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Journal forged's Journal: New computer needed. MAC or PC ? 25

Journal by forged
I need to replace a dual-cpu PC computer by a new machine, but I'm facing some kind of dilemma.

I've been a long-time PC user, in fact since the very first 8086s, and I normally build computers myself from carefully selected parts.

Currently I have 2 computers. The oldest one (built in 1996) is a dual pentium 200 mmx with 256 MB EDO ram, SCSI CD-ROMs and CD-Writer, 30 GB IDE hard disks and a 21" monitor. The newest is a Dell dimension 8100 (pentium 4 1.5 Ghz, 128 MB RDRAM, 140GB IDE hard disk, FireWire).

I am primarely using Linux at home (on the older PC), and occasionnally Windows 98SE or ME (I don't have and don't want W2K, XP or else). Windows ME is the only OS on the Dell. I mostly do "desktop" work under Linux (email, mp3s, scripting...) on the old computer, and I play and do video editing on the newer, faster machine.

My dilemma is the following: if I should buy a new machine, should it be a MAC ?

This question has a huge impact for me, since I'm such a long time PC user. Allow me to explain why I am perhaps considering a Mac.

  1. These days I do mostly "desktop" tasks and I would like to emphasize on video editing. A Mac Powerbook G4 would be a fine platform to do this.
  2. I don't want to drop Linux because I still want to be able to run bash in an xterm, use perl, edit with vim, compile with gcc. MacOS X should be able to do all these things, but I haven't seen it myself yet.
  3. The price is the biggest incentive. Should I buy a new PC alltogether, if all I really need is a motherboard ? But then, can I still get a baby-AT dual-CPU pentium motherboard from somewhere ? If not, the cost of a home-built reasonnable-spec PC is +/- 800€, considering that I would keep my existing 21" monitor. A Powerbook G4 of similar specs costs over 4500€. If I buy a Mac, it will be no less than a Powerbook G4 (I don't want a sissy iMac or iBook for video editing).
  4. When I'll be rich(er) I could buy a cinema HD display, but only if I buy a Mac in the first place.
  5. How about software: I can get all the software I want for PC, but I can't get Mac software easilly nor do I want to shell out 1000€'s to get some (if you know what I mean ;)
  6. I would like to to salvage parts from my old PC if possible, should I buy a Mac. It would sadden me greatly to throw away the CPUs, memory, SCSI devices, because all I really need is a new motherboard. In fact, perhaps I should just buy a new MB and get on with it. But in the event that I replace completely the computer, can I still use some of these parts in a Mac ?

This isn't the only questions in my mind right now. Others are: in case it's a PC, single or dual CPU ? I must admit that I haven't had the need for a dual-cpu machine lately, even if it was cool to have one. I think I now prefer to have a single, faster processor which could be used for games for instance, whereas a dual-cpu configuration is wasted because of the general lack of support from the OS (win 9x) and the applications.

If you're a PC or MAc enthusiast and you would like to contribute your feedback, please do so. I have found Valmont's latest journal log to be an insightful read. I'd love to hear more opinions, since they will help me decide.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

New computer needed. MAC or PC ? More

New computer needed. MAC or PC ?

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  • Win2K, kicks the royal crud out of Macs for video editing.

    No, seriously.

    Macs are dog slow by comparison, harder and more expensive to expand upon, and cost more in sheer bang for your buck factoring.

    A know of a number of people who actually just coughed up the money for a good rack and started shoving machines in there. :)

    But aside from that, heck, a good SMP box running either AMD or Intel (though an Intel Xeon system will cost you, then again, 8Megs of Cache is sweet. :) ) will blow away anything a Mac has to offer.

    The interface is nicer too. No, hey, stop laughing. Win2K's interface blows away anything that the Mac has to offer, and OSX is NOT good for any of the sort of CPU intensive "just get it the frig done" already tasks such as video editing that you want to do. And of course with Apple's big push to make everything OSX native. . . . Do you really want to be wasting that much of your CPU on the UI alone? Ick.

    By comparison I can compress to, manipulate, extract, or tweak any type of video file that I want to on a PC, and the tools are all either free or cheap.

    Want OpenSource? No problem, use VDub.

    Want to capture video from {insert analog source here} and make it look damn fine and well like a native DVD encode?

    No problem, use DScaler, feed it to Huffyuv for real time loseless capturing. DScaler will make your video look crystal clear, yes even from an analog broadcast (Dscaler makes even the pros go "looks damn fine well like magic". ) and Huffyuv does better then 2:1 compression in real time.

    Did I mention it was loseless? :)

    Virtual Dub (what I have been calling Vdub) has a list of filters a mile long that can then work even more magic on your video source. Run it your video through Virtual Dub, and don't worry if you slept through Advanced Matrix Mathematics in college, tons of people put up their pre-optimized filter chains on the internet, and then you can feed the video stream to a compression program of your choice (or use Virtual Dub itself, but hey, why do that when tons of free programs are out there that let you manipulate the video stream in various nifty ways to shave off every extra bit that you can?) an sit back and enjoy.

    Oh yah, did I mention that the Source is available for all of the programs listed above?

    Dscaler and Vdub are GPL, and Huffyuv is mostly GPL (a few bits of MS code still exist in there, but if you really want to you could remove those bits yourself and rewrite them and allow for the release of the entire program under the GPL).

    The complete setup should run you under $2000.

    Quite frankly though I would wait for the Matrox G1000 to come out, just for the 48bit color and TriHead display. :) If you are not going to do much gaming and cannot wait, go for a G450 Dualhead or G550 Dualhead or whichever other Dualhead model fits your needs. Matrox Dualhead rocks. :)

    Yes it is Win2K, and yes it is from Microsoft;

    but hey, it still kicks butt. :)

    (please note that I didn't even mention the NL video editing packages for the PC because they are a dime a dozen. ;) )
  • I myself had a similar dilemma recently. For me it came down to cost. I just couldn't justify the $2500 for a mac when I could get a top of the line motherboard/chip for my pc for around 600$.

    OS X is great, but if I where you I would wait a year or two. By then you can pick up a reasonable used powerbook off Ebay that will be able to do all your video editing needs and save you a few grand.

    Considering you are going to buy a powerbook I am assuming you will spend $3000 (a low estimate... about the cheapest you can get a powerbook for actually). Here is what you can get on an intel boxen:

    P4 2.4 ghz [newegg.com] $388

    1GB of PC800 RDRAM [pricewatch.com] $360

    ABIT TH-7 850i Motherboard with onboard RAID [pricewatch.com] $135

    4 IBM ULTRASTAR 36.4GB 10000RPM UTRA-160 SCSI [pricewatch.com] - For Raid 0+1 Array - $1228

    Chaintech VGA NVIDIA Geforce4 , TV-Out / DVI. Ti 4600 with 128MB DDR Memory [newegg.com] $308

    Total: $2419

    THe only thing I didn't include was, a video capture card -unsure of what exactly you wanted.
  • These days I do mostly "desktop" tasks and I would like to emphasize on video editing. A Mac Powerbook G4 would be a fine platform to do this.

    Yes. works great for me. I know a few people who do this sort of thing professionally(I live in LA you cant swing a powercable without hitting at least three :-) ) and they also use powerbooks.

    I don't want to drop Linux because I still want to be able to run bash in an xterm, use perl, edit with vim, compile with gcc. MacOS X should be able to do all these things, but I haven't seen it myself yet.

    I do this every day so I can tell you that it does work rather well. You have to install the developer tools if you what gcc though.

    The price is the biggest incentive. Should I buy a new PC alltogether, if all I really need is a motherboard ? But then, can I still get a baby-AT dual-CPU pentium motherboard from somewhere ? If not, the cost of a home-built reasonnable-spec PC is +/- 800?, considering that I would keep my existing 21" monitor. A Powerbook G4 of similar specs costs over 4500?. If I buy a Mac, it will be no less than a Powerbook G4 (I don't want a sissy iMac or iBook for video editing).

    Don't knock the new iMac it packs quite a wallop (way more then my powerbook). I'm holding off buying a PowerMac Tower till they give them DDR RAM or RDRAM basically anything better then pc133. Plus you know there going to drop the G5 soon. I'd wait till after mac world New York before buying a PowerMac

    How about software: I can get all the software I want for PC, but I can't get Mac software easily nor do I want to shell out 1000?'s to get some (if you know what I mean ;)

    I think I "know what you mean". Two words "hot, line" [com.com] ;)

    I would like to to salvage parts from my old PC if possible, should I buy a Mac. It would sadden me greatly to throw away the CPUs, memory, SCSI devices, because all I really need is a new motherboard. In fact, perhaps I should just buy a new MB and get on with it. But in the event that I replace completely the computer, can I still use some of these parts in a Mac ?

    Think of a mac as like an DEC Alpha it has PCI slots AGP ports etc. Your CPU and RAM will not work with it for sure. Your PCI cards might (90% sure). I don't think your AGP video card will though. Your SCSI and USB devices should work just fine.
  • Seriously, if you are using WinME, go to Win2k on that box. You will be so glad you did. WinME is the worst virus to infect the MS platform ever. I bought a Dell (which I'll never do again, their Customer Support sucks) with WinME preinstalled, I hooked it up and started pluggin away, and it CRASHED within an hour. I formatted and installed Win2k from scratch and it hasn't crashed since (been about 10 months.) It runs and boots (on the rare occasion I reboot) much faster, too.

    I'm contemplating getting a Mac, too. I want one to burn DVDs of my home movies, and to play around with OS X. I'm gonna try for a used one, but I'm not even sure I want one yet. I may just get a DVD burner for my Intel box.

    • Well, for some reason, I've always been a satisfied user of Win98SE and WinME for personal use.

      One of the things I don't like with W2K, is the login prompt (I like not to login at home since I'm alone with my trustee Girlfriend). It's stupid, isn't it ? ;)
      • You can set it to autologin using TweakUI, or just set the regkeys yourself. I used to do that, but my roommate kept changing the background and sounds, so we started using seperate logins. Also, he kept downloading stuff off the internet and installing it, and most of it contained spyware, which caused my Firewall to raise hell, so I took install rights away from his account. :-)
      • I converted my Dell 8100 over to Win2k from WinMe a couple months ago. From your description, we have about the same hardware. It really doesn't take all that long to download all the drivers you'll need, install win2k, and then install all the updates. I would say about half a day (and most of this time you'll be watching status bars, so have a book to read).

        You can definitely remove the login requirement from 2k without too much trouble.
        • Hey I happen to also have a Dimension 8100. How did you know :-)

          At the time, what stopped me from upgrading to W2K is that the particular model of IEEE1394 interface card installed inside did not have w2k drivers available. It hay have now, so I will check this out. And if it does I think I will upgrade !

          Thx for convincing me.

          • Since I'm busy convincing you to convert over to Win2k, I feel like I should give you some caveats as well.

            Gaming: Now that Win2k has the full set of DirectX and OpenGL drivers, you won't have trouble finding games that are compatible with it. In fact, I haven't seen a game made in the last 2-3 years that wouldn't work with 2k (or NT 5.0 as the microsofties call it). On the other hand, you may find some old games that refuse to install (or at least try to refuse to install). This is because they are doing the equivalent of this code:

            if (windowsVersion == "Windows NT") abort;

            Since Windows 2k == Windows NT 5.0, the installer will abort. Of course, the installer isn't smart enough to realize that the game WILL work with Windows 2k. This should only be a problem if you play games written in 1994 (or something like that).

            Basically, modern games work, but the newest one will often want a bit more memory when running under 2k. I've seen many games that use 128 MB of ram under ME that recommend 256 MB of ram under 2k. With all the stuff you've said about video editing, ram doesn't sound like it will be a problem.

            The most annoying thing about upgrading your system to Win2k is removing incompatible software from your machine. The Windows 2k installer will give you a report of what software (and hardware) you have that is incompatible before it actually does anything. You can use this upgrade report as a rough measure of how much trouble it will be to upgrade to 2k. Yours will probably list a lot of motherboard/system device related stuff, but Dell has all the necessary upgrade on their support site.

            Good Luck.
            • I just put an order in for a new PC. It's a cheap box: Athlon XP 1800+, Asus A7N266-E, 512 MB, 80 GB, and I happen to have a 21" monitor to spare, so I'll put w2k on this one.

              It should be straightforward because I'll be doing the installation from scratch.

              If it proves to be successful, I will migrate the WinME box to w2k later on !

              Great idea than referring to the Dell site for drivers support. I hadn't even though about it (I think I've been building my own machines for far too long ;)

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