“Just because you can do anything with Windows, doesn’t mean it’s the best overall computing experience. The cracks are appearing in the Microsoft monopoly’s facade: increasing feature bloat, lagging performance on ever-faster hardware, security nightmares thanks to ever-more-interoperable software,” Aaron Vegh writes for OSNews.com.
“For the average Windows user on a broadband connection, it’s a bad, bad world. I’m sure many of you have had the experience of supporting family and friends through constant pop-ups, crippled systems and other bizarre behaviour. In fact, I’m already set up to visit my in-laws this weekend for yet another ‘cleaning session.’ The facts are becoming too huge to ignore: Windows has become a liability. Not for everyone, surely, but for the majority of the average, non-technical crowd, it’s become a weight they don’t even know they’re carrying,” Vegh writes.
“At present, I see only one viable alternative to Windows, and that’s the Mac. It stands toe-to-toe with Windows on a usability level, and while the masses of OSNews readers will quibble about this feature or that feature, the fact is, you can reliably interchange one computer for the other, and you don’t need a degree in Nerdology to make it happen,” Vegh writes. “The Mac is not for everyone. But for those who are not dependant on the Windows platform, and looking for a change, the Mac presents a wonderful option. You owe it to yourself to look past the hype, and try it out.”
Full article here.
Excellent, balanced article.
The Mac is for anyone not dependant on the Windows platform.
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What percentage of WinPCs aren’t used for office work – where WinOffice is about the only software installed?
What percentage of WinPCs aren’t used as cash registers, info kiosks, etc.?
What percentage of WinPCs aren’t used as $1500 video game machines?
What do Windows people think can’t be done on a Mac?
Why do Windows people want the Mac to just go away?
Will the price of Windows become cheaper for Windows people – if Apple does go out of business?
Will it become easier for Windows people to ‘choose’ a ‘brand’ of computer, if there’s one less to choose from?
Probably MDN should have included the “mac zealot” disclosure at the beginning of this article.
A bad, bad world on broadband? My little linksys router has a nice firewall that seems to eliminate all the stuff that Aaron has problems with. Yet another month has gone by here without a virus or bug. I can only think that my experience is much closer to most windows user’s than that of Aaron’s.
Macbuddy, good list. When and if windows really blows up for me as you guys imagine it should, I will be in line for a g5 (with vpc). Until then, and certainly until Apple offers something worthwhile for less than a grand, I will happily, and profitably, feed juice to my wintel box.
Amen. I think it is a crime that people recommend Windows machines to older people who aren’t computer literate at at all. They are the ones who most especially need a computer that “just works” and instead are being condemned to a hell of viruses, mysterious breakdowns, conflicts and non-intuitiveness.
The Mac comes out of the box with Apple native software already installed which will do almost anything they want or need to do. Viruses are pretty much a non-issue. And not one expert out there that I have seen tries to argue that windows is easier to use than OS X. Because it isn’t. WIndows tried to be easier to use with all the wizards etc. but as the writer points out it just succeeds in offering so many choices that it is bewildering for low power users.
Both my Mother (from the start) and my Mother-in-law (recent switcher) are on Macs right now and do much much more than they would be doing on a PC. As they try out new things and it just works they lose their fear of the computer and get even more into it. One just bought a digital camera and is now into photos and the other is shopping around for one. I mean, to download the photos from the cam to the Mac you just hook it up, iPhoto senses it and automatically boots up and give them the choice of downloading or not. One Button to click. You gotta love this seamlessness for Users of this type. Plus, they don’t have to worry about viruses and that makes their world a lot nicer one to live in.
That is wonderful Jack. My mom started computing last year at age 83, on a g3 handed down from a sibling of mine.
I agree, if the customer is old, and the machine costs $100, go mac.
I agree that cost is a factor for a lot of people, especially the elderly. However, I have a hard time putting a price on the lack of frustration I have with my Mac and the accompanying OS. I would gladly pay that price to keep my Mom away from Windows. I tried to pay that price to keep the Mom-in-law away. She didn’t take me up on my offer. As a result, my Mom never has computer problems. Mom-in-law is constantly complaining about virii, problems with add-ons, etc. Joe, I can’t believe that you make so little as to complain about a few hundred here or there in getting a Mac. C’mon buddy, make the move!
My retired mom and soon-to-be retired dad were how I returned to the Mac after a 5 year absence. They were basically newbies and I got them an iMac with a beautiful 17″ screen. Teaching them the basics made me realize that in ONE weekend I figured out how to do more with the Mac than I knew how to do with Windows after 5 years! In the meantime, I was wasting a lot of business time/money dealing with some nightmarish spyware that reassigned my home page and would launch hundreds of pop-ups even when I had not activited my Internet Explorer. Our company tech support guy also spent lots of (my) time and money struggling to fix such things. Since I got my PowerBook17, I’ve added a silver mini, digital camera, and life is cool….
Joe, you are more than welcome to be part of the sub-grand crowd. Everyone a computer for like $400 but doesnt realize they are getting stiffed by dell. Shared grafx memory,underpowered Xghz Celeron Processors, crapptacualar printers that cost more in ink per week than buying a new printer, lowest cost ram, and leftover cd roms, 56k modems and bloated-overpriced-spywareridden-pieceofcrud-OS. WOW what a deal. Ill take a fully featured machine with a real OS that wont blow up if I open the wrong e-mail. Old, young or whatever, we welcome anyone looking for a better computer expeience, without the need for another “wizard”
Thats”everyone wants a computer”
why does Joe hang around here? Seems like someone wants to be a member of the group. Take the plunge man! Also, please quit with the ‘sub $500’ references. If you want to spend that on something you’ll use everyday for several hours then you deserve what you get. You probably sleep on a $50 mattress too and drink Dunkin Donuts coffee. Macs make life more enjoyable. You get what you pay for. We are happy to do so. So should you.
16 years ago I got a WDEF virus on my Mac, came from a game disk. Since then nothing and Mac’s are indeed “for the rest of us”.
Just look here for the 20 year history of M$ vulnerabilities, will they ever change? I don’t think so, a lot of PC users are hoping the next version of windoze will eliminate all their problems, but Gates keeps stringing them along.
http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletinsByType/vndr_ms_bulletins.html
this is got to be the best link to show PC users why they need to switch
Just went to a friends house today to try and help him with his Sony Desktop WinXP Pro machine. It was attacked by some kind of Trojan horse that is worse than any virus I’ve seen and its been a bitch to try and delete. He only uses the PC to surf and read his e-mail, sits behind a linksys firewall on his DSL line and has Norton with updated defs on the machine. If he can get attacked than its only a matter of time before Joe gets nailed. It really has gotten out of control on the windows side and too many people think that its just the way it is….
Firewall and anti-virus are no ‘silver bullet’. Joe, you think corporate systems are not behind firewalls and have no site-wide anti-virus systems and all traffic in and out under control? Yet, with the *newest* virus which bypasses all the in-place protection they get caught pants down.
At the lab there are monthly some 100k virus attacks spoofed, still no month passes by without some system to be taken off the network and desinfected. And it takes days of lost work for the researcher (if there is no loss of data, that is).
It is like living at an frontier outpost in the old west, with enemy indians tribes out there. You may confidently say – I have all protections in place – but that does not make your life as safe and enjoyable as the ones in Boston.
Firewalls and AV software are no guarantee of immunity.
Last week I went to give a friend a hand with his PC and noticed grey boxes advertising a site popping up every few mins. I recommended he get a firewall as he has DSL, he replied “I’ve had one since the PC was new” handing me a Norton Personal security box .
So we went to Norton’s site and downloaded the definitions Ran all the tests-Clean. So I went to another site and Ran a remote test and it came up with a virus!!
So it seems your virus checker needs checking!!
After an afternoon with the PC sorting out problems, reminded me to NEVER buy one again whatever software you need to run.
Being with an Mac and not having to worry about all that crap is worth the extra cost.
Quantify, quantify, quantify. As more people understand the econmics of total cost of ownership the more likely some people will seriously consider switching to Apple. It’s not enough to say how much Windows and OS X are similar but to show how much they differ in real numbers.
The “best overall computing experience” would be even better on a faster G5 (or… a AMD64 notebook).
A guy can dream right? 😀
The “best overall computing experience” would be even better on a faster G5 (or… a AMD64 notebook).
A guy can dream right? 😀
Joe Mc’s Mother uses Macintosh, his sibling (brother?) uses Macintosh, and recently he was talking about his son getting a G5. I think I start to see a pattern here that might explain what he is doing hanging out on a Mac User News Site. He feels at home. That is of course if he is for real and not a Mac User playing devil’s advocate. Well anyway Joe, feel free to hang around like a kid with his nose pressed to the candy store window (one with a quarter in his pocket no less). You can be our pet PC user.
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You got it Jack, it is a mac user’s NEWS site, not a cheering section as some would have it.
Dunking donuts? I will try that out.
Joe is not a Mac user posing as a PC user. He’s been around here too long with the same questions. I think he’s for real. However, I think he’ll be with us soon.
Joe, this is a news site *AND* a cheering section. We cheer for good news!
Of course, firewalls help.
But not when a individual user at a small company goes to their Hotmail account and picks up a virus in an attachment which is never seen by the anti-virus software on the mail server, nor stopped by the firewall.
The problem with protecting a PC based company is not that you have to protect them once, but that you have to do it three and four times. Workstation, server, e-mail server, firewall, proxy all have to be protected in order to secure a PC network from attack.
If Windows was a car, there wouldn’t be a person on the planet that would not have sued under the lemon law and gotten their money back.
The world must be under some mass delusion or something in that they not only put up with such a shoddy product in mass, they apologize for and defend it at every opportunity. Not only that, they ignore a vastly superior alternative for no reason other than ignorance and an unfounded fear of the unknown.
Scary to think I am sharing the world with folks like that. ;o)
Didn’t you all know? It’s POSSIBLE to manage a Windows machine somewhat safely, if you spend enough time and are properly trained. Therefore, PCs are as a good as Macs!
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Joe said: “A bad, bad world on broadband? My little linksys router has a nice firewall that seems to eliminate all the stuff that Aaron has problems with. Yet another month has gone by here without a virus or bug. I can only think that my experience is much closer to most windows user’s than that of Aaron’s.”
Joe, the mere fact that you hang around in a computer forum all day tells me that you’re probably a lot more savvy than the people that Aaron is talking about. In my experience, Aaron is right on the money. I have a 78 year old aunt, and a 63 year old aunt who use PCs. My dad has to go to their houses on a monthly basis to clean the viruses off, and get things working smoothly again. It usually takes a whole day to do it. One time my aunt’s computer had over 70 viruses on it, after having been cleaned not even a month before. I also have an 85 year old aunt with a 333mhz Lime iMac who uses it for the same things as her sisters, e-mail, internet, and word processing. My dad hasn’t been over to help her with anything in over two years, and when he did it was to set up peripherals or install software, never get rid of viruses. Unlike her sisters, she’d never used a computer before her iMac.
No, I think your experience is probably the atypical one. Sure, my aunt’s don’t know what their doing, but neither do the majority of Windows users, which was the author’s point.
I’m glad Joe’s hangin out here, contributes to healthy discussion. Even though I almost always think he’s wrong
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