a cnet review of the G5


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hmm service and support got a 6. did the article say why? i didn't bother to read it. heh. my personal experience with apple tech support has led me to believe they deserve nothing less than a 9, but to each their own i guess.

also, outdated mouse and keyboard? do dell's even ship with optical mice yet? i guess they want more media keys on the keyboard or something?

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They're shipping with apples latest mouse/keyboard designs unless you count the bluetooth versions so I think frod is right: C|Net wants random keys stuck all over their computers. The 1 button vs billion button mouse arguement has been played to death already: Apple ships and supports a single button mouse on every system but nothing is stopping you from using a 2,3, or 8 button mouse if that's what gets you off: In many cases the extra mouse functionality won't even require drivers. As far as mice go, aside from the lack of scroll wheel and a zillion buttons the apple pro mouse is a very solid and reliable unit.

The warranty is somewhere apple is lacking:

90 days free phone support

1 year parts/labour

You can buy applecare which (IMO) is one of the best warranty plans outside of the corporate service contracts, unfortunatly APP costs as much as a "bottom end" beige box - some of the major PC manufacturers offer plans similar to APP as a standard feature with their systems.

Apple will treat you well for as long as you have warranty, it's the length of the default support/service where reporters tend to knock Apple's service.

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I think they should have reviewed it against a similar spec P4 machine, or AMD64. Pitting a G5 with 2GB of memory with a ATI Radion 9600 against a G4 with 512MB of memory and a ATI Radion 9000 is not a fair comparison.

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It is when you consider that >50% of mac buyers are repeat customers.

If you have been using Apple hardware for the last few years comparing against some random PC hardware doesn't really give me any frame of reference. Comparing against the previous powermac makes a lot of sense. Comparing with a dual G4 AND an AMD64 system would be nice - but eventually we get to the point where we have one product to review and half a dozen "reference" systems; why?

The G4 they used is a reference, if you wanted you could look up how well some other platform performs on the tests they did and then do the math yourself to work out relative performance.

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do dell's even ship with optical mice yet?

The Dells that my school bought early this year had Dell branded Logitech optical mice (two button with scroll wheel), but the one that I bought maybe 4 months earlier had a Dell branded standard Microsoft mouse (again, two button with scroll wheel). It may depend on the model you buy or something, or maybe they changed suppliers between those two dates.

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hmm service and support got a 6. did the article say why? i didn't bother to read it. heh. my personal experience with apple tech support has led me to believe they deserve nothing less than a 9, but to each their own i guess.

also, outdated mouse and keyboard? do dell's even ship with optical mice yet? i guess they want more media keys on the keyboard or something?

consumer reports i think just did an article about the different computer companies... apple won tech support, doa systems, repairs, etc etc etc. dell came in a far second.

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I hate to bring up the old one button vs multibutton mouse argument again, but I think Apple got this one wrong.

Sure, an OS should be designed to only use one. OSX does this, but it's very slow and tedious compared to a two button mice. Also, why the hell isn't there a scroll wheel on the mice... this is a pretty much needed feature if you are going to browse the web at speed...

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Maybe you think you need a multibutton mouse, but apparently the majority of Apple's customers don't need or want one or are willing to pay for a third party replacement. IMO including a single button mouse gives a fixed target to developers: you can't expect a user to have more than one mouse button so don't even think about hiding useful features in context menus only. They still have access via click+hold or CTRL+click, so nobody is really missing out - it's an option.

Also, the reason we don't have scroll wheels is because safari/mozilla works pretty well without one. You've got scroll bars and the space bar, and page up/down, and the arrow keys.

Yes it's nice to have and you're fully supported in your quest to use one in OS X, Apple doesn't provide one, it's not the end of the world. This is such a non-issue I'm surprised people still bring it up.

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Thx Dose, you have given me the info I needed upon why I should save my money for a G5. Thxxx Budddy.

no worries :)

as for mouse issues/comments i've always prefered a multibutton mouse. i've actually stole my intellimouse explorer from my peecee and love that i have a scroll wheel again! I don't know how to surf with out one nor the forward or back buttons

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