From the “I’ll Show you Fast!!!” Dept.

Hi there.

What’s faster, A Dual-1Ghz PowerMac, or a similarly priced x86-based computer?

Recently two articles were published by two reputable sources pitting Mac-based and x86-based (AMD/Intel) hardware against one another. The MacNightOwl wrote a rather interesting article using the famous “Photoshop-bake-offs” demonstrated by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers. Charlie White, an award winning film editor and contributor to DigitalVideoediting.com performed similar benchmark testing on film compositing software.

Great articles. Both were jammed-packed with a slew graphs, analysis, etc.

So what’s the “4-1-1” (quoting a pundit that is often used by my friend David Vu)?

Well, sometimes a Mac is faster, and sometimes a PC is faster.

I see……

These type of articles really drive me insane. They’ve caused a lot controversy among the tech-elite, of which I don’t see an abatement anytime soon.

I T ‘ s    O N L Y    A    C O M P U T E R !

If it works for you, fine, but for me—I use whatever works best.

I guess I’ve grown out of the “How-many-FPS-can-my-computer-pump-out-in-QuakeIII” stage of live.

Not that I don’t keep up with hardware advances anymore, but benchmarks don’t tell the whole story; they never have.

These two articles above show that.

For now, I’ll just putter along on my iBook and aging AMD K6-3+ 550 MHz desktop.

From the “To Serve, or Not To Serve?” Dept

The above question is about turning your Mac OS X box into a server.

Recently, I wrote that Apple is now charging my iTools service.

Already, the more technical of the Macintosh-community have posted solutions on making your own “iTools” service, using the built-in Unix-technologies found in Apple’s own OS X.

Ironic, isn’t it? That Apple’s own OS can be used to replace the services that they now want to charge for.

Now, I’ve been thinking about doing this ever since Kevin did it. I think it’s a very convenient solution…truly ultra-chic in a Geeky sort of way. It’s just so damn cool.

Some thoughts though:

• I would never put any of my mac hardware on-line, especially if it is my priimary workstation. It’s too much of a security risk and imposes strain on some very expensive hardware.
• Linux on an old x86-desktop/notebook is a proven solution.
• I’m not to sure how well OS X handles as a server OS. Sure it’s Unix underneath, but the OS imposes an already significant performance overhead (It does however, work great as a test environment with its built-in apache, PHP, Perl, and an almost effortless mySQL installation procedure).
• How secure is OS X? I don’t know, and I’m not willing to find out.
• Making a home server costs $$ in terms of energy used, hardware upkeep, etc. That doesn’t include the time (and frustration) it takes to acutally setup and administer your own box.
• Finally, running a server on my cable connection is illegal….<cough, cough>

Right now, I use an ISP, blacksun.ca, to host my page and email. They offer an excellent service, top notch support, plus they’re dirt cheap. Their lite account, is only $10 CDN a month for 25 MB of Web Space, an open CGI/Perl bin, FrontPage extensions, 5 IMAP Email Addresses, plus website tracking software to boot.

They’re by far the best ISP I’ve found in Canada.

For $20 CDN a month, their business account they give you all of the above plus 100 MB Space, a shell account, PHP/mySQL, ASP, and other stuff to boot.

Amazing service. I really recommend them.

But away from the shameless plug—I think having your own server is cool.

It demonstrates that you are truly a Zen-uber-techno-L33T-user.

If I ever do free up that old Pentium-200MMX, the first thing I’m doing is installing Linux and going crazy.

Cheers

-T