Windows Expert Jumps Ship

An anonymous reader writes to let us know that Scott Finnie, Computerworld's Windows expert, has given the final verdict to Windows after 3 months of using a Mac. And the verdict is: "Sayonara." Finnie is known to readers here for his many reviews of Vista as it progressed to release. Quoting: "If you give the Mac three months, as I did, you won't go back either. The hardest part is paying for it — everything after that gets easier and easier. Perhaps fittingly, it took me the full three-month trial period to pay off my expensive MacBook Pro. But the darn thing is worth every penny."

Comments

What about those of us who switch the other way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignored as always.

Re:MBP NOT WORTH EVERY PENNY

[Biff98]

Good rational, because you haven't had a problem with yours means there aren't any problems with any MBP's and I'm a liar. Great.

Re:"Windows" versus "A Mac"?

[QuantumG]

Or, ya know, you could use BOTH. Shocking.

Re:Old news

[Orthodork]

Yeah, let's continue on with this sad fantasy that seems to pervade the Linux world.

I'm sticking to Windows

[eebra82]

I understand that OSX is a solid alternative to Windows, but better stability and security is not going to make me switch. I want the same operating system my friends, parents and neighbours have. It may sound ignorant but it's not.

Although Macs are great (I've had a Macbook, btw), there are still too many issues that need to be solved first. For starters, I enjoy computer games every now and then. Also, despite the fact that Apple does great hardware, I'd like to see third party vendors create Mac hardware too. That's the great thing about PCs. There's endless stuff for and around your computer that is restricted to PC usage.

Dumped Dell too

[user_ecs]

For Christmas I bought a new computer preloaded with eComStation and OpneOffice.org. I have had too many problems with Dells and Gateways so I bought the system from CSS because I wanted good quality hardware (ie ECC memory, etc).

http://www.curtissystemssoftware.com/preloads.htm

eComStation, much more stable and secure than windows yet much friendlier than Linux

Macs ARE expensive

[DogDude]

But, of course, the least expensive PC is invariably a cheap piece of crap one step up from a calculator.

I run my business on $200 PC's that I buy off-lease as refurbs (right now, $200 gets you P4 2.x Ghz, 512 RAM, 40 Gig HD, 1 Gb ethernet). The cheapest PC you can buy today will do everything that most people need, and much more. Anyone care to point me in the direction where I can get a refurbished Mac for $200 that will run all modern applications quickly?

Exactly.

Re:Made such a change a long, long time ago

[DogDude]

For people who don't play computer games it shouldn't be a big deal to switch.

Don't forget those of us who run businesses (and yes, Slashdotters, there are businesses out there other than Best Buy and McDonald's). Apple/Linux aren't really options for businesses until you're a Fortune 500 company and can afford teams of programmers.

Re:I can do better than that - $169

[DogDude]

$200 got us business-grade workstations with a warranty that are our HIGH end machines. No need to shoe horn new software onto it. That's different than a used low-end Mac that may or may not run current software. Mac hardware, for what it can do, is many times more expensive than generic PC hardware.

Not in my experience.

[JourneyExpertApe]

I had to do a Mac port of an application I was working on about a year ago. I needed to edit a plain text file on the Mac, and the editor that came with it would only save files to formats like html, rtf, etc. I don't know how to use old-school editors like EMACS, so I searched apple.com for info on how to edit plain text on a Mac. The only thing I could find was a third party application sold through apple.com called "Plain Text Editor(R)" that cost $20!!! Now, there probably is at least one free plain text editor for the Mac, but I couldn't find it after about an hour of searching. In Windows, it's just Start>Programs>Accessories>Notepad. Even after you pay the ridiculously high price for a Mac, you still have to pay for things (if you can find them at all) that are completely free on a Windows or Linux machine. And then there are those ass-backwards and poorly documented resource bundles. And the fact that applications launched through the GUI have no current directory. Macs are fine if all you want to do is surf the web and listen to music, but for a developer, they're severely lacking. No thank you.

Re:Not in my experience.

[JourneyExpertApe]

Do me a favor. Open TextEdit. Type "I am a smartass". Try to save the file as "smartass.txt". Can't do it? So you see my point. Mac interfaces are supposed to be intuitive. This wasn't. This is just another example of Apple living in a computing vacuum, where they ignore the norms of Linux and Windows applications.