[...]provided free of charge to patients[...]…

[...]heatlhy skin shows during every day activity[...]…

[...]most people don’t think of the iPad as an eBook reading device[...]…

A better analogy would be to call the PC a Swiss Army Knife and the Mac a very well built and reliable screwdriver: very good for one or two things and easy to use, but nowhere near as versatile or useful.

I’ve used both, seen both hang, and both crash, but the freedom afforded by Windows on a PC as compared to the restrictions of Apple allows far more choice and customisation. It also enables me to find the best tool for the job – meaning that any work is done cheaper, better and more efficiently – leaving more time for leisure and a bit of gaming.

As for iPhone (in my opinion), that did to the messed up, incompatible and awkward mobile phone market place what Microsoft did to the computer market many many years ago. However, it won’t be top dog there for too long. Apple is too restrictive and stifling. It will however set the baseline standard for the competition to improve upon – just as Windows did way-back-when…  only difference being that no competitor actually succeeded against Windows.

[...]blood glucose levels are key to keeping a healthy body[...]…

I went through 5 imacs in the last month. Yes they are well built. But how about the components they use?

1st imac. sent with the screen chipped from the power cord coming loose and banging against the screen.

2nd. Yellow screen of death. The screen was yellow on the right hand side.

3rd. Had a large black blob in the middle of the screen. Called LCD leak from the apple genius?

4th. the screen has piece of lint or something stuck behind the glass on the lower right hand corner. Has more than 22 stuck or dead pixels. 22!

As far as OSX goes it is really great, but is it better or easier to use than W7? No. I would call it a wash between the two now.

W7 is more compatable and you have more freedom to do as you with with your software.

Example I don't want to use iphoto for my pics and prefer picasa. I fire up picasa on the mac and everything is fine, until I try to get my iphoto libary directly off the iphone. The iphone does not show up as a drive or cannot access the iphoto folder within the iphone itself.

But it shows up in W7. and picasa can get the photos off the iphone like it's a camera. No problem.

I really like the rhapsody app on W7 and it is not avail on OSX.

No TV tuner sucks, they want you to drink the itunes cool aid and buy only from them. No thanks.

These are first hand experiences. I don't hate OSX and if they did what I needed them too, the imac would stay, but they are using IPS panels, that are faulty. LG is not the best manufacturer.

As far as a replacement the Lenovo A700 specs are looking to outpace the imacs. What doesn't it have? And Lenovo quality even surpasses Apples.

i certainly believe if one has the time and patience and ability to select a quality windows box and maintain it, they can be much cheaper and certainly fine computers. but 90% of the population are not interested in this. and the time that macs last with out “bit rot” they're cheaper than an average consumer would spend on computers in 5 to 6 years anyway.

i think my experience speaks for itself =]

i certainly believe if one has the time and patience and ability to select a quality windows box and maintain it, they can be much cheaper and certainly fine computers. but 90% of the population are not interested in this. and the time that macs last with out “bit rot” they're cheaper than an average consumer would spend on computers in 5 to 6 years anyway.

i think my experience speaks for itself =]

MSI DKA790GX Platinum MB, AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb OC'd at 3.48 GHZ, 8 GB OCZ HPC Reaper DDR2 1066 ram, 1 Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB HDD + 2 Maxtor 300GB HDDs in a RAID 0 = 1.6 TB of hard storage, 2 optical drives, MSI Radeon HD 3850 OC Edition, 750w PC Power & Cooling PS. OS: Windows 7.

Cost to build= Approximately $800

Savings over comparable 8 core Mac Pro= $2400

Problems so far= 0

Full satisfaction at a quarter of the cost= Priceless

Nuff said.

Oh, and I built it back in February.

“Once again, just like that Higgins dickwad, you have no real argument of your own to back up the accusation that my argument “sucks”"

My argument that your argument ‘sucks’ in response to your ‘soulless’ argument is CLEARLY backed up by the lines that FOLLOW this ‘sucks’ by stating that you should not make uninformed comments that have no creditability what-so-ever.
Perhaps you didn’t read past ‘sucks’?
I don’t know but its an absolute failure anyway.

After ignoring my suggestion that you go away and find out what it is you are actually talking about, you back up your argument with your favorite list of arguments?
What is that?
Unrelated is what that is.
How does that convince me that your comments are informed?
It doesn’t.
For example – ‘”There’s only one mouse button” – yeah buddy. 1997 called, they want their argument back.’
I did not use or suggest this argument (or any of the others for that matter).
Therefore this does not apply to me?
Ok.
So who the hell were you talking to then.
Yourself?
‘First sign of craziness dude’

I will now state what my next argument is doing so as you do not get confused.
I am now going to tackle your ‘social life’ argument, and at the same time fortify my argument that Macs are un-productive.
Firstly – I did not suggest that games were the reason I use windows 7.
I use it because I GET MY WORK DONE ON IT.
WORK.
Thats right ‘work’.
Clearly you do not do any work that requires decent usage of your computer, because if you did, you would realize that windows 7 is the most efficient operating system in terms of speed, stability, and productivity. Even from it’s early builds.
‘Get a life. And a job. And a girlfriend. Mac users have better, important things to do with computers and spend the rest of their time having a social life.’
Clearly all you are concerned about is your self/social importance, your ego, and your public image.
Get it sorted man.
Stop being a snotty ‘full of himself’ arsehole – and go find out what it is you are actually talking about.
Until then save your crappy impulse arguments for someone else.

Your grammar and writing sucks ass too.

Here’s my favorite dickhead “PC’s are better” arguments:

1) “You can’t play games on a Mac” who the hell cares, only losers who live in their mom’s basement waste time playing games. Get a life. And a job. And a girlfriend. Mac users have better, important things to do with computers and spend the rest of their time having a social life.

2) “You can’t customize or build a Mac” Similar to the games argument…normal people with lives don’t give a shit about this, they just want a machine that does what it’s supposed to. I have yet to hear any Mac user complain about anything with their machine except the price.

3) “PC’s have 95% of the market share, no one uses a Mac” – True. No One. Except people who know better Yes I agree that it’s also why we don’t get viruses, but I personally like it that way. I love having high enough standards to the point where I won’t put up with a 2nd rate OS like Windows which you have to constantly defend against virus and spyware attacks.

4) “Macs are all about looks and that’s it”. Yes, that’s the SOLE reason they’re growing in popularity every day. I mean, why wouldn’t people spend more to get something just for the looks? Everyone I’ve ever heard of who has a Mac loves it for everything it does…performance, looks, support, compatibility.

5) “PC’s are cheaper” – that doesn’t make them better. McDonalds is cheaper than other burger places. Wal-Mart is cheaper than most places. Fords are cheaper than BMW’s. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. It always comes down to that.

and my favorite classic argument…

6) “There’s only one mouse button” – yeah buddy. 1997 called, they want their argument back.

Arguing about the relative merits of one system over the other is one thing. Reading a bunch of comments that boil down to “windoze rulz, macs are for fags” gets tiresome, especially when you know that the pimple-faced 15 year olds who left those comments have never used a Mac.

I would agree that OS X is not the server platform that it is the desktop. However, I would recommend FreeBSD, which makes a better server than linux any day of the week, but that's another argument.

I have Snow Leopard and 7 installed. I would recommend anyone do the same if they're thinking about comparing. A lot of people on here seem to be comparing Snow Leopard to XP or comparing Windows 7 to Cheetah, just because you have XP at work, or you tried OS X when it first came out and you disliked it back then. You need to compare apples to apples, and give both a good chance.

My main concern in a good computer is being able to play all the good games at full speed. The only reason I ever upgrade my computer is to improve gaming performance. Windows (XP or better) simply runs all my games faster than OS X. This is about ten fold with my 8800GT because the OS X drivers for it are horrible. As far as gaming, I can say without a doubt and proclaim from the highest mountain, Windows has OS X beat there. I pay massive amounts of money for a speedy gaming machine, why would I then reduce gaming speed by choosing the wrong OS? Even if I simply loved everything else more about OS X (which I can't say I do), I would still have to boot into Windows to play games.

The obviousness of superior gaming in Windows makes me very confused over Michael Lankton above comment. He pays $1000 a year for gaming, but uses OS X!?!? Either he still only plays old DOS games, or he's missing out on a few hundred dollars worth of frames per second. Maybe he hasn't tried Windows on his rig; just at work?

Without taking gaming into account, just regular user stuff, it's pretty much a tie for me. With OS X, everything just works fairly seamless (as long as you buy nearly all apple). With Windows, there are more choices, so you will probably pay less for better hardware, but you may have to tinker with things and download more post install applications.

Lastly I'd like to mention that for networking there is also an obvious choice: neither OS X or Windows, but Linux (pick a distribution). I'm not a big fan of Windows Server, and using OS X as a server just seems like a waste of a license cost. Open source software is probably the way to go when it comes to sever security.

When Apple bought out NeXT Computer and based their new operating system on OPENSTEP I had one choice: switch to something else or buy a Mac. Within a year of the release of OS X I bought my first Power Mac. I am now on my third, and I would never own a PC again. This from a guy who always built his own boxes, and always threw $1000 or so into the gaming box every year to keep it bleeding edge.

So I was hesitant at first. One, I was very much in love with the NeXT interface and I resented that my beloved os had gotten the Mac OS makeover. Two, I had never bought into the whole Apple thing, and I was worried where they were going to take the system I loved so much.

After eight years using a Mac none of my worries have been realized. I am blown away at the quality of the components and smart design that first Power Macs and now Mac Pros implement. You would have to spend as much money on a PC as you would a Mac Pro to build one using components that would give you similar quality, so the whole paying more for the brand thing is a myth. Apple's towers are about as bleeding edge as it gets. Think about it, when Power Macs went to a dual processor configuration as standard, you still had to build your own dual processor PC. No one was selling one. I have an 8 core Mac Pro right now. Is anyone in the PC world offering an 8 core system or do you have to build your own?

Like PC users I used to feel that the closed nature of Apple hardware was a real handicap. It didn't take me long to see that it's one of Apple's greatest strengths. The reason Mac OS works is that they know exactly what they're writing for. The system is far more stable. When an app goes rogue on me at work where I have to endure Windows, it often drags the whole system to its knees, forcing me to pull up task manager, which takes forever to open because Windows is having a seizure, and kill the process. I do this at least half a dozen times a day. On my Mac every now and then an app will become unresponsive, and this is almost always a web browser from some site that made it freak out. Not very often, but it does happen. It does not affect my os at all. It kind of takes you a minute to figure out that the app has died, because your desktop experience hasn't been affected. Closing the app is much easier than on Windows. I don't have to hit ctrl-alt-del and wait for task manager, I simply select force quit from the app's dock icon. Takes about half a second.

As for the GUI, Windows only started to resemble something like a modern os with Vista. The Windows GUI gets the job done, but there is nothing inspired about it. Nothing that gets me excited about using it. While I still probably prefer the old NeXT interface to OS X, I do appreciate the clean, elegant OS X interface. It facilitates my job on the computer, and stays out of my way when I don't need it.

Also, as someone who has been a dyed in the wool “unix guy” for the last 15 years, I really appreciate that at any time I can drop to a shell terminal and switch from an OS X perspective to a familiar unix environment. I also appreciate that using a Mac I am not just limited to OS X native apps, but everything from the unix world, both command line and X windows. The ability to seamlessly run X apps on my desktop alongside OS X native apps is huge.

Add the ability to run Windows apps, and by this I mean old school games that are near and dear to my heart because there is no instance where I would use a Windows app on a Mac, except maybe Access, and I have a system that offers me pretty much everything. OS X has a huge library of commercial apps, shareware and freeware. Everything I would use on any flavor of unix is there. I can run classic DOS and Windows games, and it all just works. I like that flexibility, but it isn't the big draw. The draw is that for most things I do, I find that OS X generally offers a better way to skin a cat than I would find in the Windows world.

Lastly, I just find Windows to be a third rate operating system in general. It isn't just the GUI that is mediocre, it's the whole ball of wax. I wouldn't trust a Windows server to serve my family photos on a home network, much less as a database or web server. Any of the unix variants are better suited to this, offer better resource management, more robust security and are less arcane to administer. I say this as someone who has been administering unix systems since 1994, and I also have an MCSA so while I make no claim of being a Windows admin guru, I know the system.

My two cents. You don't have to agree. I wholly support your decision to think Windows 7 is all that and a bag of chips. What does become annoying is reading some of these Windows fanboy comments, and knowing that the commenter has never used anything but Windows. I am not going to sit here and proclaim that OS X destroys Windows and you're an idiot if you disagree. If you ask me then I will evangelize my platform, because I do love it, but I am not going to just spout off about it. I am not insecure in my choice of platform. I just wish that people would display a little better behavior in these discussions, because so much of the wild eyed anti-anything Windows stuff I see in these comments obviously comes from users that have no clue about anything but Windows, and you can't objectively talk about something's superiority if you've never used the competition.

When all is said and done, it all comes down to the fact that you’re just jealous because you can’t afford true quality and you’re taking it out on everyone with this cry baby article.

And you’d think someone old enough to be married with kids would know how to proper grammar, spelling and punctuation. And FYI, no one important uses “pwn” anymore.

So far no Unix variants really achieve this. Hard to deny that Unix (as a whole) is still an important OS and used heavily everywhere. mac OSX UI is not just beautiful, it is intuitive and clean – just compare the Control panel in Windows and the System Preference in OSX. In many ways, Apple is more innovative.

Did I mention that the foundation of Mac OS X is open source (as a project called Darwin) ? M$ is now trying to open source a part of Windows SOes but limited to academic only.

Open source means that the security experts can study the secure holes and warn Apple (or even submit the patch to Darwin project, Apple engineers will review and merge into their Mac OSX source tree) – just the same as Linux. Though there are still a large portion on top of this foundation is closed-source, most security problems are related to the kernel and low-level stuff.

Liquidsuns mentioned what exactly I felt when I met mac. It is not the question of “have” or “haven’t”, expensive or cheap. It is all about the design – both the hardware and software – and how they are put together. I cannot tell you how much it worth but I am willing to pay this “premium”.

Partly because I appreciate Apple’s attention to details (It never been their focus to just buy cheap computers). From their design of the power supply plug to the unibody of the new macbooks, you will see what I mean.

In addition, Apple also tries to make the products green by using aluminum and glass. You know, Al Gore is a member of Apple’s board of directors.

And with this “premium” I paid, I get iLife mentioned by liquidsuns. I don’t bother to try the so-called free trials or limited / free editions when I get a full-fledged suite (and an excellent one) along my mac. As iLife is from Apple, the applications just work seamlessly together.

Regarding the stability, there are few reasons for consideration:

1. Unix is stable. Mac OSX is built on top of BSD. So it is stable
2. Mac OSX comes from NeXTSTEP, which comes from BSD in 80′s. There is a very long history of development before it comes to the current form.
3. Apple provides only a handful of models. Compatibility is much easier in mac platform. Anyone must admit that support a variety of h/w is an extreme difficult task. Many PC problems was due to poor written drivers and are not flaw of Windows OS (but they do affect Windows users, daily and everywhere)

BTW, I love my Shuttle PC – Their design is excellent – Anyone feels their PCs look dummy and wants an affordable aluminum case should buy Shuttle products. Their barebone PCs look just shiny.

And I like Windows 7 as well – I just upgraded my Shuttle PC (bought in 2004) to run Windows 7 RC and it runs much better the Vista box I used in my office.

Conclusion:

There are people out there like iMatt, liquidsuns, heinzhruno and me etc. willing to pay “extra” to get what we value and care. To me, Apple is just like Bang & Olufsen in AV.

Some people may think their BeoSound 9000 (http://www.bang-olufsen.com/beosound9000) expensive and waste of space and prefect other jukeboxes. But I think their design is just great (though I am not a Hi-Fi fan and I don’t own their products)

It is safe to say, Apple targets on a niche market when it comes to computer business. But I definitely look forward to see it becoming mainstream. Anyway, don’t ignore this 4th vendor in US (right just behind Dell, HP and Acer)

Regarding the market share, check this:

http://www.macrumors.com/2009/10/14/apple-continues-to-demonstrate-sales-growth-in-third-quarter-2009/

So far no Unix variants really achieve this. Hard to deny that Unix (as a whole) is still an important OS and used heavily everywhere. mac OSX UI is not just beautiful, it is intuitive and clean – just compare the Control panel in Windows and the System Preference in OSX. In many ways, Apple is more innovative.

Did I mention that the foundation of Mac OS X is open source (as a project called Darwin) ? M$ is now trying to open source a part of Windows SOes but limited to academic only.

Open source means that the security experts can study the secure holes and warn Apple (or even submit the patch to Darwin project, Apple engineers will review and merge into their Mac OSX source tree) – just the same as Linux. Though there are still a large portion on top of this foundation is closed-source, most security problems are related to the kernel and low-level stuff.

Liquidsuns mentioned what exactly I felt when I met mac. It is not the question of “have” or “haven’t”, expensive or cheap. It is all about the design – both the hardware and software – and how they are put together. I cannot tell you how much it worth but I am willing to pay this “premium”.

Partly because I appreciate Apple’s attention to details (It never been their focus to just buy cheap computers). From their design of the power supply plug to the unibody of the new macbooks, you will see what I mean.

In addition, Apple also tries to make the products green by using aluminum and glass. You know, Al Gore is a member of Apple’s board of directors.

And with this “premium” I paid, I get iLife mentioned by liquidsuns. I don’t bother to try the so-called free trials or limited / free editions when I get a full-fledged suite (and an excellent one) along my mac. As iLife is from Apple, the applications just work seamlessly together.

Regarding the stability, there are few reasons for consideration:

1. Unix is stable. Mac OSX is built on top of BSD. So it is stable
2. Mac OSX comes from NeXTSTEP, which comes from BSD in 80′s. There is a very long history of development before it comes to the current form.
3. Apple provides only a handful of models. Compatibility is much easier in mac platform. Anyone must admit that support a variety of h/w is an extreme difficult task. Many PC problems was due to poor written drivers and are not flaw of Windows OS (but they do affect Windows users, daily and everywhere)

BTW, I love my Shuttle PC – Their design is excellent – Anyone feels their PCs look dummy and wants an affordable aluminum case should buy Shuttle products. Their barebone PCs look just shiny.

And I like Windows 7 as well – I just upgraded my Shuttle PC (bought in 2004) to run Windows 7 RC and it runs much better the Vista box I used in my office.

Conclusion:

There are people out there like iMatt, liquidsuns, heinzhruno and me etc. willing to pay “extra” to get what we value and care. To me, Apple is just like Bang & Olufsen in AV.

Some people may think their BeoSound 9000 (http://www.bang-olufsen.com/beosound9000) expensive and waste of space and prefect other jukeboxes. But I think their design is just great (though I am not a Hi-Fi fan and I don’t own their products)

It is safe to say, Apple targets on a niche market when it comes to computer business. But I definitely look forward to see it becoming mainstream. Anyway, don’t ignore this 4th vendor in US (right just behind Dell, HP and Acer)

Regarding the market share, check this:

http://www.macrumors.com/2009/10/14/apple-continues-to-demonstrate-sales-growth-in-third-quarter-2009/

It's like saying that Microsoft is synonymous with 'PC'. Microsoft doesn't make hardware (besides peripherals) and there are other OSes that can run on the platform.

What needs to be compared is components:

Apple OSX vs. Windows
Apple Macintosh vs. DELL/ALIENWARE/HP/TOSHIBA
Mac platform (PPC, i.e. RISC/ARM) vs. PC (x86, i.e. Intel 8086) – which no longer matters as Mac has moved to x86 architecture.

Speaking of brainwashing, how about those ‘laptop hunters’ ads?? That Lauren bimbo would get laughed out of any film school or studio saying she uses a PC to make movies. No one important uses a PC for anything media-related.

BUT here you can find that NSS Labs conducted a study that inform us that IE8 is safer than Safari V.3, etc.–> http://www.findmysoft.com/news/Internet-Explorer-Hacked-Flaw-Acknowledged-NSS-Says-IE8-Safer-than-Firefox-Safari/
“Please note that the study was conducted on IE8 RC1, IE7, Firefox 3.0.7, Opera 9.64 and Safari v3.”

Gabriel Ortiz
“The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.”

BUT here you can find that NSS Labs conducted a study that inform us that IE8 is safer than Safari V.3, etc.–> http://www.findmysoft.com/news/Internet-Explorer-Hacked-Flaw-Acknowledged-NSS-Says-IE8-Safer-than-Firefox-Safari/
“Please note that the study was conducted on IE8 RC1, IE7, Firefox 3.0.7, Opera 9.64 and Safari v3.”

Gabriel Ortiz
“The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.”

Taken straight from /etc/newsyslog.conf on my Snow Leopard Mac Pro:

# configuration file for newsyslog
# $FreeBSD: /repoman/r/ncvs/src/etc/newsyslog.conf,v 1.50 2005/03/02 00:40:55 brooks Exp $

dont buy those brands? which brands? people mostly buy dells, hps, acer and “those brands” do you mean their better elite models? while configuring one of those to the max through the manufacturer can get expensive, a smart consumer can get the upgrade parts from elsewhere and still save money by buying the base configuration. the base mac is always more than a windows or linux variant. if the consumer is to lazy to learn it themselves than thats their problem.

to answer your antivirus questions

nothing
still nothing
none

there are plenty of free antivirus solutions that dont nag, do a great job and have a small footprint. this is a non issue

who knows, the responsibility lies on them, viruses aren't new and we are well into the computer age for the common man.

you've never gotten a virus because practically no one uses linux. virus writers dont want to waste their time writing viruses that are only going to hurt 10 people. ok im exaggerating but you get the idea. it wont be long before mac gets more viruses, linux will probably be safe for many, many years but then again, linux is way to much work for the common user to figure out

“Oh, but dell, and others also build high quality PCs”
Yes, they do. BUT, most of the people (or not all, at least) don't buy those brands. You know why? Cause they cost about the same, if not more, than a similar Mac.
I don't have a Mac, because i can't afford it. I've worked with some, they WORK. Longer battery, easier to use, intelligent design (software and hardware), quality (software and hardware), no viruses, etc

“But i've never had a virus since i installed an anti-virus 8 years ago”
I give you that. But, let me ask you this:
– How much did it cost you?
– How much does it still costs you?
– How much performance does it costs to your system?
– What's the percentage of PC users that knows how to protect their PCs as well as you do?

And now let me tell you this:
I've never installed an anti-virus in my Linux system (which is the base for Mac OS) and have never gotten a virus. How about that?

And Microsoft’s biggest flaw – http://is.gd/4pvL4

And Microsoft’s biggest flaw – http://is.gd/4pvL4

I have been using Windows for nearly 12 years and Mac for past 2 Years. I am not biased towards any one of them…but i am biased towards computing (the process and the experience).

I won’t say that Apple hardware is the best, but it sure is one of the best (in terms of maintaining a balance b/w quality and ergonomics) if not THE best, as compared to other manufacturers. There is always a catch with the others (including Alienware/Dell)…something is always missing with each one of them.

As far as the OS goes…I would go with Windows when it comes to finding solutions for the common man. Windows comes integrated with many tools that are needed by a regular/advanced home user (Picture Editing, File Meta-tag editor, Customizations etc etc)
However after using the Mac, I would recommend it to a power user. By power user i mean a user who is aware of and able to handle the numerous powerful Mac/Unix Tools (on the command line and with a GUI). It has made life really easy for me. Yes i am also using the PowerShell but sometimes streams are better than objects

As for viruses/worms I agree with “Sean Higgins”.

While both apple and Microsoft come up with great innovation. On the OS front I am a bit inclined towards OS X (in just 2 years). I mostly use mac now, booting Windows only for Windows Programming and Gaming.

89% use Windows 5% use Mac 1% use Linux. My personal views are that:
Of the 5% who use Mac, 2.5% don’t know how to use it…only using it for show-off…the other 2.5% have specific needs and cant do without it.
The Windows market share is for the common man. People who need to do everything at some point of time and want to entertain themselves (ref: Games & Multimedia)
The Linux share is for people who cant afford the Mac, have too much time to think about open sources and licenses (even when all they want is to enjoy an MP3) and a are eventually Stall-ed-Man

I guess every product has its own pros and cons. So its up-to an individual to decide what suits his/her needs. To find the best for you. Try doing this:
1: Make a checklist of things you want to do on your PC regularly
2: Decide the maximum you can spend
3: Buy the product that is closest to your financial limit and has most ticks on your checklist. You would adore that product!

PS: Microsoft disappointed me when i saw Windows 7 Calculator had the near exact looks of the OS X calculator.

I have been using Windows for nearly 12 years and Mac for past 2 Years. I am not biased towards any one of them…but i am biased towards computing (the process and the experience).

I won’t say that Apple hardware is the best, but it sure is one of the best (in terms of maintaining a balance b/w quality and ergonomics) if not THE best, as compared to other manufacturers. There is always a catch with the others (including Alienware/Dell)…something is always missing with each one of them.

As far as the OS goes…I would go with Windows when it comes to finding solutions for the common man. Windows comes integrated with many tools that are needed by a regular/advanced home user (Picture Editing, File Meta-tag editor, Customizations etc etc)
However after using the Mac, I would recommend it to a power user. By power user i mean a user who is aware of and able to handle the numerous powerful Mac/Unix Tools (on the command line and with a GUI). It has made life really easy for me. Yes i am also using the PowerShell but sometimes streams are better than objects

As for viruses/worms I agree with “Sean Higgins”.

While both apple and Microsoft come up with great innovation. On the OS front I am a bit inclined towards OS X (in just 2 years). I mostly use mac now, booting Windows only for Windows Programming and Gaming.

89% use Windows 5% use Mac 1% use Linux. My personal views are that:
Of the 5% who use Mac, 2.5% don’t know how to use it…only using it for show-off…the other 2.5% have specific needs and cant do without it.
The Windows market share is for the common man. People who need to do everything at some point of time and want to entertain themselves (ref: Games & Multimedia)
The Linux share is for people who cant afford the Mac, have too much time to think about open sources and licenses (even when all they want is to enjoy an MP3) and a are eventually Stall-ed-Man

I guess every product has its own pros and cons. So its up-to an individual to decide what suits his/her needs. To find the best for you. Try doing this:
1: Make a checklist of things you want to do on your PC regularly
2: Decide the maximum you can spend
3: Buy the product that is closest to your financial limit and has most ticks on your checklist. You would adore that product!

PS: Microsoft disappointed me when i saw Windows 7 Calculator had the near exact looks of the OS X calculator.

What made the Iphone rock so much, and get so many people interested in Apple was the apps…. so many apps… and I have to admit I like my windows mobile OS but there are alot of new comapanys building apps for the Iphone and forgeting about the Windows Mobile OS…. People want choices… if Apple started giving more choices (and I don’t mean giving them choices by letting them run Windows OS on Mac) they would actually start growing.. but sadly.. even the apps store they are controling too much. Your limited to there hardware… there colors…. and when you think you have something cool you just end up with something every joe smoe has.

The IT tech geeks where I work like to use Windows xp pro and server editions of Windows, I run the Vista Ultimate edition at home, again… there is a benifit in choices, oh and did I mention.. at any given time.. if I have a project I want to do on the computer.. or a simple task…. “theres an app for that” lol and I can find it and get it right away. the prices vary… depending on the task, I might buy a basic prgram to do the task or dish out the bucks and buy a heavy hitter to the project… I guarantee I have alot more choice than trying to search for a Mac app. I think Iphone is catching up to Windows Mobile in the ammount of apps.. mabye even beating it but unless Apple starts giving more choise in there OS apps with varying venders and prices they will never even come close to cornering the market.

ooops.. I forgot to introduce myself.
Hi Mac!!!!:)
I’m a PC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! whoo hoo lol (I know its hard to visualize but I was doing my little PC dance while saying whoo hoo

What made the Iphone rock so much, and get so many people interested in Apple was the apps…. so many apps… and I have to admit I like my windows mobile OS but there are alot of new comapanys building apps for the Iphone and forgeting about the Windows Mobile OS…. People want choices… if Apple started giving more choices (and I don’t mean giving them choices by letting them run Windows OS on Mac) they would actually start growing.. but sadly.. even the apps store they are controling too much. Your limited to there hardware… there colors…. and when you think you have something cool you just end up with something every joe smoe has.

The IT tech geeks where I work like to use Windows xp pro and server editions of Windows, I run the Vista Ultimate edition at home, again… there is a benifit in choices, oh and did I mention.. at any given time.. if I have a project I want to do on the computer.. or a simple task…. “theres an app for that” lol and I can find it and get it right away. the prices vary… depending on the task, I might buy a basic prgram to do the task or dish out the bucks and buy a heavy hitter to the project… I guarantee I have alot more choice than trying to search for a Mac app. I think Iphone is catching up to Windows Mobile in the ammount of apps.. mabye even beating it but unless Apple starts giving more choise in there OS apps with varying venders and prices they will never even come close to cornering the market.

ooops.. I forgot to introduce myself.
Hi Mac!!!!:)
I’m a PC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! whoo hoo lol (I know its hard to visualize but I was doing my little PC dance while saying whoo hoo