|
Bill,
I have heard these arguments before. They are partially true, but not completely. Let me explain where I see things at this point in time (at least as far as my experience goes).
1. Apple is competitively priced based on comparable systems from Dell, based on objective benchmarks in Mac and PC mags. However, you can build your own PC for less. I can also buy a Yugo instead of a Honda for less. I am happy to pay for reliability and top customer service with a machine that must keep running. Actually I have 4 machines with two dedicated to trading with multiple monitors, one running house automation software (headless), and my wife's one GP machine. They are all desktop Macs. I don't actually have a laptop machine anymore.
2. Have no idea about sudo. I don't use Unix commands and don't need to learn them to do what I want. But I do use AmiBroker in ways never intended by TJ. ;-)
3. I love that Apple puts in the minimum RAM, because I can get the rest at a big discount to their BTO RAM. I am quite happy with the video cards I have. I suppose a PC VR gamer might want the max performance video card, but my game is market trading and it works great for that. I could install a second or different video card in my two tower machines, but I can not see that happening. I chose the less expensive one on purpose.
4. There have been one or two viruses (trojans really) a year on the Mac as long as I can remember. But not like the hundreds of thousands on the PC. BTW, Since I run the XP side with only a minimum of exposure to the world, I have never seen a virus try to get in my machine, but I do run antivirus anyway. I have been running Macs for 24 years without a virus. However, I don't want the Macs to become too popular (10% market share is Ok), because as you say, if they are seen as a good return on investment by professional Hackers, they will find a way to break in. PCs are the low hanging fruit.
I take about a 10% hit for running Parallels as a VM. I get far more utility out of it than I lose in speed. I like the close integration between the two OSes that make them seem like one. VMWare falls short on this --my most important UI feature. However this is a fast evolving marketplace, and I have no problem going with the vendor that best meets my needs. I would not consider Bootcamp because I want to be able to do things with both OSes at the same time and cut and paste or drag and drop files between them on one desktop. In general I can get more done quicker with Mac software than with PC (or UNIX) software --not subjective, several studies have shown this to be true. Incidentally, that was the reason I went to a Mac in the first place. Apple just so happens to be on top of that game for now (for a long time). Interestingly, they accomplish this by restricting choices --can't say I am always in tune with that! Apple is not a hardware vendor, or OS vender, nor Application software vendor. They are an integrated package vendor of all three. I just works better that way. However, I do love having lots of PC and other vendors out there to create the competitive atmosphere to keep Apple in line. Being the little guy, they have had to keep innovating and stretching to bridge the compatibility gap. Today, I think I have the best of all worlds.
However, I would switch to anything that made my life easier to acomplish my goals. After all, I installed XP on my Mac just run AmiBroker for that reason.
We all tend to see things in light of the choices we have already made. I am no different. However, it is deadly to trade the market that way.
Good trading, Dennis
On Feb 28, 2008, at 3:15 PM, bilbod wrote: Dennis and Ron, My 2 ¢. Whenever you run software under an emulator or VM there will be a performance hit even if it is small. Apple has something called bootcamp that runs Windows programs (never tried it, don't have a Mac). According to bench marks I have seen, Parallels is not the fastest VM. Xen ( http://www.xen.org/xen/) and KVM ( http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki) both are qemu ( http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/) based and work on Linux (I think Xen is being ported to the Mac). They are kernel modules that take advantage of Intel's and AMD's hardware virtualization. Performance wise VMWare ( http://www.vmware.com/) and VirtualBox ( http://virtualbox.org/) are next. VMWare has been around a long time and is the most polished of the VM software. It costs $189 for single user license and runs on multiple platforms. VirtualBox is free for personal use. I know a developer who uses VMWare and likes it a lot. He says performance degradation is no more than 10%-20%. I've been testing VirtualBox under Linux running W2K Pro. It runs significantly faster on my AMD64 X2 4000 in the VM than it runs on my AMD XP 2800 on the native hardware. I have several issues with Macs. 1. IMO they are over priced (some say grossly over priced). 2. They use sudo in a way for which it was never intended which reduces security (Ubuntu Linux et al are doing the same thing). 3. They are stingy with ram and use low end video cards in there base models. 4. There are viruses showing up for the Mac which leads me to believe it is only a matter of time before Macs will need to run virus software which will degrade their performance. Bill Dennis Brown wrote: I would install 4GB RAM and XP home and parallels. Then allocate 2GB to the XP virtual machine. You can run all the overhead software on the Leopard side and AB on the XP side on different cores. Trading will then be on a small clean XP machine that can stay that way.
Best regards, Dennis On Feb 28, 2008, at 12:02 PM, Ronald Davis wrote: I interpret WIKI to be saying that the newer models MacBookPro, when outfitted with 4GiB of installed RAM, will really be able to process "MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF AMIBROKER STOCHK, RSI, CCI, ETC" faster than a similar Windows based machine. I will appreciate hearing how others interpret what This WIKI article says. Ron D. The current models support up to 4 GiB of RAM, though they ship with 2 GiB included. The memory front side bus (FSB) is still 667 MHz, while the processor's FSB is 800 MHz. The earliest models support a maximum of 2 GiB (two 1 GiB modules or one 2 GiB module). More recent Merom models based on the "Napa Refresh" chipset could have 4 GiB installed, but could only utilize a smaller and sometimes less efficient 3 GiB of RAM. It was inefficient if used as a combination of two different capacity slots (one 2 GB and one 1 GB). [3] When two 2 GB memory modules are installed the "About This Mac" shows 4 GB, but on these models the Activity Monitor applications reports 3.0 GB as the total amount of physical RAM available. Newer models can address and fully utilize 4 GiB of RAM without an issue. Ron D. --
Bill
wjdandreta@xxxxxxx
Gentoo Linux X86_64 2.6.20-gentoo-r8
Reclaim Your Inbox with http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/
Take my advice I'm not using it.
Please note that this group is for discussion between users only.
To get support from AmiBroker please send an e-mail directly to
SUPPORT {at} amibroker.com
For NEW RELEASE ANNOUNCEMENTS and other news always check DEVLOG:
http://www.amibroker.com/devlog/
For other support material please check also:
http://www.amibroker.com/support.html
![]()
__,_._,___
|