Darned computer problems... again!

[bob p]

Can you run Acronis with the linux OS from a boot disc without having to install linux on your computer? Seems to me that would be really slick...

yes.

[David Schwab]

mac, yep. But best to use a parallel system with boot options for either. I've done this with great success and you can snag a patched OS via torrent and get the install helps at insanelymac or OSx86.

On this Dell notebook are installed XP twice (everyday, recording) mac OSX 10.6, and SUSE Linux (which I rarely use and then a DATA partition FAT32 (I think). Those imaging apps are REALLY good/smart and that Hiren CD rocks the kazbah!

I know what Steve's has endured as one silly app/driver can screw you perfect install hence imaging your best progress is smart.

The current Mac OS is 10.4.8 Tiger... there is no 10.6. 10.5 (Leopard) will be out probably in in April.

On the new Intel Macs you can run Windows, either as a dual boot (using Apple's BootCamp), or along side OS X using Parallels Desktop. You can also run various flavors of Linux natively, and since OS X is based on BSD Unix, you can run X11 apps natively. I recompile Linux apps all the time to run on OS X.

One advantage of OS X is no driver issues. XP has some bugs in the driver API's. And you never have to edit your registry to do things like use a different USB port for your interface...

OS X was designed for audio from the ground up. You can't really say that about Windows.

[Steve A.]

The current Mac OS is 10.4.8 Tiger... there is no 10.6. 10.5 (Leopard) will be out probably in in April.

On the new Intel Macs you can run Windows, either as a dual boot (using Apple's BootCamp), or along side OS X using Parallels Desktop. You can also run various flavors of Linux natively, and since OS X is based on BSD Unix, you can run X11 apps natively. I recompile Linux apps all the time to run on OS X.

One advantage of OS X is no driver issues. XP has some bugs in the driver API's. And you never have to edit your registry to do things like use a different USB port for your interface...

OS X was designed for audio from the ground up. You can't really say that about Windows.

Those $799 Mac boxes look very tempting... can you hook them up to a KVM switchbox? What sort of connectors do Mac's use for the mouse and the keyboard- PS/2? USB? or none of the above. They also make KVM switchboxes with USB connectors. It would be really great to have a PC and a Mac hooked up to the same monitor, keyboard and mouse, and you could switch back and forth between the two as needed! Without having to do the dual boot thing...

I still have my computer shutting off every now and then- usually when I am doing a task like ripping a CD with EAC and converting it to FLAC files. Sometimes there is a reason like running out of disk space, or having too many applications open, but in any case I don't think that the computer should shut off like that. It may have something to do with the broken SATA header- one of the pins had broken off, so I cut off the rest of them and added a PCI SATA card...

I have a new mobo and cpu still unopened- I wasn't sure if I wanted to return them or not, but I think I do need them. (Hopefully I can get WinXP to work with the new mobo without having to call Redmond.)

Thanks for the suggestions!

Steve Ahola

[David Schwab]

Those $799 Mac boxes look very tempting... can you hook them up to a KVM switchbox? What sort of connectors do Mac's use for the mouse and the keyboard- PS/2? USB? or none of the above. They also make KVM switchboxes with USB connectors. It would be really great to have a PC and a Mac hooked up to the same monitor, keyboard and mouse, and you could switch back and forth between the two as needed! Without having to do the dual boot thing...

The Mac Mini is a great way to get into Macs.. which is what they made them for. The first ones weren't too fast, but the Intel based ones are pretty nice.. they are basically laptops in a box.

Macs use USB for the mouse and keyboard. They have Four USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 400. They use SATA drives. PC2-5300 RAM. DVI output port with support for VGA, S-video, and composite video connections via adapter. You can use them with a KVM switch box.

I've been running a fairly old Mac at home... originally a PowerMac G4/466 from 2000. I upgraded the processor to 1 GHz. It's not a bad machine, and even though I use a dual 2.7 GHz G5 at work, I never feel like "damn, this thing is slow" when I'm home.

I hear the new Intel Macs are really fast. My wife was a long time Windows user, but now she even got her dad to switch... he has a PPC flat screen iMac, and just got an Intel based MacBook Pro. It's a nice laptop.

[Steve A.]

... Edit: as soon as I posted that my main computer is working again... hooray!

Ummm... yesterday afternoon my computer gave a short error message and proceeded to die a quick and painless death. R.I.P.

I had picked up a new CPU and mobo a few weeks ago so I was ready to rock!

The "in-place" installation feature once again came in handy, so I didn't have to reinstall and reconfigure all of my programs (as was necessary with W2K and the earlier versions of WinXP). With Windows being the interface between hardware devices and software programs, why should you have to reinstall all of your programs when you change your hardware??? I can see having to reinstall a few hardware-intensive programs like Windows Media Player, or having to reconfigure some of them, but why start over from scratch???

I plan to move to a totally new computer with a completely fresh install, but I need time to transfer all of my settings (there is a wizard that is supposed to do that, so I'll give that a try).

Steve Ahola

P.S. [1/27/07 edit] Darn that Fry's Electronics! After installing their mobo, cpu and RAM I noticed a lot of instabilities. Like Blue Screens of Death while running the WinXP install. And once I got WinXP working to some extent, core programs like Windows Explorer would crash, asking me if I wanted to send an error report to Microsoft. I ran EAC 4 times on one CD because the computer would lock up or crash before it had a chance to save a LOG report... it seemed like programs would crash once you started exercising the CPU.

After doing some experimenting I learned that WinXP would be stable if I removed one of the two 512MB RAM chips- either chip from either slot. So I brought it all back to Fry's to let them sort it out, and guess what, the warranty on the CPU and RAM was 14 days, which had already expired! I knew that you had 14 days to exchange the CPU or RAM if you weren't satisfied with them, but I assumed that you'd have at least 30 days to return them if they were defective! Not so... when I bought them they offered me an extended warranty on the CPU but I turned it down. So I had them exchange the mobo NC (which had a 30 day guarantee), and it looks like that did solve the problem. Whew!

So just a reminder to anyone out there who deals with Fry's- if you still haven't installed your CPU and RAM after *13* days, you might as well bring it back for a refund since your warranty on them will expire within 24 hours. If they give you any crap, just tell them that their 14 day warranty period sucks eggs! LOL