[zelda_pinwheel]

currently i am whimpering to myself and grumbling because i managed to twist my ankle pretty badly earlier tonight, and it hurts. worse luck, apart from the normal hobbling around my appartment and hobbling to the grocery store i'll have to do, i've got appointments and meetings all over the damned city for at least the next two weeks, which is the opposite of what you're supposed to do in such cases (stay off it).

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Well, a lot of people say they are really expensive... but if you compare them to truly equivalent commodity machines like Dell and HP they are pretty similar.

quite possibly, but dell is too expensive for me too.

The funny thing on the other side is while the Mac hardware is a bit more I have found that most Mac software is very affordable and usually much better than Windows counterparts.

that's quite possible. then again, outside of the adobe suite, most of my software is free / open source anyway ; firefox, chrome, avast anti-virus, itunes, spotify, calibre, sigil, notepad, open office, vlc... it's not an exhaustive list obviously but it's a good sampling. there is very little software i have to pay for, really. (of course, the price of the adobe suite sort of makes up for that, all by itself... but that's still true regardless of the plateforme.)

Of course, if you are home building you can blow it away in price. Of course, if you are building it yourself you can by Hackintosh friendly parts.

my point. (never thought about trying a hackintosh though, maybe i'll try that one of these days).

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Wine is short for "Windows Emulator" and it runs on top of Linux. I'm not sure something like Photoshop or Illustrator will run on it. Of course, I could be wrong.

BOb

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Not a emulator. It add sone windows library, and convert windows system calls into unix system calls.
A version of crossover for mac exists too.
Best way to know how well (or bad) a program runs with wine : http://appdb.winehq.org/

thanks for that info. i checked illustrator, out of curiosity ; all the latest versions (CS1 - 4) are rated as "garbage". i'm guessing that's not good.

Originally Posted by devilsadvocate

If you have big honkin' hardware, virtualization is a good option (lots of RAM = bonus). You basically have two real-world choices: VMware, which (at least for the superior workstation variant) costs money; and VirtualBox, which is open-source and/or freebies. From personal experience both handle Windows 7 just fine; VMware even runs the Aero eyecandy on 7/Vista now. I've been meaning to do a comparison of these on my site http://windowsanonymous.org but VBox is updated farily often, and if it's at a disadvantage this week it probably won't be next week. To sum up,

VMware: Costs money, a little more advanced
VirtualBox: Free, good for most purposes.

interesting. thanks. let me know when you put the comparison online.

Myth-busting time: Mac innards are commodity pieces; you can buy every internal part of a Mac at a computer supply place. There's no magic involved. It's all Intel/NVidia now.

i meant software compatibility. the developper i work with regularly is using windows. i've had some really annoying incompatibility problems between mac and pc versions of illustrator, even when they are the same version number, and that's only thinking of illustrator (it is the most notoriously capricious, but it's also my favourite and the one i use the most...). on the other hand, photoshop files are amazingly cross-compatible and backwards-compatible. they could teach a thing or two to the illustrator team.

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Zelda, if you want to try using a Linux machine, you might try one of the small nettops and a KMV (keyboard, mouse, and video) switch. The aspire revo that giving me fits in windows will load Linux Mint happily. It's only 19 X 19 X 3.5 cms all up. A good KMV will let you swap from one machine to another just by toggling a key... (I've used one for years...)

hum. i'll keep that in mind, although i'm really not sure i want / have room for *another* box (even a small one). but if i get a netbook, i might try it on that.

Originally Posted by devilsadvocate

Been there, done that. It works on mine but the process isn't for the faint-hearted. The Apple EULA says that you can only install one copy of the OS and it must be on Apple-branded product. The general formula is,

1. Buy a Shuttle; same parts as an iMac
2. Buy a monitor of your choice
3. Buy a retail copy of OSX
4. Patch OSX. Yes, it's legal to do so; most of OSX (i.e. the parts that need patching) is open-source and covered under either the BSD license or GNU GPL v2.
5. Put an Apple logo somewhere on the case of the Shuttle. ("Apple-branded product". Yes, I'm serious.)
6. Flip Steve Jobs the bird for a job well done.

i'll keep that in mind.