Computing's silent revolution

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You get what you pay for.

This is another example of that age-old principle that "you get what you pay for".

Here at ZDnet, we hear a constant stream of whining about how Macs are "too expensive" and offer no practical benefits for their higher cost. Mac users, of course, realize this is horsepucky on both halves of the coin:

1. Macs frequently are no more expensive or only slightly more expensive than an equivalently-configured, pre-assembled PC from a BRAND NAME VENDOR, and

2. In many different ways, Macs offer a better computing experience.

You've just explained one of those ways where Macs offer a better experience. The Dells you're surrounded by probably have fixed-speed fans and they, of course, use high-powered Intel chips.

Your Mac G5, by comparison, uses one or two relatively power-efficient IBM PowerPC 970 chips and temperature-controlled fans split into seven different cooling zones. If the chips are loafing along, they burn very little power and the fans turn proportionally slowly and quietly.

The same effects seems to be true in laptops. Our Sony Vaio, while having a many-speed fan, apparently burns a lot more power than our PowerBook G4. The PowerBook's fan almost never turns on, and isn't too noisy when it does, butthe Sony's often whirring away. And its sins are compounded bythe fact that the spindle noise from the Sony's hard drive is far more noticeable than the spindle noise form the Mac's faster hard drive.

YGWYPF.

(Someone mentioned Suns in an earlier reply; my SunBlade 1500 is also relatively quiet, having fans with at least two speeds. It may have more, but it always runs at low speed during normal use, shifting up into its highest speed only during bootstrap.)

Posted by: Atlant   Posted on: 01/31/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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