Minor compared to Vista. Since I've used both a PC and Mac for the past 20 years - Mac wins hands down IMO.

 

Vista is junk.. thats a given... xp is solid tho. and still available.

 

My wife wanted a laptop. I suggested a MacBook. She said that they were more expensive than getting a Dell, HP, Compaq, etc... I said that I didn't want to become her own personal tech support and system administrator -- the Mac will just work. She got the Mac. It's a tradeoff, a few dollars for piece of mind.

HOWEVER, I haven't been able to get our networked HP LaserJet 1022 to work with it yet! So they aren't completely void of problems - Apple will blame HP and vice-versa.

Other than that, things are working fine. In the meantime (last few months), my desktop is constantly being assualted with the latest virus, spyware, trojans. Even though running ESET NOD32 and Spybot-SD -- two great programs.

I've switched to Firefox and Thunderbird. Both seem to be much lighter weight than the MS IE and Outlook products. Now if I can find a decent replacement for explorer (the desktop program).

I'll also recommend Directory Opus from http://www.gpsoft.com.au/ as an excellent replacement for File Explorer.

 

i run only nod32.. no firewall or spyware apps... it comes down to a matter of control and common sense on computer usage (no offense meant). i rarely have had any problems with the above and just incase i keep a current image created with acronis... if i have a problem that cant be fixed, i can apply the image in 10 minutes and be on my way.

p.s. man this thread is so offtopic it isnt funny. lol. i just cant help it tho. computers are an obsession. [8D]

 

What happened to the good old days when Mac's ran in black and white. And DOS was using a 5.25" floppy on a 16-color monitor. Those were the good old days as I remember.

I like my machince. A Gateway customed tuned and ready for Vista. Thou XP MC2005 has served me well and countines to do so. Right now, I need to upgrade the hard drives to either a 1TB or 2TB. I already have 1TB and need more space. Ram is never an issue. CPU power is never really needed, unless I need to heat my room up.

Win 95 (very good, obsolete)
Win 98 (sucked, had to format the HD every 6months)
Win 2000 Pro (Liked it the best, flexible, very reiable, never went down)
Win XP MC2005 (Very flexible, reliable, works with most everything)
Win Vista Home Per (Its okay, needs too much ram, slow running)

 

Love my Mac. I've had it nearly 4 years and it's still fast and going strong after several OS releases in between. New versions of OS X seem to get faster, not slower, on the same hardware. As others have said, everything just works. I never have liked Windows, I used Unix before buying my Mac and with OS X, it's Unix underneath so I get the nice desktop environment and still have my favorite OS underneath.

 

I'm "forced" to (okay, they pay me pretty good money to do it) slave behind a Dell PC all day long[:'(] I much prefer the Mac I have at home, it's just more fun - spoken like a true software engineer!

 

I do the same here and have not had any problem besides a freak hard drive failure.I have since added a spare and just mirror the drive just in case.if one is good then 2 is better,right?

 

If you're stuck with a PC, but don't want to run Windows there are a couple of desktop *BSD derivatives that may work for you.

http://www.pcbsd.org/
http://www.freesbie.org/ <- this comes on a *live* CD too, you boot from the CD and there's your desktop environment so you can play with it without installing and see if you like it.

 

ubuntu anyone?