Re: [Leica] Win 95 to 98 my final word

["JeffS" <segawa@netone.com>]

I certainly appreciate the Mac's relative ease of troubleshooting versus
Windows98, but ultimately, it all boils down to what the computer does for
you. I got my first Mac in 1985, and stuck with Macs for years. I
experimented with DOS, Windows 1.x - 3.x, Amiga, NeXTstep and more.  I spent
lots of time twiddling with the systems, too. But while NeXTstep in
particular seemed really cool, it was always the quality of the Mac
applications which brought me back to the MacOS.

But the tide seems to have since turned in favor of Windows. And while it's
not terribly productive, it's fun to pop a rental movie into the DVD drive
and watch A Boy And His Dog in wonderfully clear video and surround sound,
maybe even reduced to a smallish window so that I can browse through LUG
messages and watch the movie simultaneously! I could go on, but suffice to
say, a 450 mHz Celeron-based box with fast video has lots of great
anti-productivity potential :-) I started with a bare (but stylish and
rather expensive) housing, and over a period of 7 months, gathered together
some of the best quality components I could lay my hands on--we ex-Mac/NeXT
junkies are a fussy, detail-oriented lot, after all.

The result, I'm happy to say, is a blast to use-slick, fast, stable--even
good looking and solid to the touch. I didn't quite manage to keep this
project under $1K, but I didn't exceed that figure by much either. And
unlike your average store-bought readymade computer, this one's very
upgradeable. We Leica fans talk volumes of how wonderful it is that a 1959
camera body can accomodate the modern world so well, with the installation
of a new lens. Well, I'm not expecting to be able to use parts of this
computer system 40 years down the road, but it's standardized, modular
construction should allow me to reuse major components through a number of
upgrade cycles, and to do incremental upgrades, in very cost-effective
steps. Who would've thought that a Leica-inspired computer could be so
affordable? ;-)

Jeff