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I'm Finished With Windows

The Central Scrutinizer

Penultimate Amazing
The Central Scrutinizer
Joined
Dec 17, 2001
Messages
53,097
Done.

I've had my latest Windows machine for almost 5 years now. I've had my Mac for 18 months. Both machines stay on all the time. I use the Mac for just about everything, because it is the superior machine. I use the Windows machine (Dell Inspiron) for Quicken, QuickBooks and TurboTax and nothing else.

So I come home tonight, and my Windows machine is froze up. Again. I have to power it down. This is approximately a weekly occurance. Sometimes more, sometimes a little less. Weekly is an average.

So in the past 18 months, my Windows machine (no viruses, no spyware, no adware) has froze up 78 times. In that time period (18 months), my Mac has never, I repeat never, froze up. Let me repeat that - in the past 18 months, my Mac has never froze up a single time. Not once.

So, I'm done with Windows. I'll move my Quicken, QuickBooks and TurboTax over to the Mac versions, and then that's it. I'll leave the Windows machine unplugged in the closet in case I would need it for some reason (I can't imagine why), but from here on out, I'm 100% Mac!!!
 
Oh, and by the way, it takes the windows machine 15-20 minutes of heavy duty disk drive thrashing to reboot.

The Mac (I have to reboot sometimes for software upgrades) takes 30 seconds. A minute - tops.

Buh Bye Windows.
 
Oh, and did I mention? On those occasions when it doesn't freeze up weekly, it reboots. I'll come in the next morning and it has rebooted. And my Quicken/QuickBooks/TurboTax will tell me that the previous file was not saved properly, should I try to recover?

Did I ask the machine to reboot? No. It seems to have decided to reboot on its own.

Not to mention the semi-monthly re-shuffling of the icons on my desk top? Did I tell Windows to reorganize my desktop? No. Just like I didn't tell it to reboot every week or two. It. Just. Did.
 
Load Linux on the Inspiron after you've converted your financial stuff. Play with various distros. You can do some seriously cool stuff with Linux, if you play with it a while.

ETA: In the interests of fairness, I have run XP on systems for months without rebooting.
 
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Not to mention that your Linux box and Mac box will play quite happily with each other having similar heritages.
 
I prefer linux machines and my mac to windows, but it's a personal choice of mine, and one based on specific software needs (Logic 7 and Final Cut Pro) as well as what I have come to like more about unix and unix-like OSs. I use all opensource software besides my production specific suites such as OpenOffice, and have never had a compatibility issue with MS Office users, etc. My wife prefers to use GnuCash for finance tracking and it works great. since the only game she prefers is WoW, and it runs just fine under wine, we're set without using windows. Any game I have wanted to try has had a mac version available.

I worked with windows machines for a long time on helpdesk, and prefer a proper command line and a bash shell to script from. My wife runs kubuntu on her dell and loves it. Beryl has some great eye candy and neat functionality, and kubuntu runs rock solid. If my wife has a problem I simply open a shell, ssh in to her box, and fix it. Easy peazy.

That's my 2 cents.

I am sure, however, that someone will be along to start an OS holy flame war over this.
 
Central, you didn't mention what operating system you are running, but Win XP is vastly more stable than Win 98. If you still want to keep your machine in the game, then upgrade. Vista is even better, but should only be installed on a new machine as a fresh install.
 
Ducky said:
I am sure, however, that someone will be along to start an OS holy flame war over this.
Click to expand...

You know, I'd love to start a Holy War over this but I can't. My two main boxes at home are running Kubuntu and Fedora 7 and I find myself grinning like a loon as I use them. My only ventures into Windows land now are on my corporate laptop, because I don't have the choice.
 
Reality Believer said:
Central, you didn't mention what operating system you are running, but Win XP is vastly more stable than Win 98. If you still want to keep your machine in the game, then upgrade. Vista is even better, but should only be installed on a new machine as a fresh install.
Click to expand...

Yes, Win XP is quite stable. As a matter of fact, it's the only version of Windows I can really stand. However, I would AVOID VISTA. It's new, so not all the bugs have been worked out. It's got some good eye candy, I'll give it that.

I would highly recommend trying out Kubuntu, though. I've been using it for about 5 months now, and I'm about 95% done with Windows. It's slick, it's fast, it's stable and all of the software is free. It just blew me away. Linux ain't just for nerds anymore.
 
malbui said:
You know, I'd love to start a Holy War over this but I can't. My two main boxes at home are running Kubuntu and Fedora 7 and I find myself grinning like a loon as I use them. My only ventures into Windows land now are on my corporate laptop, because I don't have the choice.
Click to expand...

Yes two of my servers at home are Fedora 7 (recently upgraded) and I am very impressed, there is a huge difference between the install of F7 and FC6. Well done Fedora. Ubuntu and its various flavors are becoming no more difficult to install and get running with full functionality on most laptops than XP. The only minor speed bumps are wifi chipsets that aren't readily open source friendly, but madwifi and ndiswrapper fix the problem with medium level tinkering. There are plenty of tutorials out there on google to explain to even a complete novice how to get DVD playback and wifi working on a ubuntu or fedora install on a laptop. The other two are OpenSolaris (nv build 66), and I love what you can do with zones and trusted services on them.

Really, though, I am one for function. Your work laptop is of a specific OS because it is intended to function as your work environment dictates. Nothing wrong with that, and if it is stable and functional, great. The function of the machine should always dictate what OS/software you choose. At one point, your company decided to use a specific model/design for their IT/IS needs, and decided that the investment in windows was worthwhile. Great for them. However, were I running an office, I would very seriously consider the use of a linux distro with open office for the licensing cost benefits.

My machines are intended to give me specific software for two of them (the macs) and the rest are intended to be functional for a variety of services and uses, while having no cost overhead for software. This is why I use GPL and open source platforms and software suites. Were Audacity and Jahshaka to rival Logic 7 and Final Cut Studio, I would even consider losing the macs for cost reasons. I've yet to see most of the hardware I use have drivers for linux, but eventually I think linux will catch up in this regard, both for multimedia software suites, and for drivers for the hardware to track audio and pull HD video.

But hey, I am sure someone will misread everything I posted as some sort of attack on Windows and flame away.
 
I have been using windows now for at least eight years, both at home and work. Several machines have gone by. I have yet to see any one that runs stable. The laptop at home tends to freeze if i dont have a mediafile on repeat. With this it runs fine for a week or more, but eventually it will reboot itself when im not looking, the mediafile shuts down and i have a freezer in minutes. My earlier computer - a desktop - did exactly the same thing. Shut down is the only solution.

At work the problem is not freezing, but slowing down till near freezing point. All my work laptops have done this at least once every other day. First warning is the fan speeding up. Then everything slows down, closing a single window can take from 15 minutes up. Only solution is shut down. Our technichians have only one fix for all problems. Reinstall everything. Since that doesnt solve the problem but cleans out all my personal settings i try to avoid it.
 
I'm running CPM-80 an on old S-100 monstrosity I put together years ago, and I haven't had to reboot it since 1978.

In addition, I'm running Kubuntu on my IBM/Lenovo R60 Thinkpad. Installation was as painless as eating chocolate and just as satisfying. The wireless even worked straight out of the box.
 
You know OS wars are fun and all but it is seriously hard to defend any OS where a legitimate solution to a problem is, "restart, reboot, pray."
 
Ducky said:
Really, though, I am one for function. Your work laptop is of a specific OS because it is intended to function as your work environment dictates. Nothing wrong with that, and if it is stable and functional, great. The function of the machine should always dictate what OS/software you choose. At one point, your company decided to use a specific model/design for their IT/IS needs, and decided that the investment in windows was worthwhile. Great for them. However, were I running an office, I would very seriously consider the use of a linux distro with open office for the licensing cost benefits.
Click to expand...


Damn you and your reasonableness! Yep, I agree entirely. I work for a company that has about 150,000 staff worldwide and the platforms and tools were chosen to meet business requirements and be standard, and so we've got a common platform that just about works, given that it's based on XP and Lotus Notes. We have had Linux + Open Source discussions over the last couple of years, but nothing's going to change for the next few years at least - there will be huge questions to resolve concerning interoperability with clients and software migration before any change can really be considered.

Linux at home is now seriously sexy, though. My first installation was Red Hat 4.2 on a 486 back in the last century and although it was fun it was a bugger to configure just how I wanted it, whereas my most recent installations were trivial (Kubuntu on an old P3-800 took minutes) and I've yet to find anything broken. Fedora 7 is sweet: I was pissed off with FC6 as I never got the pup software updater to work properly, but the F7 upgrade was painless and I've had no abnormal behaviour since the machine has been running.
 
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malbui said:
Linux at home is now seriously sexy, though. My first installation was Red Hat 4.2 on a 486 back in the last century and although it was fun it was a bugger to configure just how I wanted it, whereas my most recent installations were trivial (Kubuntu on an old P3-800 took minutes) and I've yet to find anything broken. Fedora 7 is sweet: I was pissed off with FC6 as I never got the pup software updater to work properly, but the F7 upgrade was painless and I've had no abnormal behaviour since the machine has been running.
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I remember wrestling with that version of red hat, and an earlier version of slackware. It was like pulling teeth from a lion who's pissed and rabid, but man these new distro installations are so painless it's great! What's nice is that when my wife needs, say, the flash plugin for firefox installed on her kubuntu machine, I can just ssh in, sudo apt-get install and tell her to close and reopen the app. Painless from my perspective, because trying to explain to her how to use aptitude etc. would take 3 times as long. She's not a power user, nor should she have to be.

She's been using open office to work on a spreadsheet for work to calculate something or other (I don't pretend to understand how she has to calculate interest, etc. for her job especially when having to correct misapplications of funds and stuff) and she's had no problem going between open office, and her MS Office at work. She was very happy for that.

I recently started dual booting my 17" macbook pro with Fedora 7, so I could use kdevelop and a few other very nice apps to code with, and the only problem I had was installing some specific things like madwifi for the airport extreme card, and mapping a right click to a two finger tap on the mousepad (which the Macbooks do in OSX, so the "one button mouse" haters can stuff their "but you can't right click!" strawmen.)

Anyway, that's my experience, and take it as you may.
 
I`ve had a PC up until about 2 weeks ago.

We just bought an Imac as my wife is in the graphic design industry.

Very impressed so far, great machine,quick to boot, no error messages, far less hassle than any version of windows I`ve used.

Out of curiosity am thinking of installing linux on the PC to check it out.

Recommend those PC users who haven`t used a mac to give one a try.
 
Davo said:
Recommend those PC users who haven`t used a mac to give one a try.
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I have never owned a mac, but after playing around in the Apple shop for an hour a couple of weeks ago (well, Mrs Malbui was buying clothes so I had to do something to amuse myself) I'm pretty certain that my next laptop will be a Macbook.
 
malbui said:
I have never owned a mac, but after playing around in the Apple shop for an hour a couple of weeks ago (well, Mrs Malbui was buying clothes so I had to do something to amuse myself) I'm pretty certain that my next laptop will be a Macbook.
Click to expand...

I have a copy of the leopard DVD and installed it on the mini for a while. I must say there are some very very nice new features to 10.5. They finally utilized the capability for multiple desktops in Spaces, the Time Machine backups are solid, and the new dock and stacks have some really neat useability features.

I'll certainly upgrade when they finally release it. I did find a few small little bugs in opening new sessions in Logic 7, but I have a feeling Pro App support will be fixed by the time they release it.
 
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