Dragaera

Mac vs PC War--delete if not interested!

Matthew Klahn mklahn at mac.com
Mon Feb 9 09:37:28 PST 2004

On Feb 8, 2004, at 22:24 , David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
> The single piece of hardware I've replaced most, over the years, is
> the *power supply*.
>
> I've added SCSI, IDE, multi-serial, and firewire cards to PCs.  Yes,
> I've added IDE cards to PCs with two IDE channels on the motherboard
> already.
>
> And of course video cards.  I've replaced a lot of those (not because
> they broke).
>
> Your list of what you might want to replace or change seems very
> limiting to me.
>
> (And I hardly ever even play computer games.  *Never* play fancy
> modern ones.)

Ok, so just to let you know then, in Power Macs (the desktop tower 
machines), really almost everything is replaceable by a knowledgeable 
PC builder, if you don't mind eating the cost:

- motherboard
- power supply
- AGP video cards (ATI & nVidia right now)
- PCI extension cards (modem, FireWire, USB2, add'l video cards, 
specialized DSPs, etc.)
- memory
- processor(s) (probably the single most expensive thing)
- hard drives
- optical drives
- zip/tape drives

Hell, I can't think of anything that is in a PC that you can't put into 
a Mac, except specialized hardware that has only Windows support. 
However, please remember that Macs are very heavily used in the video 
and digital art/publishing markets. Almost every part of a Mac is 
standardized to PC hardware because they are trying to get their costs 
down and make it easy for companies that have lots of Macs to repair 
them in-house.

Now, granted, in a G4 iMac (the new, flat-panel ones), you don't have 
PCI expansion, and no room in the case to do anything with expansion. 
Of course, the parts are replaceable, but not from off-the-shelf 
components, because the case of the machine is so specialized. All 
normal parts (HD, optical drive, memory) are replaceable/addible by the 
owner, if you're brave.

Sorry I didn't put in a complete list before; I completely forgot AGP 
video cards...

--
Matthew S. Klahn
Software Architect, CodeTek Studios, Inc.
http://www.codetek.com