On 1 March 2011 12:44,
<linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Just witnessed a Windows users mock a Mac user (apparently its meant to be
the other way round). I was just thinking that if I was forced into the
choice I would probably choose Windows on the basis it runs on more
things, is less expensive and seems slightly less commercial on the user
(if that's possible).
Hopefully it would never come to that but I am curious what other Linux
users would opt for in that situation.
Gibbs
I would expect any Linux user to be like me and be of the opinion that they can "have it all". I have a number of laptops / netbooks running Mint, Kubuntu, XP, Windows7 & macosx snow leopard. You could get that number down to 2, a macbook and another laptop with virtualbox installed, so that you can run the other o/s's on it. Perhaps one, if there is a mac version of virtualbox - not sure about that?
My 2nd hand macbook (EBay) is my latest acquisition because I wanted to get experience of macs. I like it very much but, there are some downsides. I recently bought a new hard drive for it, only to find that I had not been provided with the original system install discs as I thought but, just an upgrade disc. Further investigation seems to indicate that without the original system disc, I may be unable to re-install it at all! Apparently, the system discs are machine specific. As a Mac newbie, I am fairly ignorant so, if any of you can advise me on this problem, I would be most grateful. But, my general impression is that upgrading / re-installing is easier under windows or linux.
However, that one issue aside, my mac is a joy to use - easy, well designed & highly functional software. Contrary to what I thought, there is quite a bit of open source software available for macs so, it isn't just a case of having to pay for everything you need. The laptop is very well made & looks really good too.
I actually think that Windows is the least user friendly. For inexperienced users, upgrading from Windows XP to (for example) to a new Windows7 machine can be a complete nightmare as everything is so different and there is a great deal of re-learning to do. I am going to be helping someone upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows7, soon - now that should be interesting.
But, for day to day general use, I still prefer Linux, probably just because I know it pretty well now - it is reliable and relatively safe. It does everything I need. If I was forced to choose one laptop only to keep - it would probably be my newer Linux one.
Viv
