Mac users, how's your Windows 7 experience?

[Zaap]

I have no issues running Windows 7. It's long been my theory that people dick up their own PC's insisting they need to run tons of anti-everything bullcrap on it. (Well, that along with crap hardware choices.) All of my PC's run fine with just Avast AV and Windows defender and that's it. I don't buy all the "you constantly need to patch this and run that and dick around with this.." No you don't. (By the way, I don't buy the same scenario for Hackintoshes either- same deal- a lot of people just dick around a lot until they screw up their own systems and can't seem to figure out to use backups. -That and crap hardware choices. For drama I guess.)

I like both OS's. OSX is great- I use it at work for Final Cut Pro.

At home, if I have Final Cut Work to do, I'm in OSX. Otherwise, it really doesn't matter. I'm equally at home in Windows 7 or OSX.

There seems to be a pattern with Windows: I didn't mind 98/2000, hated ME, liked XP, hated Vista, really like 7. I have a feeling I'm going to go back to hatred again with 8. (Tiles? On a desktop? Really? They must have brought back all the people they fired from the ME and Vista teams to come up with that.) But of course, I'll have to reserve judgement until I actually use it.

 

[bobdole369]

I use both, all day every day on the 2011 MBP 13". bone stock - VMWare Fusion + Win7. I've found I spend far more time in OSX than Windows. I find it tedious and difficult now to navigate through OS panes, when I can open a terminal and do something much simpler. My main job is to run SunOS boxes, so thats probably why I find the OSX environment so easy. However the webapps those boxes run are windows only - so I gotta deal with it. Overall - compared to 4 years ago (when I first really wet my OSX beak) - it is significantly better in terms of OSX application support and availablity. WHile slow (likely need more RAM) windows runs well, and runs everything I need.

 

[Oyeve]

I think the Mac is less maintenance in general but it definitely isn't zero maintenance. And restarts are still needed for some Mac updates.

True, and if something seriously goe wrong on a mac, its seriously just fucked. But the timewarp thingy is great. Yeah, windows gets hosed a lot more than osx but ya gotta realize that malicious crap is created to target the masses, and unfortunately the masses are pc oses. I am sure osx will get more users and then all oses will be attacked equally.

 

[Eug]

The most irritating thing about my Acers' restore discs is the fact they come preloaded with all sorts of junk. The restore has not just the OS and the drivers, but all the crapware, which I then have to spend half an hour uninstalling.

OTOH, OS X Lion has introduced a new problem. The new installer requires Snow Leopard to do a clean install.

This was a pain when I swapped in my SSD. The process was as follows:

1) Back up hard drive to external hard drive.
2) Remove hard drive and swap in SSD.
3) Install Snow Leopard.
4) Install Lion, so that it installs the Recovery Disk.
5) Restore from external hard drive back onto SSD.

I guess the good news is that the Recovery Disk isn't absolutely necessary. It's just convenient to have and it only takes up 650 MB of disk space. However, you can put it on an external USB flash drive or else an SD card. You can actually boot off the iMac's and MacBook Pro's SD slot.

 

[Eug]

Sometimes I wonder how small MS's design budget is. Certainly their advertising budget must be pretty restrictive, at least compared to Apple's.

Apple promotional video for Lion

Microsoft promotional video for Windows 8

 

[Oyeve]

Sometimes I wonder how small MS's design budget is. Certainly their advertising budget must be pretty restrictive, at least compared to Apple's.

Apple promotional video for Lion

Microsoft promotional video for Windows 8

I dont think MS is ready to really start advertising win8 yet. But once thay are I am sure they spend a decent dollar for it. I have yet to see a non-online advert for Lion. Are there any?

 

[Eug]

OK. Here's a random Win 7 ad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmiPzMY4nuE

Ignore the strangeness of the ad for the time being, and just consider the production values. For example, the lighting is off. Glare in his glasses.

I really think there is a correlation between these ads and user-friendliness of the OSes. Apple sweats the small stuff, even if sometimes some of the big stuff is missing from its OS. If the big stuff that Apple is missing doesn't affect you, then OS X may be more suitable for you. However, if you need some of that other stuff, you'll be better off with Win 7.

 

[Adramalech]

The most irritating thing about my Acers' restore discs is the fact they come preloaded with all sorts of junk. The restore has not just the OS and the drivers, but all the crapware, which I then have to spend half an hour uninstalling.

OTOH, OS X Lion has introduced a new problem. The new installer requires Snow Leopard to do a clean install.

This was a pain when I swapped in my SSD. The process was as follows:

1) Back up hard drive to external hard drive.
2) Remove hard drive and swap in SSD.
3) Install Snow Leopard.
4) Install Lion, so that it installs the Recovery Disk.
5) Restore from external hard drive back onto SSD.

I guess the good news is that the Recovery Disk isn't absolutely necessary. It's just convenient to have and it only takes up 650 MB of disk space. However, you can put it on an external USB flash drive or else an SD card. You can actually boot off the iMac's and MacBook Pro's SD slot.

I figured out a way around it. If you already have Lion installed and you have to do a clean install, you can create a restore thumb drive with an Apple approved app on their webpage. I believe the article is dl1433. This allowed me to create a recovery tool that installed Lion (it still has to download it from Apple's servers) on my new SSD. Hope this helps you in the future!