Apple OS X vs Vista

[Rottie]

he got a bad battery replaced new one within 2 days...Apple is very quick to replace it He is happy now.

 

[tribbles]

I guess you're talking about the dictionary here: http://65.181.138.200/images/osx.png

Yeah, it's certainly useful. Just press F12 or flick your mouse into an assigned corner and the dictionary (and whatever other widgets you choose) fly onto the screen. It's certainly a lot snazzier and more useful than Windows Sidebar.

But I would find it rather humorous if somebody switched operating systems just for OS X's dictionary widget.

That said, OS X has become my primary day-to-day OS not because Windows XP isn't capable, but because OS X allows me to be more productive. I simply get more stuff done in less time on a Mac. It doesn't hurt that most of the applications (including commerical third-party and even freeware apps) feel more refined than their Windows counterparts.

These days, Apple doesn't sell a Mac that can't run Windows, too. The screenshot above shows my Mac Pro, which can also boot Windows XP or Linux. Once BootCamp does its thing (a few seconds at startup), Windows runs at native speed. I don't have a Windows-specific workstation at home right now because I haven't needed one, though I'm thinking about building another just for kicks.

The only way to know if you need or want a Mac is to spend the better part of an afternoon in an Apple retail store, not merely playing with the machines but really experimenting and digging into the OS. There is far more power in OS X than meets the eye, which partly explains why the Slashdot crowd went from being "The Linux Junkies" to being "The Linux and OS X Junkies."

Good luck with whatever you choose.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Cadaver

Yeah. I've read the same thing. The biggest deal with his computer was that he had three 20" (4:3) displays on it. One he said he keeps Outlook up on at all times. The other two he uses for IE (I expect he's not a Firefox user), Word, Excel and other various applications.

He was interviewed (with pics) showing his office at Microsoft. Not nearly as fancy an office as one might expect for a man of his wealth. It did appear he was running Windows XP (this was about a year ago).

A large percentage of machines here at MS are multimon. A few guys have upwards of 5. I would go nuts trying to match up dual network traces without dual screens. In my experience anything beyond 3 isn't helpful. You can't get any more in that within line of sight.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: Cadaver

Yeah. I've read the same thing. The biggest deal with his computer was that he had three 20" (4:3) displays on it. One he said he keeps Outlook up on at all times. The other two he uses for IE (I expect he's not a Firefox user), Word, Excel and other various applications.

He was interviewed (with pics) showing his office at Microsoft. Not nearly as fancy an office as one might expect for a man of his wealth. It did appear he was running Windows XP (this was about a year ago).

A large percentage of machines here at MS are multimon. A few guys have upwards of 5. I would go nuts trying to match up dual network traces without dual screens. In my experience anything beyond 3 isn't helpful. You can't get any more in that within line of sight.

4 in a grid isn't too bad. :evil:

 

[Smilin]

Yeah. If you have the vesa arms to position them vertically you could prolly go 6...MS only gives us free cokes tho...not lottery tickets 😛

4 wide screens side by side in portrait orientation aren't too bad either. Lot of the debug guys run like that.

 

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by: tribbles
I guess you're talking about the dictionary here: http://65.181.138.200/images/osx.png

Yeah, it's certainly useful. Just press F12 or flick your mouse into an assigned corner and the dictionary (and whatever other widgets you choose) fly onto the screen. It's certainly a lot snazzier and more useful than Windows Sidebar.

But I would find it rather humorous if somebody switched operating systems just for OS X's dictionary widget.

That said, OS X has become my primary day-to-day OS not because Windows XP isn't capable, but because OS X allows me to be more productive. I simply get more stuff done in less time on a Mac. It doesn't hurt that most of the applications (including commerical third-party and even freeware apps) feel more refined than their Windows counterparts.

These days, Apple doesn't sell a Mac that can't run Windows, too. The screenshot above shows my Mac Pro, which can also boot Windows XP or Linux. Once BootCamp does its thing (a few seconds at startup), Windows runs at native speed. I don't have a Windows-specific workstation at home right now because I haven't needed one, though I'm thinking about building another just for kicks.

The only way to know if you need or want a Mac is to spend the better part of an afternoon in an Apple retail store, not merely playing with the machines but really experimenting and digging into the OS. There is far more power in OS X than meets the eye, which partly explains why the Slashdot crowd went from being "The Linux Junkies" to being "The Linux and OS X Junkies."

Good luck with whatever you choose.

I'm a chronic OS switcher...

Went from MacOS 9 to Windows 2000 to MacOS X, and I'm now rapidly drifting on to Windows Vista. OS 9 crahsed constantly, so the stability of Win2K was wonderful. The slickness of OS X won me over from 2K/XP. And Vista is actually pulling me back from OS X.

I like the UI on Vista way, way better than XP. Feels much more refined than XP, which always felt to me just a cheap theme slapped on Windows 2000 (which essentially it was). The eye candy (windows fade in/out, etc) is fast enough not to be bothersome or prone to slow down under heavy system load. Even little things like the new system fonts and improvements to ClearType make looking at the screen very easy on the eyes. I've set the theme color to black, and I really like the look of it.

Internet Explorer 7 is a huge improvement over IE 6 - no pop-ups all over the place, no billion-window spawing ad sites, no crashing and no oddly rendered pages. Vista and all the apps I've used on it so far (Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Outlook/OneNote 2007, Photoshop Elements 5, Acrobat 8 Pro, Nero 7, Windows Photo Gallery, Adobe Lightroom trial, End Note 9 and Virtual PC 2007) just fly on my machine.

And Office 2007 on Vista is the best office version yet (Mac or PC).

I'm running Vista nearly full time now on my 4-core 2.66GHz Mac Pro, Radeon X1900XT and 30" display. Its installed on its own 74GB WD Raptor hard drive, so its very fast and its got plenty of breathing room. I've been eyeing parts on NewEgg to build myself an overclocked X6800 Core 2 Extreme machine, but honestly running it on my Mac Pro is more than fast enough. I don't really play games too often, so I need to remind myself than I just don't need dual SLI 8800GTX graphics cards or a multi-drive Raptor RAID 0 setup (though it still would be cool).

Anyway, I'm at the moment prefering Vista to Mac OS X (10.4.x). We'll see if anything changes with the release of OS X 10.5, but barring any massive OS breakthroughs, I'm back in the Windows camp.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

Internet Explorer is still garage imo. Use it for a while and the whole system gets messed up.

 

[kalster]

havent used vista, but between xp and os x i find os x much more intuitive, also since i use linux for work mostly being able to have a fully functional bsd core in os x is very useful for me.

 

[traderonline]

there are many advantages in using xp and vista over mac ox. mainly windows is compatible with almost all the softwares and games ever produced. it even supports old legacy hardwares.

 

[TMoney468]

I'm pretty sure that if you were looking into a gaming system, you wouldn't buy a Mac. And there is a large amount of software that is available to both Mac and PC, so I don't see your point. One thing that is good about Macs, and sorry to sound like the commercial, but their new operating systems are much more compatible with older systems ala hardware requirements than Windows.