I am 56. My first exposure to computers were
mainframes -- I recall how damned glad I was when
Yale upgraded to an IBM 360 which allowed
keyboard and tape input and we could put the
punch cards away. My own first computer was a
Timex Sinclair that worked flawlessly within its
limited frame. Then I moved up to a Commodore 64
and then to a couple of CPM machines. So the
advent of DOS was a magnificent move forward for
me. I've been all the way from an original PC
clone in the middle 1980's, through a bunch of
386 and 486 machines to several Pentium I's. I
know have a Pentium 4 as my primary machine as
does my wife, both operating on XP Pro. Neither
machine has ever had a serious hardware problem,
though both have had their power supplies
replaced (my wife's died when a fan went west,
mine died during that tree-crash/power outage I
told you folks about two months ago). That is
the limit of the problems I have had with these
machines. My Pentium II did lose a hard drive
but all of the data was preserved -- the drive is
ok for intermittent use, so the old HD is now an
E Drive, and I use the machine as a backup at my
Roanoke house while we are moving. (I am up
there once a week or so, and this allows me 'Net access and the like.)
In other words, I have had almost no hardware
problems in twenty years of using PC's -- two
HD's, two monitors, and two power supplies, out
of seven or nine computers over this time
span. (I DID recently buy an exterrnal HD for
back-up purposes, though I've not had a chance to
use it due to the Movement Order imposed by my
hausfrau, the uberbefehlshaber as I call her in
moments of endearment. <he grins: she is of
pure German stock, but speaks not a word of the
German, so I can get away with a lot in speaking
with her. When she gets wise, I can slip over to
Russian or Latin or Ancient Greek or the
Gaelic. It is convenient to be minimally multilingual.)
I have also had almost no software problems; the
one I wrote the List about last week is the most
serious I have ever experienced on a PC, and this
seems to be an XP issue -- the Rollei d41 works
quite well on my Pentium II, which is equipped
with Windows 98SE. (I took care of my immediate
problem while in Roanoke this past Friday and I
shall run out tomorrow to see about picking up a
Card Reader for CF cards, with all the caveats you folks kindly provided.)
Along the way, I have used Macs a couple of times
but always felt that they were best used by the
mentally feeble, the very elderly who distrust
technology, and the very young who are just
getting started. My co-author, Charlie
Barringer, is dedicated to Macs but, then, he
started on computers dead-cold around 1988, when
he was pushing 50. My serious photography is
going to remain chemical and analog for quite a
while -- as an interim measure, the guest
bathroom in the new Schloss Klein will work well
as a darkroom, though my hausfrau does not yet
realize yet what I have in mind. I will take a
course at the local Community College on
Photoshop over the winter, but that will probably
not make me a vibrant digital dude. I do have an
Epson 1200S Perfection scanner which works nicely
for MF negatives and slides but, frankly, it does
better when I scan an 8" by 10" print than when I do a negative or chrome.
From fairly detailed discussion with
professional photographers on this and other
Lists and side-channel, I suspect that the Mac
still has a slight edge in graphics though many
major houses and publications seem to have gone
over to PC's simply in the interest of
compatibility with the gear used by the editorial
staff, the accountancy folks, and the like.
I now have to power down to upgrade my PC from
256 to 512 RAM. If my next posting has the
agglomerated signature line, you'll know that I
fried the Friendly Beast and am using my wife's computer for List access ....
Mac or PC is a matter of personal familiarity. I
chose PC's when Mac was an absurdly expensive
alternative with software aimed at the dimbulb
side of the house. Were I entering the market
today, I might well opt for a Mac, all things
being equal -- but I had almost two decades of
peripheral involvement with IBM and CPM based
gear when I got my first PC, so the choice to me
at that time was a clear one.
And I can assure the worried souls in our number
that, yes, Windows XP WILL run Wolfenstein 3D,
albeit it does not do as well on a flat-screen
monitor as it does on a regular CRT.
Marc
msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!
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