Apple Mac Quadra 840av

Owned for 1 year(actually had to be replaced with same model halfway through)

Currently sporting:-

Apple Mac os 8.1
40MHz 68040 CPU
128 mb ram
8x CD Drive(sled)
4.23 meg hard drive
500 meg hard drive (did have a 1.2 gig but it has died)
56k modem external modem (which is good as I can physically see if I am connected or not)
Zodiac speakers
Compaq monitor 15" & other monitors connectable.
Stylewriter 1200
Umax something or the other scanner.
a lovley 2 button mouse (has Quickshot emblazened)
a keyboard which does it's job if not the most stylish thing ever made.
CD-rewriter, though power supple has died.

Next up my Pentium 75r pc.

Owned for 3 or 4 years (maybe 5)

Windows 95
A pentium processor, could never be definite if speed was 75 MHz or 100MHz.
16 MB ram(attempted to upgrade, even with advice from seller of the ram, but it just wouldn't accept the extra ram.
I think 32X CDrom
530 MB hard drive
1.44 MB floppy drive
PCI Modem 56k
Zodiac speakers(now owned by my Quadra)
Compaq 15" monitor(now owned by my Quadra)
Panasonic kxp1124 printer(used by st before it now idle in the attick)
terrible mouse, I think I ended up having three all together which seemed to die within three months or so. ended up using "mousekeys"(keyboard instead of mouse) that was one huge nightmare.
Keyboard was quite nice, slender & functional.

& finally an Atari STFM(if you consider buying you want an STe)

Owned quite a few st's since 92 or so, finally we both gave up on each other(messy divorce & I'm still mentally scarred) circa 1999.

Tos 2.06 & very easy to load virtually all previous versions of the operating system from floppy & even got it running Magic(Tos single tasking, Magic multitasking)
8 MHZ 68000 cpu
2.5 MB ram(difficult to upgrade, though can be done up to 14MB)
A 720k Floppy(software able to accept 1.44 meg floppy & 2.88 meg floppy, but would have need to replace Ajax chip, I am not a solderer & dont believe that sending away for it to be done & paying over £100 to have a 1.44 meg floppy)
A 720k external floppy which span too fast & aided the spread of a virus to most of my disks.(haha I gues my virus checking software literally missed it cos it was going too fast.)
Commodore 1084s monitor with hacked cable which broke after a while & did not survive my few attempts to resolder.
Panasonic kxp1124 printer(now sleeping in the attick)
had a gorgeous mouse, 2 button(though don't remember 2nd button being utilised) mouse was swappable between Amiga & ST.
keyboard did it's job, though colour schemes are something worth mentioning, but perhaps later on. Keyboard was attached internally being Part of the computer housing, terrible not for lugging around.
Had a hand scanner at 1 point which did a very nice job, just a shame it was black & white as the st only did high res if in greyscale.

Now we move onto software:-

Operating systems,

Apple os, personally I find it limiting.
Windows 95, very fond of crashing
Atari Tos, only singletasking, but more reliable than anything else I have used.

Viri

Apple, clean as a whistle(fingers crossed)
Windows 95, infected once, killer having to shell out for antivirus protection.
Atari Tos, had a few viri though nothing too extravagent & if your hardware worked well then tracking down viri very easy with very cheap software.

Internet

Apple, does enough to make it the winner, could be more encompassing of internet features.

Windows 95, connected to the internet then crashed after half an hour, promised the world & delivered little.

Atari, never quite managed the jump into cyberspace, though many reportadley have & do.

utilising files:-

Apple I have managed:-

Tiff
Gif
Jpg
Img

Mov

Hqx
Sea
Bin

htm

not sure about anything else, have had complete misery with all other files.

Windows 95 I managed:-

Jpg
Tiff
Gif
Img
Spc
Pi1

Mov(but only just if memory serves, was disjointed, jerky)
Avi
Mpg

Zip

Htm

Wav
Midi

Atari ST I managed:-

Jpg
Tiff
Png
Gif
Pi1
Pi2
Pi3
Neo
Spc
Spx
Img
xImg
Iff

Mov(Black & white only but played nicely)
Avi(Black & white only but played nicely)

Zip
Lzh
Zoo(Amiga based)
Tos(self extracting Atari based)
couple of others I can't put my finger on & a few others which were Atari based, very fancy but allways too much hassle for me to bother with.

Wav
Snd
Midi

It appears I have forgotten about a few over time.

Program linking,

Apple,

It can be done, though I'm not definite how to go about it & I do get the incessant "this file could not be opened because the application which created it could not be found"

WTH is that? does nobody use 2 different programs on Apple?

It has done a bit itself but more hassle than it is worth.

Windows 95

The mother of all P*ss takes, Windows is very very customisable, but what I found was that I would link, lets say jpg to Paint Shop Pro, Then the next day after browsing the internet or installing a "nessacary piece of software ie:- shockwave & the like" I would double click jpg & somthing other than PSP(Paint shop pro) would open, I continually felt bullied & harrased by having my personal customizations overided.

Atari St

A simple menu option allows you to link a file extension to a particular program & you can load the desktop file & self customise via a text editor allowing a program to load several different file types. Pure simplicity.

So what wins?

I'm not going to score all the points but my Apple Mac Quadra is the most practical computer I have used to date.

The Pc did ok, & slightly preferable os to Apple.

Atari ST has a very classy os, & some very good software. The hardware side of Atari is worse than diabolical, they are difficult to connect to other devices & most of the hardware I had let me down.

shaktiman

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