Sunday, December 20th, 2009
Yes, everything awful you've heard about these adapters is true. They don't really work right, under Mac OS X. The strange thing is that those who've turned their Mac Minis into either Windows XP or Linux rigs do not have trouble with the adapter. So it's not really hardware related. A bit embarassing that the Apple engineers can't get their own gear working. Another senior engineer transferred to the iPhone video driver department?
Apple Mini DisplayPort Dual Link DVI Adapter MB571Z
Here's what recent reviews on Apple's own store say (just two of two hundred):
Flicker two or three times a day – GM, Dec. 9
I am a totally MAC fan. I love their stuff. It is always quality. This thing is awful. I depend on my monitor as I do a lot of photo work. I had an older macbook pro which had the DVI output. Ok, so I have buy a 100 adapter now, I am sort of ok with that. Then I find it takes up one of my USB ports as well. A little less happy, but give me a product that works. Now this… Two or three times a day I need to cycle this thing. Very poor. I really hope they fix this.
bad, bad, bad – VC, Dec. 9
This thing is junk. Sadly I have to re boot or put my computer to sleep at least three or four times a day because it goes out and comes back with the dreaded TV Snow we all hated as kids when the cable went out. Apple should have gotten this right by now. As a consumer and big spender on apple product I'm disappointed again. Windows 7 anyone? (Joke) Is Apple listening?
Read the rest of this entry »
By Alec
IT |
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Until recently, Apple had no good inexpensive computer in its lineup. There was the Mac Mini but the graphics were crappy built-in on-board Intel adapters. As an ex Macbook owner, I knew how weak that chip is.
On the other hand, the Mac Mini with the 9400GF is a real computer. A Core2Duo processor at 2 GHz can handle anything except gaming and high end video editing.
I hope to hell my staff are not gaming and I know we aren't doing high end video editing these days. If we decide to start, I'll get a more powerful computer.
I know that when we do go to video editing, there are no audio and video sync issues on Macs (sync issues are the historic bugaboo of video editing on Windows computers).
We've just bought a total of six Mac Minis and Macbooks to switch Foliovision over to being primarily an Apple company. Here's why.
How Apple Won Our Mini Enterprise Contract
- What is great about the Mini is that it is small and silent and powerful. We spend a huge amount of time finding and configuring custom power supplies and fans to make our Windows computers silent. Minis are silent out of the box (the power supply is on the floor). Silence is goal number one for our computers. That Macs used to be loud (even the G5 towers, I had one) was one good reason they didn’t have our business earlier.
- We can move the OS around from computer to computer without going through a complicated and painful . I.e. we will build a standard setup for our Minis with all the software and extras onboard that we want and just clone it from one machine to another.
- All hardware is compatible (limited choice but what exists works)
- I know all the software so whatever software anyone needs I can tell them off the top of my head which one to install
- We are all licensed software. Which means we are paying for our work tools anyway. As we are paying for our tools, we’d like nice ones. We’ve tried Linux but it is too widely configurable (i.e. too much choices so you end up spending time fiddling) and suffers from the same issues as Windows (driver and hardware compatibility issues).
- Maintenance is minimal and I don’t have to dedicate a staff member to working just on the computers (adding 5 more Windows boxes means that the IT guy would be almost unavailable for anything except computer maintenance).
- I want my programmers to write simpler, more attractive software which means they shouldn’t be on Windows or Linux as Windows is ugly and complicated and Linux is just too complicated. We aren’t writing for other programmers but for real estate agents and best selling authors. Simple and attractive are Steve Job’s watchwords and ours too.
How Apple Almost Lost Our Business
- Minis are very difficult to get into. We almost didn’t buy them at all as it is so difficult to change RAM and hard drives. I figured we are buying enough of them that we will get good at opening up the little devils.
- The warranty period is inadequate. All computer makers in Europe are offering two years. Apple is trying to offer one, along with a paid upgrade to three years. Yes for a laptop, no for a desktop. By the time you buy the extended Apple-Care on a desktop, it’s no longer a cost effective solution.
- There is no reasonable step up. iMacs are lovely computers but it’s next to impossible to change the hard drive. Guess what? We just won’t buy a computer in which we can’t change the hard drive ourselves. Crashed hard drives are the number one hardware issue and we expect to be able to deal with it without lugging a heavy iMac around town. Moreover the top of the line new quad iMac was issued without an external SATA port. For no good reason Apple has limited us to FireWire 800. Even FW 800 raid with 80 MB/sec throughput is not fast enough for HD video and just adequate for heavy duty photo processing.
- Custom video ports. We have to buy five mini-DVI adapters and five miniDisplay adapters for our dual head setups. Fortunately there are third party solutions now which come in at €8 to €15 per adapter instead of Apples €25 to €29. Tell me again why Apple are not using DVI and displayport instead?
Conclusion
The computers are arriving this week. We'll be setting them up over the holidays. I'll be back with some tips on how to set up Macs for enterprise use straight out of the box.
Microsoft had our business until they lost it with complicated licensing.
By Alec
IT |
Sunday, December 13th, 2009
We are moving half the office to Mac computers this month.
Originally I was in the market for a couple of quads with Microsoft Windows. But to be able to buy those two computers, I had to figure out all the troublesome licensing of Microsoft. Originally we just wanted to say with XP, as that's what we know and like. On the way, here's what I discovered about Microsoft Licensing:
- licenses are extremely confusing (8 license levels? come on)
- licenses are not portable
- licenses are restricted to a single language
- licenses have to be activated
- hardware changes require reactivation
- you need antivirus software for every Microsoft computer (we've actually bought it for all ours from Avast)
We were relatively happy Microsoft Windows XP users with five XP licenses and four Windows 2000 licenses. We planned to stay that way, but it's difficult and expensive to buy XP licenses these days and they don't point forward.
Microsoft does offer Windows Professional 7 licenses with the option for downgrade.
When we called Microsoft's telephone numbers for volume licenses, they were very coy about telling us what we could expect to pay. I'm sorry I don't like hidden prices, which can only be revealed after review of your contract. If you have to hide your prices, there's a scam in there somewhere. Moeover, we were also told that volume licenses would not allow us to do XP downgrades.
Apparently with Windows XP, a license is good regardless of what language you choose to install in the end. In Windows 7, unless you choose ultimate version, you have to keep the computer in the language for which you bought the license.
Which brings up the issue of versions. There are over 8 license versions. Guys, make it a lot easier, please. I.e. Ultimate shouldn't exists. Starter shouldn't exist either. Home and professional cover the two usage scenarios. If I buy a license, I should have the right to move it to another computer if I take it off the first computer.
In contrast, with Macs you just install the software. Of course you need the computer, but once you have that you can just copy a working OS from one computer to another.
We spent ten man hours just clarifying what Windows 7 licenses were available and which would work for us.* That's a good start on explaining why we just don't want anything more to do with Microsoft.
Go back to selling software, guys in Redmond. Complicated licensing to confuse and shaft customers is no way to do business. You've just lost ours.
* Once you are done with the licenses, you still have to configure and troubleshoot your own custom computers, downloading and debugging drives. There are hours to be spent here as well. Enough.
By Alec
IT |
