New computer trilemma

[Voltron]

Both Mini and iMac are set for new releases this summer, so I would wait on purchasing either one.

[Knuckledragger]

This page is not always accurate, but it's a handy resource for keeping an eye on upcoming Apple model refreshes.

[HDen]

I'd go the i3+SSD+HDD, are the i5s that expensive over there?

The "better" GPU only really matters if you're planning on gaming, there's plenty of great budget ones that will work perfectly well.

[manaox2]

Ok, I want to clear up some of the general statements being repeated here. The 6000 series recommendationby me was not based on gaming. Compared to the 5000 HD series, they have been designed for better color accuracy, better power saving, HDMI 1.4a, UVD3, Display port 1.2, and linear display correction for the pesky oversaturation of wide gamut displays. I know that is confusing.

Basically it boils down to this card leading to better colors, much more bandwidth and support for hardware accelerated mpeg decoding (finally your cpu doesn't have to handle the entire load of watching blu-ray movies! Great if your not running a sandstorm core intel, similar to what ION did for the Intel Atom). It also allows for multiview video coding that allows 3D stereoscopy on H.264 (mkv files and such for 3D displays!). Because it includes display port 1.2, it has a huge amount more video bandwidth (great for multiple video streams used for 3D.

None of those features does the 5xxx series have.... So if your just as interested in saving power and having superior video viewing and photo editing features as you are in gaming, I think you would be making a much wiser choice going with the quietest version of the 6xxx series such as the 6450 possible over a 5XXX HD. There is a reason for it.

While I also said you don't need a quad core cpu (especially if your not doing hardcore video encoding), I'm not a big fan of the i3's chipset. You want your PC to handle HD flash streaming without having GPU acceleration (trust me, on a desktop PC you don't want the instability and blue screens that GPU acceleration causes if you watch or play a lot of flash. Its seriously unstable right now by my testing). I would rather recommend the i5 or the i7. The lowest most modern release of the i7 is a great little overclocker which is where you'll see the real benefit especially when you need to to get the right speed for the DDR3 PC1600 ram with tight timings. RAID 1 is a good choice for going with 2TB drives, you may still want to have an offsite backup through the cloud or such in the event of a natural disaster or fire for your important data.

[HDen]

You are right about the 6000 series, I thought he meant going for one of the higher end gpus, like the 6970 or something along those lines.

I say i5, because an i7 might go over budget, but ideally an i5+120GB SSD+6850 would make a great system.

[Torpedo]

Thanks guys for making my decision even more difficult No, seriously, on my current computer, which by the way is now behaving after I've improved CPU's heat dissipation, playing HD video over flash is a PITA. I'm not much of a gamer nor planning to do video edit, other than perhaps a few minutes of instruction videos. No Bluray, no 3D in a midterm future. So knowing that a 6000 series GPU can make things easier for the CPU watching the Berliner Philharmoniker online is very interesting. One more reason to see what's the new iMac mounting.

I've checked Dell and a 27" display alone is close to 1000 euros, so building a windows computer with the same performance as the i3 iMac, would make the overall cost about the same, and a "serious gamer" computer with such display would be about the same as a quad iMac with SSD plus HDD.

So unless this computer definitely crashes and I can't live much time with the MBP as the only computer, I'll wait to see what the new iMacs have to offer. Hopefully that won't be more than a few weeks.

[manaox2]

Good to hear that the pc is behaving again.

Those dell IPS monitors go on sale from dell almost regularly on slickdeals.net. If you wait for a deal, you could save a few hundred perhaps.

[Torpedo]

It hasn't shut down itself again. I'm considering to plug in the Adaptec and SCSI HDD again to see what happens. When it works good considering an upgrade/change seems silly.

[Ben Gramain]

I dunno how many computers you have, but I've just completed the process of moving completely back to Windows for my home setup.

The lack of versatility and efficiency of Apple-based solutions for home media consumption is something I found really restricting. The problem is that I was pretty much wedded to the iPod and iPhone, so moving away wasn't an option especially as the OS X iTunes allowed a mitigating degree of customisability. However I recently took the leap to Zune and Windows Phone, and this has allowed me to completely free myself of anything iTunes related, which in turn has allowed me to pick the better platform for home media consumption duties - which is, despite much Apple hype, still Windows.

You can consider a totally new build - if you are actually a competent builder it's still possible to build a machine in the iMac's ballpark pricewise that's significantly superior and practically speaking, not any noisier.

If you're buying the iMac, you'll need to specify the SSD + HDD as factory-fitted options as the hardware to retrofit is not supplied if you don't order it. So you're looking at $2900 for a 27" 2.8 i5, 4Gb, 2Tb + 256Gb(SATA3)SSD. Here's a competing sample $3K build I put together. Of course there's endless permutations but it's an idea of what you can get for the same. If you pitch jRMC15 vs Amarra (even Mini I'm thinking, which I haven't tried), unlike the somewhat preposterous Goodsound article conclusion, there's a further price/performance gap.

Edited April 24, 2011 by Ben Gramain

[grawk]

The lack of versatility and efficiency of Apple-based solutions for home media consumption is something I found really restricting. The problem is that I was pretty much wedded to the iPod and iPhone, so moving away wasn't an option especially as the OS X iTunes allowed a mitigating degree of customisability. However I recently took the leap to Zune and Windows Phone, and this has allowed me to completely free myself of anything iTunes related, which in turn has allowed me to pick the better platform for home media consumption duties - which is, despite much Apple hype, still Windows.

You're shitting me. You're switching to ZUNE, and complaining about itunes and apple being inefficient and not versatile? Is skin choice the way you judge versatility and cusomizability?

[Ben Gramain]

not really. it's not iTunes, either, but it sure as fuck ain't Windows. Windows has at least as many problems, they are just different problems.

Why not? I hear a lot of this from committed Macheads who haven't even tried to rig up an equivalent setup. It works a hell of a lot better for me, I have to say - and it's not that complicated in the end. But yeah, there's different problems for sure.

And skin choice? Wut? That could only come from the committed Machead referred to above.

FYI for anyone looking to make their media life actually sightly more 'it just works', with some initial investment of time:

- I've transcoded all of my FLACs and ALACs to WMA Lossless. In terms of idiology many prefer FLAC, and I still have the original FLAC library archived, but I don't really see any practical issues with using WMA-L in my setup.

- The lossless library now sits on my Windows Home Server appliance. This serves up the music to all the connected PC's and can also stream outside the home net as well (although I don't) via Windows media integration and also via DLNA. Incidentally the centralised backup is also a hell of a lot more reliable than Time Machine.

- TV recordings and videos on PC's that do import this type of stuff are automatically uploaded to the WHS, so a consolidated copy is kept on the server at all times.

- Zune, like iTunes, can automatically transcode media that falls outside a certain bitrate criteria - so I have the software set to transcode above 256K source material. Transcoding speed, despite not being hugely multithreaded is not too bad on the (admittedly) fast PC's I've tried it with.

- Playback is thru j.River Media Center.

- HTPC plays with jRMC through the Prism Orpheus to the dCS stack.

- In addition to Windows Phone 7 as my actually used phone, I have an Android handset floating around and I use it with Gizmo ( http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Gizmo ).

- Rather than buying another workstation I've built a new PC (last time I built a PC myself was like 5 years ago) to be my main home PC - this is also the sync PC, which sits alongside the remaining Pro (which is now divorced from any media consumption duties). It has Zune and jRMC installed, and will play out thru a Fireface UFX.

- Some of my laptops which are used outside my home are classified by jRMC as MP3 players thru shared drives and they get a playlisted subset of my library. They also have jRMC installed.

- I can see/listen to the library on the XBox if necessary.

Edited April 25, 2011 by Ben Gramain

[grawk]

Yah, I certainly don't do any media consumption. I have a mac mini as an itunes server, feeding 3 appletvs and 2 airport expresses, plus ipads and iphones and ipod touches, many of which get used simultaneously. With 4 kids, we can have as many as 6 different streams going on simultaneously, all without issue. I've got ~700 movies on the server, many thousand albums, ~50 tv series all on the server. Of course, I also have the media for all of those, so I was able to rip them into a format apple supports. When someone else rips what you're watching, I can see how apple might frustrate you when it comes to media consumption.

There's a reason I'm an "apple fanboy". I've been working with computers since 1982. I've worked with effectively every platform, both personally and professionally. I admit I haven't used a version of Windows since XP, so it's possible that there have been huge advances since then, but at this point, I'm not going to replace everything I own. I switched because it worked better. From the bsd underpinings to the superior data management, I haven't worked with anything that from a user's perspective works better. All the power of the unix command line and a graphical user interface that actually works logically and consistently. Instead of relying on flat files, iTunes uses a database infrastructure that allows tremendous flexibility for interacting with your media. Sure, you can't just drop files in a filesystem and have them be available, you actually have to load them into the database. Which CAN easily be automated.

But further to suggest that Zune is a solution, especially given that even microsoft feels like that was a failed experiment, is ludicrous in the extreme. There may be a lot of different solutions to the media consumption problem, but Zune certainly isn't one of them.

[Ben Gramain]

once you're in Zune, you are as stuck in Zune as you are in iTunes. it's also reaaaalllly fucking buggy when it comes to actually, you know, sharing media: "hi, my name is Windows 7, and for some reason i can no longer see that server share that i've been using for weeks and weeks, and you will never get me to see it again, because i'm a fucking piece of shit specifically designed to have people call you for help when you're doing something more important, like getting the helium controller for an NMR machine working again." i've had to set it up at work for our presentation suite, and i'd much rather set up one of the linux media systems. the iTunes ecosystem has its issues, but it's never decided, over and over, that shares just don't exist anymore, which is a problem rife in the Win7/Zune/XBOX ecosystem, and which is really fucking irritating, when it comes to actually, you know, enjoying your media.

unless, by media consumption, you just mean putting music on your phone, in which case, how is Zune really any different from iTunes?

I've just edited the post above, but one of the big differences with Zune and Windows is that Zune will pick up library changes made by other clients. This gives you much more flexibility in terms of being able to use anything you want. e.g. I can listen to my Zune Pass media in jRMC if I want, with no handicaps at all (unlike Fairplay) for example. If I make a change to the tags in my library with jRMC, Zune picks that up.

That basically opens you up to be able to use the optimum audio tool for a particular task without worrying about how you get the media in and out of your setup. And we're not talking hyper-nerding here: Most of it works like this pretty much out of the box. The key is in the combo, for which a reasonably stable combination obviously is far easier to sleepwalk into with OS X.

And as for the examples you listed, don't blame the OS. Blame the user who can't be trusted around Windows for really simple stuff. Really.

Simple related case in point, there are a lot of DIY'ers who'll blame Windows for a problem which lies in their rig. If I'd just slapped together my new rig without cooling testing, you can see for example that there's a lot of backed-up air which would have cause cooling and stability issues down the line. You don't get this in OS X (or a slightly cheaper Windows pre-built) of course, but it's just one of those things where the ego of the user overrides the actual cause of the problem.

I find, as the owner of an (actually pretty Mac-heavy) tech consultancy - among others - that people like this usually tend to start with 'I've been an IT professional for xx years'. My question to that would invariably have to be "How many of those years have you been actually good?"

Edited April 25, 2011 by Ben Gramain

[Ben Gramain]

you really don't understand how the protocols work, do you?

No. Apparently I don't. Which is why it works all the time. Woe is me, eh?

[Ben Gramain]

it doesn't work all the time.

You're doing it wrong then - at least, if we're going to compare with OS X. Assuming you want to be helped, what sort of problems are you having?

[Ben Gramain]

lol. how good are you with IOS? i don't mean the Apple variety.

What, Cisco?

[Ben Gramain]

indeed. if you really want to help, you can fly to Redmond and teach the group responsible for network media attachments how the various options that a Cisco switch has work in any kind of serious network infrastructure.

Hmmmm.

What about being a CCNA (yes I know iOS - I employ enough CCNA/CCNP's) is directly relevant to a Windows-based home network?

In fact, that kind of makes it worse - if you can't troubleshoot what was quite likely a pretty simple issue in your instance, it means that you either have no knowledge of basic Windows use (which is e.g. fairly typical among programmers who think that being able to develop gives them all IT knowledge) or pretty much managed to pass your Cisco exams through rote.

[grawk]

Bonus points: where did jacob complain about using Zune in his home network?

[luvdunhill]

Windows Home Server has come a very long way, it's very nice for what it is. Is it superior to Apple? I don't think so. Is it inferior? I don't think by much. Regardless, like Dan said why would someone with such an investment change? They won't. However, for someone like the OP without such an investment, I think Windows Home Server is worth looking at. So is Apple frankly. So, try both or pick one... Or trust Dan.

[grawk]

No one needs to trust me, just don't suggest Zune's a viable solution.

[Torpedo]

Thanks guys, I've just shot my foot Luckily the old PC still works fine. Looks like a cured it, but I didn't dare to plug back the SCSI things.