Anyone use Windows 7 AND OS X (Mac)?

[consultant]

I was writing software 20 years ago on an Apple IIe when I was 12 years old in machine code, assembler and basic and shortly after running what amounted to a baby AOL with my huge 5MB Sider Hard Drive with subscription checks coming to my parents house. I eventually switched to a PC when I discovered Windows 3.0. I've been involved with computers ever since in almost any capacity you can think of from PC Tech, to Network Admin, to Webmaster. All my friends and family have always used Windows and I was always the one to come to with their problems.

I currently am now just a freelance Intrernet Consultant and leave the coding to sub-contractors and just maintain the devices in my own household including three PCs (1 desktop running Vista and 2 notebooks running XP), two iPhones (mine and my wife's) and my 8-yo and 9-yo's iPod Touch devices. (I am SO loving the iPhone, previously I always owned the latest greatest WinMobile device like the HTC Touch Pro or Tilt - never going back after getting my hands on a 3GS.)

Now I could write a novel about all my frustrating experiences with Windows (and WinMobile for that matter) but I am not going to waste my time as Windows has already robbed me of hundreds of hours of time over the years troubleshooting problems. But with experience I was able to get very proficient at setting up Windows so it works decently to the point it never pushed me to buying a Mac. I always viewed Macs as way overpriced for the processing power and for the people that were scared of computers.

However I think a recent experience or two may be the nail in the coffin for me with Windows. First, when I got the iPhone I switched my Outlook to getting my e-mail from my 4 accounts via POP3 to IMAP. I like IMAP much better as then I don't have to worry about leaving Outlook open on my PC and when I delete email from my phone, it is removed from Outlook whether I left it open or not. Problem is, I've found Outlook frequently cannot connect to the IMAP server and most of the time the only way to resolve it is to delete and re-create the account which I have had to do dozens of times now. Is Microsoft trying to steer me towards buying an Exchange server but making Outlook not place well with IMAP servers? (I believe my host is running QMail.)

I'm in the process right now of trying to find an alternate to Outlook that will alow contacts and calendars to sync with my iPhone and allow me to check and reply from several accounts. Would be nice if it was also compatible with Outlook appointment requests - but I can live without that and manually enter appointments. I started down the GMail road and it appears I can only check other accounts via POP3 which means if I delete e-mail from my iPhone it will still be in my Gmail (unless Gmail is smart enough to check the server and reconcile and delete local mail that no longer is on the server?) I think Thunderbird may be the answer - setting that up right now.

Anyway, to make a long story longer, I've read that Windows 7 is FINALLY something semi-solid of an O/S from Microsoft. I'm not a Microsoft loyalist - it's just what I've used. I realize this board is going to be VERY biased. But last night when using Vista my wife couldn't e-mail a photo because it wouldn't load Outlook (it actually did load it in memory just never came up and you couldn't load Outlook after that without bringing up Task Manager and ending the OUTLOOK.EXE process!) This is typical Windows CRAP. And I'm fed up with it.

I realize the Mac hardware is considerably more expensive for the same processing power in a Windows PC. I'm a huge power user. Edit video, run several apps at once always finding myself waiting for my laptop and I have Intel Core2 T7200 2.0 GHZ CPU with 2GB of RAM on my laptop which is pretty good even by today's standards (Bought the thing about 18 months ago - I always use a laptop so I don't mess with syncing data between a PC and a laptop trying to Keep It Simple.)

So I'm wondering, for those long-time Windows Power Users out there that have recently switched over to a Mac, do you have any regrets or things you missed about Windows? I have a lot of specialized Windows software, such as my SEO software. Will everything run on the Mac, no problems? Can I edit all my complex Excel spreadsheets no problems? Can I please WMA and WMV files? Does it place nicely on the network with Windows PC's?

This fall it's going to be a Windows 7 laptop with a Solid State Drive, or I'm defecting from Microsoft for good and getting a Mac laptop. I'm getting too old and my spare time to valuable for this ongoing care and feeding of Windows and their bloated and sometimes buggy software.

 

[Tiran Inside]

WoW

that was a very long message!!!!

Well, to be brief, mac osx is the best os in the market, now with snow leopard. It doesn't crash, it is fast and did i say extremly fast.
I dont have a mac by the way, cuz it is to expensive to be corvered by a 15 yo boy, but what do i have is leopard installed in my Pc,
I know it sounds strang but you can do it (just google iAtkos or iDeneb)
And so far it has been the best experience ever.

Well yes you can do all sort of things with a mac, even run windows apps (.exe) in your mac using darWine.

I am rrelly hoping to get a iMac

And did i say that the best windows pc (reviewed by pcmag) was a mac (yes with bootcamp)

 

[consultant]

I always thought Apple had made the Max run windows apps without needing any other software - just did it out of the box?

What I'm really interested in is comments from people with extensive experience using both Windows 7 and OS X as to their conclusion. When I get a new laptop I'll have to spend all the time to reload and config all my apps anyway so then would be the best time to make the switch to OS X.

 

[pparks1]

I've tried to get into Mac and OSX but I simply cannot
1). Pay the extra for the hardware
2). Have a limited and locked down OS experience that's Apple's way or no way
3). Have limited hardware options for upgrading down the road.

 

[denrock]

I never switched over to a mac entirely since I still have my windows computers, but last fall when I got an iphone I decided a couple of weeks later to give macs a try so I bought an imac. I really enjoyed it at first mainly due to the newness of it to me ( I did somehow manage to crash OSX a bunch of times at first and had to hard reboot it everytime, but it eventually settled down and hasn't crashed since like january) and how everything just seemed to go together so nicely between my imac, iphone, ipod and timecapsule. But over the last few months I've grown disenchanted with the lack customizing options, lack of software support, not finding it really any faster than vista, and the overall sameness of everything mac. I just don't know about the whole OSX Leopard speed thing. To me, OSX 10.5 Leopard just seems slow and clunky and actually very sluggish compared to Windows 7 (and about as responsive as vista was in my eyes). And now that I have my imac dual booted with windows 7, I"m barely every in OSX on my imac. It's been heading this way ever since I first installed the beta and rc of win7. Win 7 flies on my imac and gets a 5.8 in the wei so I'm very pleased with using my imac as a win7 box with the ocassional option of booting into OSX if I want to do some online purchases without wondering if maybe my machine is infected with some spyware (evern though I'm very careful) or in case some new virus wipes out windows.

I'm glad I bought a mac so I won't have to wonder what having a mac is like and will be able to have firsthand knowledge in a debate between the two. But I'm definitely a PC at heart and windows 7 and its speed and features has only confirmed it. Macs are definitely overrated in my opinion but maybe if snow leopard really steps up the speed of the os i may give this topic some thought again.

 

[consultant]

Sounds like my gut may be right that Win7 is the light at the end of the tunnel for me. My main priority is speed. I can get about 20% more work done in the same time period if I could get a really fast machine. Although most of the speed issue is due to HD access which an SSD will help, not CPU or memory. I recently downloaded the new Windows Search. WOW, that saves me a lot of time right there as searching for e-mails and files is one of the more time consuming things that was holding back my productivity. I definitely can get more bang for the buck hardware wise this fall if I stick with a PC platform. And I'd go ballistic if I had issues running some of my Windows Apps (I don't play games though.)

Still curious though. Can you give a few examples pertaining to #2 and #3?


2). Have a limited and locked down OS experience that's Apple's way or no way
3). Have limited hardware options for upgrading down the road.

 

[Stabgotham]

I have been going back and forth between Windows 7, OSX86 (iPC 10.5.6), as well as Ubuntu Jaunty. I think that I would enjoy a good dual-boot experience with both Windows 7 and OSX because each has their strong selling points.

OSX would is good because its beautiful, functional with other Apple products, and the Apple software (mainly the iLife series of products) are superb. On the other hand, I find Windows to be a better overall experience (at least with Windows 7). Being that I am a gamer, there is no substitute for a Windows system. I love Windows 7 for a multitude of reasons, but primarily because...it just works. I can't put it any better than that. It works and everything I use works with it.

I have tried dual booting both, but had too many issues doing so, so for now, I'm all Windows 7 all the time.

 

[shfle]

You could try asking people on a Mac message board. MacForums has has a 'Switcher' forum where you'll find people who use both systems discussing the pros and cons of each.

 

[PhreePhly]

WoW

that was a very long message!!!!

Well, to be brief, mac osx is the best os in the market, now with snow leopard. It doesn't crash, it is fast and did i say extremly fast.
I dont have a mac by the way, cuz it is to expensive to be corvered by a 15 yo boy, but what do i have is leopard installed in my Pc,
I know it sounds strang but you can do it (just google iAtkos or iDeneb)
And so far it has been the best experience ever.

Well yes you can do all sort of things with a mac, even run windows apps (.exe) in your mac using darWine.

I am rrelly hoping to get a iMac

And did i say that the best windows pc (reviewed by pcmag) was a mac (yes with bootcamp)

To be even briefer, Mac OSX is one of the least secure OS's on the market and is in no way faster than even XP.

And you need to be honest with the OP, 'cause darWine will only run SOME windows software.

To the OP, first of all, you have a screwed up Outlook install. Outlook connects to IMAP just fine. Also, GMail is IMAP by preference but will do POP3 if you want it to.

PhreePhly

 

[eli2k]

I haven't tried it yet, but you might be able to get OS X applications to run inside a Win7 host using VMWare Unity.

I'm sticking with Windows in the longrun. Poster 2 may believe that OS X does not crash and is the fastest, but that just depends on the user. I know a user who had an imac and hated it because it kept crashing (for some reason), and prefers Windows instead.

 

[Shockwave]

yes, just let me reboot and select it in my dual booting menu

 

[PhreePhly]

I haven't tried it yet, but you might be able to get OS X applications to run inside a Win7 host using VMWare Unity.

I'm sticking with Windows in the longrun. Poster 2 may believe that OS X does not crash and is the fastest, but that just depends on the user. I know a user who had an imac and hated it because it kept crashing (for some reason), and prefers Windows instead.

Well, if you want to be legal, then NO, you can't do this. The OSX EULA specifically disallows virtualizing the software.

VMWare Unity only runs windows apps in OSX, not the other way around. The only way to run OSX and OSX apps legally is to buy the Macintosh Dongle (TM) . With this unique hardware security device you will be able to run OSX apps without any problems.

PhreePhly

 

[denrock]

Sounds like my gut may be right that Win7 is the light at the end of the tunnel for me. My main priority is speed. I can get about 20% more work done in the same time period if I could get a really fast machine. Although most of the speed issue is due to HD access which an SSD will help, not CPU or memory. I recently downloaded the new Windows Search. WOW, that saves me a lot of time right there as searching for e-mails and files is one of the more time consuming things that was holding back my productivity. I definitely can get more bang for the buck hardware wise this fall if I stick with a PC platform. And I'd go ballistic if I had issues running some of my Windows Apps (I don't play games though.)

Still curious though. Can you give a few examples pertaining to #2 and #3?


2). Have a limited and locked down OS experience that's Apple's way or no way
3). Have limited hardware options for upgrading down the road.

I'm going to assume the poster meant that for #3 that your only option is to install it on computer you buy from apple where basically all you can upgrade is the memory and maybe the hard drive (no way I'm gonna bother to take apart my imac though to put in a bigger hd). You cannot buy parts and make a mac unless you want to go the hackintosh route and then you're breaking the law if you use OSX on it and you're gonna have lots of driver issues. That's the thing that always gets me about the claim that macs just work-- yeah, sure, the os is only on like five different models all made by the same company so of course it all runs smoothly. If windows was on five different computers all made by microsoft it would have no driver issues or any other issues either (though my mac crashed all the time with some external drives i bought at the apple store!).

I'm not sure exactly what the poster meant by #2 either, but I assume it was just how controlled osx is compared to windows. I've learned by having a mac that there are many more hacks and tweaks out there than thought for osx; so it's not like you cannot mess around with it to a good extent, but nowhere as much as with windows; and it's a lot harder to find the programs since you might find one of what you're looking for where in windows you'll find 100 due to the marketshare difference.

To be even briefer, Mac OSX is one of the least secure OS's on the market and is in no way faster than even XP.

PhreePhly

Yeah, i said in my other post that i feel my imac with osx leopard is about as fast as vista. I'm referring to vista 64 bit service pack 1 with four gigs on my laptop. OSX is faster than what I remember vista pre-service pack 1 being on this same laptop.

I haven't tried it yet, but you might be able to get OS X applications to run inside a Win7 host using VMWare Unity.

I'm sticking with Windows in the longrun. Poster 2 may believe that OS X does not crash and is the fastest, but that just depends on the user. I know a user who had an imac and hated it because it kept crashing (for some reason), and prefers Windows instead.

Yeah, i had lots of crashes on my imac for the first three months i had it. It did not seem to like the external hard drives I was hooking up to it via firewire 400, 800 and usb. I bought the ones i was using on my mac at the apple store and they still weren't playing nicely with my imac. So imagine if osx had to deal with all the different hardware that windows has to deal with. It really makes me appreciate what windows has accomplished in making it run on so many configurations. Even without the hardware issues, I still had lots of random freezes, crashes, and a nasty kernel panic. But nothing really since january when I started using windows 7 most of the time on my imac and just ocassionally booting into OSX.