Look, you lose on that point too.

As for saying you cant say that Windows 2000 is more stable than XP. Well, actually you can. It does depend a lot on the hardware, but Windows 2000 uses less complicated, and less userfriendly programs than Windows XP. Just the themes alone in XP cause minor instability problems. Mind you, the diffrence is faint, but still there.

Ah yes, my favorite comment yet. Wally's "A G5 IS SUPER LEET COMPARED TO A PENTIUM 7!!!!". Ha ha, wow. What, are you desperate for points to argue now? Why dont you look up the AMD X2 processor please. 64-bit dual core, which is more than a G5 can boast. Mind you, it does seem faster because Mac OSX (Which is still BSD/Linux, despite what you think) runs on lower resources than Windows. And if your precious Mac OSX is so great, why are Apple switching from IBM/Motorola processors (The makers of the G5/G4/PowerPC, etc) to Intel processors, and releasing Mac OSX x86 edition? Hum, seems the Macs are becoming PCs.

"AFIAK windows XP is just a beefed up version of 2000 " Finally, a point that is almost correct. XP is indeed a beefed up version of 2000, but in the same way that 2000 is a beefed up version of WinNT. Why? Because they run on the NT core.


And my last points an up point. It was said that arguing this was futule. Well know what? Guess who decides when it gets locked (or unlocked)? Thats right, I do. Last time I checked, I was the head moderator in Hardware back in the day, and still am.

And yes Wally, despite what you may think, I do know more than you can imaging about Hardware (And software for that matter). I do not claim to know everything, or even a lot, but I know enough to know that almost every point you make is wrong.

Now im not saying Macs suck. In fact, they are stable machines, and do great photo/video editing. However, the world of gaming, processing, coding, and overall use belongs in the world of the PC.

[GameMaster.EXE]

The claim that floppy disks are reliable is downright ridiculous. These things die if you look at them funny. You can have a brand new floppy, format it, copy one file on it, bring it to the PC next door and - boom - data error, file corrupted, try to reformat floppy, track 0 unusable, throw floppy to garbage bin. And old floppies tend to develop "sector not found" errors and just plain bad sectors. You can treat a floppy right and it will still die on you. And that's unreliable in my book. Of course, with all that, I still find them useful for the exact same things mentioned earlier - moving small files in the absense (or unusability) of a flash disk.

Speak for yourself. I find floppy disks usefull, depending on the situation. True, CD-ROM's have more space on them, but touch one with a greasy finger and-boom- it's messed up. Floppy disks aren't as vunerable and you don't have to carry it around in a case. Just keep it away from magnets and it will be just fine. Those 5.34 floppy disks are the real problem, they are bigger but have less space than a 3.5 floppy's and are just as vunerable as CD-ROM's.

[dr_st]

As for saying you cant say that Windows 2000 is more stable than XP. Well, actually you can. It does depend a lot on the hardware, but Windows 2000 uses less complicated, and less userfriendly programs than Windows XP. Just the themes alone in XP cause minor instability problems. Mind you, the diffrence is faint, but still there.

Depends a lot on the hardware, you have it there. XP is superior to 2K when it comes to modern hardware, and it causes it to be even more stable most of the time.

touch one with a greasy finger and-boom- it's messed up.

Not necessarily. If you clean the dirt carefully it may still be in perfect working order. Scratches will kill it, though.

Those 5.34 floppy disks are the real problem, they are bigger but have less space than a 3.5 floppy's and are just as vunerable as CD-ROM's.

True dat, but since these old 5.25" disks and the devices that read them are all but extinct, it's not a real issue.

[GameMaster.EXE]

What I'm trying to say here is CD-ROM's are not bad, they are very usefull but so are floppy disks. They both have there disadvantages. 45 years from now and we have real tiny CD-ROM's the size of one of your toes called BETAROMS and some forum having this same arguement but getting nowhere.

Floppy disks are the first generation of memory storage, and CD-ROM's are the next. Technology is improving everyday, and so is computers. (dosraider's attitude is not ) It doesn't matter if someone likes floppy disks better than a CD, or vice-versa, because someday CD's are going to be just as outdated.

So get with the flow, people. The REAL issue is PC vs MAC. I want to see the outcome.....

[Kazer0]

" want to see the outcome....."

The outcome will always be the same, despite what wally thinks. For games and overall use, a PC is better than a MAC. Apple is changing their computers towards an x86 base because they know this.

However, MACs do have the advantages in the video and picture editing department.