hi all,
The underlying moral is still exactly the same with PC's - that is, looked after properly, good maintenance and tweaking of settings mean Vista can and does operate perfectly well for 'most' Home users. When looked into, most of the 'Gripes about Vista' you'll see here and mainly on other forums are 90% easy to resolve scenario's provided you DO a little research. The other 10% usually come down to elements with a combination of other companies needing to make their software Vista certified, Driver manufacturers bothering to update etc. Not to say Vista is 'great' - it isn't - the forthcoming Windows 7 is what Vista should have been, but like I always say to people who do complain with generalising statements - have a little look and you'll probably find an easy solution.
I understand of course most 'home users' just want it to 'work' - hence why Apple have enjoyed success in this area, 'most home users' who just want to email, store photos, listen to music and perhaps do the odd bit of word processing and other similar low intensive tasks will always give the thumbs up for the MAC system. A similar Windows user, WILL have to spend more time maintaining the system, doing malware scans and regular cleanups etc - however, done well, there's very minimal difference between the great Windows Vs MAC debate. It's when you want to do more intensive tasks the gap becomes bigger. In this thread some of the most common things have already been mentioned - if you're a Gamer, Windows is the way to go, as Apple's MAC has much less available in this area. If you do alot of Graphics intensive work, Apple does have a upper hand here, but you've got to get the ultra high end Apple desktops to seriously steal a lead on comparable Windows workstations, and thats when you're talking £2500, £3500 plus on the Apple G5 - way out of the re-mit of most home users.
To the poster who mentioned having to 'click 100 times' to copy the files - read the dialogue box, and there a option which says 'do this for all files'
use that, and it becomes 'one click'
Navie mentions the Gaming aspect - Windows has more titles and hardware and graphics capabilities here
Norton's current products have been independantly tested and have MUCH less memory requirements than much older versions - it's a fallacy to say they slow youre system way down. If that happens, it's simply highlighting other areas of weakness in the integrity of the operating system.
Linux - great alternatives, but still currently at the stage of being viewed as too technical and difficult to resolve matters with. Things are getting better though with the reviews I've read for the very latest flavours. However, the overall mass market still places Linux distributions such as Ubuntu into the very very small number of users catagory.
open Source software - again, great alternatives, and free, and do the job. it's support and fixing issues where these fall down, with so many releases, variants and having to sift through tonnes of online messages for help, 'most home users' just don't bother. You'll also find sometimes, features you want are not available and/or require other plugin or downloads or updates to get them.
There's plus points and negative points for all the above - If you have simple requirements and are not technically minded, go for the Apple Mac, if you have a little technical skills, don't mind getting into a routine to maintain your computer and want ultimate flexibility on choice, go for Windows. More technical minded, and want total freedom, consider a Linux distribution. You can even have hardware now that will run all operating systems on one box! yes, even on a PC architecure box too! (evil grin!)
Have a good evaluation of your computing needs and take it from there!
My Vista I've had from day one, and I've only ever encountered two issues - one where my login password was 'forgotton' - 5 minute delve into a forum and fixed. And last week where my DVD drive wasn't being detected - 15 minute call to Dell support - problem fixed.
Trying to stay as unbiased as possible here as I do encounter users with all Operating systems. That said, I've already earmarked funds to purchase Windows 7 as soon as it's released!
Cheers! DtM! West London & Slough UK!
