> Easier solution: Switch to a Mac. You will NEVER have to do that again.
Heh.
I'm typing this on a Mac. One of three on my desk. Alongside a couple of Windows machines (real and virtual) and a couple of Linux machines (real and virtual). And don't forget the BSD Unix VMs.
What you say is only partly true. Mac OS-X gets more sluggish with age of the install, though not nearly so bad as Windows. There's no silver bullet -- trust me. I've been doing this stuff for 35+ years.
Right you are. I will take your word for it all since you seem to know a lot.
Just reporting my experiences. I love my Mac from the moment I turn it on, unlike the hours and hours I spent trying to nail down viruses on my PC.
I am adding more memory in a couple of days, however, since it is getting slow with more stuff that I have downloaded.
Usually, there are only two things that will slow down an OSX installation, Day. The first is too many icons on the desktop. If you let your desktop get too full, it can slow down the system slightly. It's not too noticeable... but you can get a slight speed bump by removing the excess. Besides it's messy.
The second is damaged permissions. Every time I've seen a slowed down OSX Mac, a permission repair has brought the Mac back to like new speed.
Give those fixes a try when you run into a slowed Mac.
Of course, the ultimate fix is to upgrade your Mac to a newer OSX version... everytime you upgraded, the Mac ran faster than it did under the older version.
I use a number of operating systems at work and use Win 7 and Ubuntu 10.04 at home. I love them both, but for different things.
I do computer security for a living. So what is the most secure OS in the world? I'd say HP-UX. Of course you can't do any fun stuff with it.
Win 7, Mac OS X, and your favorite flavor of Linux are all good systems. Security is more dependent on the user than the OS. Anyone who runs as root (or Administrator in Windows) is asking for problems.