From: ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright)
Subject: Re: Macs cost too much (NOT!)
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 21:05:11 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In <1992Jul23.143042.14243@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> smoon@strfleet.gsfc.nasa.gov (Sang J. Moon) writes:

>I've been using System 7 with tuneup 1.1.1 for about 6 months now, and I've
>had to reinstall system 7 and/or rebuild the desktop file an average of
>twice a month.  With 75MB of stuff on my hard drive, this has been the
>biggest waste of my time.  

Oh, rubbish.  Your PC-bigot friends might be willing (happy!) to
belive this, but keep in mind that this is comp.sys.mac and most
of the people here have actually used Macs.

I've had System 7.0 on my since the day it was released.  I have 140M
on my hard drives, over 100M of which is used, not to mention gigabytes
of CD-ROM.  I have never once had to reinstall System 7 in that time.  
(Never even had to rebuild the desktop, for that matter.)  If you have
to reinstall the system twice a month, you must be doing something
exceptionally stupid, like dragging system components into the trash
can and ignoring the warning messages.  

You also snuck a lie in sideways.  You talk about reinstalling the
system and rebuilding the desktop together, as if these are both 
jobs of equivalent complexity.  In fact, all you have to do to
rebuild the desktop is to hold down a modifier key during startup.
Pretty hard, isn't it?

Finally, you can't "rebuild the desktop file" in System 7 because
there *is* no desktop file.  The desktop is now a database, not a
file.  I only mention this because I thought, since you claim to
be a programmer working on a Master's degree, that you might have
some idea what you're talking about.   


>Installing software takes just about the same time.  

Double rubbish.

Macintosh: Drag an application icon into a folder or (worst case)
double-click to run the installer.  

PC: Read the documentation to figure out the command line to run
the installer.  (By the time you've finished this step, the Mac
user is already finished.)  Type the command line and run the
installer.  Now you have to install the icons in the Program
Manager and perhaps create a new program group.  Then check the
CONFIG.SYS, WIN.INI, and AUTOEXEC.BAT files to see what modifications
the installer made there.  Then check every other piece of software
to make sure it still works with the modifications.  If it doesn't,
call technical support and try to work out some reasonable compromise
in the CONFIG.SYS, WIN.INI, and AUTOEXEC.BAT that will allow both
programs to run.

Bestcase time for the Mac -- a few seconds.  
Bestcase time for the PC -- a few minutes.
Worstcase time for the Mac -- a few minutes.  
Worstcase time for the PC -- several weeks.


>Anyone can see that macs have their share of problems by browsing 
>through the comp.sys.mac hierarchy.  

Anyone who understands what he's reading will also understand
that most of those problems arise from INITs that do sophisticated
things, like replacing the standard window definitions, that you
can't even do in Windows on the PC.


>If you respond to this post, please list the system you bought and
>how much you paid for it.  It shows what you actually have to back your
>views.  

Very well.  This is what I've spent over the last two years:

Mac IIsi/40M HD/Apple RGB Monitor	$3000	
FPU adapter card			   75
Upgrade to 17M RAM			  400
External 100M HD			  400
32-bit color board			  300
CD-ROM drive			          300
Developer's CD (500M+ of documentation,
  tools, sample code, etc., updated 
  quarterly)                              $36/yr.
12 Voyager CD ROMs 			  $90
Hypercard, Quicktime, System Software	 Free
MacRayshade, NIH Image			 Free

Plus a few hundred dollars for commercial software packages.  
All prices are rounded off since I'm doing them from memory.


>It may also show that you had much more money than I had to spend.
>In which case, there should be no need for everybody yelling their heads
>off because I too would buy a mac if I had that much money to spare.

Except that your claim was not that you can't afford a Mac because
you don't have enough money.  It was that if you had enough money
to afford a Mac, you could get a better PC for the same price.




Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc,alt.config