Re:Over to the Dark Side
Monday, July 24 2006 @ 03:28 PM CDT

Quote by: pgreenstone Alan, I have been running SecondLife (top graphics settings, all bells and whistles on), GB (with effects and multiple tracks), and NiceCast (broadcasting) all at once on my G5 dual 2.5Ghz PPC w/2 gigs of ram with no problems for my shows. No crashes, no stream hiccups, no crippling lag. While SL does run better on a PC than a Mac it does run just fine for me, to say the least.

I suspect the stream crashes are performance issues that come from running everything on a G4. There's no way I can pull off a G5 and I'm glad it's working for you! This is a good dialog as we've seen more and more MacJammers coming into Second Life and I'm sure the discussion will be helpful to those considering it.

Re:Over to the Dark Side
Monday, July 24 2006 @ 05:45 PM CDT

I know less of computer games than I know of Einsteinian mathematics; should I even care what Second Life is? If so, why, what?

Re:Over to the Dark Side
Monday, July 24 2006 @ 06:00 PM CDT

Quote by: alanfraser I never thought I'd say it but I'm crossing over to the Dark Side and over the next three days the parts will arrive to built a fairly powerful PC. The reason is that the resource requirements of GarageBand in combination with more than one Guitar Rig track make it extremely difficult to run Second Life in parallel. Therefore, I will build the PC to run Second Life and this will set me free to use the Mac exclusively for audio and streaming. The logic behind the decision is that it would cost six grand to get a Mac Quad and that hardware will be obsolete in, say, a year when it goes over to Intel. Going obsolete is inevitable when buying any box but that upgrade is going to make it even more dramatic than usual. So, I can get the parts for a fairly hot PC for a bit over two grand and building it myself will save the additional thousand in assembly costs. It boils down to solving the problem for four thousand less and no way can I justify a Mac solution with that much of a spread. I'll let you know how it goes. If you hear firetrucks, that would be a bad sign.

an intel mac will boot both windows and osX... have you considered that? Actually you may want to wait till they cross grade Guitar Rig. 3rd quarter of 2006. Or wait till they come out with the new intel chip for the power mac user...

Re:Over to the Dark Side
Monday, July 24 2006 @ 06:26 PM CDT

alan - one word of warning - I have done some recording with a Dell laptop and every time I use it takes forever to get the ASIO drive to work with my interface. It seems like I spend more time troubleshooting than recording. Maybe it's just that Mackie's driver for PC is bad, but I've heard of a lot of driver problems on PC in the past - you need to make sure that all your hardware is compatible or you'll run into problems.

Mason

Re:Over to the Dark Side
Monday, July 24 2006 @ 07:12 PM CDT

ahead of yourself. If only you waited until the August 15th Apple Developers Conference before taking the plunge. That is the expected release of Tower-intels (date may be 8th I didnt confirm). At that point the G5s will lower in price as the new towers step up. I hope to get a quad G5 when the price drops myself.
you have my condolences on your purchase. I've endured pcs since the original 8080 chip and I refuse to use them at home or for personal business of any nature. I administer thousands of them at work every day and despise them. There is nothing in the world that I would buy a pc to run and that's my choice. If I cant run it on the mac then its of no use to me. The only exception is for games -I use xboxes and play the games with my son. So far no xbox viruses...
luck to you.
Oh, dont forget the anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam softwares, hardware firewall, a backup external hardrive(s) and a clone program such as norton ghost. Once you have things running you will want to make clones to restore from as its the quickest way when things go wrong. I believe you bought a drive after the driver issue you had but thats mac formatted you will need seperate EQ to run on the pc.

Re:Over to the Dark Side
Tuesday, July 25 2006 @ 06:24 AM CDT

I hear you on the G5 but a six thousand dollar box isn't going to suddenly turn into a two thousand dollar box. The PC solution is cost-effective. Note that I am not even remotely moving into the Dark Side as it is my intention to dabble in that witchcraft only to the extent necessary to solve a specific problem. I'm not going to give up Mac audio and graphics any sooner than any of you! However, Macs are not very good at gaming type apps such as Second Life.

In case you're not getting it on Second Life. I was online last night with a very dear lady and we attended an impromptu concert by Peter Greenstone and one of the songs he sang was 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' with an acoustic guitar accompaniment. It was magical and virtually impossible any other way. That's why I do Second Life.

Peter, that took massive cojones to even try and you pulled it off. It was quite a beautiful thing.

Re:Over to the Dark Side
Tuesday, July 25 2006 @ 06:31 AM CDT

Quote by: rover101 I know less of computer games than I know of Einsteinian mathematics; should I even care what Second Life is? If so, why, what?

It's live. Sure there are constraints but I couldn't possibly keep my job and perform as much as I do any other way. Sometimes I'm doing two gigs a day and I'm loving it!

Re:Over to the Dark Side
Tuesday, July 25 2006 @ 06:41 AM CDT

Quote by: alley-oop So you've been swallowed by the dark side, young skywalker?

I would think Alan is more like Han Solo, wouldn't you? Or maybe even Boba Fett?

Re:Over to the Dark Side
Tuesday, July 25 2006 @ 10:11 AM CDT

Quote by: TobinMueller Quote by: alley-oop So you've been swallowed by the dark side, young skywalker? I would think Alan is more like Han Solo, wouldn't you? Or maybe even Boba Fett?

Dunno about Han Solo but I did get the girl - LOL

Re:Over to the Dark Side
Tuesday, July 25 2006 @ 11:21 AM CDT

Quote by: alanfraser I hear you on the G5 but a six thousand dollar box isn't going to suddenly turn into a two thousand dollar box. The PC solution is cost-effective. Note that I am not even remotely moving into the Dark Side as it is my intention to dabble in that witchcraft only to the extent necessary to solve a specific problem. I'm not going to give up Mac audio and graphics any sooner than any of you! However, Macs are not very good at gaming type apps such as Second Life. In case you're not getting it on Second Life. I was online last night with a very dear lady and we attended an impromptu concert by Peter Greenstone and one of the songs he sang was 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' with an acoustic guitar accompaniment. It was magical and virtually impossible any other way. That's why I do Second Life. Peter, that took massive cojones to even try and you pulled it off. It was quite a beautiful thing.

I thought Peter used a mac?