Psystar Open Computer Notes, Benchmarks and Video

Engadget has had a chance to play around with Psystar's Open Computer and has a few things to say about the controversial machine. "Okay, so we've been playing with the Psystar Open Computer for a few hours now, and we've formed some early impressions and put together a short video of it in action. We haven't really tried to stress the system yet, but based on our other experiences with OSx86 machines, we're expecting things to generally go smoothly. That said, there are some definite rough patches and issues, all mostly having to do with the fact that OS X isn't really built for this hardware."

One small problem...

[sessamoid]

"The DHCP lease drops every fifteen minutes or so and you have to manually renew it in prefs."

So you have to go into preferences and renew your dhcp lease every 15 minutes or you have no internet? Yeah, these'll sell well.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[Martin Blank]

What's wrong with wireless on a desktop? I've done several installations for people who wanted a primary computer hooked up to the router, but had their kids' systems (and I think TiVo, in one case) hooked up via wireless because they didn't want the hassle of running cables to other rooms. It's not a good case for transferring large files all the time, but it works perfectly fine for them for the Internet browsing, e-mail, and gaming that they were doing.

Re:"it just works"

[hagbard23]

I'm not doubting you might be having hardware problems, but several of your complaints are not actually problems.

Move windows between Spaces: Hit your spaces key, and drag the windows between spaces. Easy peasy.

Automatically change desktop wallpaper: right-click (or control-click) on desktop, select "Change Desktop Background". I have a folder of Digital Blasphemy pics, so I hit the + button at the bottom of the left hand side, and navigate to that folder. Then I check "Change Picture", select "Every Hour", and check Random Order.

I have a feeling that Spaces is "supposed to" separate things by application, not necessarily by window. Linux and Windows throw all windows into one huge Alt-Tab clusterfsck, where Apple says: Command-Tab is for switching applications, and Command-` is for switching windows within an application.

Menubar at the top of the screen? Ever hear of Fitt's Law? [wikipedia.org] Rather than the fiddly wasted screen space of dozens of menu bars repeated in every window, I've just got one.

Uninstalling Garage Band? Just delete the folder. No uninstaller application needed.

Just because something is different doesn't mean it's broken

Re:"it just works"

[UnknowingFool]

We got two new iMacs last month. One of them turns off randomly. Both of them crash randomly when we use our analysis software (a two-year old powerpc program)

Well if you got new iMacs, they are Intel iMacs. PowerPCs programs would not necessarily work unless they were compiled for Universal.

File sharing is a pain to figure out.

I acutally have the opposite experience. I have Windows and Linux machines at home. It takes only a few clicks to turn on Windows Sharing and share files. Windows unfortunately makes me reboot if change the workgroup.

I can't find any easy way to uninstall Garage Band, et al, so that the automatic updater stops bothering me about them.

To uninstall any application drag it to the Trash.

The "mighty mouse" can fake a right button, but you have to lift your index finger off the left side for it to work.

Yes that is slightly annoying. However any USB mouse pretty much works on a Mac so you plug in a multibutton Logitech or MS mouse if you want.

I can't drag windows around by alt-clicking on the window.

For OS X, you can only drag windows by clicking on the titlebar.

I would say that it seems some of your issues are because you are a power user. You have expectations on how it should work because they worked that way in Windows and Linux. Unfortunately your experience with Linux and Windows does not translate. It's not that it doesn't just work. It doesn't just work the way you would like it to work.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[HuguesT]

Re: between fink and macport, the choice is easy: neither.

Fink is essentially not being maintained actively. I'm on the developer mailing list, I receive maybe 10 mails a day. The software in the repository is very much out of date. I also have terrible experience with missing packages.

MacPort is for those who have a spare Mac to do their compiling on. I don't have that. Ever tried compiling the Gnome or KDE libraries? I've done my share of 24h compiling stretches when X11 was young, I thought we had moved beyond that, but no, apparently.

So when I need something non trivial like a new version of emacs or TeX, this is scouring the net time and searching for a precompiled version somewhere. Thanks to everyone who provide them!

This is why I have a spare Linux machine, which costs less than a mac, for these times when I need new software not yet available.

For F/OSS, Apple Macs are a second class citizen, simple as that.