Windows.

It's a great operating system. It has the most application compatibility. It looks great. It rarely undergoes problems. It has good drivers. It doesn't require all-that-good hardware.

Why is it hated so?

"Because it's Windblows"

Lame.

It's a great OS. I am sick of hearing people complain about it.

It's just as great as OS X.

its not horrible

but it is nowhere near the level of OS X

i used windows from day 1, i was brought up on mircosoft

then when i got into my super awesome smart ass high school that 700 out of 28000 people that apply (actual stats) get into my parents said they would bye me a laptop of my choice

i chose the MBP when it first came out.

i was completely blown away by OS X- it stilll amazes me today

you're right, but you suck for bragging. (bronx science is pretty dope tho...don't get sidetracked and ull get into an ivy...a couple o my friends here in new haven went there. try rockefeller u for a summer program.) furthermore, i'd bet a bunch of the guys who mod kernels and whatnot on this site have PhDs

right, on topic: triple boot and you'll have the best of [three] worlds...paying for the same software 3 times over kinda sucks tho...

Windows is a decent OS, but it's not as as good as OS X. Multi-tasking on Mac is much better handled, and Flip3D is a p*ss poor attempt at copying Expose. Windows in general is extremely bloated, and a resource hog. OS X can be run on an old G3 machine, Vista requires relatively recently made computer to run well. The UI of OS X is much better streamlined, and Windows...being Windows, is a huge target for attacks.

Macs are great because Apple controls the hardware and software. No need to deal with driver installation or any sort of driver conflict. Also, software installation in OS X is as simple as drag and drop. Windows may have more compatible software, but do you really need it all? doubt it.

I have both Mac OS X Tiger and Windows Vista installed on my Mac, and I have never touched Vista unless I need to play an occasional game or two.

Also, getting in a prestigious high school is nothing to brag about. Brag when you get in Harvard, Stanford, Princeton or MIT.

I triple boot OS X, Linux and Windows XP x64 , and the latter is quite a good OS.
However I spend most of my time in OS X, followed by Linux.
It is Vista which sucks: every single person I know feels the same, including owners of computer shops.

Flip 3D wasn't an attempt at copying Expose, it was an upgraded Alt-Tab switcher and I've shown it's not as bloated/hog of a resource as some of you make it out to be so many times I won't bother to do it again.

For the record, I never made a comment about your opinion, only about things you try to state as a fact.


The bottom line is, Windows is nowhere as bad as people, especially on here, make it out to be but past versions have been severely lacking in many areas [and Vista lacks in a few areas too].

I never really liked XP at all and only upgraded because despite not liking it it did have many improvements and also because that's where everything went. I also used Linux/OSX every chance I could over XP.

Vista is.. well, I actually wanted to upgrade unlike XP and I find myself using Vista over OSX but I still find it hard to decide whether to boot into Vista or into Ubuntu 7.04 if I'm just doing general stuff which I can do on either, I like both heaps for different reasons.

Probably because they know jack-{censored} about how to use Vista. But instead of just admitting that they as supposedly porfessionals, don't know enough of Vista to actually sell/tell you, they simply tell ppl how bad it is. THAT is lame.

Frankly Vista (and XP as well) are not that bad at all. There are some fundamentall things wrong with Windows and it is targetted with the most amount of virusses, spyware and other {censored}. Not to mention to halfcooked made-in-china-crapp-hardware with even worse drivers (which are the manufacturors responsability!!!) that gets flooded on the PC-(read.: Windows-)market make things worse.

In that case a restriction to the supported hardware as Apple does, might indeed be a better case for stability and (relative) performance.

So in essence... yeah Windows suck because it is Windows and Apple doesn't suck (ATM) because it is (technically) better (for now). Don't get me wrong. Apple Inc. as a company sucks as big as Microsoft Corp. Both their respective CEO's are similar dictators and controll-freaks.

Cheers,

EPDM

windows is good just for games and nothing else ...
viruses,spywares,adwares,unsabillity ..

I can assure you, they are first class professionals.

I think that both operating systems have their strengths and weeknesses, although i do agree that windows is a good operating system, they both have their strengths and weaknesses, and please, no fanboyisms here.(not you ramm, just other people that ive noticed)

and its also because, as the leader it is scrutinized most i guess.

Windows can be a good system, but what happened is that Microsoft gave stupid people the keys to the new Corvette and they then wondered why on earth they kept crashing the car into adware, er trees, and spyware, er road signs, and just how the heck a virus, er cable, got on there that is screwing everything up.

Now Vista comes out and Microsoft (to its credit) made a usable OS that is so much like OS X in that you need the administrative password to do everything on the system. So stupid users are now complaining that the new Corvette won't run.

It really isn't Windows at all. It's stupid users.

Windows its not a bad Os it just suck when it comes to provide proffesional apps i mean Microsoft its a software company and they dont even make killer apps they just put paint , I explorer, .....all crap well they have Office at least but that doesnt even come with the OS.
On a more positive comment, i been in Windows since i was a child so im use to all the things you have to do to make it work the way i want . The way i see it a lot of people dont see what windows has to offer that would be mainly a plattform where you can put wathever you want to put in there , if you screw it up thats your problem not a Windows problem.

Windows is a great OS. Period. Application compatibility. Application availability. Stability. In all senses. Way more applications are written for Windows. Now...



Spyware, Adware, Viruses... If OS X was as popular & widely used as Windows, it would be targeted too, and malicious applications would be written for it too. It's not that security holes don't exist in OS X. There are as many of them as in Windows... It's just that no one has really taken advantage of any of them yet.

Stability... Just think about one thing... Windows as an operating system runs on a WIDE variety of hardware while Apple has restricted it's OS only to it's own hardware. Hence instability which may arise from unstable drivers for your hardware in Windows, obviously is totally rooted out in OS X, as there is only a specific set of hardware for which drivers are created, by Apple itself. If Microsoft were to start selling their operating system only for a specific range of their one hardware, you'd see how stable Windows would become too. Or in the same way, if Apple were to release their OS to general hardware, you'd see how many instability issues would arise due to buggy 3rd party drivers.

Windows isn't good only for games... Although most pro software is written for both platforms these days, there is a far greater choice in the Windows world.

OS X is definitely a great OS, but Windows isn't far behind.

I do not have an apple computer (so far, it will only arrive next week ) and i have used Windows at the least for the last 10 years. Before i had an amiga that used their fantastic os, and i can say that i do recognize that Windows is a very good operating system, with some great software. For me the big issue with it is that most of the times that you install an application it copies dll and ocx's to your system that are loaded everytime the system starts, and this makes the machine unworkable after 6 months. This is not true to all of you, maybe most of you only play some games and once in a while try an application, but i try 10+ applications per week, and trust me, every 6 months i make a reinstall of windows to keep my system stable.
I installed OS X in my Laptop and i was quite surprised the way the installations are done, however i still feel that there are some programs copying to much to my system folder. i am a newb in what comes to Mac and OS X, so maybe this is for sure the best OS ever, but this only applies to the use you make of it, for some people its ok, for other is useless, for others its great.

I still use windows everyday, and i can't say that i will ever be able to put it aside, but i will for sure use OS X more and more, and i trully hope that Microsoft releases a XP V2.0 and cuts the crap with this Vista, that for me its nothing more than another Windows Me, the true magic of an operating system is its ease of use, and for most of us common users, the easier the better.

My friend, I can assure you that I install almost as much or possibly even more applications than you do. And the kind of applications I install-reinstall are ones like Adobe CS3, Office 2007, Maya, 3DS Max etc. Basically huge applications. I haven't re-installed Windows XP on my work machine since last August which is almost a year, & I use this work PC of mine for quite a bit of performance oriented tasks like 3D Animation, Video Authoring etc.

It all depends on your skills of cleaning up your whole installation and of not installing crap-ware.

I used to run windows with all the apps siddarth uses, like 3ds and maya, they are huge apps, i also had about 10 different renderers installed including renderman and maxwell render, and my system only slowed down when i ued the ntfs FS. I'd still be using windows now, if i had a use for those 3d apps, but i dont as i have stopped 3d almost completely. Even though mac has equivalents to these, its just better on windows.

Thats not true at all mate. The market share statement has been disproved time and time again. Remember, OS9 did have few known viruses ...and its userbase was only a fraction of what OS X's userbase is back in the days. This was when Apple was going downhill in the mid 90's too. The reason why there isnt a true virus for OS X so far, is becuase of the way in which OS X is designed. UNIX, is far more secure, and has been researched time and time again, as it is one of the oldest known system run bases out there. The permissions hierarchy that is used in OS X is way to strict for any malicious code to execute and actually do damage to the system files, which is what a true "bad" virus does.

Now dont get me wrong, I'm not saying OS X is bulletproof , as that would be a false statement, but in reality, it is much, much more difficult to design a virii for OS X or any other UNIX based operating system than it is for Windows. Security holes do exist in every single operating system out there, be it OS X, Linux, Windows, Solaris, or any other BSD variant out there. These "vulnerabilities" are vastly different from the term "exploit" however. This is an important distinction that should be noted. Vulnerabilities represent a "what if" scenario, while "exploit" refers to a "crap, its happened" scenario, so to speak. Security holes constitute the "vulnerability" expression, and thus not the "exploit" case. The latter is much worse, obviously, and the former is what Apple is proactive about., thus preventing it from becoming an exploit over time.

Thanks for the great explanation EFI...

Conclusion #1: Windows is more vulnerable and thus more exploited, than OS X.

Solution: Switch Windows to a UNIX base. (Which indeed is gonna happen in Vienna )

Harumph.

I see more posts in here about how crappy Windows is than anything else.

I'm loving that picture Colonel.

love Half Life 2 mods on my Windows partition.

Windows vs OS X?

those who can do both, don't give a shit, do they?

i know i don't.

I swear it. The picture rocks. And since I have both too, I really don't give a {censored} either.

I thought that Vienna was going to be a 64 bit, NT based, Win FS based (next gen ntfs) OS with all applications sanboxed..
Windows recieves so much criticism, and it doesnt deserve most of it. Windows is a very solid OS and Vista is a worthy successor to XP. Microsoft is in a really tough spot now because a lot of their customers use legacy hardware and applications so they cant update Windows too much. Apple went smart and did what needed to be done. They went intel, thus losing all OS9 support but they made intel based OS X so great it didnt matter. An example of the spot Microsoft is currently in:
OS X Commuinity- Ah wow! Aqua is terrific and OS X comes with all of the applications I need!
Microsoft- Here look at Vista, it has a new awesome GUI and tons of cool new features!
Users with sh*t hardware- WTF MS?! My computer cant handle this RAM eating bullshit.
Sorry if it was hard to make any sense out of this post XD.

Hopefully Microsoft will add WinFS finally to Vienna (2009?). It has to be 64bit, since Leopard coming out this October is going to be completely 64bit, but with a 32bit cocoa layer, so you will be able to run 64bit and 32bit apps simultaneously side by side, with no speed reduction or compability issues. Another reason why Microsoft is really in a tough spot (and this might be the most major one) is the fact that they are having the fight of their life against Linux and the open source community on one hand, and fight Apple and OS X on the other hand ever than before. More and more average joes are being educated that Windows is not the only operating system out there, so ofcourse the biggest threat to Microsoft now is Google, Apple, and Linux....all three of which are in a position now more than ever to do multi billion dollar damages to Microsoft where its most important...the OS department.

i've never had problems with "exploits" or "viruses". windows 98SE through windows xp have worked great
for me.

it's just a matter of taste. none of us in here are foolish enough to allow windows basic limitations to limit
our use of it, nor are we limited by linux or os x.

written on OS X.

p.s. i think something called Windows ME was too much of a problem, and i spent that year on Slackware.

p.p.s. having a wee brain is a great thing.

I agree with everything you just said here EFI. Right now Microsoft is in the middle of three huge "debates" :
Sever- Which is more cost efficient Windows Server or the tons of Linux/Unix/Other alternatives?
Consumer OS- Is Windows really the best OS for home/home office users. Cant the Mac do everything Windows does?
OS for use in Business- Microsoft has always had the edge here, but newer Linux Distros with Open Office are becoming more and more of a threat to Windows.
From what I've read the Office team (or parts of it) is going to be in charge of Vienna. This would be a pretty good choice considering the office team always delivers excellent products and knows how to stay current. The Office team was smart enough to give 2007 open source formats. The Windows team could have done a lot more with Vista. I also think Microsoft should nix Steve Ballmer. In the Computer industry youve got tons of innovators right now: Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, etc etc. Ballmer isnt one of them. He makes Microsoft look foolish and unconcerned by "laughing" at the iPhone and saying his kids arent allowed to use google or iPods.

Exactly, well said mate. I personally like Gates better than Ballmer (you should see Pirates of Sillicon Valley, a free watch at Google Video , which was known to portray Ballmer's exact personality among a few other things when he and the entire Microsoft/Apple crew were young). See the thing I dont like about Microsoft (in which Apple, Google, and Linux are not followers of) is their shady business practices. One route is if Microsoft sees a developing company that acts as a genuine threat in the future to Microsoft (either with a competing product or otherwise)...Microsoft, rather than making better products that will therfore increase the competition, will simply purchase that company...therfore monopolizing the market to a dangerous level. Such examples include what is now FrontPage, WebTV, Hotmail, Direct3D, Internet Explorer, Visio, and recently Defender. When Quicken was doing very well in mid 90's....Microsoft, in a hostile move threatned to takeover the company, as it was competing with Microsoft's own Money software. The multi-billion dollar empire which started with the MS-DOS...was not even Microsoft's own creation to begin with. They licensed it from SCP (Seattle Computer Products).

They cannot keep doing this in the future, since more and more people (especially the more "informed/intelligent" tech bloggers out there) are coming to this realization of Microsoft's practises. What this means is hopefully Microsoft will finally realize that the world is realizing what they have done in the past...and will in turn make truly "one of a kind" product(s) in the future. I would personally love to see that imaginary day become a reality. I'm dead serious on that note too.

Unfortunately, most computer users (the ones that make a product a success or failure) are neither informed nor interested enough to care about who dominates the market or if products are designed to efficiently fulfill any real needs from a technical point of view as long as they're cheap and have many pretty colors.

Welcome to our big roller coaster of cultural regression.

hecker

ThndrBrd, I am having trouble understanding exactly what you just posted up....

I've seen Pirates of Silicon Valley it was kind of dumb.. Did Bill Gates and Chris whoever really race bulldozers and smash it into Pauls car? It portrayed Bill as this distant out of touch strategist and I dont think that was entirely the case. "I want it!" (Bill referring to Lisa/Macintosh) I wonder if he was really that much an immature brat about it? The whole thing with Steve Jobs and his kid was really bizarre but I guess thats true.. It didnt really explain the relationship between Apple and Microsoft that good either.. All of a sudden at the commercial unveiling theres Windows on the Japenese computers.. What about floating point basic for the Apple? Why wasnt that in the movie??

It's not any less of an operating system because it's Windows. It is, however, less of an OS because of viruses, malware, poor multi-tasking (especially when copying multiple items at the same time. . . and WTF is up with NOT checking free disk space prior to initiating a copy which will then just abort because you ran out of space?!?!?), poor organization (there are MANY unrelated panes with the same settings, etc), etc. . .

That said, Vista is a BIG improvement in many of these areas. But it is hampered by lack of driver and application support currently. Moreover, my 'hackintosh' runs MUCH better now than when I had Windows installed- it would eventually get so bloated and slow (because of the unprotected system folder, malware, etc) that I needed to do a complete re-install. And my Windows partition more than once went so awry that the system wouldn't even boot! Since I have erased Windows and boot only in OSX86, I've had NO SUCH issues or slowdowns! I do, however, keep a 'virtual partition' of Windows in Parallels for those rare instances when I need to run it. . .

JMHO

-phil A meanT

IMHO, is much harder (not impossible) to write viruses or malicious software in an Unix based OS. Were are the malicious software in Linux?



Linux can be installed on a variety of made-in-china PC's. And is stable. On my PC, I had only 3 major crashes in OSX (from 10.4.1 to 10.4.9), that's all deserved to my bad actions on it. In this time, I installed Windows XP 10 times. I mention, OSX is my primary OS.



Right, but neither too close

Again, if OS X has that magical 5%, there should be 5% of viruses out there for OS X. There were (and still are) tons upon tons of viruses for the Classic Mac OS (and I can find you an older list if you don't believe me), so this myth of "security through obscurity" is debunked. WHY isn't there this "severe" amount of viruses for OS X, given:

1. That OS X is supposedly all these horrible security holes in OS X

AND

2. During the Classic Mac OS time, there were hundreds upon hundreds of viruses out there.

I await your answer.

Windows & linux needs maturity. Windows doesn't with stand heavy load. It panics & comes back again. Very difficult for an administrator to figure out the reason to fix it.
Linux has lot of tools for one task. (some till buggy) One complete tool for one task will do good. Box crashes or hangs when load avg crosses 150%. I havn't seen AIX or HP-UX box crashing even if the load avg goes beyond 200%.. I have HP v2600 class server running for 8yrs.... no outage still - (With very heavy load). Very strange isn't it ... :-) for me too.. Sun Solairs I have seen boxes with 800days uptime... but not linux / windows. Linux is gud for an administrator ... windows gud for home users.

If that were true, a hackintosh should never be stable, which is definitely not the case.
Besides, Linux runs on even more hardware than Windows, and yet it is normally more stable.

Well... I'm convinced. OS X being UNIX based isn't fool-proof but it's fairly difficult to write malicious software for it as compared to Windows, since there are less vulnerabilities. But it's not impossible, it's just that not many hackers have really attempted it yet. OS X is far more secure than the Classic Mac OS.



Good point.

I've always worked with Windows, since I was a toddler, and the version I like the most so far, is still Win XP.
In a sense, I see it as some sort of sports car: if you can keep it under controll and now what not to do, it runs very smoothly. I don't have crashes, I don't have virusses. I do seem to get some spyware from time to time, but that's easily taken care of.
So to my oppinion, Win XP is better than Vista. I've always said that trying to work with Vista is like having a business conversation with a 13year old hyperactive kid.
And I find the general look of it all to be so bloody ugly >_>
But OS X had me enchanted from the first time I powered up my MBP and it continues to do so ^^
As things stand now, I will try to find a decent desktop Mac (mac mini is too weak/low powered), let it all work side by side, and never switch to Vista :-)

@XanthraX:
Acording to wikipedia there are a few, but not many viruses for Linux:
A few, but a lot less than Windows!

You've got to be kidding right ;-) ? Comparing Windows to Mac is like compairing a Chevy to a Mercedes. Sure they will both get you there but the journey sure isn't the same.

What exactly about the journey isn't the same? Does a Mercedes bend the laws of physics in some way? Is the scenery better in a mercedes? Is there less of a need of a pee break?

You Obviously dont own/drive a Mercedes

In the terms of the Windows= Chevy metaphor, yeah whats your point!
As far as Chevy= Chevy goes, the journey is better in a Mercedes.

How is it better? Are we just being arbitrary? I like x, therefore x is better?

I don't own an automobile and never have/will. I've ridden in many different sorts of automobile, and they're all basicly the same.

Now, one might argue that a car is better than say... a bus... even though that's debatable... And you might argue that a mercedes looks nicer or has more sex appeal than a geo metro. But as far as going from A to B, how are we determining relative quality of journey?

I guess I grew up with weird notions... when someone makes a blanket statement about something, I feel the need to find out what measuring stick they used.

EDIT: To stem off the argument I'm sure it weeding it's way through lesser heads... I am not arguing that a mercedes isn't different/better or that a mac isn't different/better by analogy. I'm asking why going from one place to another in a mercedes is different/better. I would think the person who made the argument, at the very least, would know.

Its the luxury, the ease of use (voice activated GPS), styling, sex-appeal, power (most are V6+'s and 200+hp), history, reputation, comfort, and stability.

And yes, I have driven a Mercedes E-class 07' (uncle's), as well as a Ford Focus 06', and Chevy Malibu 06' (friends cars)...and there definately is a difference in the ride...besides reaching from point A to B.

Your kidding right ;-)
Somethings you got to ask means I'd be wasting my time explaining.

Well, I contend that if you can't explain the difference in the "journey", there either isn't one, or you don't know what it is.

EFI: Thank you for your information, but it really doesn't answer my question. From what I understand, the journey is being defined in terms of abstract pleasure. Pleasure is subjective. It pleases me to use efficient transportation. It pleases you to use expensive and luxurious transportation. Which means there is no absolute difference between enjoyment.

The analogy has been upheld to prove "I like it better, therefore it is better".

I like Windows better than OS X, therefore Windows is better than OS X. Let's fight!

Although the vehicle analogy is so imperfect as to render it almost useless, here goes. . . From my (very brief) experiences with luxury vehicles:

They accelerate more smoothly and brake better, the engines are quieter, the ride is more cushioned, the steering is 'tighter' (in general they handle A LOT better), the interior is more comfortable (better climate controls, better sounding stereo system, more ergonomic layout, more comfortable (and more adaptable) seats), there is a definite sense of quality (the doors don't creak, the fans are quiet and don't blow right in your face), etc, ETC. . .

You can't honestly think that riding the bus/driving a VW bug/driving an old pickup truck/etc is comparable to driving a Porshe/Rolls Royce/Mercedes/etc????

But, this has nothing to do with computers. . . As far as OSX versus Windows, OSX handles multitasking WAY better (just try initiating more than one copy procedure on both machines and time the results), internal audio latency is WAY lower, OSX is more secure because of the protected system folder inherited from Unix, the interface is more consistent and logical (somewhat subjective, but notice how 'tabs' in Windows behave compared to Macs), it is more efficient at processing graphics/video/music, etc., etc. . .

Windows is not a bad OS, but (IMHO) OSX blows it away (at least for pro audio, pro video, and graphics). Now, as far as 3d gaming, Windows has the upper hand (DirectX is THE standard and Apple has yet to deliver anything comparable), but for most applications OSX is vastly superior.

Summarizing the car analogy: with a luxury car when you get from A to B (especially a long journey) you'll be a lot less tired. Consider that in Italy many cars don't even have air conditioning and that the weather is hot and humid for much of the year.