Re: MIDI

On Sat, 2006-11-11 at 22:07 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
On Sat, 2006-11-11 at 21:06, Craig White wrote:

Basically a Macintosh is really cool hardware

The interface is stale - singular in view - stupidly conceptualized for
idiots with a single button mouse as Apple finally figured out that
there is a benefit to having a mouse with more than one button. Not only
the OS but most applications do little to implement alternate button
options because of Apple's lack of vision.

You have to give them some points for itunes where they make the
software do the right thing for you without much intervention.
It is hard to beat subscribing to some podcasts with itunes set to
collect and keep unlistened copies and an ipod set to sync them.
When you've listened to one on the ipod, the next sync back sets
the itunes 'listened' timestamp, then next itunes podcast refresh
(scheduled or manual) will delete the listened items and pull any
new available copies, and the next ipod sync will propagate the
deletion and update the new versions.
----
conversation wasn't about iPod but I do have one and I am hooked ;-)
----

Perhaps they noticed the OpenOffice users complaining about how
the conversions didn't always work.
----
I guess I hadn't noticed much of a problem since OOo 2.0

A bad reputation is hard to live down. Many of those Office 2004
copies may have paid for themselves in time saved before OOo 2.0
was available.
----
Mac users woundn't know that anyway because OOo was so slow in coming to
Macintosh (still only beta), NeoOffice version (Native Quartz) is a
performance dog, OOo requires the extra hassle of installing X11 AND
completely eschews the the Quartz interface which requires extra
training for each user...thus, OOo in a Macintosh environment is a hard
sell.

It's not that Office 2004 saves time, it creates proprietary Microsoft
format documents which is the problem, not the solution. The battle is
actually over and Oasis / Open Document formats have won. Some of the
participants want to deny that fact and most of the world's computer
users don't understand this yet.

That is one of the principal strategies that Microsoft is trying to
accomplish with their deal with Novell...to get Novell to implement the
extensions for the Microsoft XML formats into OOo because those are the
file formats that they can control - not the Open Document formats. If
you're a business, do you really want to continue shelling out $400-$600
per copy of Microsoft Office Professional? Microsoft's XML formats whose
documentation is abusively vast? Microsoft's XML formats that embed DRM
that could possibly lock you out of your own data?

It is simply not possible to justify the cost of Microsoft Office when
the alternatives are free or nearly free and when the file formats are
documented, public, easier to comprehend. From this point forward, the
only thing that is going to drive Microsoft Office sales is consumer
ignorance.
----

Allow me to pose this conundrum to you...

I have a non-profit client without a lot of excess funds. Having just
recently figured out how to implement roaming profiles on Macintosh via
LDAP/NFS/Netatalk it allows me to consider them as peers on a network
that has Windows and Linux desktop machines which already had roaming
profiles so I am relatively at peace with the Macintosh at the moment.

They have several iMacs and G3 systems that are still running OS 9 and
are due to be updated. Do we upgrade them to Tiger considering...
- $ 129 per system
- most of them don't have a DVD drive and we would need the CD's and if
you go to
this page on Apple's web site
http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/requirements.html
you will see a link in the middle of the page to get CD media for just
an additional
$ 9.95 - the link has been dead for over a month

or do I just say - screw Apple and install Fedora Core 6 on them?

I'd guess that you'll have to add RAM and the cost along with
the OS is going to approach a new Mac Mini with nowhere near
the performance. And you'll likely see the same thing with
fedora running locally. If you have a decent server available
on the network, I'd give LTSP a try, running them as thin
clients. I've seen people on the k12ltsp list say that they
work fine.
----
Most of them have enough RAM.

I can purchase thin stations or faster PC's for about the same price. I
have my own yam repository and kickstart scripts that can perform a
pre-configured setup in about 30 minutes. I'm not sure I want to go the
thin client route but I have the LTSP in the back of my mind anyway.
----
In this instance, it's evident that if I don't have to run any specific
Macintosh software on these systems, Fedora it is - even if I can't
locate PPC based versions of things like flash/etc.

As clients, you wouldn't have to worry about that since the
apps run on the server.
----
+1 for thin client
-1 for thin client because some applications run much better on client
----

By logical extension, the only difference between this client and any
other user is the willingness to spend money to feed the corporate
beast, whether it is Microsoft of Apple and to be honest, and to
paraphrase one of my favorite lines of all time...one is a monopoly, the
other is a monopoly wannabe.

If you aren't willing to spend $100+ about every year to keep the
OS up to date, you probably shouldn't even consider apple. But, if
the employees are paid it doesn't take much time savings to
make that back. If they aren't and you really have to go the cheapest
route, take a good look at the k12ltsp distro which is essentially
fedora with the ability to boot thin clients included in the base
install.
----
I've been on the mail list for a few years but have never implemented it. We have it as an option but to implement, we will have to buy 1 big iron system for the server.

Thanks

Craig

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