Personaly, I have a DELL on the left side of my desk and an iMAC on the right, and my notbook with (Free BSD, Linux, or some other x86 usable OS) in between them.
I think I am really just a computer geek that likes them all. I enjoy the weaknesses of each of them and find it hard to choose a favorite, they all have good points. Oh yeah I have an Atari 800 also.
Daniel
Sigh. I was just thinking of this last night. It’s hard to pick. I don’t ever want to pick just one OS. I don’t intend to. I’ve got an iMac, a Win 98 PC, and a Win 95 laptop. Oh, and that old PowerMac, too. Can’t forget about that.
I have a strong leaning towards the Mac OS (I am using OS 8.6 on both iMac and PowerMac) but there are strengths on Windows that I like too. There’s the advantage Windows has of being so popular - more applications available for it. But - still. I’d hate to be stuck with just Windows. For instance, that damned Napster. It is so buggy on Windows. Slows everything down, crashes. It almost never does that on the Mac. Napster on the Mac is much better (IMO). There are other things that drive me nuts with Windows too. I like it, but I’d hate to have no other options. And I don’t have to! Yipee!
Macs give much fewer headaches in the long run, in my experience. Though I think the upcoming MacOS X will be very interesting, if only for bringing UNIX to the masses.
(Disclaimer: I use Windows NT at work because I’m required to. I use a Mac at home because I have a choice.)
I use (and like) MacOS, Windows, and unix on a daily basis. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. From a productivity perspective, I find Windows to be more frustrating. From a “everything-works-with-windows” perspective, the Mac is sometimes frustrating (though VirtualPC alleviates most of the software portion of that). Also, I’ve got Mac software that I just can’t find decent equivalents to in the Windows world. From a unix perspective, I guess I just expect less so it never lets me down.
Like rjung; when it comes to deciding how I spend my money on my personal machines I always opt for Macintosh. I’ve got three of 'em at home.
Which brings up another good point. My oldest Mac is an 8 or 9 year old Performa and it still sees some good use. I have several friends with LCs, MacIIs, and even MacPluses still in service… I know of no one with a 486 running Windows 3.x (or earlier) still in service.
Joey, now you know (virtually) at least one. Old 486, old Pentiums, all running. Not very fast, but still very much alive. 386s would be too, but just too slow on anything other than W3.x.
I preferred Macs for many personal things until 98/W2K, now those OSs seem to cover those many things. W2K is much more geared for business, but very useful for home. Macs were much better much earlier, but today I’d have to go with W2K.
Unix is tops for critical business functions, hands down. The Linux movement may prove that sme can use it at home, but not your average consumer.
Anyone use WinME? Any commnets?
i’ve decided to become a Linux promoter. although i regard UNIX as a choke and puke operating system, they consider vi to be a text editor, LINUX has info available about what’s going on inside. Microsoft is playing info hiding games for the money. i don’t want to be one of their cash cows.
i used to repair hi-fi so i know analog and audio i’ll try merging what i know about computers with that.
LINUX MUSIC & SOUND by Dave Philips
looking for a good book on Linux and video.
Dal Timgar
Philosophically, I like Linux and the free operating systems best. They’re also generally the most useful and work best too, but as of right now, there are a few critical sorts of applications which are not up to par on those systems. Namely video performance for games and a mature GPS enabled mapping program. Give me those two and I’ll never go back to a proprietary system.
Until then, I have to keep windows around so I can take full advantage of my hardware.
Macs are the philosophical antithesis to how I approach computers, trying to hide details from the user, and generally removing fine control. Plus, I can’t go build myself a Mac, so they’re opposite my preference for that as well.
I run Linux.
On my Mac.
About 10% of the time, when I need to work with Adobe stuff or Final Cut Pro, I use MacOS.
I love the opennes and freeness of Linux; it truly is a hacker’s heaven. And though MacOS is chided for being the most closed and monolithic, it’s extremely efficient and reliable.
I also use the public beta of MaxOS X sometimes, which has the best of both worlds. A full, working BSD Unix, plus the grooviness of Aqua. There’s also a version of XFree that runs on it.
tradesilicon: We have WinME on our Compaq, but there’s so much Compaq crap running that I can’t find a way to stop that I find my Win98 running much better than it. My dad also won’t let us take back that computer and let me build a new one and clean install ME.
WinME (When done with a clean install, not the crappy versions from vendors) is much faster, more stable, and easier than 98, but I anticipate there will soon be a second edition that fixes some problems (Much like Win98 and Win98 SE).
Now to the OP: I use Win98 on my machine, and it runs just fine. Whenever I get an error, it is always a problem caused by third-party software (Most people will blame this on the OS). I don’t own any Macs, primarily because I don’t want to dish out the cash to buy myself a good one (Don’t even talk to me about iMacs, they’re crap).
I want to learn Linux, but I can’t find any free CD’s of it anywhere. I can’t download it because I’m on a 56k modem with only one phone line in our house, so I can’t tie it up downloading Linux. I also don’t know anything about Linux, so I’d need some kind of help book or something like that to get started.
Cheap Bytes.com, or something like that. CD’s of every linux variety you can imagine. $2 each, they have a flat rate $5 shipping and handling, so order tons. 
And I left Slashdot to get away from all of this.
I’m also surprised no one has mentioned BeOS yet, an excellent option.
There’s also PalmOS, which I am getting my mother for her birthday.
Y’all might want to check out this dmoz category, which has more operating systems that I thoguht existed.
Monster104, I have about forty CDs with Linux on them, from buying boxed sets (at first), then ordering CDs from Linux Central, plus finding them in the back of linux books I purchased, and lately from downloading the ISOs of them and burning them on CDs (since I got a cable modem, I’ve gone a little mental with it). Send me your address, and I’ll mail you a variety.
I bought BeOS 4, and was really impressed with it - slick, stable, easy to install. Then I found out that there was no good browser for it, and it was reduced in my eyes to a hobby OS. Now that 5 is free, and Mozilla is ported to it, I might try it again.
I’ve got one monster box running Windows 2000, and a Dell 450 running Mandrake Linux 7.2, plus a laptop with the same Linux on it. Linux now seems to be where Windows 98 was, as far as general use goes; Windows 2000, on the other hand, is comparitively amazing. Of course, there are other benefits to Linux I’m enjoying that I don’t have with Windows, but the combination of having both side-by-side makes for a very complete computing experience.
I’ve used Macs, and had to work on them for a while, and I wasn’t impressed. I found that they’re better in many small ways than Windows, but not nearly enough to overcome my vastly greater experience with Microsoft products, which makes Windows far more useful to me.
For me it is really not a choice. I am a hardcore computer gamer and Windows is the only OS that runs the games I love to play. MAC gets very few games and often much later than Windows. I can’t name any games released for Linux, although some do work on it. Therefore I am stuck with Papa Gate’s monster, at least until game publishers wake up and realize there are more OS’s (awkward term) out there.
Michael
you are kidding right?
even friends of mine who I consider at expert level AFA supporting MacOS have to rebuild their system every 6 months.
no aurgument on this one. buddy of mine had his uptime up in the 106 day range on an 8600. I think the only reason he had to take it down before was furniture rearranging in his apartment.
Maybe your friends just aren’t as Mac-saavy as you think they are?
TheNerd wrote:
followed by:
Which struck me as an odd pair of statements, since Apple actually publishes more than you’d ever want to know about the gory details in their technical documentation. Microsoft, too has a wealth of information in their “Library”, but it pales in comparison. I have much more “fine control” over my Macs than my PCs.
This highlights, precisely, one of the reasons why I think the MacOS is superior to the Windows OS. It’s the same guys who build the hardware that build the software. With Windows, Microsoft has to account for nearly every nerd (no offense) and his dog who wants to build a “Windows compatible” computer in his garage…
slowhand53:
I have to go with rjung on this one - your “experts” are none too adept. I’ve been using Macs since 1984 and I’ve never, ever, ever had to rebuild a system. I was even sys admin for a bunch of Macs for a while. Furthermore, if you know what you’re doing, the MacOS is incredibly stable. I once ran a 3400c for more than 90 days without a crash or restart. I finally restarted and rebuilt my desktop just because I was getting nervous. BTW, in that time I installed and tested probably 50 software titles, so it’s not like I was playing it safe.
On the other hand, my Windows NT machine shows me the Blue Screen of Death pretty much every day and none of the “experts” can figure out why. My system has been rebuilt 4 times and they’ve even wiped and reformatted my disk. It’s funny that Windows has reduced me to exactly what you fear from the MacOS - a stupid user who doesn’t have a clue how the damn thing works because all of the details are kept inordinately obscure.
Don’t get me wrong, as I said before, I like and appreciate both operating systems, however I just don’t see how anyone can come to the conclusion that Windows is more open than the MacOS or that Windows is more stable…
Monster104, thanks for your feedback.
I just installed WinME on a new PC, and the incredible amount of STUFF that was on there from the manufacturer and thirteen other companies. It seems an awful lot like Win98 too mee - still had an app hang and took down the computer to recover.
OTOH, in responce to Joey, I have NT4.0 Workstations running for months and months w/o any blue. There usually run 4,5,6,7 apps, on top of a bunch of services, and don’t reboot unless I install something new requiring a reboot. I ruuun everything from Office97/98/2K, Netscape v 3.x,4.x,IE, custom apps, etc. Usually problems come up for those who have thrown in some apps a bit less than stable, but even then I can kill a misbehaving app and keep the system running.
Win2k seems to be best of all worlds at this point. You can adjust anything and everything, or leave it alone and it will run like a champ. Detects just about all hardware, and plenty of software available. I like Linux for it’s efficiency with hardware, but for most home users (non-hackers) it’s a painful way to go, plus limited apps available. On the other hand, if your apps are available on Linux, you’ll be happy with performance, up time, and $$$ savings.
My experiences with other operating systems --0
Windows (95/98/ME) – typically easy installation and compatibility with most 80X86 hardware. Lots of little annoyances, though, like missing DLLs and unexpected program crashes.
Windows (NT/2000) – VERY stable, easy installation, fast, fewer annoyances than the consumer Microsoft OSen. Not compatible with some games, if you’re into that.
Windows (all) – my biggest peeve includes the way programs want to install either under the root folder, in a subfolder under a corporate folder (even if the program is the only one the company makes), and the way that many programs alter your operating system without your permission, like taking over file type recognition or adding their functions to context sensitive menus in other programs.
Mac OS (to 9.X) – very few annoyances, much easier to maintain once it’s set up. While there are few little problems like what you would encounter in Microsoft operating systems, there tends to be more system crashes that require rebooting. Multitasking isn’t up to par with other operating systems.
Be OS – extremely easy to set up, very stable, quite fun. Not that customizable, though, and not all hardware is supported. (BE OS 5.0 still doesn’t recognize the 3COM 3c905b-TPO ISA network card on my old computer).
Linux – outrageously stable, very customizable. Despite Gnome and KDE, though, it’s a bear to customize, configure and maintain. Not all distributions support all hardware, and the newest hardware might not be supported. It’s also very delicate, with regards to hardware upgrades – change a card or add a partition, and Linux goes kablooey. Is the average Joe expected to recompile a kernel?
QNX – stable, FAST, wonderful GUI that breaks through the complexity of the Unix-like innards. Little software available. Still, the install didn’t recognize the Matrox Millennium II video card or the or the 3COM 3c905b-TPO network card on the hobby computer. The partition will be formatted over, unfortunately.
Right now, I’m running Windows 2000 Professional on the primary computer, and despite the annoyances I like it. However, when Mac OS X is released, and hardware prices drop (<$1000) for a system that will run it at a reasonable speed (probably early 2002), I’m going back to Mac.
By the way, there’s other popular operating systems out there. NeXT is a bitch to install, but there’s no better looking GUI, excepting OS X. AtheOS seems to have its followers, although it’s still in the development stage. Brits seems quite enamored with Acorn RISC OS, and Germans are still fond of the Amiga.
Anyone play around with any of the BSD Unices?
tradesilicon:
Yeah, I’ve heard that was possible. I’m sure our problem is related to some standard installed software, but no one seems to be able to track it down. The crashes tend to happen in MS Office or Netscape, but I’m betting the root cause is elsewhere.
I think our problems have more to do with background processes than applications. I just checked, and my system has more than 70 background processes running - many of them I haven’t a clue what they do.
I think either OS can be as stable as you want it, depending on your skill at administering it and the robustness of the “essential” software that is installed.