low-end octane2? (was: Re: [rescue] octane question)

[Kurt Huhn]

> And yet CURRENT mac owners are abandoning the platform for windows.
> My aunt(59 years old) bought a mac 4 years ago.  Her friends use
> windows PCs.  She went out and bought a PC to replace the mac because

Are you kidding?  I know of *no* long-term Mac users that would even
consider buying a PC.  Mac users are typically very loyal.

> she couldn't read the outlook only .pst and .eml files her friends
> sent her.  She doesn't know that OE can read them, she doesn't know
> how to update her computer to later versions of the OS.  She is a

Update?  Pop in CD, run the update - right?  From what I've heard, updateing
a Mac is *way* less painful than updating Windows.  I'v got a freaking MCSE
<ducking> and even I *won't* "update" my windows laptop to anything later -
it's always a clean install, never upgrade.  Doing a Windows upgrade can
ruin your life.  No shit..

> typical American Computer user.  Its sad, its a pity but not everyone
> has access to someone like us (my aunt lives in boston, I live in DC)
> to help them with their consumer issues.  They want what works w/
> everybody else.  I say thats a Mac because I *KNOW* macs and I grew

I see your point.  Typical American computer consumer sees advertisements on
TV with flying people set to a Madonna song and they think that is a fair
representation.  Uninformed users, or rather *misinformed* users will buy
whatever the closest person tells them will work.  They don't know about
alternatives.  For some reason, casual Windows users are seen as experts in
interoperability of *all* computers.  Feh!

I hate it that advertising budgets dictate what is considered as "good".  I
really do.  I also wish Apple would BUY SOME EFFIN AIRTIME ON TV!!!  They
really need to stop acting "different" and get the point across that MacOS
WORKS AND DOES EVERYTHING THAT WINDOWS DOES!

Sorry, got carried away...

>
> Yes but NT is marketed at consumers, and XP is following the trend of
> new version windows adoption.  people said the same thing about 2k,
> and even about NT4 (oh, its only a shell update....).  The fact that
> M$ is the current choice has *HUGE* weight and people who are on the
> fringe are adopting new technologies now.  How many of the Fortune

Er, *only* choice for preinstalled OS.  MS bashing aside, that bothers me to
no end.  PC makers should be able to offer whatever OS they feel comfortable
supporting.  Including older OSs, like NT4.0, Win98/ME.  Why are they forced
to offer *only* the newest OS?  I'm happy that IBM has resisted pressure
from MS and continues to offer Linux on workstations and servers (as well as
other OSs).  But, as you've pointed out, the genreal public doesn't know
about (and hasn't bothered to check) Linux or any other alternatives.

Sun did A Good Thing(tm) with the sub-$1000 workstations.  But people think
they're worthless becasue they run at half the speed of Pentiums.  Truth is,
they're not worthless.  At all.  They're quite nice.  They're *extremely*
nice.  But people have no idea waht the benefits of 64bit processing are.
Damn, back to advertising again...

> 500 are using Windows as the primary desktop and workgroup server os?
> How many of them will change?  It has to start small but it also has
> to overcome the intertia that it already has to stay put.  People
> *ARE* buying P4s *BECAUSE* of the MHZ Myth to "" Steve Jobs.  I sold

And makes me sick.  Really.  I get sick to my stomach every time someone
tells me how many freaking Mhz their damn x86 computer runs.  I know they'll
*never* need all that power, and never be able to fully utilize the
processor anyway!  I've always said that anything over 200Mhz is completely
wasted on the average home user.

Kurt