Doesn't surprise me that Vista is going bye-bye from what I've read it's a pig.

Sounds like you haven't looked at Macs for at least 15 years. If you spent 30 minutes researching Macs you'd be going out and buying one too. I've worked with computers since 1962 (Alwac II and IBM 1620), used mainframes from every manufacturer except NCR ie. Sperry/Univac, IBM, DEC, CDC, Honeywell (CP6), Xerox (CP5), Burroughs, Sun, HP, all manner of PCs and Macs and all the OSs that went with all that hardware...retired after 33 yrs in computing (plus 4 more as an oceanographer in the '60s using DEC and CDC h/w. And my choice of computers for anyone looking for a home or office computer is a Mac.

After Apple switched to the Intel processors anything you can run on a PC you can run on a Mac at equal or greater speeds, hit a button and you're back in a Mac environment (Fusion or Parallel s/w allows running MS operating systems concurrently with the Mac OS) or reboot with Apple's Boot Camp that comes with Mac OS X into a Windows environment. Hook up your old PC to a new Mac and run Boot Camp Assistant, now you got both OS X and Windows on your Mac...simple as that or so a friend tells me.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html

But why bother with Windoze there are hundreds of programs for Macs that run just about anything you'd want to run except maybe highly specialized programs, but the reverse is also true: no PC version of some of the real cool Mac programs, esp. in the video and multi-media world.

Btw Macs are readily upgradeable, esp. the tower models. A few years before I retired I spent $7k to upgrade the cpus on 30 Macs at work and extended their life for another 3 yrs, they were already 5yrs old...checkout macsales.com and sonnettech.com, there are dozens of others and see for yourself, cpus, drives, ram, cards to upgrade Macs...I have no affiliation with these companies, just a satisfied customer. iMacs are less upgradeable but you can swap/add some ram and drives, more than enough for the average to above ave user. My 24" iMac has USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and 800 ports, with a 500GB external add-on drive connected to the FW 800 port w/4gb of ram...networked to my downstairs old 2001 hopped up Mac G4 tower...should last me another 5-6 yrs at least, with shared printers upstairs and downstairs. Like my daughter's former 12 yr old G3 Purple iMac that is also hooked up and running Mac OS X 10.3 and a Firefox browser at a very decent speed...try something similar with a 12 yr old PC.

Checkout versiontracker.com it will open your eyes a bit on the s/w side, other sites like this exist. The only reason Windows and PCs is prevalent is because MS (instead of Digital Research, but that's another story) did a superb sales job at the right time years ago and rode the momentum...and suckers bought into it (not me). What people are unaware of is that Macs last you a lot longer with much less problems. I haven't used virus software on my Macs, so far so good after 20 yrs or so.

And who needs MS Office, I use NeoOffice, free from neooffice.org and has enough for most people without the bloat and compatible with MSOffice files. Macs can handle networking as well as PCs and a lot easier too. I could go on for pages but why bother, you're the one that's losing out...and you don't even know it. Ignorance is such a pitiful thing.

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I'm a hypocrite, I'm intolerant of intolerance. Hey, what's your Terrorist Score?

IBM = I Blame Microsoft.

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Earn your spot today -Affrayer -bugalugs -ColoradoGirl -DEFCON1 -Divine Wind -eugenius -HoboMonkeyPirate -Josey Wales -manwhocomesaround -Never Left -Pro Deus Et Patria -venik -White Doors

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And speaking of Linux.....Ubuntu 8.10 just came out.

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I worked on a mac for years at my job. It was the first computer I had to work with. I don't remember it being hard to work on. I received a pc for Christmas one year and have had pc ever since. The only "down side" I ever hear for macs is the lack of variety of programs, games and the incompatibility with certain office programs that are more widely used.

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You might be a liberal if................You think that consenting adults can engage freely in every activity except capitalism.
You think the answer to ANY crime, infraction, or injustice is counseling.
You use the words "right wing extremist" at least four times in any given day.
You live in constant fear that someone, somewhere, is making a profit.

And I have chronic sound problems with it because of Pulse. I decided to stick with Gutsy because of Hardy's flaky sound problems. Pulse is bloody horrible.

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Difficult.

My partner came up with what I thought was a good test. He installed XP on on a 24" IMac we just got and configured a PC using that price tag. (It's since had Leopard put back on it)

For $2,400 (roughly) the IMac came out with a 2.8Ghz Core2 Duo, 4GB RAM 800, 1TB SATA drive and an 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 with a 24" Monitor and a single DVDRW drive.

For the same price he configured a 2.66Ghz Quadcore PC, 4GB RAM 1333, 2 x 1TB SATA drives, a 1GB GTX280 graphics card, DVD RW lightscribe and a BlueRay DVDRW along with a 24" Monitor.

(Yes, XP doesn't recognize the full 4GB, but the memory were all 2GB sticks. XP was using 3.2GB of the 4 on both hardware platforms. Hes correcting me as I write this.)

At which point he benchmarked them - surprisingly (not) the PC kicked the holy crap out of the Mac. I mean, it wasn't even in the same ballpark.

Not only that, the CPU, RAM and hard drive are not manufactured by Apple, leaving basically the chassis and mainboard as Apple specific products. So much for the vaunted superiority of Mac hardware. They're pretty PCs at this point in their lives and frankly, not very powerful ones for the price.

As an Apple certified tech and MCSE/A+, he's worked on both systems extensively. According to him, hardware failure rates and servicing between the two platforms are not miles apart.

As for the OS, he gives the Mac a slight edge for the average home user, a big plus for graphics and entertainment industries (along with a few others), but when it comes to business and enterprise situations Mac OS blows monkey chunks.

If you want the cachet of paying more for a home system, knock yourself out. But what little gain you get in the OS is more than mitigated by the inflated hardware costs of a Mac. If you're a graphic artist, a publisher, in the recording or film industry, etc., get a Mac. If you do anything else, don't go Mac.

By the way, he wants to me point out that the argument is basically stupid in nearly all incarnations since most people use pretty much antecdotal evidence based on wholly subjective criteria, rendering the conlusion applicable to the individual only. Hardly an objective comparison since in most cases it's a back end justification for buying either. The spurned lover syndrome he calls it. Whichever platform one has migrated from gets remembered in the most negative light while the new love interest can do no wrong.

Overall, both are acceptable platforms, with their respective disadvantages and pluses within certain areas dictating the wisdom of the purchase decision.

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Toodley-doo,
Maggie.

So how did Vista work for you?

It's about time that somebody pointed out that everything that goes wrong is the fault of the Democrats. I've known that for a long time. When I was growing up and I got bad grades in school, I blamed it on the Democrats.

A couple of friends of mine were divorced last year. Do you know who was at fault? Thats right, it was the Democrats.

Your egg salad goes bad. It's the Democrats.

Thank you for pointing that out, Guy.

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RELIGION IS THE EVIL IT WARNS US ABOUT!!

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. Mark Twain

My main system at home runs Vista Ultimate 64bit. In the 16 months it's been installed on my system, fairly well. There was one issue with ATI drivers that caused some hiccups with the media center functionality, but that was fixed in the next driver release.

It worked fine until an ATI catalyst driver release caused the problem. Their next release (one month later) addressed the issue. So really, the issue was with ATI moreso than Vista.

My partner geared me up to be our home guinea pig because I'm fairly abusive of my system, constantly playing around with it.

Now, for work, I use an HP Business class notebook because that's what my company bought for me and it runs XP Pro because Macs don't play well in our office. But for writing and doing the family photos I use the MacBook Pro.

My partner has four systems in his office, one with Server 2003 (our house server), a Linux box, one XP Pro system and a PowerMac . There's also a Vista system in the family room that runs the television and we have the IMac in the kitchen.

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Toodley-doo,
Maggie.