Community weekly poll: Are you considering switching from a Windows PC to a Mac?

Windows all the way!

In reply to: Are you considering switching from a Windows PC to a Mac? by Lee Koo (ADMIN) 

I would never switch to Apple. They say their products "just work," well it turns out they don't. OSX is probably the most useless OS out there. I have a network that includes my Compaq V6000Z (Vista Home Basic), and my neighbors eMac G3. We got a 1.5 mb DSL connection, and set up a wireless network with a Linksys router. After the lengthy set up process (had to upgrade router firmware and took the tech support dude a while to figure out the router and modem were using the same IP Address...) both of the computers recognized and could access the internet. Well, a few days later his eMac couldn't use the net for no apparent reason, while my laptop "just worked." We have yet to figure out what is wrong, and OSX doesn't tell us what is wrong. It says that it is connected to the router, and can access the router setup page, but Safari can't see anything past that, while IE7 takes the torch and just works. Vista (and XP) can diagnose and repair (or at least tell you what is wrong) network connections, while OSX sits all pretty and pretends nothing's wrong. I'll be the first to say I know little to nothing on how to use Macs, and his eMac isn't the newest, so that could be a problem, but given the way Apple and its followers portray Macs as systems that just work, I'd expect better. I guess there's a reason Bill Gates is one of (if not the) richest men in the world.

Anyway, I have no reason to switch to a Mac, idk about you guys, but I've been using Windows since Windows 95 came out (on a IBM Aptiva with a 1GB HDD, lol) all the way through Vista, and I have NEVER EVER EVER had a blue screen, or a crash, or a virus (on my computers. Windows never gives me any problems, and from my vantage point, Apple has positioned the iMac as a wanna be PC (Intel chips, Bootcamp) whats the point of owning a Mac, when you're always going to be using Windows anyways? I guess Mac users don't like having fast computers. As far as hardware goes, as long as you don't buy the $300 eMachine at Walmart, you're going to be fine. There is nothing that Apple offers that is any different than what MS offers. Another reason NOT to switch to a Mac is the fact you can't build one yourself! Half the fun of a computer is building it. As for photo editing, the computer arts teacher at my school (go Viewmont!!!) uses a variety of different Macs, and would like to switch to Windows. When we came through the school in freshman year (here in Utah high school starts in sophomore year) the teacher spent half his time trying to find videos/pictures that his Mac could use, so obviously PC's are the way to go there. The school had some Macs in the video editing lab last year, but switched to Dell XPS Pentium D's over the summer. In my engineering class we use XP Dells with PD's also. Windows is the most versatile OS available, as you can do almost anything on them.

I think if it wasn't for the iPod, Apple would be pretty close to dead. I'd bet a good chunk of the new Mac users were "converted," for a lack of a better term, by their iPod. Apple is really showing weakness by adopting the processor they dissed on for 10 years, and then officially supported putting Windows on their computers. It made me laugh the first time I saw the "Mac vs. PC" commercial, with the PC guy getting surgery, as it is so one sided. If you knew the other side, you'd think that Apple was advertising for Microsoft. Upgrading my XP release era (late 2001) desktop to Vista standards was simple. All I had to do was switch out the graphics card and add more RAM costing me around a 100 bucks. For my neighbor, he'd have to buy a whole new Mac to upgrade to Leopard costing over 1000.

Anyway, Apple doesn't bring anything that is different or better to the table for me, and Microsoft has done well at keeping me at the table, which is an overall summary of why I'm never going to switch to a Mac.