Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler So I stopped into a Bose store today....

Like I said earlier, Microsoft deserves a lot of bashing as well from their debacle with the 360 and how that was handled as well as people gripes with Vista. But from an overall perspective when it comes pricing, advertising/marketing and proprietary designs and software I see them as the better of two evils. Similar reasons on why I don't care for Bose (overpriced, marketing techniques and proprietary designs)

It was back in June. I just tried a similar config now, 4 months later, and the machine runs about $6400. That's also with SATA instead of the faster SAS drives.

Can't... stop...

Pricing:
Microsoft Windows 7: upgrade starts at $99
OS X Snow Leopard: $29

Proprietary designs? Proprietary designs? Dude, Microsoft is the mother of proprietary designs, at least when it comes to software
MAPI
Active Directory
.doc
NTFS
the list goes on.

Of course, they have some open stuff too.

Now, one can easily argue that proprietary designs aren't all bad, heck, maybe they're not bad at all. But you cannot hold Microsoft up as example of a company that doesn't use proprietary designs.

Apple? Well, they use a lot of open source stuff. Yes, the iPod is closed. Yes, it only works with iTunes by design, and vice versa. Yes, OS X only runs on Apple hardware (by design). But when they can use open source, they tend to do so, and they return to the community (sometimes). Webkit would be a prime example. AAC is also an open standard. Is WMA? Not to my knowledge.

Personally, I find Microsoft's advertising to be more insipid, annoying, and counter-factual than Apple's, but that's my perspective. I can't argue that Apple's ads aren't misleading to some degree (hey, what happened to PC gamers?), but they're hardly in a league of their own.

Yeah, I saw they didn't have SAS drives available any more. What's up with that?

I never said they didn't. My argument is they are the lesser of two evils.

BURRRRRNNNNN HIM!!!



The popularity of the Hackintosh movement is a compelling testament to how overpriced Apple hardware is.

Hey, that's fine. That's a reasonable argument. I prefer ESX, myself. Oh wait, that doesn't count...

Popularity? Maybe online at gadget sites.

Should have qualified my like of Windows 7 over Mac OS X. See, I like to be able to use my computer to do things, not just listen to music. While my photo processing software is available for both Win and Mac, most of my other day-to-day work just doesn't have a Mac version of an equivalent which isn't lacking in features. Mac software is always very easy to use, which usually translates into doesn't offer enough options to be really powerful.

I pick Windows 7, because Vista came too early, and with 16 GB of RAM, I need a 64-bit OS, XP64 is worse still.

In the end though, I spend a lot of time booted into Linux, included in that is the 8 hours of work each day where it is all I use.

Backpeddler.

I was just yanking your chain, Ken.

And I never heard a Bose product I liked. Ever.

I don't know that I have, either. I hate the Wave radio--horribly boomy. I'm sure it's good for what it is, but I just don't like minisystems or clock radios at all anyway.