mac vs pc

[Adam]

Why does my 150 mhz mac run faster than my 2.4 ghz pc?
Are pc's really that slow?

[Nicholas]

"TROLL ALERT"

[Ray Taylor]

Before making any comments like that in future, note that macintosh cpu's
are made by Motorola.

I don't know much about the technology used with cpu's however I would
expect that Motorola can get more instructions through a single cpu cycle
than others such as Pentium. This would lower the requirement for higher
clock speeds.

Also what operating system are you using. Two very different ones.
Windows is designed to be more compatible and run on the IBM pc compatible
line compared to Mac which has limited hardware compatibility. Some
operating systems also use less cpu power to carry out a task.

What are you measuring. How can you judge the speed of your computer and
compare it to another just by saying it 'runs' faster. Using the term 'run'
would mean it boots, opens applications, and generally appears to perform at
speed. I am guessing you are looking at one of these to judge your speed.
How about you try and convert an mp3 to a format supported by both
computers and compare the speed differences.

Macintosh is made for media performance so you will find that multimedia
quality is better on a Mac but you try running a large WAN, powered by macs
in which the key task is a business database / custom software for a very
large company. Mac's simply don't have the performance to run something like
that, nor do they have the security, user management and software deployment
abilities that something like windows 2000 or .NET 2003 server can.

You can judge speed however you like but I prefer windows due to its
features, compatibility and network abilities, and I am willing to
compromise these over speed.

The only way i would use a mac, was if it was running on a pc, or was a
terminal services client of a windows pc.

Ray Taylor



"Adam" > wrote in message
...
> Why does my 150 mhz mac run faster than my 2.4 ghz pc?
> Are pc's really that slow?

[Dr. Harvie Wahl-Banghor]

Some time, on or about: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 17:39:54 -0700, "Adam"
> wrote:

>Why does my 150 mhz mac run faster than my 2.4 ghz pc?
>Are pc's really that slow?

Comparing a PC to a Mac is like comparing apples to oranges. All PCs
are built on open architecture with all components being built by
different manufacturers. A Mac is a proprietary machine with all
aspects of hardware strictly controlled by Apple. The main CPU of a PC
is a based on the X86 technology and carries a lot of baggage for
backward compatibility issues. The CPU of a Mac is a RISC CPU
optimized for the Mac OS. However, I don't think this has nothing to
do with why your 2.4 Ghz machine being sluggish. It's probably due to
you trashing the OS after 2 unsuccessful attempts at upgrading from 98
to W2k or XP. My other belief is you're just here to cause trouble.

[Ron Martell]

"Adam" > wrote:

>Why does my 150 mhz mac run faster than my 2.4 ghz pc?
>Are pc's really that slow?


Why is a 1964 chevy faster than a new Mack truck?


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

[Jim Macklin]

Because
"Ron Martell" > wrote in message
...
| "Adam" > wrote:
|
| >Why does my 150 mhz mac run faster than my 2.4 ghz pc?
| >Are pc's really that slow?
|
|
| Why is a 1964 chevy faster than a new Mack truck?
|
|
| Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
| --
| Microsoft MVP
| On-Line Help Computer Service
| http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
|
| "The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't
eat much."

[Neysa Wilfong]

>Why does my 150 mhz mac run faster than my 2.4 ghz pc?
>Are pc's really that slow?

If anyone feels like it I would sort of like the easy answer to this too.

I have always had a pc but I do a lot of graphic work for people and have
been told how much better a Mac is for this and that Macs don't get virus
problems as much as pcs.
I am a very average user and don't pretend to understand a great deal of how
each works. I did understand the analogy of chevy to Mack truck but honestly
I still don't get it.
Is it true Macs run off mostly RAM? Are all or most programs made in a Mac
version? Is it possible to take files from a pc and share them with a Mac?
What about Mac files, are they shareable with a pc?
I'd kind of like to know a little more if anyone is willing to take a stab
at it. But please use fairly simple terms, I don't understand the difference
in CPUs or RISCs or things like that. I am just an average consumer with a
slightly above average consumer need for graphic design who wants to
understand both pc and mac since it seems mac is here to stay afterall.

[Dan DeStefano]

it is likely that the person complaining about his pc being so much slower
than his mac has got a serious problem with his pc; be it a malfunctioning
component, program with a memory leak, virus, etc, because if there is one
thing macs do not have over pc's, it is performance. i have read a benchmark
between the fastest pc vs the fastest mac (pc: dual xeon proc machine; mac:
dual ppc machine - equal ram; dont remember the clock speeds) and the pc
soundly thrashed the mac in performance, taking every single benchmark test
with ease - it even doubled the mac's performance in some cases.
the old idiom that macs are 'better' than pc's for graphics is just no
longer true. this was true back in the late 80's - early 90's, but nowadays
it is not. the fastest gaming and workstation 3d accelerators are not even
available for mac workstations, and usually do not become available for them
until months after their pc counterparts have been released. most mac
workstations come with stripped down versions of the latest graphics
chipsets (i.e. geforce4 mx - you can now get a radeon 9700 pro, but not the
9800 pro, which is the latest). also, other technologies not invented by
apple (serial ata) are usually not adopted by them for a while - you can buy
a pci sata expansion card, but its speed is limited by the pci bus and will
not perform like the latest intel chipset with integrated sata.
you mention the difference between risc (reduced instruction set) and cisc
(complex instruction set) processors - macs (and sun workstations/servers)
using the risc architecture and pc's using the cisc architecture. the best
way to explain this is to look at a processor's "instruction set" as its
language and the instructions a processor can understand are like the words
in the language. the less instructions a processor understands, the more
instructions you need to use to perform a specific task, which puts a
greater burdon on the software. e.g. if two people understand 2 different
languages - the first language uses more words, and the second uses less,
and you want to tell both of them to "walk", you may have to tell the first
person "walk", but the second person does not have a word for walk, so to
get him to perform the same action, you may have to say "extend one foot in
front of the other, place it on the ground, transfer weight to the front
foot, move the earth behind you, repeat". even though the end result of both
are the same, you had to issue one command to the first, but 5 to the
second. this is the difference between risc and cisc processors in a
nutshell. the experts still debate which architecture is better, but it used
to be that risc processors were much cheaper, but now the cost of processors
is so cheap that this argument is less valid.
a lot of major programs are made for both pc and mac, but windows machines
have the most software by far.
if you want to share files between a pc and a mac and you are using mac os
9.x or below, then you will either need a windows server or third party
application like thursby's "dave", which runs on a mac and makes it emulate
a windows machine, or mirimar systems' "pcmaclan", which runs on a pc and
lets it communicate on an appletalk network. however, if you are using osx,
then, yes, it can communicate with windows machines in a windows network.

puttin the hardware aside, apple really has 2 platforms - os 9.x and below,
and osx and above. they are essentially two, totally different animals and
are not interoperable (osx is actually a proprietary version of a unix
kernel with elements of steve jobs' "next" operating system), which is why
when planning an upgrade to osx your old software will have to run in
"classic desktop" mode on osx and not be able to actually run on osx. osx is
a major change for the better for the macintosh platform and finally brings
stability and improved networking i.q. to the macintosh, making it as stable
as the nt/2k/2k3 platform, which os9.x could not touch.

so, you cannot really compare windows vs. mac without bringing the os into
the equasion (which apple has not done in its "switch" campaign, which
borders on being false advertising). windows xp is based on the nt kernel,
while windows 9x/me is based on the dos kernel - this makes xp a far
superior platform to 9x/me and it cannot be compared to os 9.x. conversely,
osx runs on the stable unix "platform" and it cannot be fairly compared to
os 9.x or windows 9x/me.

Dan DeStefano


"Neysa Wilfong" > wrote in message
...
> >Why does my 150 mhz mac run faster than my 2.4 ghz pc?
> >Are pc's really that slow?
>
> If anyone feels like it I would sort of like the easy answer to this too.
>
> I have always had a pc but I do a lot of graphic work for people and have
> been told how much better a Mac is for this and that Macs don't get virus
> problems as much as pcs.
> I am a very average user and don't pretend to understand a great deal of
how
> each works. I did understand the analogy of chevy to Mack truck but
honestly
> I still don't get it.
> Is it true Macs run off mostly RAM? Are all or most programs made in a Mac
> version? Is it possible to take files from a pc and share them with a Mac?
> What about Mac files, are they shareable with a pc?
> I'd kind of like to know a little more if anyone is willing to take a stab
> at it. But please use fairly simple terms, I don't understand the
difference
> in CPUs or RISCs or things like that. I am just an average consumer with a
> slightly above average consumer need for graphic design who wants to
> understand both pc and mac since it seems mac is here to stay afterall.
>
>