[superboyac]: I'm beginning to see that there is something inherently wrong with the Windows OS...
It eats all the hardware you can throw at it, and netbooks crawl on it; Win7 is no different in my own house. Frankly, I could no longer afford to keep up in the pre-cloud days. (I'm not a Photoshop user. After version 6 when I could no longer print money, I quit.)
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[superboyac]: Photoshop runs much more flawlessly on the Mac.
I dare say that the Mac was built solely for this program. ha! But ask yourself: will it run Wolfenstein 3D?
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[superboyac]: Over the years, I've had to spend a lot of time and energy becoming a Windows expert so that I can fix all these problems. But I'm growing up, I'm changing, I'm doing different things with my life.
My computer life took a new direction a while back and I also grew tired simply keeping up with Microsoft's turns and twists, primarily with document formats. I could no longer afford to chase them version after version within their proprietary format. Then came ODF.
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[superboyac]: I've seen more than a handful of my friends and family switch from PC to MAC in the last year. And they are very happy about it.
I've seen two of the smartest [Windows] programmer birds I've known over the past 25 years switch to Mac. You could knock me over with a feather when they showed me their new machines. Neither has returned to Windows. They absolutely love it and did not regret the decision. When they run into a problem, Apple support has helped every time without fail (and they brag about that, too).
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[superboyac]: Anyway, all the kids have Macs and they're using them in their classes and lives. Guess what is going to happen? They are going to get jobs, and they are going to want to use Macs.
That won't happen as long as Apple pricing stays high. IT budgets are seen as money pits by most CFOs. You might bring your own Mac to work, but it's unlikely they'd let you. Depends on the work, of course.
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[superboyac]: A PC is such a pain in the ass to use and get it running smoothly. Very few people have the ability, patience, and willpower to do it. We're not the norm here. The problem is that if you're not like me or us here, you WILL run into issues with the PC. Constantly.
True to my experience. It's the setup time that is daunting with Windows; viz., because I like to customize the crap out of it and of every app. From installation DVD to loading my data and a few other application tweaks, it takes me about 90 minutes to fully setup my Linux machine. The installation alone takes about six minutes.
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[superboyac]: How much longer do I want to keep tweaking my PC and keeping up with all the options and little solutions to the dozens of programs that I like to use? I love it on one hand, but it's a lot of effort and time on the other.
Among other reasons, this led me to try Linux (openSUSE, Mint, Fedora) for a full year before finally making the switch for good. The same former Windows machine was suddenly twice as fast, I got my choice of new filesystems to install, software installation and updates were stupid-safe and easy, and with virtualization, I could still open a Windows session if I needed it. The OS was free and I could build any custom PC I wanted. The only hardware I checked beforehand was the videocard drivers. Perhaps most noticeable at first is boot times.
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[superboyac]: I'm already sick of having to fix all my family and friends' problems. My dad is afraid to do anything remotely adventurous on his laptop; all he does is use Outlook, Word, Excel, and browse the internet. He will literally not do anything else. It's sad.
That is sad. But be honest: how adventurous would Dad be otherwise? It's not like he's a Wolfenstein 3D kung fu master.
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[superboyac]: So that's it. I think the Mac wave is coming. Vista sucked. The young people switched to Macs. These people will eventually influence the workplace. Slowly, the workplace will start using Macs. Windows may start dying slowly.
That wave's already arrived -- Apple's had a great decade (something to do with that whole iPod/iPhone gadgetry)! But the future is soon upon us: it's the browser, not so much the OS. A proprietary OS like Windows will restrict you in various ways. A proprietary
system like Apple will restrict you in every way. I chose Linux as my OS in part because its virtualization (virtualbox; vmware server) and graphical abilities through KDE4, and now that I spend most of my computer time in the cloud, the days of building superfast PCs aren't necessary. Everything I have in the cloud is backed up in four different places. My biggest hurdle when leaving Windows was leaving behind AutoHotkey. That's the only program I missed for a while. Everything else has been a joy.
So good luck if/when you do go Mac, superboy. You'll enjoy it, but if you wait five years, you're going to be missing a lot. Once you leave Windows, you'll soon see that it isn't good enough to lure you back. Of the three big OSes, it's the last choice of those who have tried all three. (For each one's own reasons.)
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That's what I did all day yesterday, is laugh at how many ways this could be funny. Lines from the TSA line: