[FrYGuY]

Originally posted by ClawTovski
This is a myth. Apple has like Microsoft and RedHat also an up-to-date feature, which has every few months an update or two.
OSX tells you in the same way like UNIX what's wrong this time. (If there is something wrong...)

That's great and all, but my point was Hardware. My favorite story about Mac comes from a friend of mine. He had a Mac, and he bought a game for it. He puts it in his computer, and discovers that the OS is too old. So he upgrades. The new OS, however, discovers a slight glitch in the connection to the CD-ROM. Rather than being a $10 problem (IDE cable) like it would be on a PC, Mac in its infinite wisdom decided to hard-wire it. So now he has a computer without a CD-ROM (Which, ironically, he used to install the OS). So, he takes it to the local Mac repair shop, and they replace it for $400 or so.

The kicker? The processor, which Mac claimed would be fast enough to run the game, wasn't actually fast enough. He then swore off Mac for life.

My point? Mac's main advantage, that it has complete control over it's hardware, is my main pet peave. That is why I will *NEVER* own a Mac. But that's besides the point. Apple still lost a head to head benchmark with a comparable system, when Apple claimed it was 'miles ahead'.

I don't agree with you here. I said "doesn't have to". I didn't claim a car with two engines doesn't run faster.
Tractors are typical vehicles which need power, not speed. Two engines each connected to one wheel don't have to go faster, and surely won't go 2x faster than one engine connected to both wheels.

Um. Yes, it does. Again, physics. More power == More speed. Cause, effect. The only way it wouldn't is in the unlikely event that the Transmission wasn't geared for it, and that's only top speed. Acceleration would flat out be faster.

Main point: not vehicles, but adding a few processors doesn't mean the speed increases with the same multiplier. It can even decrease due to lock/wait and/or communication.

That's great and all, but I already said that. I just said that your analogy didn't extend that well. Cars are a different beast than computers.

Did you notice the Intel outperforms the AMD's here? I guess you have read all those roaring stories about AMD's being faster and cheaper as well too?
My main point: don't trust/rely on benchmarks. You can create a benchmark so it concludes what you like to see as a result

Um, except that AMD's are cheaper. That's been AMD's main selling point since day one. They are, however, currently slower than the relative Intel chips, something which AMD has ceded to Intel in the last few months. AMD's big selling point on the Athlon 64 is that it's Cheap 64 bit computing which is backwards compatible with 32 bit computing, Neither of which can be said about the Opteron (And even less so on the point of price about the G5, though it too is backwards compatible).

Microsoft managed to have a benchmark result of Windows being cheaper than Linux on the long term. They simply let all problems Linux can have occur at once and compared that to
Windows systems having no tricky situations at all...
RedHat can do (and probably has done already) exactly the opposite by choosing and applying all the weak spots of Windows... What is the final value of such benchmarks?

They managed to do it by factoring long term savings from the glut of MCSE compared to qualified Linux System Admins. The 'tricky situations' they applied to both. The value of such a benchmark is valuable to a company looking at the overall cost of running said system. That same test, however, (Which was Microsoft SPONSORED, not Microsoft run) concluded that there were applications which would be cheaper for Linux, such as running an eMail server. But that's neither here nor there, and certainly isn't a performance benchmark, but a theoretical expense report.