Blender Tests:
Mac
Classroom 18:20 1100 s
BMW 27 (CPU) 6:17 377 s
Pavillion 20:00 1200 s
Windows
Classroom 11:54 714 s
BMW 27 (CPU) 3:52 232 s
Pavillion 13:08 788 s
Comparison ratios:
1100/714 = 1.54
377/232 = 1.625
1200/788 = 1.522
Thus the new machine is comfortably
faster by about 1.56 X in Blender renders. I take this as being a
better measure than the previous comparison.
You can get the test files from the
Blender website (along with Blender itself) all free.
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Folder items and organising things
On a Mac a folder typically contains
files and these can be organised according to various sort orders but
also, you can move them around with the mouse into any order you
want.
This alone has been so useful to me for
organising my projects that I really do not want to go without it.
Typically for my projects I have dozens
of images that need to be sorted and remade until they form a series
that then gets converted into a comic. I repeatedly go through these
images checking for accuracy, consistency and various other details –
and I shuffle them around in the folder window as I do this. The
nearest I can think of in Windows is to have more folders and
shuffle items between them – but there is no quick way to change
their order so I would need to rename them if I wanted to do that. I
also tag them with Apple’s simple coloured dots to identify the
ones I will use or the ones I will need to remake, for example. This
is NOT like tagging as used on the net or Linux - no words are used
– but simple as it is, I find it very useful.
I remember looking at image editing
software wondering why they included some sort of image handling
thingo with it – well, now I realise why: Windows just doesn’t
let you play with your files the same way Mac OS does.
Multiple desktops
On the Mac I have five desktops, each
with its own background (to prevent confusion) and applications that
stay in those desktops when assigned there.
This apparently cannot be done in
Windows 10 – although you can have multiple desktops, it is hard to
tell them apart. I tried a small addon that might have provided
something similar to the Mac desktops but it only worked with Win 8.
Restart/restore
When I start my Mac up it re-opens the
same programs and files I had open when I shut it down. I have yet to
find the feature in Windows (or a system addon) that will do that.
Yes, you can have Windows start up
programs at boot time with a script, but that is not quite the same
as returning to the same state as of shutdown.
Apple’s Mail program presents all
mail to all email addresses in one list. The other mail programs I
have tried do not do this. Okay, I admit this is probably a matter of
personal taste rather than a truly essential feature but there it is.
Image Previews
Apple’s Preview operates when you
have selected an item in a folder and if it is a text or image file,
Preview shows it in a new window pretty much full size or scaled to
fit the screen.
In Windows there is a “preview”
function but it stays within the folder window you are looking at –
not as grovy as the Apple method but still perfectly usable.
I would miss the interface if I sold
off my Mac. Just the way it looks and operates – so I have been
working on a compromise of sorts, I think maybe I will try and have
both: I managed to link the two with an ethernet cable and the setup
was not too hard to figure out – except that it was almost exactly
the opposite of what someone on the net told me . . . but never mind,
it works now.
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Tags and Tagging
In Mac OSX, there are what Apple calls
“tags” - ten coloured dots you can add to anything (documents and
folders) to provide basic sorting inside a folder. I have become so
accustomed to them that I went looking for something similar in
Windows land.
First, on careful consideration, the
Mac tag system is awful in that it only provides limited choices –
only seven colours - but then you can now create your own tags -
except that you can’t see them in folder views anyway, you still
get the same seven colour dots so why bother? - but at least you can
sort files in a folder by their tags. This seems so eleentary to me,
yet there is nothing in Windows that will let me do this. WTF is
going on here?
Tags as defined in the web world or
Linux are something else: text definers that can be added to almost
anything and searched.
I looked around for an addon for
windows that would do the following:
- Should be usable in Explorer
ideally, as in not needing a separate app to read or edit tags
- Should have simple tags easy to
identify in a group of icons
- Should have coloured tags.
My main use for tags is sorting images
when I am in production mode: simple coloured tags are useful to
identify the “ins” from the “outs” from the “remakes”.
Also, since I am expecting eventually not to have a Mac, I want to
use them to sort multiple subgroups from the item in one folder –
sub-groups , but without having to make lots of folders.
Here are my attempts to get something
like the Mac tags in Windows using wares:
TagSpaces – This has a lot of
options for tagging things but so far it has not “Found” the
items I tagged when I search by tag, a bit of a deal breaker I
think.
This is a discrete program that has its
own file explorer and has a lot of options . . . . . and that brings
me to two matters: First, on a Mac any new window is by default a
Finder window.
From there, any file double clicked on
will open it’s designated editor by filetype.
What is infuriating about this ware is
that it does not have a “List” view of files so you can’t
organise them according to the tags you allocate (looks like it WAS
there but got pulled), nor can you sort the images in the “Grid”
view based on the tags you set . . . . . . which makes the whole
thing useless to me.
Tagged Frog- this did not work
at all. Supposedly it worked with Explorer in Win7, which would be
the ideal, adding tags to the existing Windows Tag space but it just
doesn’t seem to work in Win10.
Tabbles - This is the worst
thing ever: I cannot download the software from the Tabbles site and
they don’t seem to want to help me either. I am amazed.
So in short, I have had no joy finding
a tag system in Windows 10 that actually works: well, at least well
enough for me. You can’t tag folders, and the items that can be
tagged have their tags hidden away so that editing them is a
nightmare. You can actually see them in a folder view called “
Details“ but only after you make them visible for each folder.
AFAIK there is no way to make them appear for all items automatically
in that view. . . . . . and as for searching for files based on tags,
forget it.
This raises another matter that Windows
is surprisingly bad at: Where can I set the default folder views in
Win 10?
Why are there no key commands to change the folder views?
Is this something where software
companies have had their asses sued if they make anything that
infringes on a fundamental patent? It looks like that to me, why else would it be so useless?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Backups
I tried out Filefort which although it
cost, it was not expensive: but then I realised that I needed
incremental backups – the main drive I want to back up is 2
TB and if the software is going to blindly copy even 1 TB every time
it backs up I am not going to be happy: it takes a long time . . . .
. so I found FreeFileSync which (if it lives up to its name) will do
what I need.
Buuuut things keep crashing on me. All
I have tried to do so far is create a backup for my Content files,
something you would think is as simple as plugging in an external HD
and pressing a button but somehow it just hasn’t turned out that
way yet. Said content has probably cost me about ten grand by now
cumulatively speaking so it makes perfect sense to me to be keeping a
backup copy of it . . . . if possible. This is a perfect example of what annoys me about the Windows world.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Last Words
If there is an overall theme to this it
is that in the Mac world I have experienced for the last 20+ years, software pretty much just works – but over in
the Windows world you never know what you are getting. It would be nice if there was some neat repository of wisdom that told you
wether that ware you are getting is good or at least reviews, but
that doesn’t exist. Okay, it sounds like I’m being soft on Mac
developers so here’s a rejoinder.
Once upon a time the Apple Store had
reliable reviews and was organised so that you could find what you
needed by category, but those days are long gone: now it’s a
nightmare of undefined “stuff” where some wares don’t even tell
you what their wares do (or are supposed to do). Sure, the bigger well known wares work just fine, and OSX is still damn good, but Apple still insists on keeping a firm grip on the hardware side and probably won't be making any Nvidia supporting Mac Pro units in future. As you can tell I am still not happy about the whole thing. Neither option - Mac or Windows - is all that good overall for me, but I will keep on chippingaway at the mountain and maybe somewhere I will find Win wares that can make it usable. Maybe.
Will there be a Part 5? Not for a while , if ever.
Thanks for reading!
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