Essay Instructions: Imagine that your pany, religious organization, or civic group has asked you to submit a report on the best personal puter to buy for members of the organization. Your goal in this essay is to provide information on at least three (3) different models. To achieve this goal, submit a pare and contrast report (essay) on at last three (3) personal puter models. Provide a concluding paragraph in which you remend the best model for the organization.
Final Report (Compare and Contrast Essay)
Using the outline guide in the chapter on the pare and contrast pattern of development, pile the information from your research and write your report. At the end of your report (conclusion), you should remend the best personal puter for use by employees of the organization.
Following the pare and contrast pattern of development outlined in your textbook, your paper should contain:
an introduction paragraph (place your thesis statement at the end of this paragraph).
body paragraphs (each body paragraph should present and discuss a point that supports your thesis statement).
a conclusion paragraph.
CHECK LIST:
1. Format your project in APA manuscript style in the following order:
Title Page
Abstract
Essay
References
2. Write the essay using the pare and contrast pattern of development:
3. Write the essay using a formal tone and style, which avoids the use of personal pronouns (you, I, me, or we).
source 1
No Seinfeld, Gates seen as marketer riffs off rival Apple's PC-bashing ads
After only two weeks, Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates' rambling conversations about nothing have been jettisoned for a new campaign in which Microsoft tries to rebuild an image that has long been battered by rival Apple.
A new 60-second spot that broke last week for Microsoft from agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky opens with a dead ringer for actor John Hodgman, who plays a PC in Apple's popular "Mac vs. PC" advertising campaign. "Hello. I'm a PC. And I've been made into a stereotype," the character in Microsoft's ad laments.
The ad introduces viewers to PC users around the world, including Microsoft employees (even Mr. Gates), children, an astronaut, an environmentalist and celebrities such as star couple Tony Parker and Eva Longoria Parker, hip-hop producer Pharrell Williams, and Deepak Chopra. It wraps with the debut of a new tagline, "Life Without Walls." There's a 15-second version of the spot, and the campaign is supported with print, out-of-home and outdoor elements that also broke last week.
The move is an abrupt change of tone for Microsoft after just two iterations of the Seinfeld-Gates spots-Crispin's first work for the marketer-which saw the duo chatting in a discount shoe store and trying to blend in with an average American family.
But the Redmond, Wash.-based marketer insisted the spots weren't pulled because they prompted a lot of head scratching and heavy criticism in the blogosphere.
"This has always been the plan from the beginning," said David Webster, general manager for brand marketing at Microsoft. "There is a storytelling arc between [the two iterations], even if the tone and style are different," around the idea that "Windows has connected 1 billion people."
At the same time, in the newest ad, Microsoft attempts to identify the "real PC user," said Mr. Webster, rather than the "caricature" painted by Apple's "Mac vs. PC" campaign, from Omni Group's TBWA Media Arts Lab, which portrays the PC as a perennial loser to the hipper Mac.
"It was important to do on behalf of our users, who really aren't like that guy," Mr. Webster said. (About that guy: His name is Sean Siler, and he is a Microsoft employee, one of a number who were plucked to appear in the ads following a casting call. Their e-mail addresses run as part of the spot.)
Whether the campaign transition was planned or not, Microsoft's advertising seems to be all over the place of late. Besides the Seinfeld-Gates ads, it recently launched its bait-and-switch spot dubbed the "Mojave Experiment," an attempt to correct negative perceptions about the Vista operating system. Those ads, which aren't part of Crispin's $300 million campaign, will continue to run.
PHOTO (COLOR): NOT HODGMAN: Microsoft's new spots feature "real PC users" such as employee Sean Siler, discovered in a casting call. And yes, that's his real e-mail address.
PHOTO (COLOR): WEBSTER
~~~~~~~~
By Rupal Parekh,
source 2
Komando, K. (2000). PC vs MAC. Popular Mechanics, 177(7), 72. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Section: Technology
COMPARISON TEST
After years of debate, we settle the question once and for all.
It's the puter industry's very own holy war. Raging for well over 10 years, the ongoing battle between Macintosh zealots and volatile Windows devotees is not about to end.
Don't get us wrong. The majority of puter users realize that one's choice of personal puter platform is about as important to the overall Big Picture of Human Existence as which underarm deodorant you choose. Try to imagine a BAN Roll On user launching an all-out verbal assault on a Right Guard user and you can begin to appreciate the level of sheer idiocy to which this debate can quickly sink.
Ultimately, the best personal puter is the one that works best for you. Of course, if you're in the market right now and don't have a personal preference, all the distorted Mac-versus-PC banter only confuses the issue. Benchmarks? They can give you an idea, but who uses their puter in a lab, performing the same few tasks over and over again?
To help with the debate, we've done the unthinkable and shattered the myths. In short, we pitted a state-of-the-art Mac against a state-of-the-art Windows machine in a real-world setting. So hold onto your seats, silence your opinions and get ready to rumble.
In This Corner
In the Windows corner we have a Compaq Presario 5900Z sporting an 850-MHz AMD Athlon processor. Granted, now there are 1-GHz processors from both AMD and Intel, but at the time we were testing, this was the best. The system was equipped with 256MB of SDRAM, a 30GB Ultra DMA hard drive, and an NVIDIA GeForce 256 video card with 32MB of VRAM.
In the other corner we have the Mac, which has a configuration similar to that of the Presario. Our PowerMac G4 sported a 500-MHz Motorola G4 processor, along with 256MB of SDRAM and a 27GB Ultra ATA hard drive. For video, the Mac had a Rage 128 Pro video card with 16MB of VRAM.
Finally, both systems were connected to the Internet via the same high-speed cable modem link using each one's respective built-in Ethernet port. Check out the configuration chart on page 74 for plete details.
Applications For Normal People
Although we did many other tests, we figured that in this report we'd focus on more pedestrian applications.
We loaded Microsoft Office 98 on the Mac and Microsoft Office 2000 on the Presario--these are the most recent versions for their respective platforms. Because Microsoft applications tend to get slower and more bloated with subsequent releases, this probably handicapped the Presario, but it was the best we could do.
If you're like us, you probably receive e-mail that you need to include in other documents. Copying and pasting is easy enough. The problem is that each line of an e-mail message typically ends with a "hard" paragraph return, with double returns between paragraphs--not suitable for most documents. What's more, many people still mistakenly insert two spaces after a period. To deal with all this, we wrote a Word macro that does the following:
It converts all double returns to the letters "ZXC." We chose these letters only because they're right next to each other on the keyboard.
It converts all single returns to spaces, thereby eliminating the hard returns at the end of each line.
It converts all double spaces to single spaces, thereby undoing the wrong done by those who spent too many years on a typewriter.
It converts all occurrences of "ZXC" to single returns.
Most of our documents are usually on the short side, but we wanted to give our systems a true workout. So we created a single 25-page document from several misformatted e-mail messages. In the past, we've seen this macro take a few seconds on slower machines, even with a document of normal length. With our systems, however, it wasn't even a challenge. The changes were made almost instantaneously. The Presario was noticeably faster in this test.
While the Presario did better in our macro test, the Mac seemed to get us up and running sooner. As you can see in the Application Load Times chart on page 75, we timed how long it took to start up various mon office applications on each system.
Just as with the games, the Mac consistently loaded programs faster than the Presario. Basically, if you use either of these machines for typical office work, your puter will spend much more time waiting for you than you spend waiting for it.
Let The Games Begin
Sony has publicly stated that it plans to use its PlayStation2 game console to make PC gaming obsolete. But we find it unlikely that anyone is going to trade their puter for one more box to strap onto their TV set. Computer gaming is here to stay for the foreseeable future, so we figured we ought to test it.
For our gaming usability, we tested two games: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and Star Wars Episode 1 Racer. As a reference platform, we also ran both of these games on a Nintendo 64 game console.
Game play with Rainbow Six was nearly identical on both the Mac and Presario systems. The graphics were smooth and clear and the controls were very responsive. "Indistinguishable" is the word that es to mind. From a parative standpoint, the Rainbow Six test was unremarkable. The only noteworthy difference is that the Windows version of Rainbow Six took a wee bit longer to install, and longer to load before game play, too.
Rainbow Six, however, is a strategy game, so it's not too exciting. For fast, nonstop action we turned to Star Wars Episode 1 Racer. We ran the game on a Nintendo 64 first to see exactly what the gaming experience is supposed to be like. Say what you will about the inferiority of game consoles, but as dedicated systems go, they are generally good at doing what they're supposed to.
We began installation on the Presario first, and then started on the Mac. Oddly enough, the Mac software was installed and ready to go while the Presario was still chugging away. Hence, the Mac got the first run at Racer. The biggest downer in any puter game--especially a high speed game like Racer--is when the action pauses for an instant so the puter can catch up. Gladly, we went through different courses--played a tournament, in tact, until we got beat--and never observed a single pause or skip. The game play was identical in every respect to the Nintendo 64 version.
Pleased with these results, we turned to the Presario. We ran the same tournament and got beat on the same course. However, much to our chagrin, we experienced the telltale insta-pauses several times on each course. After playing Racer first on the N64 and then on the equally capable Mac, this was a real letdown. So, even with a graphics card that's statistically half that of the Presario, the Mac came in first in the gaming tests. As you can see in the game performance charts, the Mac consistently outperformed the Presario and, in fact, rivaled the N64 in most instances.
Working The Web
Gaming may be the top priority to some, but most of us spend more time working on the Internet and, certainly, we'll continue to be online more as the technology progresses. Thus, we next tested the Web-surfing capabilities of both machines. And to keep things fair, we tested the latest versions of both Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) and Netscape Navigator.
At the time of testing, IE was at version 5 for Windows and version 4.5 for the Mac, while Netscape was at version 4.72 for both platforms. If the Web was still limited to text and GIFs and JPEGs, you could get by with almost any old puter. What really taxes your puter when you're surfing the Net is using multimedia, so that's what we did.
First, we visited Macromedia's Shockwave page (www.shockwave.) to play a little game of Centipede--an old arcade favorite. The important thing to remember is that playing the Shockwave version of Centipede is not a matter of streaming media. In other words, once the Centipede code downloads onto your puter, the speed of your Internet connection has no impact on the game play.
That said, playing Centipede on the Presario was pretty much like playing Centipede at the arcade, except in miniature, of course. In both browsers, the controls were responsive. We were able to blast those bugs to smithereens posthaste.
On the other hand, Centipede performance on the Mac was less than spectacular. For starters, when playing the game with IE for Mac, the little character doing the shooting flickered between the correct image and the mouse pointer. This was very distracting.
Centipede play on Navigator for the Mac was even less pleasurable. The controls were choppy and unresponsive--a game you'd probably have to play if you were sent to puter gaming hell.
Streaming Internet Video
Streaming video is audio and video that downloads from the Web as it plays. It can be very taxing on your system.
We started our streaming tests with just audio--live airplay from Web-enabled radio stations, to be exact. With just audio to deal with, both systems performed admirably with one caveat. There are two main players in streaming media: Real Audio and Microsoft's Windows Media. While Real Audio makes player software for both Windows and Mac, the Mac version of Windows Media Player was available only in beta when we tested. We found that the Mac version worked fine at some sites--MSNBC, for example--but not at others. For instance, when we tried to tune in to KGB in San Diego (www.101kgb.), the player consistently stalled after only a few seconds. Undoubtedly, there's something the station is doing wrong since the Mac player worked fine at other sites, but it's also likely that other sites are making the same mistake.
Streaming Internet video failed to thoroughly impress us on either platform. High-speed Internet access is great, but video puts a real strain on that bandwidth and, regardless of the particular site, the stream seemed to consistently get bogged down somewhere along the way. While the audio portion kept moving just fine, the video on both platforms was choppy, sometimes even stalling pletely. Even though the results were second-rate on both platforms, the Presario outperformed the Mac in this category. For example, we watched a trailer from "Mission: Impossible 2." While the video was often choppy on both platforms, we could at least distinguish Tom Cruise from Anthony Hopkins on the Presario. On the Mac, the video tended to suffer from a tiling effect when the stream slowed down. That means at its worst, all you saw on the Mac was a bunch of fuzzy, indistinct blocks.
In short, for overall Internet multimedia performance, our Windows system pretty much ran circles around the Mac system. With the exception of streaming audio -- where the two performed similarly -- the Mac delivered a consistently inferior user experience.
Photoshoppin' Around
No system test would be plete without using Adobe's Photoshop. For those who have been living in a cave for the last few years, Photoshop is the industry standard for digitally manipulating and transforming photographic images. With Photoshop and a little skill, the results are amazing. With Photoshop and a lot of skill, the results can be breathtaking.
We should preface this discussion by stating that we had occasion a while ago to test this same Presario system against a 450-MHz PowerMac G4. And naturally, we did our fair share of Photoshop dabbling with both. In test after test, the Mac was consistently and noticeably slower at various Photoshop tasks.
What a difference 50 MHz can make! This time around, we put the same 200-dpi digital photo on both systems and went to work with Photoshop. We applied filters, we rotated, we adjusted, we tweaked, we rippled, we applied lens flares, we water-colored, we saved as JPEG. In short, we gave these two systems just about every resource-taxing task that Photoshop had to offer. Time after time, the results were almost instantaneous on both systems.
Click the mouse, blink your eyes, and bam!, the image was transformed. In some of the tests, the Mac seemed just a little snappier than the Presario. If you were hoping for a tiebreaker in this round, sorry to disappoint you. As photo manipulation tools, these two systems are dead equal.
Final Thoughts
There's one especially important thing to keep in mind as you digest all this information. In each test we ran, more came into play than just the puter's processor and operating system. In each case, we were running application programs, and who's to say that the Mac programmers at XYZ Co. aren't just as efficient as the Windows programmers, or vice versa? Just because a Mac and a Windows program look the same on the outside, that doesn't mean that the programs have identical code inside.
Ultimately, for the end user, it doesn't matter why one system works better than another--only that it does. And that brings us right back to our earlier premise, that the best personal puter in the world is the one that you feel is right for you. The next time you meet a Mac zealot or a Windows zealot (or now a Linux zealot), tell them that your choice in personal puters is just that--personal. Which puter is the most powerful one of all? Why, it's the one in your head. After all, as Francis Bacon said some 400 years ago, "Knowledge itself is power."
source 3
Section: News
It all started with an internet search engine, now Google's on your mobile and powers the latest laptops. Windows? That's so last decade gadgets
For decades, it's been a two-horse race in the world of puters - the technorati cool of Apple's Mac versus the lumbering colossus of Windows. So any serious third contender is big news - particularly when the high-tech newer, Chromebook, es from Google, and casually tears up the rulebook for laptops too.
It's ultra-simple - even less fussy than the iPad.
For silver surfers who aren't interested in Call Of Duty and are just looking for something that does the internet, Samsung's Chromebook is just the ticket - that's all it does.
The operating system's so slim it turns on in under 10 seconds. If the puter's in 'sleep' mode, it'll e on in under two. Apple's new Mac-Books are light sleepers, but Chromebook is fast. Once it's on, a browser opens (Google's slick Chrome, of course), and you can access (Google) mail and (Google) documents, as well as apps such as Angry Birds. You can't close the browser - there's no desktop behind it. There's a window full of Chrome apps such as games and a dedicated YouTube page - but as with any of the new 'light' operating systems (such as that used by the iPad), you can't do nuts-and-bolts stuff like tweaking performance or downloading and converting video.
Perhaps that plaint just shows I'm behind the times - the PC equivalent of a dad spending Sundays under the bonnet of his car.
For puter-phobes, it's also refreshingly virus-proof, as it won't run non-Google programs.
It's pricey (around ?390, or ?440 with 3G), though, and slow - high-definition YouTube videos splutter, and Angry Birds jerk mid-flight.
Given that the iPhone can hurl birds without plaint, it would have been nice if this could do it without pouring steam from under the bonnet? ? www.google.ie/chromebook
~~~~~~~~
By Rob Waugh
