Click Here for YouTube video of 25 different OSes running simultaneously on an Apple iMac!
Posted on 07/31/2015 10:36:47 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Think running two operating systems at the same time is clever? How about twenty-five?
Hypervisors or virtual machine monitors (VMM) are computer software, firmware or hardware that create and runs virtual machines.
While this demo has no practical purpose, it does help to illustrate how clean and efficient are VMware’s hypervisors.
Of course, VMWare makes one of the most widely-used software hypervisors for the Mac, Fusion Pro 7.
You’re assuming that’s all they have running, Sword. Sorry, but with over 20 years in corporate IT, I can tell you without a doubt that they’re using Parallels in some way, shape, or form. There’s very little an engineer can do in a corporate domain without running Windows.
” If you’re going to answer the question directly without hurling insults fine. If not, please move along. “
I did not insult you at all. I suggest you reread what I wrote. I shared my personal experience with 13 years of Window computers and the experience of my kids going to college and the result.
“The Mac Laptop is anywhere from $250 - $350 higher.”
And worth a multiple of that, when you take the full customer experience into account.
“You attribute cost of the Windows laptop as not including other things that are not in scope for my example. “
And that is why I shared it with you - so that you would evaluate the totality of the experience. To know the cost of something is a small thing, compared to knowing the value of something.
“the learning curve for switching to a Mac/OSX laptop from any commodity i7 laptop w/Windows on it is pretty steep itself”
I can only speak for myself. That is not true. There is a learning curve, mostly unlearning the MS way and going with the more direct and useful Mac way. It was minor for me after exclusively using a (series of) Windows desktops and laptops over 13 years.
” Especially if that person is already a Windows user?”
Assuming you are able to learn, it is a short learning curve. If you care only about initial cost and do not wish to learn anything else, you should certainly continue down your pathway. It is familiar to you and comfortable.
Since that appears to be your plan, why ask for advice on this thread? Was that just rhetorical?
Best
Uh, you link to a generic laptop, hardly the top of the line.
And you didn’t point out the driver issues listed.
And you still haven’t addressed the limited bios emulation.
“”Frustration analytics,” in this case, tracks the crapware that PC makers put on machines fresh from the factory.”
How does the apple stack up against a quality pc laptop?
The article doesn’t address that.
What’s kind of ironic is that this video was meant to demonstrate the capabilities of VMWare. A demonstration of running 25 VMs on industrial strength hardware wouldn’t be very impressive.
My experience with the cheapest windows hardware has been a life-span of 2-4 years until things just seem to bog down.
My first foray into mac computers was a refurb Core2Duo that I got about 7 years ago. We are finally having to replace it sometime soon - it just isn't getting the job done anymore. It was painful to hit the 'buy' button that first time, but I haven't regretted it. Since then I have purchase another macbook, macbook air, iMac and mac pro - all refurb or used. The pro is now 8ish years old and still used. The iMac needs more disk space, and that is a pain to install. So I don't use it a lot, it is also showing it's age (C2D again). The Air is only 3-4 years old and doesn't get as much use since my daughter got her iPad, but it still works, she still uses it when she needs it. I have a second iPad and an iPad mini...iphones...you name it.
This post was done on my 1 windows box that my daughter and i built to play Battlefield 3, pretty much all it does anymore...(waiting for it to start up as I type)
Not sure if I was clear, I consider the macs cheaper. More money up-front, but a longer useable life makes it all worth it to me. But I buy refurbs for the most part. Yes, there can be learning curve. I had a blast learning iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, etc.
The thing that really pushed me to buy the first mac was a 'last lecture' by a guy dying from some cancer or something. He had less than a year to live, and wanted to try a mac before he died. I figured I should give one a shot before I was told I had months to live. If I enjoyed it and it worked well, great. If I thought I spent too much, then lesson learned and I wouldn't have to wonder what the mac users raved about.
Just drives me nuts with the Windows vs Mac bashing. It’s almost as bad on FR as the religious threads. Why can’t people just appreciate both for what they do differently?
I misunderstood where you were coming from, and my sincere, humble apologies.
No worries mate. I meant you good. I hope your son does well in college.
Cannot disagree with a single word of the above although comparing the quality of a $400 laptop to a $750 MacBook Air isn't exactly fair.
Any laptop one can buy for $400 frankly isn't worth purchasing. They're built to meet a price point as cheaply as possible. That means no i3/i5/i7 processor -- it's going to be some POS Celeron with the cheapest memory, HDD and motherboard that can be crammed into a laptop case. Really not fair comparing the two.
Interestingly, I had to take my oldest son laptop shopping yesterday (Sunday..) as he starts college at Western IL University in a few weeks. Initially we were looking at an Asus laptop online at MicroCenter that had an i7 Processor, 8Gb of Memory and a 1TB HDD. Graphics had 2Gb of memory dedicated to it, and came with Windows 8.1. What looked to be very appealing for $699 online turned into a steaming pile of crap once we got to the store and looked at it.
To say the build quality of that laptop was crap is an insult to crap. I'm going to be completely honest here: any laptop you can buy under $700 is going to be a POS. Every single laptop we looked at in the $600 - $700 price range was just horrible and it didn't take long to realize I had to either lower my expectations or increase the $$ I was willing to spend for a quality laptop.
Ended up with a very nice Lenovo Z70 for (considerably) more than the $700 price tag I was looking to stay under. The build quality seemed to be quite good, the 17.3" display was 1080p, the GPU had 2GB memory on it, it had the latest i7 Processor, 8GB of reasonably fast memory and a HDD that I ended up cloning and putting on an SSD for him. No way I was leaving a POC 5400 RPM HDD in that thing.
All told, that laptop ended up costing well north of $1k once I added a Microsoft Office 365 license, and that cost doesn't include my time of cloning the drive and swapping it out for an SSD. (About 2 hours.)
Do I think the build quality of the laptop I purchased yesterday is equal to a MacBook Air (or any other MacBook for that matter?)
Answer: No, I don't. I've always admired the build quality of virtually anything Apple creates. I've never bashed Apple over the quality of their devices or how well they seemingly seamlessly "just work" together. That's a testimony to Apple's engineering.
But that's not my point. My point, which I've been making since Apple traversed to the "dark side" and went with Intel Processors has been that there's always been a "premium" on purchasing a Mac Laptop/Desktop even though they (largely...) use the same components that go into a comparable Windows Laptop or Desktop.
We can debate what the cost of that "premium" is: You say it's lower than I claim for reasons you cite, and I say I'm about right for reasons I cite. Not sure you and I are going to agree on this point but after yesterday's experience I'll say this: Dollar for Dollar, the build quality of a MacBook compared to a comparably priced Windows Laptop is far and away much better.
I'll also say this: the engineering that goes into MacBooks and Mac Desktops is also superior especially when one factors in the "I can plug device "x" in and it just works." That's easy to do when you directly control a much smaller set of devices that will get plugged in and used, vs the thousands/tens of thousands that which exists in the Windows world.
So at the end of the day with cost being relatively the same +/- whatever the cost difference really is, people choose Mac over a PC/Laptop for a number of reasons and at this point I suspect "cost" really isn't the main factor.
In my particular case, my oldest Son has zero experience with a Mac and having him switch about 2.5 weeks before heading off to college didn't seem like a good idea. Who knows, maybe his college friends will win him over. Until then .....
Carry on! :-)
Well, usconservative. . . My comment on that is that at 17.3 inches, even though it is large, the resolution on that 1080p screen leaves a lot to be desired. It may be good for looking at BlueRay movies, but not for doing school work on. . . at 1920 x 1080, the resolution is only ~127 DPI. At 2560-by-1600, the Retina MacBook Pro at 13" is 227 DPI, while the 15" Macbook pro with 220 DPI has 2880-by-1800. Your Lenovo will produce eye strain after a very short time, neither MacBook Pros will. These are facts.
In my particular case, my oldest Son has zero experience with a Mac and having him switch about 2.5 weeks before heading off to college didn't seem like a good idea. Who knows, maybe his college friends will win him over. Until then .....
The learning curve on a Mac takes about two weeks, especially for a youngster. Most of that is unlearning Windows habits that require more clicks to do things than it takes on a Mac and shifting gears from the CTRL to the CMD key.
Did you check what the college your son is going to recommended? Many are recommending Macs now.
Oops, I can. . . my math was a bit lame. . . $750 - $350 is $400 not $350. . . what can I say, i'm getting long in the tooth or stupider as I get older?
Unfortunately, I am forever arguing with LOTS of people who seem to think that Apple MacBook Air's ARE the equivalent of those $400 or even lower priced Windows' laptops. And they will argue until they are blue in the face there's no difference in the quality.
My oldest son is 6'4" and is pretty well built. He's a third degree Black Belt so I'm sure he's not going to have a problem lugging around an 8.5 pound laptop (does it really weigh that much? Dang, it didn't feel like it to me.......)
Battery life: I don't care. All the classrooms provide power at each station/desk/whatever for the kids to plug their laptops in. (I remember that..) If he wants a bigger battery he can pay for it. (Note to self: find one online CHEAP. This stupid laptop is nickel and diming me to death now.)
Don't care how thick the stupid thing is (see comments re: oldest son above.) He picked the Laptop with some input from me. I just paid for it.
Price: I just looked at the receipt: $1,196 out the door. That's $446 more than I wanted to pay, but still $103 cheaper than the MacBook Pro with only a 13 inch screen. 13 inch? Talk about eye strain!
Compared to the 15" MacBook, the MacBook is $603 higher than what I ended up paying. (I know, Retina displays are *much* better.....)
. I WIN! ;-)
Levity aside, I think I'm not atypical of most people who look at a Laptop purchase pretty similarly the way I do:
- How big is the Display? (Some may ask about resolution...)
- What CPU & CPU Speed is in it?
- How much memory is in it?
- How big is the HDD?
- Does it run the applications I'm familiar with?
Those are the most common questions I get from friends and family when they're looking to buy a new PC or Laptop. That last one right there is what (I think...) keeps most people on Windows despite productivity software such as Microsoft Office running on both Windows and Mac. I think there's a familiarity factor in making the Windows choice because that's what most people use at home and work.
I think Mac users think about these things differently (and perhaps more thoughtfully) and do get into/care about the differences you've pointed out.
The only other user base I can think of that gets into/cares about the differences as much as Mac users do are the hard-core gamers where CPU, HDD, Memory, GPU speed/fps makes a huge difference. Oh the stories I could tell about spec'ing out both my son's gaming PC's, and then helping their friends do the same after they saw my boys gaming rigs.....
BTW Unbeknownst to you, I have a Mac Mini here at home that I use for some of my Amateur Radio programs. In my own experience, it's not a two week learning curve. I've had it for just over a year now and the one vs. two clicks still trips me up and don't get me started on using the CMD key in place of the CTRL key. I've got twenty-nine years of muscle memory in these fingers of mine and they ain't changing without a fight. I'm just getting old I guess....
The college didn't seem to have any recommendations on Windows vs. Mac. They simply stated that both work on their campus and the campus wide print server solution they have in place (which allows the kids to print to any server on the campus) works with both Windows and Mac's. The other systems the kids will be using such as monitoring the status of their laundry and whether or not the machine they're using has finished are all web based so again both Windows and Mac's work for that too. Go figure, web based laundry monitoring..... who's the genius that thought of that?!
The college *does* have a Dell Certified repair center on campus though. Problem is: there's now way in hell I'd buy a Dell. Talk about garbage.
You'd be surprised. . . clarity is far better and no eye strain. No blurry characters. It's like reading a page of a high quality magazine or a fine textbook as opposed to reading newsprint. You do get what you pay for.
I had a 6.3 pound 15" MacBook Pro several years ago and I am big and strong. . . but schlepping that thing around airports got tiring after awhile. The farther you carry it, the heavier it gets. Yours is two pounds heavier. Someone stole it out of the trunk of my car. . . my insurance company bought me a new one to replace that six year old model but it was only 4.2 pounds. It seemed like a cloud compared to the older model.
Display size is not the metric you need to think about. My 13 inch MacBook Air is actually bigger than my 55" HD TV from where I am sitting. . . and it has more resolution. In fact, US, it is FOUR times the size of that humungous screen across the room. It's a matter of perspective from where you use it. Since it's sitting on my lap, It appears a bit bigger than the 27" iMac I have sitting on my office desk at work. . . from the perspective of my office chair where I use that. That is what you have to consider when buying a laptop. You consider the ergonomics of the device, not the size of the screen. Remember that for your next laptop. I found I DID not need a 15" and I am thinking about downsizing to the 12" Macbook for my next purchase. It's only 2 pounds total! That's only 8 ounces more than the original iPad.
In addition, Windows people are too much concerned with CPU and CPU speed. Today, that is not really that important unless you are a gamer. . . and then the graphic card is far more important and the Frames per second and the number of triangles the 3D renderer can calculate is far more important. Macs are more efficient at memory usage than Windows machines, although the Windows machines are catching up.
Same with HD space. Some people keep oodles of stuff on a hard drive they NEVER look at and never know is there. One gigabyte is sufficient to store the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica and a 20 volume index to it, including all the photos. . . and have room left over. Yet people think they need terabytes of hard drive space for their photos of the crumb crunchers. . . It's actually better to store that stuff on an external or cloud drive. Laptops can be destroyed, lost, or stolen. . . along with your precious files. Keep those locked away at home or on a secure web location, not on a portable device. Same with documents. Keep only current documents locally and back those up frequently to the cloud or to your home storage.
To get to know a Mac, your Mac mini for example, you actually have to use it exclusively for about two weeks. Those who do learn quickly how much of a kludge Windows really is. . . and start appreciating how much they enjoy computing again. That muscle memory will serve you well, because it is similar for the Mac and will be easy to retrain. Most Mac users are also Windows users. It's just a slight change.
I hope your Lenovo lasts for the full time your son is at College. . . I have my fears it won't. That's just my experience talking. Lenovo is better than most.
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