Fred, you must have missed my question earlier
regarding the security updates
I would echo an earlier sentiment - if your system hasn't crashed in 6 years, I suspect you could have bought an IBM Selectric to accomplish the tasks you are asking of it! Our office used MS Access, MS Excel and Quickbooks, and with the antivirus software we had to have constantly running, the systems (even new Dell top of the line systems) were overwhelmed on a daily basis. There was not a CHANCE of running more than a couple of days without a crash or reboot. People who constantly download all the little helper utilities to solve Windows myriad problems will generally experience even more problems as their registries become bloated with entries - many causing conflicting demands on the system. (Which brings up another of Mac's beauties - want to delete a program?? Just drag it's icon into the trash can - and it's gone - no leftover icons, registry entries, folders, etc) While there are a very few number of programs that are not available for Mac (MS Access is one of them) that has not been a legitimate complaint for many years now - in fact - the ease of writing and the open code for Mac has proven that software development for Macs yields a wide variety of choices with constantly improving products. On the other hand, whether or not new updates to MS programs are improvements or not is often debatable (see the concurrent thread on IE7). As to cost, I bought my first iBook as an Apple Store demo two years ago - for $600. It had an extended Applecare warranty, a wireless network card installed, and the memory had been maxed out. Our two newest MacBooks were under $1,200 each, so affordability is not really an issue either. I understand you can build your own Windows box for less than that, and as you said - to each his own. I do believe that the dominance of Windows has much more to do with the marketing strategy of giving Windows away on new PCs for years than it does with the superiority of the product. When you have that much market saturation, it's awfully hard to get big businesses to do a mass overhaul, so most places (like my former employer) are stuck in the rut of continuing to use a marginal product. The points you have in your favor are that there are many more PCs than Macs, some (limited) software for Windows does not have a counterpart in the Mac world, and you can build your own Windows box cheaper than buying a Mac. For me, none of those issues point to a superiority of one system over the other. For me, those drawbacks are more than offset by having a stable system with a far superior graphical interface, and one that is a joy to use - not a frustration. JMHO of course. -- Scott
regarding the security updates
I would echo an earlier sentiment - if your system hasn't crashed in 6 years, I suspect you could have bought an IBM Selectric to accomplish the tasks you are asking of it! Our office used MS Access, MS Excel and Quickbooks, and with the antivirus software we had to have constantly running, the systems (even new Dell top of the line systems) were overwhelmed on a daily basis. There was not a CHANCE of running more than a couple of days without a crash or reboot. People who constantly download all the little helper utilities to solve Windows myriad problems will generally experience even more problems as their registries become bloated with entries - many causing conflicting demands on the system. (Which brings up another of Mac's beauties - want to delete a program?? Just drag it's icon into the trash can - and it's gone - no leftover icons, registry entries, folders, etc) While there are a very few number of programs that are not available for Mac (MS Access is one of them) that has not been a legitimate complaint for many years now - in fact - the ease of writing and the open code for Mac has proven that software development for Macs yields a wide variety of choices with constantly improving products. On the other hand, whether or not new updates to MS programs are improvements or not is often debatable (see the concurrent thread on IE7). As to cost, I bought my first iBook as an Apple Store demo two years ago - for $600. It had an extended Applecare warranty, a wireless network card installed, and the memory had been maxed out. Our two newest MacBooks were under $1,200 each, so affordability is not really an issue either. I understand you can build your own Windows box for less than that, and as you said - to each his own. I do believe that the dominance of Windows has much more to do with the marketing strategy of giving Windows away on new PCs for years than it does with the superiority of the product. When you have that much market saturation, it's awfully hard to get big businesses to do a mass overhaul, so most places (like my former employer) are stuck in the rut of continuing to use a marginal product. The points you have in your favor are that there are many more PCs than Macs, some (limited) software for Windows does not have a counterpart in the Mac world, and you can build your own Windows box cheaper than buying a Mac. For me, none of those issues point to a superiority of one system over the other. For me, those drawbacks are more than offset by having a stable system with a far superior graphical interface, and one that is a joy to use - not a frustration. JMHO of course. -- Scott
