Replies

The company I work for, a household name known for its outstanding technologies, has banned Vista and IE7 from the campus thus far. OS X has been banned since its inception except for DTP and PR applications. Mortal IT people may not connect their Macs to the network.

There is a certain distrust of powerful machines in corporate security circles. There are paranoid people everywhere.

I've only been permitted to use XP since 2004.

It'll be a while before MS recoups its investment in Vista.

There you go again. Yeah, this is the resume of someone who is liable to write an unbiased review:

John C. Welch

Unix/ Open Systems Administrator, Kansas City Life Insurance.

John C. Welch is a Unix/Open Systems Administrator for Kansas City Life Insurance, a columnist for Datamation.com, and a contributor to InformationWeek, Your Mac Life, and MacJournals.com. John has been a regular speaker at MacWorld Expo since 1999. He has been dealing with all things Macintosh since the Lisa, and even has non - computer parts of his life, such as his son, his soon-to-be wife, his guitar, and a long involvement with Korean Martial Arts.

Windows is...well, Windows is very eager to tell you what's going on. Constantly. Plug something in, and you get a message. Unplug something and you get a message. If you're on a network that's having problems staying up, you'll get tons of messages telling you this. It's rather like dealing with an overexcited Boy Scout...who has a lifetime supply of chocolate-covered espresso beans. This gets particularly bad when you factor in things like the user-level implementation of Microsoft's new security features.

This is the best description I've heard yet about the way windows works.

I kind of like the way my OS (Fedora Core 4/5/6) works. If you insert a disk, it brings up a window that asks you what you want to do with it. If you insert an audio CD, you have an option to open it in one of several players, open it as a disk of files, or rip it. Regardless of what you want to do, you'll also have an icon you can click on to do the same thing later if you don't want to do anything with it now. You get essentially the same thing when you pop a card in a card reader, or a DVD. In the case of external drives and cards, it just treats them as any other disk on the system that you can read/write to. It has definitely gotten a lot more user friendly from what it was like several years ago.

Like OSX, changes from one version to another are incremental, so you don't have to re-learn everything you knew before. I've heard the interface for MS-Office was completely changed in the new version, in such a way that a lot of people are going to have some serious issues. Perhaps this is a necessary change, but there also is no option for using the older way of doing things. I haven't heard whether or not they've changed the shortcuts significantly with Vista.

These articles are funny. We can all relate to liking something niche, and running up against a brick wall trying to convince others it's "better".

The market has clearly spoken "Microsoft is better" when it comes to what OS the vast majority of businesses will even consider using. They don't care one whit about Apple and OSX. Not one.

Those of you who live and breathe Apple apparently believe your kind are everywhere. I don't think you realize how comparatively rare your kind is. I deal with about 250 businesses on my courier route and only the ad firms and color houses use Apple (which confirms that legend as true). Everywhere else it's a Windows World.

And due to these threads I will often ask people if they use Apple or know anyone who does. Rarely do they answer in the affirmative. I even suggest to people shopping for a new computer to check out the iMacs. They always kindly decline as if that isn't possibly an option.

Anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but I must not be alone in observing it because market share backs it up, "OSX is better" be damned.

This is the second thread you posted today (that I know of) in which you are pimping for Apple. If you are not getting paid for your work on their behalf, you are one strange individual. As I asked on the other thread, what's it to you which computer people choose? A computer is just a tool of modern life, no different than any other appliance, electronic device, TV, auto, etc. Some people buy Toyotas, some buy Chevys. Some people buy Maytags, others Kenmore. And so on. Why is your ego so wrapped up in what kind of computer people choose to buy?