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Embracing Early Intel
- Thread starter MacFoxG4
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Nice! I love ThinkPads, and I'm glad to hear their newest gen stuff is still good quality.
Not to mention Chromium! https://github.com/blueboxd/chromium-legacy
Yep, I seriously want to boost this project! The developer could use some love (and possibly help). Until recently there was a showstopping bug where you couldn't move the window by dragging it, but the developer fixed it!
With Firefox Legacy stuck on v71, this project is the only way to get a fully up-do-date version of one of the three major browsing engines (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) on an OS older than Yosemite.
The only thing that really sucks right now is it won't work on Mavericks for some reason. Luckily, Mavericks can run Firefox 78 ESR for the time being, but that won't last...
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I think the objection(s) here might be based on how most of us define the word 'budget' in relation to electronics/technology. In my mind, and I am sure in the mind of many here, 'budget' means low-end. For instance, back in the day, people bought the iBook instead of the PowerBook because they were budget conscious.
In this context, I believe the word 'budget' is probably being used to mean 'because modern Intels aren't affordable to us'. That may or may not be true (it certainly is in my case). But it does not mean (to me) that I seek out low-end electronics and devices.
Yes, I am constrained financially, but I am always going to try and get the highest end model/device/thing/object/whatever that I can. Often times, it's easier to pick up these older systems and then build them up. Precisely because of budget I own several high end (but older) Macs that would have run into the thousands new based on what I've since done to them. Many of us here do the same thing for the same reason. Making these older Macs do new tricks (or keeping them up with the Joneses) is also part of the fun of using older Macs.
If that makes me 'budget', so be it. But I seek out older product that was middle or high end (non-budget) when it was sold and then upgrade it. So, I object to the inference that 'budget' means I am seeking out low-end product specifically.
In this context, I believe the word 'budget' is probably being used to mean 'because modern Intels aren't affordable to us'. That may or may not be true (it certainly is in my case). But it does not mean (to me) that I seek out low-end electronics and devices.
Yes, I am constrained financially, but I am always going to try and get the highest end model/device/thing/object/whatever that I can. Often times, it's easier to pick up these older systems and then build them up. Precisely because of budget I own several high end (but older) Macs that would have run into the thousands new based on what I've since done to them. Many of us here do the same thing for the same reason. Making these older Macs do new tricks (or keeping them up with the Joneses) is also part of the fun of using older Macs.
If that makes me 'budget', so be it. But I seek out older product that was middle or high end (non-budget) when it was sold and then upgrade it. So, I object to the inference that 'budget' means I am seeking out low-end product specifically.
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For me, it depends on the use case. Even though I don't need to, I may as well use the longevity of Apple products to my benefit, if the product serves my desired uses as well, or nearly as well as new products. Especially products such as the Magic Trackpad/Keyboard 1st gen - half the price, exact same functionality, and in some cases, better design. It means I can invest more of my income, and makes larger purchases (such as the LG Ultrafine 4K I've just bought) easier to swallow. Win win.
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I was thinking the same thing. Quality is quality, whether it came out in 2002 or 2020. Stuff like capacitors, materials, component access, firmware, and overall design are significantly better on my older stuff than my new gear. As long as the performance is acceptable, older high end tech is often a better choice than new consumer items for those reasons.
There was a college instructor whose class I took once. This is back around 1991 I think. Back then, this guy is probably 60 or so. He made what I thought was a sage observation to the class: "Just because it's old, doesn't make it good. They made crap back in the 1950s too".
That's always stuck with me because he was right. Everyone looks back in history through rose colored lenses about the stuff that people of that period used. Well, just like today, there was garbage that was sold on the shelf - stuff you wouldn't buy because it was just bad. I'm not saying there are certain Macs that are garbage (although we may have an opinion on that). But we all have our own standards for what we are wanting to buy and just because it's old it doesn't automatically follow that it's good.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm looking for a Mac to buy I'm not looking for the budget, bare-bones stuff. Just like @556fmjoe I'm looking for the higher quality models.
So I "built" my dual X5690 Mac Pro early this year. It was fun. But the relative performance per dollar is getting worse everyday. Not to mention the many annoyances coming from the aging peripherals.
Take a look at i3-10100. How many old high-end systems could beat it? Ryzen 3300X was even better; unfortunately it is out of stock for awhile.
So keep buying old Macs if you like but I don't believe there is much opportunity for getting a better value overall.
Take a look at i3-10100. How many old high-end systems could beat it? Ryzen 3300X was even better; unfortunately it is out of stock for awhile.
So keep buying old Macs if you like but I don't believe there is much opportunity for getting a better value overall.
For me it's about quality, not performance. I don't care at all about performance as long as it is fast enough. I care about how long it will continue to run without DIMM failures, board failures, capacitor failures, power supply failures etc., and how easy is it to replace any of that when necessary. By and large, old high end equpment is miles ahead of today's budget, cost cutting, disposable systems in every one of those categories.
Exactly. I mainly buy enterprise stuff nowadays because it's just so much better made. My $100 T5220 was $14K brand new. My AlphaStation was $19k in 1996 when it was sold. There's a huge quality difference between those and the budget systems of their day, which are all long gone by now.
I thought computers were fast enough until I followed along a blender tutorial. That said I do enjoy work with workstation/enterprise hardware not going to lie.
Cool collection for vintage computing. For daily use it appears that one gets neither optimized modern software nor inexpensive supply for hardware components.
Software wise they're both running OpenBSD -current so it's modern and fairly well optimized, but certain spare parts are indeed expensive (especially DEC stuff).
I could imagine the kernel + base system working well. Now how about ISA specialized optimization found in x264 or JIT used in the likes of luajit? How well does LLVM (a dependency of rust, among other things) work? Could it use golang? I know sometimes less is more. Some other times more is more though.
The vast majority of my couple hundred posts have been in the PPC forum. Less so the last year or so - university does that to you.
Ivy Bridge didn't come out until 2012. You're not disproving my point either.
Do you seriously think it's a coincidence that people are 'embracing early Intel' at the same time prices have magically started falling on those same devices? They're fun machines to work on and they're cheap in terms of price. Budget does not mean that one is 'broke' or 'low class' or whatever bizarre interpretation of my words you've personally imputed upon them.
It's not a bad thing. It's not a judgement, it's simply a dispassionate observation that early Intels are extremely affordable relative to the performance they can provide now. I'm sorry my remark that most PPCs and early Intels are inexpensive makes you personally feel attacked.
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I pretty much agree with everything here. I will add that to me budget simply implies that it's inexpensive. That's it. I've remarked that PPC products are particularly durable in one of my earlier posts on this topic. PPCs aren't low end devices in the sense of being dinky or cheap, but most of them (the cube and so on aside) are indeed low end Macs, which is a much different qualifier. They're certainly going to have better build quality than cheap Windows and Android devices, for instance, and with some love and care will last much longer than them too.
People may opt to use inexpensive or older hardware for a variety of reasons. Personally, I don't mind tinkering a little bit to keep an older machine going as it saves me money in the long run. I could afford a much newer machine-quite easily-than the ones I have, but they work for me and I don't feel the need to upgrade presently.
That makes me a price conscious-or what's often called budget-consumer, even though I too have a preference for higher end-if slightly older-items. Cheap plastic just doesn't do it for me, so I compromise and buy used.
A lot of people have magically imputed meaning upon my words that wasn't there. They seem to have taken budget to imply a sort of judgement on them as a person. I was simply observing that since most of us in this forum make PPCs keep going for one of three reasons-work, play, or price-it's fairly logical to see a larger number of early Intels enter our collections as they drop in price, since that makes them cheaper to acquire and work with, whether that's out of necessity or leisure.
Definitely and it's tremendous fun to see what can be achieved with hardware that's been written off as useless and worthless. The outcome usually demonstrates that yesterday's technology remains far more viable than the computer industry would have us believe. As an example, one of my friends was impressed at the sight of my 1999 iMac G3/350Mhz playing DVB-T SDTV recordings from its SSD with remarkably good performance, which went far beyond what would've been expected of a machine of its vintage and spec.
I saw "insecurities" mentioned earlier in this thread and I certainly do not harbour any regarding my usage of PPC Macs. It's an activity that I enjoy and if I felt inclined, I could purchase a brand new Mac from Apple - and in the past, I have done so but I'm not keen on the direction they've taken in recent years and I'm quite happy with what I already possess.
OK. So you meant budget in the sense of inexpensive, not cheap. There's a difference. I think I got your original intent but I'm pretty sure a lot of other people heard 'cheap' - which is not what you meant.
I doubt it, but if your needs are so performance sensitive that you are worried about ISA optimizations or JIT, then you need a different machine. You won't be very happy with a 266 MHz Alpha no matter how optimized it is.
Somehow I recalled one potential "killer app" running on Alpha: Open Genera. Now compare that with MacIvory ...
My father was an electrical engineer who worked on the Space Shuttle program, and the Minuteman and Peacekeeper missile programs. Before he retired, he'd been engaged in trying to make parts of the Star Wars initiative (shooting down an ICBM with another ICBM) work for a few years. His specialty was gyro-stabilization.
Then there's me, who killed a speaker port and a Bluetooth antenna with my soldering iron. At least I got his healthy respect for electricity.
Weren’t we talking about how awesome old intel Macs were at one point? My 2008 15” MacBook Pro is taking it very personally that nobody is talking about it!
