[Ham-Mac] Are you running OSX on your Mac ?

Fri, 1 Feb 2002 16:48:32 -0500

At 08:52 -0500 01/31/2002, Chris Smolinski wrote:
>
>I'm curious how many hams are running OSX on their "primary" Mac.

I ran Mac OS X (version 10.0.4) for a while on my B&W G3 350, but at the time there were a lot of things that didn't work and I would have to run in Classic or boot OS 9. I played around with it for a while but I finally decided that if I was still running most of my operations in Classic or 9, why waste the drive space? I took it off and reformatted the drive.

One of these days, I may run it again, but it may very well be when I buy a new computer that has it installed. My B&W G3 and my Pismo PowerBook are getting along just fine in Mac OS 9.2.2, and I don't have a lot of incentive to change.

Admittedly, Mac OS X has some neat features and the threaded multi-tasking is attractive, but it is that very multi-tasking feature that breaks one of the apps I run on the PowerBook, Virtual PC, slowing it down severely. And according to what I've read on the subject from Connectix, it's not a problem that will be easily be solved because the way VPC wants to use the processor goes directly counter to the Unix multitasking structure.

Since I run Virtual PC routinely in the hamshack for my contest logging software, having it slow down a great deal is not acceptable. If there were a contest logging package for the Mac that would allow radio control, autologging of time and frequency and importing of packet spots received from the packet cluster via telnet, I wouldn't have to spend so much time on the Dark Side. Unfortunately, there is not. I have my own logging program in FileMaker Pro that I use for NON-contest operating, but I'm not programmer enough to implement radio control and packet interfacing into that package.

SO, I'm content for the moment where I am, running Mac OS 9 on my computers. Everything works smoothly, no crashes, and I'm not going to fix something that isn't broken. Mac OS X will be around for a long time, I'll have plenty of opportunity to move to it later when everything works and it starts to live up to its billing.

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