You're gonna look real funny trying to use that computer without a power supply, keyboard, mouse, cables, fans, heat sink(s), software, etc. It is a fact that Macs used to be quite a bit more expensive (and not just because of the name, but because of parts choices), but it's just not true anymore, at least to the extent you are claiming. No doubt you could spec out a roughly equivalent computer and install Linux and whatever other free software you want for probably about 20% less. Part of the premium is the convenience of not having to shop for all the difference parts and put it together yourself (and hope you don't short out your motherboard in the process). I'm fairly sure most PC sellers charge a "premium" for delivering it in one piece with software installed.

Also, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you picked the low end of the Mac Pro line for ease of comparison, but it also happens to be the worst choice by far in terms price/performance.
>> ^jmzero:

Or you could buy good PCs and see the price is pretty much the same.

Lol @budzos. Mac people have always said this, and it has always been funny. They used to have some magic wiggle room because so many parts were different (different processor, especially) - but that's mostly gone now. OK, so here you can get a quad core Mac Pro for $2499. Let's see what those parts it lists are worth:
Processor: $316 (here's the specific model)
Graphics Card: $109 (here's actually a slightly better model)
6GB of RAM: $100 (good RAM for that premium)
1TB hard disk: $100 (decent hard disk for that)
Motherboard: $250 (let's get a nice one)
Case: $250 (let's get a nice one)
Optical drive: $100
So far we're at $1225. Maybe they've got some Apple magic (whoo! Superdrive!) to make up a couple hundred more dollars - but it's going to take a lot to spend another $1275 (ie. more than double). If you prefer a Mac, go ahead and get one - but pretending they're the same price is silly.
To be clear, I don't hate Apple and some of their products are reasonably priced now. A Macbook Air, for example, has been a good deal for a while and is still much nicer than its competitors. But their hardware has historically been way more expensive, and lots of it still has a significant premium attached.

Or you could buy good PCs and see the price is pretty much the same.



Lol @budzos. Mac people have always said this, and it has always been funny. They used to have some magic wiggle room because so many parts were different (different processor, especially) - but that's mostly gone now. OK, so here you can get a quad core Mac Pro for $2499. Let's see what those parts it lists are worth:

Processor: $316 (here's the specific model)
Graphics Card: $109 (here's actually a slightly better model)
6GB of RAM: $100 (good RAM for that premium)
1TB hard disk: $100 (decent hard disk for that)
Motherboard: $250 (let's get a nice one)
Case: $250 (let's get a nice one)
Optical drive: $100

So far we're at $1225. Maybe they've got some Apple magic (whoo! Superdrive!) to make up a couple hundred more dollars - but it's going to take a lot to spend another $1275 (ie. more than double). If you prefer a Mac, go ahead and get one - but pretending they're the same price is silly.

To be clear, I don't hate Apple and some of their products are reasonably priced now. A Macbook Air, for example, has been a good deal for a while and is still much nicer than its competitors. But their hardware has historically been way more expensive, and lots of it still has a significant premium attached.

How about this one:

http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/3/8/ants-can-learn-to-navigate-with-chill-magnetic-vibes--2



In reply to this comment by ant:
Yeah, I saw that gallery before. Thanks. :

In reply to this comment by critical_d:
http://en.www.lensart.ru/album-uid-210a-aid-456b-sh-1.htm?ps=18

Latency's a bitch ain't she?

It's interesting, people always get all worked up over bandwidth. 99 times out of 100 it's long latencies you're noticing.

>> ^MonkeySpank:

This is why we have on-processor cache (L2, L3) in the first place. Even at the speed of light, the distance traveled between the processor and motherboard memory, when done a few billion times a second, starts to become a limiting factor on processing speed.

This is why we have on-processor cache (L2, L3) in the first place. Even at the speed of light, the distance traveled between the processor and motherboard memory, when done a few billion times a second, starts to become a limiting factor on processing speed.

I learned a lot more from this discussion:
http://www.metafilter.com/109869/MotherBoard-TV-The-Thorium-Dream

Awesome video. Two times I've been about at half the distance as that. I think that means four times as much sound energy. I have my computers on UPS's, but the lightning reset them all last time nevertheless. (And killed a hub and a motherboard while at it.) It ended a match of Battlefield-2 actually between friends at the house.

It is because of a cell phone tower in the adjacent lot. It is a highly effective "neighborhood sized lightning rod".

Now that i know there is no hope. I disconnect cables from tv, xbox and comps when the signs look right.

It's indescribably loud. First the !!!boom!!! and then you'd look up and every one of our dogs we had would be standing in front of you . It seemed like they realized -- this is way out of normal parameters, please take over. Doggy warp core overload.

ETA for the new C64 is may/june - MSRP $595. Nothing that exciting about the computer really - it's just an ITX motherboard in a C64 style case. Runs Linux and has a C64 emulator.

I'm not sure how serious the company is though, since they have a golden retriever on their board of directors... http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_Corporate.aspx

I think you just got unlucky. I've had a bad string with Samsung including phones and laptops breaking quickly and a hard drive failing but when so many people seem happy, it's hard to really draw aspersions.

Asus has been fine for me, although the last thing I bought from them was a motherboard quite a while ago.

I do give them cred for being more innovative than most of the other hardware makers. They've got a whole bunch of novel slates/tablets coming out or already released, they essentially invented the netbook, and now they came up with this which really does seem pretty nifty.>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^kronosposeidon:
Still looks pretty half-assed to me, but I'm sure there are plenty of geeks who want to be the first nerd on the block to get this.

Nah, man, not if you accept the implication that 'geeks' know what they're doing.
See, Asus is well known for making garbage that just barely lasts through the warranty period before total failure. I learned this the hard way many years ago as the owner of 2 Asus video cards (the second of which was the warranty replacement of the first) and an Asus motherboard which I believe died within a week of the warranty expiration. The first video card died after roughly 60 days (90 day warranty) and the replacement lived maybe another 4-5 months.
Their netbooks seem to be a recent exception, though I understand support is still useless if you do have a problem. Maybe someone else manufactures them.
The big question here is what will you do with your fancy cardboard box when the crap inside of it sizzles?

>> ^kronosposeidon:

Still looks pretty half-assed to me, but I'm sure there are plenty of geeks who want to be the first nerd on the block to get this.


Nah, man, not if you accept the implication that 'geeks' know what they're doing.

See, Asus is well known for making garbage that just barely lasts through the warranty period before total failure. I learned this the hard way many years ago as the owner of 2 Asus video cards (the second of which was the warranty replacement of the first) and an Asus motherboard which I believe died within a week of the warranty expiration. The first video card died after roughly 60 days (90 day warranty) and the replacement lived maybe another 4-5 months.

Their netbooks seem to be a recent exception, though I understand support is still useless if you do have a problem. Maybe someone else manufactures them.

The big question here is what will you do with your fancy cardboard box when the crap inside of it sizzles?

>> ^maximillian:

Also, This doesn't really look like a computer motherboard, more like a generic, custom circuit board.
Still cool though.

It's defiantly not a standard board, double-sided mating surfaces for interconnects, integrated cpu, gpu, and onboard prom and ram chips probably means it's for a notebook, eeepc, or some type of tablet.


One thing I miss working in the industry was the smell, there's something unique about the smell of a freshly coated board just having been hot-soldiered. Of course now with all the whining they've switched to lead free. Wonder what the failure rate based on hot-flexing and tinning is. If it's under 15% I'll be surprised. I'll say it's at least 10%, which is a miserable failure.

I mean come on, it's not like people chew on motherboards. Replacing a tried and tested technology with something inferior and without proper testing is setting you up for failure. Well I guess we can blame environmentalists and insane politicians for that one.

So what kind of motherboard creates the motherboard?

>> ^Stingray:

Machines making machines? I felt like I've seen this before... in a movie series called Terminator.


no you are thinking of wily wonka.

This isn't a total video of a motherboard being made. It is only the pick and place machine part. Making the bare board, the solder stenciling, oven reflow, and inspection parts are all missing. Also, This doesn't really look like a computer motherboard, more like a generic, custom circuit board.

Still cool though.

Unfortunately, you cannot install Mac OS X on anything other than a Mac. (officially that is. There are some intel motherboards which can install an EFI bios and get a hacked copy of OS X, but in general you can't)

OpenOffice 3.2 is about the best package for linux, but I'm not sure how it compares to Keynote. You can download it for windows or mac os x as well - it behaves pretty much the same on every OS, so try it out.

>> ^MycroftHomlz:

I thought if I got the Viao or any other PC I would consider installing OSX on it or Linux. I would be hard pressed to use Windows again.