Comments on: Windows Vista vs OSX – Price comparison

By: PCTech

PCTech — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 05:35:44 +0000

nope, as a tech who frequently repairs PCs I have absolutely had it with microsoft and Vista which is a nasty OS. I currently work for a school district who in it’s wisdom decided to upgrade it’s servers to Vista from XP without checking the hardware properly. The servers crashed and we were forced to revert back to XP. The servers also were less than 1 year old.
VISTA demanded too much of the hardware to run properly even with what it was said to be compatible with… which turned out to be false.

Bottom line: after seeing the poor quality of Vista and the high quality of OS X 10.5 … I am making a formal recommendation to switch over to Apple. I am nothing short of impressed with their products, and for those people who argue about the initial cost of the OS .. let me put it to you this way… $149 non student edition/$99 CDN Student OS X 10.5 has FAR FAR more capability out of the box than VISTA has at current.

We wasted money on faulty PC hardware every year when we could have gone mac and had few hardware repair costs, not to mention
the save in AntiVirus software and a few other areas… all this money could have been used more cost effectively. :(

Very sad indeed!

By: Mike2

Mike2 — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 01:17:38 +0000

@ Jason

“Not only that, but the 1 button mouse made playing with the standard mouse / keyboard config virtually impossible.”

Dude – so spend 10 bucks on a two button USB mouse – yes – even then Macs accepted two button mice… And yes – I am posting this from a Windows machine – a beast laptop (yes laptop) with 3.4 (yes – three point four – yes in a laptop) Ghz pentium 4 processor and a 256 SDRAM nVidia gfx card and a gig of memory. It runs games like an x-box – and can run about a gazillion programs including photoshop, illustrator and flash simultaneously without even slowing down. Why am I telling you all this… – well frankly I am about to buy a mac – I have to for business reasons – as a web developer/designer I need to be able to develop applications that work on both – and to be honest, I will probably end up installing windows XP on the mac and using it if an intel core 2 duo with 128 gfx card, and two gigs of memory will handle the above programs in a similar fashion. I will not be upgrading to Vista any time in the near future because I have tested it and it just isn’t that great. There are a few neat navigational features that were improved – start menu, folder to folder navigation – but IE7 – what a joke – where did they put the refresh button…oh lets remove it by default? Good thing I am a keyboard shortcut guy. I’m ready to spend 150 bucks every couple of years (as I understand it you get two upgrades per purchase? – correct me if I’m wrong but I read that somewhere earlier today) Vista is playing catch up w/ Mac OSX and even with Linux in some areas… sad really. And all the different versions – what a crock – I develop applications myself and yea – that’s how developers can make money – build an application that you can strip/disable features on and then charge the client/customer to get those features – so yes – Vista Ultimate (aka Vista Useful) is a rip-off and Home Edition isn’t worth wasting your money on. In XP – the start menu actually has a registry item where a delay is set for how long it takes to appear after you click the start button…. You can change it to be much quicker. I wonder how many things they did in Vista that are similar in nature. In XP home, networking was painful to say the least – professional was much easier to configure – how many things like that did they do with Vista? Your average home business person won’t need things that would come w/ Media Center so let’s split them apart – but wait – now I need to buy a whole new computer (or dual boot) to have some nifty media features… – with a mac it’s all included regardless. I don’t think there is much of a comparison there folks…. just a slaughter-fest against Windows….

By: Joshua

Joshua — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 06:48:36 +0000

I would have to agree with the mac. I am presently deciding between the mac and pc for my laptop. As of now im swaing towards the mac. Easier, and can also run Vista. If you really want to spend that much money on it. Over looking both systems patterns seem to start coming out. Apple are leading the technology bringing improved software out, every 1 – 2 years. Every 5 years microsoft is starting to play catch up. Athough I have not made my final choice yet. PC may still be best for running auto-cad. However its still possible to run on the mac using xp or vista. However I found that the Mac system is actually cheaper than the pc market. Apple just make the high quility stuff at a low price. Where PC have a range from poor to high quility.
Oh and PC much better for gaming. But what kind of nerd sits down and plays games all day. GET A JOB, PLAY REAL SPORT. Damm come on gaming is not cool. If you are really that nerdy, get a life, not another computer.

By: Windows Vista vs Mac OS X

Windows Vista vs Mac OS X — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 15:15:36 +0000

I’m installing Vista presently onto my P4 2.6GHz machine alongside XP. I can’t wait to see what Redmond has been up to, it sure had taken a while. In the meantime, it looks as if Apple will be poised to release 10.5 before this actually sees daylight (in any mass-adoption sense). The next iteration of OS X looks to have some amazing things built in. Microsoft just keeps trying to catch up, in my opinion.

By: Davor Prcovich

Davor Prcovich — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 18:54:59 +0000

Hi, first I have to say that your blog is really nice and informative. As for the Vista, I think it will just drag the users away from it. First due to a high price tag and second would be that Vista is quiet demanding for what it offers ( which is nothing). Many people would consider switch to mac because OS X is a very stable and Intel macs can rub both Mac OS X and Windows XP. Keep up the good work man…

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 19:02:47 +0000

I have been working on and fixing pc’s for over 15 years now and no matter how often I have to fix one, I’d still use a pc over a mac. “Why?” you might ask, because a mac will never hold a candle to a pc when it comes to gaming. Macs have only saturated 10% of the computer market. Which, logically, would mean that they would have 10% of software titles available to them. I remember when Halo came out for PC, able to run on a 733MHz system and 128mb memory. Two years later it came out for Mac, requiring a CPU speed of at least 1GHz and 256mb memory. Not only that, but the 1 button mouse made playing with the standard mouse / keyboard config virtually impossible.
I was on the beta team for Vista and I must say, they DO need a LOT of work. Running on a 3.2GHz 2GB 4200 DDR, 250GB sata drive with a 512mb 256bit gfx card, it lagged. Much like when XP first came out, we waited a good year or two before upgrading from 2000. Most IT techs will probably do the same and wait until Gates decides to correct the majority of the issues.

“And as requested its filled with bugs that will force users to upgrade for years” – Tomorrow Never Dies

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 17:22:38 +0000

You cannot compare Vista Ultimate and OS X, they are two different beings, one thing being is that Ultimate has alot of stuff that OS X doesnt even bundle, like MCE, ready boost,bit locker etc.

The only version of Vista that is comparable to OSX is Premium and even that has MCE which OS X doesnt have an equivelent too.

And please we all know that ever since OS X has come out every year or so you have to pay for an upgrade to it. So if over a 5 year span you spend 500 dollars on an OS for the MAC, what exact cost savings is there over Vista Ultimate which has free update over its entire lifespan?

MAC’s, for people who can’t get over themselves.

By: Tina

Tina — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 19:33:40 +0000

I’m also surprised that the lack of support for prior hardware hasn’t been addressed. We have an old iMac and a fairly old pc running windows XP. I’m looking for a new computer and am dying to know if my peripherals I have now on my pc will be compatible with VISTA if I upgrade. When we looked at upgrading to a new iMac, we discovered that we needed to purchase a new scanner and printer because our old ones are not OS X compatible. Well, now I’ve recently purchased a printer/scanner for the pc. Will it be compatible with VISTA should we decide to go that route? I’m not looking to spend the money on upgrading an entire new system – I just want something that is faster, has a lot more memory and will make my life easier, not more stressed!

By: Derek#2

Derek#2 — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 18:51:16 +0000

I’m surprised to see that barely anyone touched on backwards compatibility of existing software. Esp since other developers were making comments here. Essentially what we are saying is that Windows XP while different than Windows 95, generally has to maintain the quirks of the operating system down to MSDOS. M$ maintains a developer group, whose sole job, is to create mimicked bugs of the operating system, through the compatibility layer. Sure this can be a royal pain the ass sometimes, but rarely has compatibility been broken with Windows as it has been with MacOS in general.

By: seano

seano — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 12:59:12 +0000

Macs are good for editing movies, but only because there a simple fast system.

As someone who plays games, I like the windows program and the vista is a good gaming os.

I also will say I like the feel of windows more because The format seems just better. Also having a mac is like telling people I’m computer eliterate.