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I’ve been a Windows user for years, since the 3.1 days and have endured years of painful blue screens, ugly user interface and shady usability. Despite all this I was a Windows Fanboy and always thought Mac sucked, because it did indeed suck and it’s users where considered pompus douches with elitest attitudes. Well that all changed, well all but the elitist pompusness. (Think I just called myself a pompus douchebag…)

Apple has concentrated their efforts exclusively on design and usability, which I do for a living so perhaps this is why I feel myself being converted to the “bright side”. When launching my own company, I felt it was necessary to test my applications on all platforms so was compelled to purchase a Mac. What started as test machine quickly became my full time work machine as I was left dumbfounded by OSX’s pure awesomeness. During the transition from Mac hater to Mac lover, here’s where I found myself weighing the pros and cons of the 2 latest Operating systems.

Windows Vista

PROS

• Looks better then XP
• Has “borrowed” many nice features from Mac OS which makes it more user friendly
• Has media center which can be controlled from other pc’s and even your Xbox so you can share music, movies and pictures across your home network
• More secure then XP
• Has a great picture browser / slideshow function
• Has a pretty good recognition of hardware you plugin to the machine without having to download additional drivers ( note, this is after you manage to successfully remove all errors from a fresh install )
• You can click your cookie crumbs to go back in your path while browsing files

CONS

• Confusing Version/Pricing scheme
• Expensive! $179.00 if you go to futureshop, save 99 cents if you buy it online..??
• $279 if you want vista ultimate !!?? Seriously, wtf?
• If you are planning to upgrade, be prepared for a very unpleasent experience ( 5 hours and perhaps some phone calls to Microsoft ). Warning – you’ll end up doing a fresh install.
• When doing a fresh install, backup everything onto a DVD or external hard drive, things will fail.
• Crashing, lots of it, untill you manage to find all your drivers for a fresh install. Be prepared to google till your eyes bleed to find a fix
• Bloated, sluggish performance on a farily decent system ( Rating 4.1 with AMD 64 3200, 2 gigs of Ram, 2 x SLI GFORCE 6600GT, 1tb SATA HD )
• Reduced performance for gaming
• The system constanlty hangs for no reason whatsoever
• Blue screens, be prepared to crash often
• Absolute mind bogglingy anoying confirmation screens appear for anything you do making sure you want to do what you’re doing. Kind of makes you feel stupid after a while. “Are you sure you want to open notepad?” Yes, I’m fuckin sure, I clicked it to open it, STOP ASKING ME!
• Ah yes, you will develop uncontrolable rage and frustration after extended periods of usage. So cut down on coffee consumption, vista and coffee don’t mix well
• If you have a Mac, you’ll feel like you wasted your money and your Vista computer will get very lonely because you’ll find yourself enjoying the Mac experience

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

PROS

• Leopard has 1 version and it’s $129.99, simple
• Everything from packaging to install to user experience and the look and feel is amazingly beautiful, simple and works
• Mail and Calendar mesh together in such an incredibly useful way, it’s fun to work with
• Ichat, sharing desktops and flipping full screen video conferencing is sweet, not to mention animated backgrounds
• Upgrading? Put the cd in, answer a few questions, walk away for an hour, come back to a fully upgraded working system
• Hardly ever crashes, when it does, head to the mac forum and find the fix in minutes
• Everything you need in a computer comes free on a mac ( except for Iwork )
• Everything looks better, I mean everything
• Managing photos, music and videos is awesome
• Everything works the way you think it should work
• Learning curve is non existant, it’s a flat line

CONS

• No good support for gaming, but that may change in the near future
• Some windows apps don’t have mac versions. Although better alternatives are most likely to exist

Conclusion

Quite simply, Mac rocks and if you’re wondering if you should take the plunge, goto a store and try it out and the answer will be simple. The future is Mac, and Windows is in serious trouble.