[Ham-Mac] OS X advice

[Tom Rees]

Well, I'm a bit late but I'll chime in too, especially since I've got a 
different POV.
Don't 'relegate' the video/photo editing to an upgraded G4 and then use 
a new G5 dually for the 'normal' (ham radio, word processing, internet 
etc) stuff. That's like buying a Ferrari to drive to work and 
relegating the road racing to your old Yugo. Word mangelment, ham 
radio, web surfing etc etc can be done very, very well on a G4. More 
than enough power. And use the G5 dually for the video/photo editing, 
which takes far, far more oomph than anything normal, particularly in 
the ham radio field.

It may not show much class, but there is a good reason so many hams are 
still running old Pentium Pros and 2s with some Windoze version for 
their shacks. It's all the power they need. And a G4 would blow them 
out of the water. Multimode, Xastir, etc etc will run kicka__ on the G4 
but you will notice an incredible performance increase when you do 
video production of just the simple home kind on that G5. Anything more 
complicated in the field will just be that much better on the G5.  Of 
course, the G5 will do it all, but that wasn't an option you listed.

For the OS question, another question. Why do we radio geeks go out and 
spend a hundred bucks several times a year on pure junk at the local 
(or not so local, thus increasing the price) ham/swapfest, and then 
cry, pout and whine when we have to shell out the same hundred bucks on 
a top notch OS upgrade? Weird.
Run OS 10.the_most_recent on the G5 and run the same on the G4 except 
with Classic installed as well.
If you've got a Dell machine that runs well (now there's an oxymoron) 
leave Windows to it. Virtual PC, now owned by MS, won't touch it in 
Windows performance, period. VPC is great for someone who doesn't have 
access to Wintel box but as well as it works, and it does work very 
well, it still won't touch the real thing.

But hey,  that's just me.

Trees KB7XL

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you 
didn't do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore. Dream. Discover."

Mark Twain


On Wednesday, September 3, 2003, at 09:14 AM, KD5NWA wrote:

>
> I just upgraded my 8600 with a 800 MHz G4 card and 256 Megs of extra 
> memory, and I need some advice.
>
> This is a stopgap measure, as I plan to buy a Dual G5 within the next 
> 12 month to be used as my main computer at home, and relegate the 8600 
> for Video/Photo editing purposes.
>
> Which OS should I have for running the most number of Ham 
> applications, should I stay with OS 9.1 or should I upgrade to OS X ?
>
> I own a copy of  OS 10.1 should I upgrade to Jaguar or wait for 
> Panther if OS X is the best choice?
>
> Would Yellow Dog Linux be a consideration?
>
> I have a Dell Laptop also but I would like to use the Mac when 
> possible.
>
> Thanks for the bandwidth.
>
>
> Cecil
> KD5NWA
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