Thomas Vander Wal has Posted an essay explaining why he has bought his last Windows-based computer, citing:
“...the years of headaches of horrible business and technical practices that Microsoft breeds. Their concern is not the customer and their well being, but their pockets. In the 10 years that I have had my own Microsoft OS-based computers (four of them) I have had four complete meltdowns resulting from MS patches or incompatible MS software (not third-party software or hardware problems). I have had software overwrite a shared resource (because MS took a sort cut in their OS and created DLLs). I have bought OS’ and software that had to be repeatedly patched for security problems, not just bugs (one of these security patches overwrote an element that controlled my hard drive partition, which resulted in a cleared hard drive). I have provided numerous hours of help to friends and relatives that have had similar problems (many of them have had worse and more frequent problems because they are not computer professionals). I have paid for incremental upgrades or for an actual CD I could boot my computer from, when all MS would offer is an OEM disk that contained an image of the software installed on the system. I had paid for the operating system when I bought my computers, but if I wanted to own the OS, I had to buy the damn thing again (this seems to be Microsoft’s understanding of two for one bargains, like many things they do they got it horribly wrong).”
As for Windows XP:
“The Home version wants to reorganize your configuration, which knocks out my DSL connection and never let me share files with my Windows 98 machine, nor use its printer. The XP Home will play nicely with other XP Home machines, but that seems to be about all...
What makes it easy for Mr. Vander Wal to make his next purchase something other than a Windows machine ?-- “Mac OS X has made this option available to me.”
“My laptop running OS X has been a dream. I don’t know that I would call this an operating system as it has been headache free, it has not conflicted with other software, it allows quick software loads (which are also pain free), and things just work. This is unlike any operating system I have ever used. It is not perfect, but it is damn near perfect. I thought I may have problems doing my regular work on the machine, but I can do every thing I ever did on a Windows machine and without the damn headaches....”
I’m glad Mr. Vander Wal has seen the light. Reading about his travails with Windows PCs over ten years inspired me to compare his experience with my correspondent ten years using Macs.
During the past decade, I’ve used eight different Macs for production work - - a Mac Plus; an LC 520; a PowerBook 5300; two WallStreet PowerBooks; a UMAX S-900; a G4 Cube; and a Pismo PowerBook. Not a lemon in the bunch.
I have experienced no data a loss other than occasional unsaved work lost in crashes (and usually retrievable using MacsBug). My hardware downtime has consisted of a video power supply replacement in the Plus; a motherboard replacement (under warranty) in the LC 520 to fix a sound support problem; and a frustrating intermittant failure to boot problem in the UMAX, that was ultimately traced to a bad (brand new) Seagate Barracuda hard drive.
That’s it. I’ve never been obliged to involuntarily reinstall Mac OS system software other than to remedy a strange glitch that breaks OS 9.1 in the WallStreet if you disconnect the power supply while it’s sleeping, and that just requires running the installer over the existing installation to fix it. Never had a virus. Never had a day of unanticipated or unscheduled downtime (the UMAX has been mainly used as a backup computer, and I’ve always been able to coax it to boot even when it had the bad hard drive).
I continue to marvel at what Windows users routinely put up with in terms of hassle and unreliability. The wastes time, expense, inefficiency, and frustation boggles the mind. Sure, there is the occasional problem Mac, but they’re the exception rather than the rule.
The Macintosh platform has simply been consistently superior to the PC throughout, and continues to be so. Some argue that Windows XP has closed the gap. Well, my son makes his living these days as an XP tech consultant, and according to him, XP is still a cranky, buggy, user-unfriendly piece of crap that causes the folks he spends his days helping hours of grief and downtime. He’s more of a Mac OS X fan that ever since he took the XP doctor job. Indeed, he says that spending his days helping people struggle with their Windows XP problems has given him a whole new appreciation of how great the legacy Mac OS is as well.
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