Nekochan Net

Im really looking forward at Macs this year, and getting a new aone too. Anyone else? I heard that they are going to make a new MacMini. With a nVidia Graphics, More USB, Faster Firewire, etc.

Definitely. Getting myself a Mac Mini shortly after I get back from deployment, actually. Whether they update it or not, actually, but an updated one would be outstanding. I'd love to see GeForce 9400M graphics and 802.11n. Firewire 800 would be keen but not entirely necessary.

I haven't used OS X regularly since I sold my PowerBook G4 a few years ago (which I regret), so I'm gonna see if Mac OS X can replace Linux as my daily driver. I also want to play with Time Machine (using hopefully NFS as the backend, apparently this works with a little ad-hackery). Hey, Apple may not have ZFS fully supported yet, but Sun does - why not just back up to a Solaris machine? Either way, though, I intend to get a Mac Pro when it comes time to replace my current main workstation. Absolute worst case I can multi-boot it.

I'm still holding out hope that they introduce something intermediate between the Mac Mini and Mac Pro, though, since an all-in-one iMac is a poor fit for someone who already has two high-res monitors. A single-socket Core i7 machine would be quite nice, that it would.

I would buy such a system immediately. A Mac Mini is not powerful / expandable enough for me, but a (dual) quad-core Xeon is a bit over the top, and *expensive* too.

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*cough* hackintosh *cough*

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The last time I checked, the hackintosh route came with the somewhat serious flaw of not being able to apply any security fixes and the like - has that changed?

I run 10.5.6 on mine just fine - been updating right along since last March.

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It depends of the case, sometimes you'll have maybe use something more special to get updates working but it is nowhere as big hassle as for example, using windows. Im happy with my crapintosh, been running it over year with cheapo components.

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Damn, no new Macmini. Hackintosh time now.

If I had to go into speculation-land, Apple's waiting on the Xeon and mobile versions of Nehalem. The notebook chip will power the next-gen iMac (and possibly Mac Mini, though I'll bet that'll get a cheap Core 2 Duo/Quad), while the Xeon will power the next-gen Mac Pro. Incidentally, that's slightly sick - 8 real cores plus Hyperthreading - 16 simultaneous threads. Remember back when Solaris, IRIX and Tru64 were the only OSes to have decent support for that many CPUs? (Maybe VMS, I'll confess to not being entirely sure on this one).

hopefully the dual-socket nehalem systems will push current secondhand xeon systems under $1k - the hp xw is there already (and a much better system than the mac), but only cheap at the low end. The octocore 3ghz models are still about $3k - maybe these prices will be cut in half once nehalem gets going?

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"InfiniteReality Graphics - Power Through Complexity"

3.0 GHz 8 cores in HP land is just about $4500 (http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/defaul ... DC=1469050), the MacPro comes in around $3500. I'm not sure how a HP system is better than the Mac. Most of the HPs are still 1333 MHz FSB instead of 1600 MHz and they have a single ethernet interface. Otherwise they're really similar, a couple extra drive bays on the HP side. The cases on both are a bit ugly, each in their own way. The Mac case is a little easier to work in...although I did smash my fingers in one of the HD bays.

I would say it's a lot easier to run MacOS on the MacPro and a little easier to run Windows on the HP. Linux is probably about the same. To me the MacPro provides better options for OSes at a similarly high price point.

EDIT: Now where's the Mac? or a Mac mini with some guts? How about a mini that's 1 cm taller and has a pair of 2.5" drive bays accessible from the back?

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I was talking about secondhand/refurbished prices as there's a dealer just down the road from me who sells HP refurbs. He has that exact system except including a nvidia fx1700 card for $3200. I'll probably stretch out my 7-year-old P4 system for another year or two but I can dream right?

If I look up a 3ghz mac pro on apple's site with 4gb ram, 250gb hard drive, sas/raid card (built into the HP), etc, it comes out to $4949. Plus the HP can handle 128gb of ram (8gb sticks aren't readily available though) whereas the mac can *only* do 32gb.

Of course the mac is a mac and has all the typical mac niceties to go with it.

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(Maradona) (DavidVilla) A1186 (Xavi)
A1370 (Messi) dp43tf (Puyol) A1387 (Abidal) A1408 (Guardiola)

"InfiniteReality Graphics - Power Through Complexity"

Here's the trick for getting an affordable Mac Pro - get the baseline minimum everything but CPUs, then upgrade 'em yourself. Apple charges outrageous prices for disks, RAM and controllers. Though, I think there are still some sticking points with needing an EFI-compatible card for video and bootable storage, but I might be confused here.

from mine pov, Mac`s for 2009 will == PC`s of any kind and variations u can immagine + Leopard OSx86 [ even if is not still quite legal ], sadly, swithcing to x86 signed the mac`s future, it will be interesting to watch what will happen ... the SGI switch to x86 was not with happy ending, maybe Apple will have more luck out there, at least they have x86 compatible OS, even the good - killer one. It`s interesting how position of Apple in such field may appear the same, but slightly differ in many ways for example from SUN`s one that also switched to x86 but retained and upgraded its risc line ...

Damn PC`s and 8086 cpu, they ruined the good computing world and brave computing people and damn the 8086 protected mode not allowing more than 640K of main mem

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Well... macs have been intel for a while now. And given that they are selling more than ever, and apple has been making plenty of coin out of them, I don't think apple regrets the move.

And I think you were referring to "real mode", protected mode was from 286 on... besides the 640K limitation was due to the memory mapping of the original PC BIOS. The original PC team and Microsoft has to carry a lot of the blame for unleashing the original PC architecture on an unsuspecting world. Ugh...

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"Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a
pyramid with thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?"