ALL the Athlon machines are giving us excellent stable trouble free service and they are fast!
According to many, this cannot possibly be true!!!
But the fact remains that in my experience it is true. Well chosen parts and peripherals make the difference. When I was shopping for my 'WinAth' computer I considered a Compac machine. However Compac put a crappy graphic card in the machine and an inadequate power supply. I looked at several others. Gateways were crappy all around. Dells have crappy cases. So I went ahead and built my own.
I liked the design of Compac Athlon machines. They had the headphone, USB and IEEE1394 jacks in the front. Didn't care at all how it looked. Just makes sense to put those kinds of inputs where you can reach them easily. Apple had the good sense to do this with the headphone jack on some Performa's but then the 'egos' took over and they stopped. Pretty stupid IMHO. They want to make the device 'look good' and I end up having to constantly crawl under my desk. I hate crawling under my desk to plug any of these devices into my computers. I'm not an executive showing off, I need peripherals.
Most people don't understand Athlons need a 300W power supply. When the manufacturer puts in a 250W - Duh! - it crashes. I don't skimp and my machine doesn't crash. It's not that hard to build a computer. I built it for $1100. Think what I could have built it for if I ordered a million hard drives at a time.
My pal just lost his drive on his G3. I've heard too many stories about G3 hard drives going bad. They used a crappy model in too many computers. I think they just got a good price on the damn drives and decided to put them in and cross their fingers. They put a crappy modem in my G4. I think a lot of decisions are made this way, they get a good price on a volume deal and they go for it. What else would explain the 2 year Apple stuck with the hocky puc? I've never heard any reasonable explanation for Apple's stubbornness on this issue.
By the way I don't mean to imply that Apple is the only computer maker doing this. But Apple supposedly makes superior machines. That is the rational behind the excessive margins on their machines. Over the years Apple has slowly let the quality drift downwards. True the prices have gone down somewhat, but in relation to my Athlon they have not.
To all the investors a personal note: I hold a stock that I bought at $70 this year and it is now down to $38, so I know how you feel. I like Apple people. I like the culture. I love Firewire and Quicktime. Give me more of this kind of innovation! I call a spade a spade. You don't need cheer leaders, and you don't need reality distortion, and you don't need casual users to give you advice on how Apple is doing, you need to listen to Joe working guy. So does Jobs.
Build me a machine I can make money with! Build me a machine for a good price that I can't build myself. Think about it. If a giant corporations like Dell and Apple, with all their volume discounts, assembly lines, and engineers, can't build a better, cheaper machine than I can build for myself what the heck do I need them for?
I still say they will port OSX to intel/amd chips. But not until after they milk their hardware for all they can. |
