Firefox or I.E

[goldFiSh]

I am being forced to use IE at work so all our interal shit works - sharepoint etcc.

on my mac i use firefox...

I'm not really all that fussed - yeah extensions are cool, but not a deal breaker...

I do however like the google sync thing within firefox - lets me keep all my bookmarks across multiple machines (and more if you want / dare)

[Betty]

Different but related (sort of) issue for you Mac guys (sorry to jack your thread Super but I think you got your answer). One of the guys at work is looking for a laptop to play around with his video and photos at his home away from home. His old film scanner uses a scsi drive to connect to his desktop. He is considering a Mac as it is meant to be better for this sort of thing but it goes against everything else he owns and uses.

It may also mean buying a new film scanner, etc .... but why should he go Mac? and will it cost him in terms of establishment cost (ie. new software/hardware) other than the machine.

Thanks for any help but I know you guys love plugging your Macs

[loony888]

i use safari on my mac and am blissfully ignorant of the benefits to firefox, is it really better?
as for IE, anything that comes from windows has way to many holes, backdoors, trojan horses etc etc, bill gates is the devil you know??
not that am paranoid or have anything to hide, but i won't even run WMP cause it apparently logs your viewing activity for nosey cretins to monitor.


paul.

[mattyvas]

hey Paul

Go download it, FF that is you might be nicely surprised at how it runs.

Matty...

[DosVerde]

Different but related (sort of) issue for you Mac guys (sorry to jack your thread Super but I think you got your answer). One of the guys at work is looking for a laptop to play around with his video and photos at his home away from home. His old film scanner uses a scsi drive to connect to his desktop. He is considering a Mac as it is meant to be better for this sort of thing but it goes against everything else he owns and uses.

It may also mean buying a new film scanner, etc .... but why should he go Mac? and will it cost him in terms of establishment cost (ie. new software/hardware) other than the machine.

Thanks for any help but I know you guys love plugging your Macs

It used to be that MAC's were superior as a video and graphics machine, but these days the guts of them are the same as your Windows running laptops, Intel CPU's and NVidia graphics cards, so there is no real performace difference, even OS X is getting a bit bloaty these days. (it's OK I can say this, I have an Imac at home as well)

I would say, stick with what you know. If your friend knows OS X, then get a MAC, If he has other Windows PC's then stick with that. The standard graphics manipulation programs on the MAC are probably better for a home users, however my Sony laptop came with a nice suite of programs including Photoshop Elements which is fine for cleaning up and resizing pics. Most well known brands do this.

My recomendation would be to buy as much RAM as you can, say 2GB, it's not too expensive. and make sure it has a dedicated NVidia or ATI video card with it's own memory. The cheaper laptops with the intergrated Intel graphics are slow (especially with Vista) and they use the systems memory reducing the amount left for your programs. The Macbook Pro already has the good specs so it's fine as it comes.

Hope that helps,  BTW, Harris Technology have Ducati badged 4GB USB memory sticks that are red and look like a fuel tank side on 

[goldFiSh]

I'm not gonna disagree, I own and use both, and whilst I prefer the mac, usability counts, and if you are the type that knows what they know and just want it to work without re-learning, then the PC may be the go.

It may also mean buying a new film scanner, etc ....

More than likely, or an aftermarket SCSI card. And this would go for either - difference is the cheaper macs don't have slots, so you would probably have to replace the film scanner with a USB device. Not that this would be a big issue, unless it is uber-resolution and specialised...

[Betty]

Thanks guys. I did suggest to him that a new scsi card would probably go a long way towards a new film scanner - he was surprised that they all seem to be usb rather than firewire.

[DosVerde]

I have an urge to get really nerdy...

USB 2.0 is not that much slower than firewire 400, this would not be an issue for your mid spec scanner. USB 2 runs at 480mbps (megabits per second), say a good quality scanned image is 5mb (megabytes) in size, times that by 8 (8 bits in a byte) to get 40 megabits to be transfered, the data should be transferred in about 0.15 seconds (plus a bit of overhead at the start and end).

The slow bit is the software doing it software thing and the scanner doing its scan thing. USB 1.0 was painfully slower but fortunatley is never seen on hardware these days.

You can't fit a SCSI card in a laptop anyway....

/nerdy rant  [moto]

[kutter]

For those of you that want to run a different browser at work, Firefox and Opera can both be run from a flashdrive. In fact Opera has a configuration that you can download that will set it up for you completely, not sure about Firefox as someone else gave me a flashdrive with it already installed.

[Betty]

Thanks DosVerde - I knew the DMF was the right place to ask about IT issues  [moto]

[BadBoyBubby]

I get my IT info from the 'The IT Crowd' - Wed nights, ABC TV.

I was so overcome with geekdom last night I think I wet my pants.

[DosVerde]

Thanks DosVerde - I knew the DMF was the right place to ask about IT issues  [moto]

Embarrasing isn't it.

I get my IT info from the 'The IT Crowd' - Wed nights, ABC TV.

I was so overcome with geekdom last night I think I wet my pants.

As long as you don't Goolge google...

[Spider]

DosVerde, can you programme my ECU, please?

nice work