gobbledonk Posted October 29, 2003 Report Share Posted October 29, 2003 My 10-month old iBook has developed a problem with the display blacking out unless you hold it at a certain angle (!) I was initially of the opinion that my *local* Mac dealer (I bought it from a different dealer before moving here) was dragging the chain in fixing it, but it would appear that they've been doing the exact opposite. Here is their reply : xxxxx has replaced the display in your iBook today and unfortunately this did not fix the problem. That leaves either a cable or the logic board. It is more likely to be the cable than the logic board, so we have ordered the cable today ? this will be here on Friday. If the cable doesn?t fix it ? Eric said he would put your hard drive in our demo iBook and loan that to you to use until he has yours sorted. Yes, I realize that *some* PC shops will give exemplary service, but I suspect that the majority would just try to push it back to the manufacturer : they just want the sale, not the warranty hassles. Something to think about when you are considering your next hardware purchase. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
khunsanuk Posted October 30, 2003 Report Share Posted October 30, 2003 Hi, Could this have something to do with the fact that Macs are more than twice as expensive You've not convinced me yet of switching to Macs Sanuk! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 30, 2003 Report Share Posted October 30, 2003 Artiew, Your lasts post, including this one, seem to indicate that you believe that 'good' service is only because of competition/money/future profits ??? I have found that there are a lot of people out there who will give you the 'good' service, simply bcause it's the right thing to do. They take pride in what they do,they are interested in what they do, regardless of the monetary consequences. Not everyone is in it 'just for the money'. Be glad that people like KS and Jigger feel that way ......... cause they sure ain't going to retire on this enterprise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adikgede Posted October 30, 2003 Report Share Posted October 30, 2003 Twice as expensive as what, a used Think Pad? Virginia Polytechnic claims that their 1,100 unit cluster of dual G5s will be able to do 17TFlops, currently its at about 10TFlops, which makes it the third fastest supercomputer in the world. At $5Million thats almost half the price of the lowest bids they took from Dell, IBM, HP and Sun. I wonder What NEC's Earth Simulator, 36TFlops, or Los Almos' ASCI Q, 14TFlops, cost? The only hardware modification to the G5s is an infiniband network card, and its running on Mac OS X. Back to earth for USD 1100 you get the baseline iBook, and its not a shabby little computer. http://www.computing.vt.edu/research_computing/terascale/ http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,60559,00.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted October 30, 2003 Author Report Share Posted October 30, 2003 Hi KS, If you sincerely believe that Macs are *still* twice as expensive as the equivalent PC (and you need to get over the industry fixation on CPU MHz to do that ...), then your thinking is sorely dated. I also shared this belief prior to the introduction of OS X, but Apple have slashed their prices significantly in the past 18 or so months. If *only* one of the big magazines would get together a benchmark based on real-world performance for things like Office, Photoshop and other commonly used apps, and run it side-by-side on a range of hardware, straight from the manufacturer. AMD have repeatedly complained about Intel's penchant for having the biggest numbers against their flagship processor, and this gave us the 'XP1700+' to try to convey that they felt their 1.4GHz Athlon was the equivalent of a 1.7GHz P3 (and so on). Apple havent tried to go down the same road, but the proof of their engineering is only ever going to be found in actual comparative testing. Pricewise, I can now buy a 1GHz G4 eMac with 1GB of RAM and an 80GB HD for *less* than an entry-level desktop from Acer, Dell or Compaq (specced with 256MB ..). The 'paltry' 1GHz G4 looks puny compared to the 2.6 - 3.2 GHz numbers on the PC makers webpages, and the eMac is pretty basic in terms of FSB and other motherboard specs, but I would defy the average user to find fault with the response time running anything other than games (the eMac's card just isnt up to Direct X9 games). I admit that someone like yourself would be more inclined to look at a G5, and they are pricey indeed. Having said that, its not hard to reach the Apple pricing when speccing an Intel server (and thats what the G5 is designed for, despite Apple's 'desktop' hooha) . Again, we need one of the big-budget magazines to build two servers and load them up with databases, web servers and enough poorly-written Java to choke a horse KS, I realise that you dont like religious wars, and I apologise if I've strayed into that morass, but I cant let dated thinking on the price/performance aspect of the Mac go unanswered. The other aspect is longevity - its not uncommon to find Mac users who are still happily using four and five years-old+ machines : contrast that with the landfill that most PCs of that vintage have long since become. I resisted buying one until they had the OS to match that hardware - now that they have OS X, its impossible to ignore the new Macs. Cheers Artie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
khunsanuk Posted October 31, 2003 Report Share Posted October 31, 2003 Hi, Okay, must admit that I do not follow the prices of Macs (just heard a figure of I believe 120K Baht for a G5?) and was under the impression that they are still much more expensive. Furthermore, my comparison would not be a brandname computer, but rather something I would throw together myself, which is likely much cheaper than a Dell, IBM, whatever. Anyway, I suggest we drop this. Sanuk! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adikgede Posted October 31, 2003 Report Share Posted October 31, 2003 "I admit that someone like yourself would be more inclined to look at a G5, and they are pricey indeed. Having said that, its not hard to reach the Apple pricing when speccing an Intel server (and thats what the G5 is designed for, despite Apple's 'desktop' hooha) . Again, we need one of the big-budget magazines to build two servers and load them up with databases, web servers and enough poorly-written Java to choke a horse." I would be interested to see what the installation base for Xserve and other OS X machinery is in a year or two. I would think that iTunes is Apples most network intensive presence, and most of that is done with VA Linux 2200 and Angstrum 2U machines w/2 Intel Xeon CPUs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted October 31, 2003 Author Report Share Posted October 31, 2003 Adik and KS, No problems Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted October 31, 2003 Author Report Share Posted October 31, 2003 Adik and KS, No problems Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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