[Discussion] Hardware Failure begets Mac Mini a bit of a rant

[D Burch]

Well folks, since OS/2 2.1, Comdex '94, salmon shirts with Janet & co; 
the BS with the IBM executive who basically abdicated any interest in 
bring a truly wonderful multitasking environment to the masses, the 
absolutely wonderful community of POSSI. SCOUG , Warpstocks past and the 
future because....., Ecomstation, Pavel, Steven, Esther, Bill, Stanley, 
Peter and the rest of the Edmonton CAOS/2 group (that still meet to talk 
about boats, holidays, stuff)

Another corrupt piece of PC hardware - a Seagate hard drive, less than a 
year old.

I looked at my collection of bits and pieces, running my beloved OS/2, 
but needing M$ to do some fun stuff and some necessary stuff. I realized 
that everything I have is non compliant to the current state of personal 
home computing.
A couple of years ago a local pc retailer went out of business and I 
picked up a couple of Compaq/HP boxes and a couple of printers. Well the 
pc's were Vista ready and the printers were not. Not to worry, a laser 
printer for $70 CAD ain't so bad and with a bit of work, it will 
function under OS/2. The PC's themselves were BS. I remember when HP and 
Compaq were leaders.  I have OS/2 and XP Pro. Under XP Pro, something in 
the chipset whined like a cat in your car engine. Steadily. I put in an 
upgraded video card, Not change. I trade my D-I_L for an old Dell . She 
runs Vista and is happy.

I working in heavy industry - oil upgrading. By day I am a contracting 
and procurement specialist who right now is spending way to much time at 
this point in his life in the mainframe environment. I know little about 
the 1's and 0's that make things go whir. I do know a lot about what we 
need to purchase goods and services, efficiently, globally.

So now the primary hard drive fails. You want a laugh. The folks who 
make the crappy hard have a division who will recover your data. They 
have access to everything about this drive. The official estimate to 
recover a couple of GB's of data is $770.00 to $1770. I told them - 
Seagate and affiliates that this is not an estimate, it is a scam. I 
will be keeping an eye out for a class action against these clowns.

Certainly prior to this latest Armageddon, my use of OS/2 was limited to 
internet activities and one of the absolutely most wonderful 
applications written - Relish. In our house, if it isn't in Relish, it 
isn't on the fridge door. If not on the fridge door it may not happen.

I now have a MAC mini!

I went from C-64 to OS/2. I always knew that when the time came I did 
not want to my computing experience to come from Redmond. So I again 
have chosen light over darkness.

I picked up a little box 6.5" square X 2" high. I plugged it in, turned 
on the power and whoa - everything I need is there, and IT WORKS!!

I am not abandoning OS/2 just yet. A friend of mine just got an older 
version of Warp running under an application called Parallels. If I can 
get eCS to work in a virtual machine I will be ecstatic.
It seems to me that this is what the founder of Taligent wanted. People 
should have the best of all worlds with respect to computing. I was 
there when The NT box failed the Taligent demo and Someone from Redmond 
was very unamused!

This MAC experience is a bit unsettling for me. There are many 
assumption's that the"system will do what is best", but overall it has 
been a pleasant journey of learning.

It wasn't that long ago that Esther commented to someone on this list 
that buying into Mac might have higher up front cost, but most of what 
you need is provided. She was right!

I am not giving up on OS/2, rather the crap and corruption of the 
traditional PC hardware and the DIY (do it yourself) world of making 
life better. I can't open this little box to do squat.
BTW, I had purchase a Sharp Aquos 32 TV as a monitor. When I fired up 
this Mac, it filled the full screen with absolutely stunning video!

I hope to install eCS into a Parallels virtual machine shortly. I am not 
at all interested in a dual boot scenario


Don Burch