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Hola! Always good to see you; te extraño mucho.

I don’t get the vitriol on this topic. I am probably an outcast here, but I think Vista is absolutely amazing.

When I first used Vista I marveled at the beauty of the interface, and when I realized that the start bar would let me start typing stuff in and it would present me with an intelligently searched list of options to select...for instance: I start typing in C.....A.....

and I get

Calculator
Calendar

in an attractive menu, and I can key in immediately get what I want....that is AWESOME. To Vista’s credit I TOTALLY can’t help it but accidentally expect that when I use XP and even when I use Mac OS X.

XP doesn’t let me do that valuable thing, nor does the Mac.

But, I have also been bit in the ass by Vista. I actually have applications that I paid THOUSANDS of dollars for that SIMPLY DON’T WORK ON VISTA. My Schematic Capture tool and PCB layout tool are extremely expensive pieces of software that I need, and simply won’t work on Vista. And don’t for a second think that I am some kind of specialized weird-o and I have strange tools that do weird things. The ONLY reason my expensive software fails is because they chose to use microsoft databases as their file format (which microsoft wanted), or something like that. Something they thought WOULD LAST FOREVER. That is it. Something stupid like that. Now, the apps simply don’t work.

So, to get them to work on Vista, I had to install them in a virtual machine running XP on top of my Vista OS.

So I did that, because I want to keep my clients for whom I’ve designed circuit boards.

Get ready for the money shot here...

...Ok, so the failure of Vista to let me run my most important apps led me to discover the concept of VMs, so I could run an XP VM on the new Vista that I was forced to run.

Then I decided to get into iPhone development, where you have to have a mac to even get started.

So I had to get a Mac. But since I’d already discovered the magic of running Windows XP apps in a VM it was extremely easy to get the same thing going on the mac. But it turns out that there are better VM solutions for running Windows apps on the MAC than there are for running Windows apps under windows! (I kid you not)

So not only am I running all of my XP stuff on my Mac, I learned through experience that IT WORKS BETTER ON THE MAC THAN IT DOES ON A PC.

So here I am writing this post quite literally on a Mac on its 5th or 6th reboot that I’ve ever done. The same Mac that I run my windows apps on, and now the new mac apps that I am discovering, mostly because Vista simply decided not to let me run my programs.

In case anyone “goes there” I own 4 orders of magnitude more stock in Microsoft than I do Apple.

Great observations, krb.

The vitriol on this thread actually spills over from other forums: There are groups of Windows advocates that are obsessed with blogging about certain things they cannot adapt to on MAC. Their pet whines are “mouse control” and “having to drag items out of the trash to open them”. There are other complaints they drag out when the pet whines are put to bed.

As a computer repair person going from house to house (mostly of old people), I think the MAC is ideal for folks who work at the absolute top level, or who really don’t want to deal with problems.

Windows gets Viruses; MAC really does not. MAC resumes beautifully and rapidly. MAC is seemless with iTunes, while Microsoft seems to put up obstacles to use of competitive software. MAC doesn’t care how old software is, it runs it. MAC finds the available wireless internet at any hotel instantly.

I’ll give you an example of Windows frustration for one of my clients (an old man): He got a virus on his old R40 thinkpad; he needed to download AVG; he tried to install it, but it required SP2; he was at SP1, and attempted to run Windows Update, which could not run because it was compromised by the virus; Windows provides no other option for downloading Service Pack 2, so he called me. (I thought he did well getting this far.) I cleared the virus with Malwarebytes, which gave him back administrative control of his browser.

Why would Microsoft force the download of SP2 with a program other than the browser? This old man is better off with a MAC, but I said nothing as he was quite happy to spend the rest of his day figuring out how to get to SP3 with only 1GB of space available on his harddrive.

I have another client (an old artist lady) with Vista who calls me every other day. She loses files constantly with some of her old photo software running on Vista... It never happened on XP. Usually all I have to do for her is reboot the program. I have also moved all her old files to a clickable desktop folder... associated every file with the appropriate program, but she still calls if she can’t open a file from within the program. (Eventually, I hope to solve this one since she cannot adapt and will not buy a new photo organizer program.)

Now she also calls every time she gets a popup that says “your antivirus software is about to expire”, despite the fact that I wrote the name and renewal date of her antivirus pop-up software on a stickie on the corner of her monitor. She lives in fear of viruses (viri?) and would pull her credit card out for every anti-virus popup she sees if I hadn’t convinced her not to. If she had a MAC, I would simply explain to her that MACs don’t need [third party] anti-virus software.

So people come on MAC threads and whine about some specialty setting for which they can’t find the correct terminal command or they can’t program with UNIX, when they could more easily have done their research and figured out from blogs that their favorite game will run too slow in Rosetta emulation mode and they probably should keep their gaming on a highly customised Windows configuration. They have special requirements and should purchase/plan accordingly.

But because MAC is frustrating with their special circumstances doesn’t mean a MAC is not ideal for very top level users who use a computer for internet, email, .pdfs, office software and photo/music purposes.

So what you see is sort of pointless trolling from people vested in Windows and Windows-based software.

For the record: my household has two MACs, two thinkpads, one packard bell desktop, one Dell and a gateway tablet. With the exception of the Gateway Tablet, which is ideal with Labview, I would like to migrate everything else over to MACs.

Sorry for the long reply. Oh, lol, we own Apple stock and stock in one of the microprocessor companies.

PS. You can type C... A... in finder and get the same results... :D

I start typing in C.....A..... and I get

Calculator
Calendar

in an attractive menu, and I can key in immediately get what I want....that is AWESOME. To Vista’s credit I TOTALLY can’t help it but accidentally expect that when I use XP and even when I use Mac OS X.

XP doesn’t let me do that valuable thing, nor does the Mac.

Uh, KRB? Yes, it does... and the Mac's done it for almost four years now.

Microsoft ~~ripped off~~, er, borrowed that quick search routine from Mac OS X. Apple calls it "Spotlight" and it is available in every Finder window and also on the desktop at the top right hand of the menu bar, many applications such as iPhoto, Mail, iTunes, Safari, etc... and has been since the release of OS X.4 Tiger. It was announced and demonstrated in June of 2004 at the WWDC.

Partial instant results for entering "CA" on my Mac

Pressing RETURN or ENTER after entering the "ca" will start the calculator. In fact, the Mac version (which Apple patented) is far more sophisticated than the MS copy.