Can someone explain the difference in processors?

[V. Barbarino]

I have a Dell, 5 or so years old, 640ram and 1.3ghz..

Now I'm looking at the macs, which I'm waiting for the new OS to drop before I buy, but compare

1.3ghz Pentium R to a 2.16ghz Core Duo...

How much faster are we talking here?

[Guest pod]

Double and then some. The Core Duo has two processing cores, whereas the Pentium-R has 1.

That's keeping it "non-geek".

[BobbyTrendy]

LOL! non-geek

Okay I have a HP Lap Top. I defragged it a couple weeks ago and i rarely turn it off. As long as i run the system checks when they tell me too (I have symtec and norton anti-virus) - is that enough to keep my lap top "clean"?

I don't download any music except for what i buy on iTunes and i rarely watch anything on youtube or any of those video sites.

non-geek explination is appreciated ;D

[Guest pod]

You'll be fine

[BobbyTrendy]

excellent - thanks Dan

[Guest swirlundergrounder]

Double and then some. The Core Duo has two processing cores, whereas the Pentium-R has 1.

That's keeping it "non-geek".

The fact that OSX is also a more stable operating system than Windows is also adds the the 'quickness' of a computer with OSX.

[Guest swirlundergrounder]

Now I'm looking at the macs, which I'm waiting for the new OS to drop before I buy, but compare

RIGHHHHHHT......You've been saying that for the past 2 years now.

By the time you actually get a Mac, 'OSX Elephant' will be out.

I say 'Elephant' because Apple will have ran though all the 'Feline' names before you actually go out and buy one.

Buy one from eBay.

I just bought my 3rd mac off of eBay a few weeks ago.

I got an older Dual 2.0 Ghz G5 desktop. I stuck 6 GB of RAM in that bitch and it runs great! The seller I got it from offered me an extneded warannty for 2 years for an extra $100. Anyting happens in the next 2 years with it, I'll get all my money back!

I spent $1475 for the dual G5.

If you're interested in buying one, I can give you the sellers user id. He sells refurbed macs.

[Guest macboy]

Now I'm looking at the macs, which I'm waiting for the new OS to drop before I buy, but compare

RIGHHHHHHT......You've been saying that for the past 2 years now.

My thoughts exactly. Just buy a mac already. I agree with Terry on the ebay route but would also recommend going straight to the online Apple Store for refurbs. They come with a full warranty and I've purchased both new and refurbs with no problems. My next project - buying a core solo mac mini refurb and replacing the processor with a core 2 duo chip.

[Guest Adam Singer]

dont buy a mac

un-upgradable, overpriced because they make you believe you're paying for a better product, vaporware

waste of money

you can get a PC with everything and then some for the price of a mac with half the speed, ram, storage and no monitor

macs are for trendwhores, if you want real advice on a system pm me

[V. Barbarino]

I know plenty about computers, but the core duo is new and I didn't fully understand it. Even the wiki on it, doesn't offer practical advice on how it's beneficial.

I'm getting a Mac simply because I like the idea of running two OS's in a nice sleek package. I bought a 22' LCD monitor already so I'm not getting the Imac, I'm getting the mini which is about 1/100 of the size of my current dell. I can't find the apple picture showing how many minis make up a pc, but here is a pic I found on google. This is a huge advantage for me, being in a small office.

Look at this one, I would love a setup like this, I run 2 computers in my office, dell laptop and dell pc, I switch beween them via kvm switch, so If I could get rid of my dell pc I'd be soooooooooo happy!

[Guest Adam Singer]

most of your apps wont be able to even utlize the dual-core, imo its more of a gimmick

ive worked on my friends new dual core system and it seemed no faster than on my single core system doing most things...even in processor intensive stuff it felt about the same (we have same clock speed, he has a dual core)

honestly ram and quality hard drive matter a ton more...

[Guest endymion]

I'm getting a Mac simply because I like the idea of running two OS's in a nice sleek package.

You'll really love coherence mode in Parallels:

rN9jNNeEd98

The only way that your processor affects this feature is that you need to be using an Intel Mac to be able to use Parallels.

The Core Duo helps a lot if you do CPU intensive things. Web, email, and office apps are not CPU intensive. If you do image or video editing or music production then the Core Duo helps a LOT. I have a Core 2 Duo and it renders motion graphics video at unbelievable speeds, but most of the time that's totally irrelevant. I notice also that Quake and Halo make it spin the CPU as hard as it can go. For web, email and office apps, the extra cores are irrelevant.

[V. Barbarino]

I'm getting a Mac simply because I like the idea of running two OS's in a nice sleek package.

You'll really love coherence mode in Parallels:

rN9jNNeEd98

The only way that your processor affects this feature is that you need to be using an Intel Mac to be able to use Parallels.

The Core Duo helps a lot if you do CPU intensive things. Web, email, and office apps are not CPU intensive. If you do image or video editing or music production then the Core Duo helps a LOT. I have a Core 2 Duo and it renders motion graphics video at unbelievable speeds, but most of the time that's totally irrelevant. I notice also that Quake and Halo make it spin the CPU as hard as it can go. For web, email and office apps, the extra cores are irrelevant.

That is sweet, I can flip between them without rebooting! wow!

I don't do anything real intense on my computer, but I do tend to have open dozens of firefox tabs and itunes which right now my computer after a while can't keep running, FireFox leaks memory and itunes starts to skip... Before I upgraded to 640mb or fam, my pc could only have 1 webpage open at a time! Ram made all the difference in the world, but it's not enough anymore.

[Guest swirlundergrounder]

dont buy a mac

un-upgradable, overpriced because they make you believe you're paying for a better product, vaporware

waste of money

you can get a PC with everything and then some for the price of a mac with half the speed, ram, storage and no monitor

macs are for trendwhores, if you want real advice on a system pm me

Yeah and have the PC crap out on you in half the time.

I've have both PCs and Macs. Now I'm not to much of a techy know it all kind of guy which most consumers fall into.

I can say for sure that in 3 years time using a Mac versus my other 4 years of time using a PC, I've been able to get more work done and spend less time on maintenance using Apple computers versus PCs.

Adam is right about getting more RAM and higer performance hard drives.

For example you can have an computer with a dual core processor say 2 Ghz clock speed with 1 GB of RAM and a 5200 RPM hard drive or you can have a computer with a single core processor that has a clock speed of 2 GHz, 4 GB RAM and a 7200 RPM hard drive and they will practically run at the same speed.

So it really should come down to what are you really using your computer for? If it's just for email and itunes stuff then any computer out there on the market will be able to handle those basic tasks.

Now if you're Multi-Media guy like myself that runs Final Cut Pro doing mulit cam editing and needs to have 6 to 7 diffeent screens of action running on my monitors then I would need to have a computer with more than 1 processor.

Also your computers performance will depend on how you manage your data.

If I were you I would run your OS on one hard drive, partition another part of your hard drive for your applications and then get an external Firewire hard drive to store and run your files off of.

[Guest Adam Singer]

dont buy a mac

un-upgradable, overpriced because they make you believe you're paying for a better product, vaporware

waste of money

you can get a PC with everything and then some for the price of a mac with half the speed, ram, storage and no monitor

macs are for trendwhores, if you want real advice on a system pm me

Yeah and have the PC crap out on you in half the time.

I've have both PCs and Macs. Now I'm not to much of a techy know it all kind of guy which most consumers fall into.

I can say for sure that in 3 years time using a Mac versus my other 4 years of time using a PC, I've been able to get more work done and spend less time on maintenance using Apple computers versus PCs.

Adam is right about getting more RAM and higer performance hard drives.

For example you can have an computer with a dual core processor say 2 Ghz clock speed with 1 GB of RAM and a 5200 RPM hard drive or you can have a computer with a single core processor that has a clock speed of 2 GHz, 4 GB RAM and a 7200 RPM hard drive and they will practically run at the same speed.

So it really should come down to what are you really using your computer for? If it's just for email and itunes stuff then any computer out there on the market will be able to handle those basic tasks.

Now if you're Multi-Media guy like myself that runs Final Cut Pro doing mulit cam editing and needs to have 6 to 7 diffeent screens of action running on my monitors then I would need to have a computer with more than 1 processor.

Also your computers performance will depend on how you manage your data.

If I were you I would run your OS on one hard drive, partition another part of your hard drive for your applications and then get an external Firewire hard drive to store and run your files off of.

damn, my mac bashing doesn't push yer buttons anymore !

ill hafta be more creative

[Guest swirlundergrounder]

dont buy a mac

un-upgradable, overpriced because they make you believe you're paying for a better product, vaporware

waste of money

you can get a PC with everything and then some for the price of a mac with half the speed, ram, storage and no monitor

macs are for trendwhores, if you want real advice on a system pm me

Yeah and have the PC crap out on you in half the time.

I've have both PCs and Macs. Now I'm not to much of a techy know it all kind of guy which most consumers fall into.

I can say for sure that in 3 years time using a Mac versus my other 4 years of time using a PC, I've been able to get more work done and spend less time on maintenance using Apple computers versus PCs.

Adam is right about getting more RAM and higer performance hard drives.

For example you can have an computer with a dual core processor say 2 Ghz clock speed with 1 GB of RAM and a 5200 RPM hard drive or you can have a computer with a single core processor that has a clock speed of 2 GHz, 4 GB RAM and a 7200 RPM hard drive and they will practically run at the same speed.

So it really should come down to what are you really using your computer for? If it's just for email and itunes stuff then any computer out there on the market will be able to handle those basic tasks.

Now if you're Multi-Media guy like myself that runs Final Cut Pro doing mulit cam editing and needs to have 6 to 7 diffeent screens of action running on my monitors then I would need to have a computer with more than 1 processor.

Also your computers performance will depend on how you manage your data.

If I were you I would run your OS on one hard drive, partition another part of your hard drive for your applications and then get an external Firewire hard drive to store and run your files off of.

damn, my mac bashing doesn't push yer buttons anymore !

ill hafta be more creative

LOL..

Nah, I think by now we both know where we stand on each product.

[Guest coach]

Standing on a Mac is about all it's good for since it spends half the day "automatically" upgrading all of it's software.

[Guest endymion]

Upgrading non-kernel components on a Mac: click "yes", done.

Upgrading your OS kernel on a Mac: click "yes", when it's done click "restart" to give it permission to restart, done.

Upgrading non-kernel components on a PC: tell it to start the update. Manually close your programs one-by-one. Stare at the installer running solo while it copies files. Reboot. Now reboot again. Check to see if it updated. Wonder why it didn't. Try again. Reboot again. Reboot again for good measure. When it blue screens in the middle of the process, reboot. Check to see if it updated. Reboot again. Done.

Upgrading kernel components on a PC: repeat the above process three times. Enter license key. Re-enter license key. Reboot and then re-enter license key. Reboot just two more times, and then you're done.

[Guest coach]

Heh, when was the last time you used a PC? 1998?

[Guest endymion]

I run XP all day in coherence mode. My upgrade from IE6 to IE7 in one of my VMs last week was what I was describing. It took all day and a dozen reboots just to upgrade the browser from one version to the next, because they forced me to do OS updates in order to upgrade IE7.

Go Microsoft! All I wanted to do was a browser upgrade to test a web page. Good thing it was just in a VM in Parallels, so that I could keep doing real work while updating the browser consumed the entire PC VM for the whole day. I would have been pissed all day during the update if the PC was my only way to get work done.

Safari, on the other hand, updates itself independently of the OS. A bug in CSS layouts that I was dealing with got magically fixed in every version of Safari on every OS with the update that automatically came out last week. The bug had already been fixed in the Safari that I use on my Leopard beta but it was there on Safari in Tiger. Then one day *POOF*, no bug in Tiger either.

[Guest coach]

Good Lord! I upgraded to IE 7 the other day (I forget why) and it took like 4 mins and no reboot.

[Guest endymion]

I was bitching about it to a friend by IM as it happened so I have a log. I just checked my IM log from that day (apple-spacebar to pull up spotlight, type "reboots", pick the chat from the list) and it took 14 reboots to go from IE6 to IE7 because it forced me to install XP SP2 first. Part of the SP2 install broke and the VM blue-screened. I had to go and pull my XP DVD folder out of the filing cabinet to type in the authorization code just to update the browser. The upgrade took a total of eight hours.

Millions of people are stuck using IE6 right now because they can't or haven't upgraded to SP2, so they can't update their browser. MILLIONS.

[Guest pod]

I've found with XP it's a case-by-case basis, no "upgrade and go"...

[Guest coach]

Why do I have to RE-agree to my license everytime I upgrade iTunes?

[Guest endymion]

Why do I have to RE-agree to my license everytime I upgrade iTunes?

Because the terms-of-use agreement changed. Why does XP tell me that I "might be at risk" every time I boot it? That just reminds me that I'm using XP and am therefore at risk, which unfortunately is true.

I have a friend who's into World of Warcraft. A very experienced senior software developer like myself. His XP PC got hacked last night by a zero-day exploit called Bloodhound.Exploit.131 that got into his system through his guild's web site. The crackers used a key logger to hack his WoW account and sell all of his stuff and then transfer the virtual money to another account where they sold the credits for real money. Probably made off with hundreds of thousands of dollars, they made around $1000 from raiding his account. That was an SP2 XP system with a current IE7 install. Go Microsoft.