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Apple Archive

Problems with Cable Modems and Home Built Windows PCs

- 2004.09.20

Wednesday morning my Internet connection went down. No particular reason - I was just about to click a link, and it died.

"No problem, I'll just unplug the modem and reconnect it." Except that didn't work.

So I figured it must be an outage and went about my usual business during the day. When I came back that night, I found that it still wasn't working.

Fine, I'll call the cable company.

At around 1 a.m. I finally managed to get through to someone who could help me - but I got disconnected almost immediately. A half hour later I finally got someone who managed to keep the connection open long enough to tell me that the system they use to book repairs was down from 12 a.m. until 7 a.m.

I woke up nice and early the next morning just so I could call them - and was then informed that I had to wait around the entire day for a technician to show up. It's a bit of a pain to have to wait the entire day, especially given that I had two classes to attend (which I unfortunately had to miss).

They finally showed up at around 4 p.m. Apparently someone downstairs had unplugged the cable by accident. Of course, nothing's just that simple. The cable guy didn't seem to know how to use a Mac (how typical), and it turned out that my router took two days to start functioning correctly, which finally restored reliable Internet access.

In the meantime, I figured that I'd take some time to try finishing up a project that I had started a while ago. As of a couple of years ago, I realized that it makes a lot of sense to have both a Mac and a PC. While you can do pretty much everything you'd ever want to do on a Mac, there are a few things that either work better on a PC or that you absolutely can't do on a Mac.

For Web developers, for example, having a PC is essential in order to view websites and make sure they function correctly in the Windows version of Internet Explorer. (For more on that, see Peering Through Windows: Why the Mac OS Alone Isn't Enough.)

The last PC that I bought was about 1-1/2 years ago, if I remember correctly, and it was a 550 MHz Pentium III with 292 MB RAM, a 6 GB hard drive, and a DVD-ROM drive. I later upgraded the hard drive to 60 GB and added a CD-RW drive.

I had very few problems with the machine, except for the general quirks that home-built Windows PCs tend to experience.

Unfortunately for a Mac user, those quirks can be a little bit annoying. Things like the computer refusing to go to sleep, even though there's no reason evident for it not to go to sleep. Things such as it taking 20 minutes to start up under Windows 2000 no matter how many times you reformat the hard drive and reinstall the OS.

Then there are the little issues, such as the cursor flickering when running poorly designed software and the general interface quirks that Windows tends to experience from time to time.

Macs tend to just work, and when they don't, there's a reason why. Since, for example, OS 9 was designed so it would function properly on my 350 MHz blue G3, it will work on every 350 MHz blue G3 without giving you problems.

Windows 2000 was designed to work on an Intel based system, but one 550 MHz Pentium III system may have completely different components than another 550 MHz Pentium III, so Windows 2000 may decide to work better on the first one rather than the second. The oddest part of this is that when you upgrade both machines to Windows XP Professional, the second machine might work perfectly, yet the first one may become completely unstable!

Thankfully, Windows XP seemed to fix all of the quirks on my specific Pentium III machine. I decided that I'd leave that with my sister and build myself a new computer for college.

That's right, build.

If you want to "build" a Mac, the motherboard and case have to be Apple products. And since Apple won't sell these things to you new, you have to find them used or refurbished. You can't just go to your local computer store, buy a motherboard, and decide that you want to run the Mac OS. Apple computers aren't really do it yourself (DIY) computers.

But I figured that DIY may be the cheapest way to go about doing things when it came to buying a PC. I bought a mid-tower ATX case at a thrift shop. I ended up ordering a new AMD Athlon 2700+ 2.17 GHz processor and matching motherboard, as well as 256 MB of RAM. A 60 GB hard drive was on it's way, and soon I had the machine together.

But Windows 2000 refused to install. This past week I ended up replacing the motherboard, and buying a new 80 GB hard drive, and so far everything seems to be working fine.

For Mac users considering a Windows PC as a second computer, I only recommend building your own if you're willing to put up with certain "features" that won't work like you'd expect them to. Otherwise, it's probably better to buy a prebuilt machine from one of the many well-known manufacturers. [Or even pick up a used one from a local dealer. ed]

Or you could just buy Virtual PC, assuming you've got a fairly fast G4.

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