Why do you favor the Windows OS?

[newt42]

I can never decide between the two. I do a lot of photoshop work and movie making, so in that field, I favor the MAC OS. I also like games, and software compatibility. This is where the Windows OS comes in handy. Instead of picking one or the other, I put the Windows XP OS on a separate harddrive partition of my MAC using Boot Camp software. Victory is mine OS battle!

[BoringSupreez]

I don't like Mac for several reasons:
1st: Far fewer games than Windows, and less backwards compatibility with old games.
2nd: The user interface is terrible. I have an iMac, and I had to give up using it because I could hardly find my stuff, and programs were always freezing up when I tried to use them too long.
3rd: Mac does too much thinking and deciding for you. It's like baby's first OS.

[gtmtnbiker]

I dislike these discussions. At work, we have Unix & Windows & Mac bigots. I will use them all. They all have pluses & minuses.

If I had to choose one to use exclusively, it will be Windows due to the wealth of applications/hardware available for it. Macintosh does not come anywhere close to it.

If I had to give an unsophisticated user a computer, I probably would lean towards a Mac. Still Macs are not perfect. My Mom had issues with her Macs over the years so even Macs are not immune to software/hardware incompatibilities/bugs.

[ZeroAX]

The limited hardware works in their favour, systems are more stable and more reliable. I never have kernal panics on my Mac apart from when my RAM started to fail, I drove to the Apple store and had it fixed, free of charge while I waited. Tell me when you could ever do that with a Windows PC.

More and more games are getting Mac versions. I think the only games that don't tend to get OS X versions are FPS. Pretty much every game made by EA on PC get's a OS X version. Some games like Spore or The Sims 3 have both versions on the same disc. It's simply not true to state that OS X doesn't play games, it does, it's just not every single software developer has got on board yet.

I'm sorry. are you kidding me?

About point 1, I disagree, because if all computer's were like that, a cheapest computer would cost a ton of money, and not every household would be able to afford one. That is also one of the main reasons (choosing your own parts, to make the machine, that is) that the PC as a platform became the number 1 type of computer in the world. But since the mac ain't going to be overthrowing the pc from it's throne, any time soon, I don't care. Waste your money all you like.

And really about point 2..... are you kidding me? Not only most games DON'T come out on the mac, but even when they do come out, they cost more, play worse, and are not supported.

[fast]

Why do I use Windows? Well I have a fair amount of experience with a lot of operating systems, from Amiga OS to OS2 to OS7 to knoppix to OSX, but I always come back to Windows for my primary for a few very simple reasons:
1.I enjoy tinkering with my computers. When something breaks I like having options on how to fix it, not being pigeonholed into a small range of components.

2.Like many of you, I fix computers on the side. Since most of my customer base is Windows, I gotta keep on top of it. Sure some people don’t, but I do.

3.Legacy peripheral support. I use a tapwave zodiac as my pda on a daily basis, there are no drivers for it on OSX or Unix. I also use a parallel port version of the Laserjet 4L or 6p as my primary printer, the unix drivers for that are wonky. I could upgrade, but they work fine now and have for the past few years.

4.Gaming. While much better now that WINE and DOSbox have had major updates and companies back OSX. But some games still run really poorly on anything but Windows. Sure it is not that big of a deal, but Ive already got hundreds of PC games.

5.I have a dozen or so legal XP licenses I still have not used…
All OS’s have pros and cons, people just find ways to work with what they have to the best of their abilities. There are many things Windows is rubbish at, data recovery for example, but that is why we have Live CDs.

That said my breakdown is as follows:
Gaming computer – XP
Hometheater PC (old gaming pc) - XP
Laptop – XP
Netbook - eeebuntu – EEE version of Ubuntu
Mac laptop – OS7
Imac – OS 10.3
Test box 1 – OS of the month – right now it is trying to install Amiga OS
Test box 2 - Debian
Nettop – Knoppix/XP dualboot
(Soon to be) Mamecab – DOS 6

The rest of the pcs are not in operational status – need more PSUs and keyboards. And the number of computers is down (a lot) from what it use to be.

[MrPopo]

Aside from the various aformentioned reasons, I recently found a huge reason that will keep me from ever adopting a Mac. The Mac keyboard has the Option key in the same place as control, and the squiggly symbol key in the same place as the Windows key. But you use the squiggly symbol key as your shift key for shortcuts, like copy and paste. Why, oh why, must the placement be so fundamentally wrong?

[Luke]

2.Like many of you, I fix computers on the side.

Please fix my PC. It's become such a nuisance that I no longer play games on it. It's odd, since everything worked fine a few months ago. Now, the games will run fine for a while, but it seems that around every ten minutes the game will s - l - o - w down (almost to a halt), then pick right back up to normal speed. Any suggestions?

Running XP

[fast]

Man I was in Greenville last weekend - yall have an AWESOME park downtown. I could have swung by and taken a look at it then.

How often does it slow down in game? Is it once or twice or is it every few minutes? When was the last time you cleaned it (physically and digitally)?

[Luke]

Man I was in Greenville last weekend - yall have an AWESOME park downtown. I could have swung by and taken a look at it then.

How often does it slow down in game? Is it once or twice or is it every few minutes? When was the last time you cleaned it (physically and digitally)?

I'm guessing you're referring to Town Commons on 5th street. I take my dog there often, but wouldn't recommend hanging around there at night.

The slow down happens about every ten minutes, even when I'm not playing games (just happened now actually). I use one drive solely to run XP, and the other for storage. Both drives are around 80% free, and I keep a pretty clean PC, physically and digitally.

Could it be a power supply problem?

[fast]

We were at the Falls Park actually. http://www.fallspark.com/index_content.html
Simply beautiful.

Let me get back to you about the computer problem, Ive got a meeting in four minutes I need to go to.