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My first bleeding edge computer

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by jerrymildred, Nov 27, 2020.

  1. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    Wow, $140 for Home Edition sounds expensive. As I said, for ~$200 you can have a perfectly working capable PC with OS, so I wonder if anyone is buying a standalone OS license nowadays. I have not paid for Windows OS for a long time but I think I paid less in a boxed retail version of NT or Pro version of OS can't remember if that was XP or 7. Those days OTA update and online download were not available yet.
     
  2. Rmay635703

    Rmay635703 Senior Member

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    I’ve always wondered if anyone ever did outside enthusiasts. $100+ for full Windows has always been a thing, $99 for an upgrade version.

    I remember when office max (remember those things) had rows of fresh boxed operating systems and software, never see those days again

    Would be interesting to know how many retail copies have sold
     
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  3. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    Hey, I was one of those who lined up all night outside of the retail store to pick up the copy of the retail box of Windows 3 on the day it was released. Never again. LOL
     
    #83 Salamander_King, Feb 17, 2021
    Last edited: Feb 17, 2021
  4. Rmay635703

    Rmay635703 Senior Member

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    That was actually a vast exciting improvement in an exciting time of personal computing. Things back then were special and could improve your productivity.

    That was before the electronics industry entered the boring appliance like malaise era and everything was special and actually improving in meaningful visible ways.

    That was Long before the AMD/Intel race to the bottom of daily obsolescence that killed the industry and with it enthusiasm for PCs.
     
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  5. ETP

    ETP 2021 Prime(Limit),Highlander HYB Plat,B52-D,G,F,H

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    Slide rule is emergency equipment with no power any where. How many people can actually do statistics the hard way?

    I remember back in the Civil War that we ran out of current load and balance/combo slip sticks. So I copied the front of a new one and glued the picture to the old slip sticks. No body died so I guess it worked.
     
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  6. Ronald Doles

    Ronald Doles Active Member

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    Made my first visit to "Incredible Universe", a brand new big box store, on the first day Windows 95 was released. I told my wife that the very loud music and strobe lights everywhere gave me a headache and that I probably wouldn't be returning. That Tandy owned store went from a big flashy opening with all kinds of promotions to a "going out of business sale" in about 6 months.

    I loved CompUSA which is also gone now. We have a local MicroCenter that is the only computer-centric big box store remaining. I buy my Arduino (single board computer) accessories there.
     
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  7. ETC(SS)

    ETC(SS) The OTHER One Percenter.....

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    I buy all of mine on eBay if i don't mind waiting a few weeks for the E-packet from China....or Amazon if I want it in a few days.

    Go into a physical store for a computer?

    Um....yeah.
    I suppose I might if the price were right.....but..... ;)
     
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  8. Prodigyplace

    Prodigyplace Senior Member

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    The closest I came was buying my last laptop online on sale from Costco.
     
  9. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    The M1 MBP that started this thread was my first ever new Mac. All the others came online from their refurb store. No refurb M1s yet, which is what prompted my use of the term "bleeding edge."

    I bought this online, but didn't want to wait several weeks for it to arrive, so I went the next day to the local Apple store to pick it up.
     
  10. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    My last "new" computer purchased was at the midnight opening of Office Dept on Black Friday sale 5 or 6 years ago. I picked up a $99 laptop by Asus. It was a 10" netbook with 32GB eMMC storage, 2GB RAM running Windows 8 on Intel Atom CPU. No expandability except MicroSD card slot. I managed to update the OS to Win10 several years after the purchase, and it still runs a browser and a few additional apps although excruciatingly slowly. Way before that, I bought several brand new Sony VAIO or Fujitsu Lifebook B series subnotebooks costing over $1K/unit, but those were mainly for my work. Almost all other computers are purchased used on eBay. I have set the max price I would spend on a computer to be $500 since the debut of cheap laptops on the market ~15 years ago. Many of them were less than $200. Almost as important as the price, for a laptop to be functional for my use, the weight has to be less than 3 lbs.
     
  11. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    Here's an update on the M1 after almost one year. And it leads to another first for me.

    This thing had been fantastic with one major exception that I'll get to and which triggered the new "first."

    Performance has been totally satisfying. It's everything they said it would be. Display is fine. While I rarely run on battery, when I do the battery lasts almost forever. In almost a year of sometimes pretty heavy photo editing, I never heard the fans come on although my status monitor showed them running briefly and slowly a few times. My 15" MBP often sounded like a hair dryer.

    But one thing has bugged the heck out of me. No ports! Just having two Thunderbolt ports, with one used for charging, means I need a docking port of some sort for my three external drives, my 27"monitor, and full sized keyboard. I've tried two different docks as well as a few dongles. With any of them, the external drives and monitor will occasionally disconnect themselves while the mac is asleep. Eventually, that led to a corrupted Time Machine drive. And, to get it to see the monitor again, requires rebooting. I have started using a wireless keyboard and that seems to reduce the disconnects, so I suspect I'm drawing more power than that single port can provide. I'm otherwise totally happy with this thing, even with only having 8 GB of RAM. Never any performance or usability issues. But those random disconnects are just not something I want to live with. So, another first ... a preorder.

    Yup! I have actually preordered a 14" MBP with the the M1 Pro SoC and it should get here in mid-late November. It's a little more expensive, and I've never replaced a computer this soon, but I'm getting what I think is a good price for the M1 and I'll get my ports back. Along with twice the RAM, twice the storage, twice the speed, and an even better display. I don't need the extra performance, but I want those ports. SO glad Johnny Ives has left Apple so we can have "Pro" machines again.

    Final verdict on the M1 MacBook Pro is that it really is awesome. As long as you don't need many peripherals.
     
  12. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    If you rarely use MBP on a battery, that means it is more or less being used as a desktop with connected peripherals. Why didn't you consider Mac Mini with M1 for purely desktop use? I have not priced it, but think it would be much more affordable than Macbook Pro.
     
  13. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    Because rarely isn't never. I use the heck out of it on vacations. I also sometimes need it for meetings. Since getting home from the hospital, I've used it a ton in the recliner since I"m just now to the point where I can sit a a desk for a few minutes. I used to have a MBP and an iMac. Having both was a big waste. The MBP just sat around most of the time. But I needed it for travel. So, if I have to eliminate something, the one to eliminate is the one that can only be used at home.

    That said, my son used to do all his work on a Mac Mini and sometimes traveled. I'm not willing to lug around the monitor and other stuff and then set it all up when traveling. Especially if the travel is overseas. I just open the lid and in about two seconds I'm ready to get to work. Bring it back home, connect it to the peripherals, and I have more performance and more screen area than I used to have with the 27" iMac. (As a matter of fact, the new one will out perform most Mac Pros costing thousands of dollars more, but that's not why I got it.)

    Edit to add: It's kind of like why I have a Prius Prime rather than a hybrid or a BEV. Best of both worlds. :)
     
  14. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    Yeah, but for that rare occasions, you have your current 2020 M1 MBP. Or did you trade it in? If you did, then I get your logic.

    I never like to rely on a single machine for something I use so often and must-have for my daily activity. That's why I have multiple computers (now mostly laptops but still have a few desktops) set up with exactly the same apps and setups. I would much rather have multiple cheap and old but perfectly usable computers than having a single "bleeding edge" super expensive computer. I have several cloned Chromebooks and several cloned Windows laptops. Also has one very old Mac mini that I used for a single task. In fact, I recently picked up a used HP laptop of exactly the same model as the one issued by the work. I can't use the personal laptop for my work, but having exactly the same model allows me to swap the laptop from the docking station and use the same peripherals, three monitors, ergonomic keyboard, trackball, external drives, ethernet connection, NAS, etc. Still, my budget has always been ~$200 for a system.
     
    #94 Salamander_King, Oct 23, 2021
    Last edited: Oct 23, 2021
  15. mikefocke

    mikefocke Prius v Three 2012, Avalon 2011

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    Back in 1967 I went to work for a computer manufacturer. Debug at the transistor level in the middle of the night. Carry the listings in the trunk of the car. Things were simple then.

    Then Apple and Atari and Commodore came out and I chose an Atari for home. Built up over time.

    When IBM came out with their PC, shortly after so did Commodore and Columbia. Still the cost of a small car.

    A year or so later, the clone motherboards started to appear and I built my first clone. Many clones later I taught computer hardware selection to a Users Group and helped them assemble their computers. Lots cheaper for me to let them pay for the hardware and I got to play with it.

    Led the group that determined if my company should standardize on Apple or IBM at the time when NT came on thirty some floppies and took almost a day to load onto a 286..

    After 37 years in the computer business, I retired.

    Now I buy whatever Costco has on sale. Computers have, for me, become like terminals and as long as the OS is on SSD, it is good enough. Not sure I plan to migrate to the next Windows version for at least a year as it would require a new hardware purchase.

    Never had an interest in paying the Apple-Tax though they are marvelous machines.
     
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  16. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    The M1 MBP is helping to cover the cost of the new machine.

    As for back-up computing, there is my wife's MBP or the most likely backup would be my iPad. It's pretty capable for a lot of things, just not as handy for heavy use.

    Edit to add: The Apple store is about 17 miles away, so if push came to shove, getting a replacement would not take very long. I could get a replacement M1 MBP tomorrow if needed. But there's no rush since I can limp along with the iPad in a pinch. Having a spare computer on hand sitting idle is a little rich for my blood. And I WILL NOT use a Windows computer. The last Windows machine I bought, I nuked immediately and installed Linux.

    One more edit: Actually, I will use a Windows laptop. But only for Techstream. LOL!
     
    #96 jerrymildred, Oct 24, 2021
    Last edited: Oct 24, 2021
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  17. ETC(SS)

    ETC(SS) The OTHER One Percenter.....

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    I have several that I use on the job running XP in "airplane" mode.

    That's been my experience.

    My CFO remains utterly delighted with her (base, rose gold) M1 and I just got her an early Christmas present with a "leftover" watch.
    Their stuff is pricey and they use the 1970's GMC model of planned obsolescence, but I haven't had a SINGLE "howdoI" question in almost 3 years - and my sweet daughter has assumed the role as her Tier-1 tech support. :D
     
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  18. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    I believe that was the last good OS M$ made, at least from this user's point of view.

    Same with my wife. She used to have a Toshiba laptop running Vista that weighed about 62 pounds. I was always having to help her with computer questions. One day she asked if I'd help her pick something lighter. I suggested that she see if our neighbor would show her the new MBP she just got. (I was running a Linux desktop then.) She loved it, I got her an early 2010 and I don't think she's asked me more than a dozen computer questions in the past 11 years. (She now has a 13" 2017 we got in late 2017.)

    True, but how much would it cost for another computer with the performance of the new laptops from Apple. One reviewer just said that his new $4k MBP Max was rendering video twice as fast as his $12,000 Mac Pro with a 12 core Xenon CPU and a $2k video card. And the lowly M1 is as quick as a high end i9. Here's a little video that describes some of the things not on the spec sheet that add to the cost of a Mac.

    There was a time when the MBP was only so-so for performance and screen quality. Those days went away when they starting rolling their own CPUs. And how the heck do they get such great sound out of those little laptop speakers!!??

    I still have to wait a little over three more weeks to get the new machine. What keeps me patient is that this entry level M1 is still fantastic. I need to quit checking the status every two hours. :ROFLMAO: I'm using it more now that I can sit at the desk for a while and have some work assignments on my plate.
     
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  19. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    Well, I guess we're having an early Christmas. I started comparing options for modernizing my wife's computer, too since her dinky 256GB drive is nearly full. I compared giving my M1 MBP to her (it's like new) and selling her 2017 i5 MBP against going ahead with my trade and also trading in her computer on an M1 MacBook Air with 512GB SSD. Turns out that trading in both of them is much cheaper even considering the price difference between the Air & Pro. So I ordered her birthday/Christmas present yesterday.

    It's been a long wait but my 14" has finally shipped and is due to arrive Nov. 23. There must be quite a demand for them. Her Air is about to ship and due here Nov. 23-26. All the reviews seem to confirm to me that the specs I chose should be a great fit for my photography hobby.
     
  20. ETC(SS)

    ETC(SS) The OTHER One Percenter.....

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    Great!
    She will love it.

    Whatcha gonna do with the oldies, or did you trade them in on the newies?

    I was going to upgrade some of my IOS stuff this year but my 11, Mini5, and the SE watch are still knocking it out of the park...so I'm gonna kick those upgrades off to the right for a year.
    Maybe two.
    I have 2 other hobbies (reloading/optics and a BARE budget camera drone) that are going to get Christmas money this year instead.

    I'm thinking that, given the current attention to inflation you might be happier later that you bought the MBPs sooner.

    Best!
     
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