Gotta ask; Mac/OS X, PC/Windows, PC/Linux or other?

[Frickr]

pc user, grew up with windows. first computer still ran dos then windows nt? onto 95,98,me,xp, vista, 7, back to vista for the mean time.

i love the media center benifit to windows. i have my xbox, zune, and computer all set up to work together. after all zune > ipod.

 

[steiner666]

pc user, grew up with windows. first computer still ran dos then windows nt? onto 95,98,me,xp, vista, 7, back to vista for the mean time.

i love the media center benifit to windows. i have my xbox, zune, and computer all set up to work together. after all zune > ipod.

Dont you mean Cowon S9 > zune > ipod? Lol, but i have been wanting to check out the new zunes. My friend had one of the older ones and he had to have it repaired adn then it broke again and i'm not sure ifhe couldnt get it fixed or just didnt feel like it, but i havent seen it after that. All i know is that my creative zen has outlasted his zune and a couple other ppl i know's ipods.

Why did you go back to vista from 7? I'm guessing because your beta ran out and you didnt feel like forkin over the $ for retail? Its just that you're the only person i've heard of that went from 7 to vista. I've heard of a FEW who went back to XP, but never vista.

 

[Frickr]

Why did you go back to vista from 7? I'm guessing because your beta ran out and you didnt feel like forkin over the $ for retail? Its just that you're the only person i've heard of that went from 7 to vista. I've heard of a FEW who went back to XP, but never vista.

yup, have a brother who works tech support for microsoft sharepoint, and he gave me the beta version. this computers about hashed out anyways, so just never bothered to pay for it. just have to get up to fargo and have my bro install it on here for me again.

 

[tdavie]

Interesting about the spill. The Lenovo laptops have a drain for spills, routes the water (or whatever) away from the electronics.

The PC laptop I gave g/f was an HP that I had used for about 16 months. I thought it was getting rather long in the tooth, so I gave it to her as a justification to buy an iMac(plus I thought the 17" aluminum macbooks were coming sooner than they did....I ended up using a nice Acer netbook for 1/2 a year).

Since getting a Macbook the only extra precaution I've taken is to keep my beer at a lower elevation, and on the right hand side (I'm left handed so less of a chance to spill it).

Tom

 

[Purple-Days]

I haven't seen 7 but having used Vista I have since bought two laptops in XP pro, both Lenovo. One for Pammy, for business and records, (that I thought I would get to share but that ain't happening. So she talked me into another for the music room and me).

XP doesn't ask you for a bunch of approvals before you tinker with stuff you aren't supposed to (now ), registry items etc... And lots of older programs (freeware) for XP.

All those who hate the I-tunes interface and it's constant tag along updates, raise your hands.

 

[jeffp]

I've had Windows for a long time. I'm currently running Win 7, and everything is running fine. I am not against Macs, I've just never wanted to pay Mac prices. Sooner or later I'm going to have a Macbook though.

I'm OK with PC's - I have no problems with Vista. I don't know why it's so disliked.
I buy computers cheap and dump them after a couple of years.
What I'm using now is a "scratch and dent" Dell that I bought from their outlet site for about $400; it's fine - it has the most superficial cosmetic scratch on the case and because it was
a custom order Dell and it wasn't cosmetically perfect it was reduced about 50 percent.
Same one year warranty.

**EDIT***

Tom, I don't like iTunes either, I use a really good free third party program called Copy Trans Manager.

 

[jeffp]

-get NOD32 Antivirus from www.eset.com/store and install it. I think its like $30, but its THE best AV out there. I repair PCs at my job and I'm pretty familiar with almost all of them. Norton, McAfee, AVG, and crappy AVs like them do very poor jobs of protecting computers, but an awesome job of slowing them down and crashing them! NOD32 does the opposite, catches almost everything and uses almost no system resources.

-get Comodo - http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/free-download.html. It comes bundled with an antivirus that i honestly havent given much of a try, but you can choose not to install it in favor of NOD32. What you'll get then is a pretty awesome firewall and also protection from a lot of other malicious programs and security threats. It might be a bit hard for a really noobish user to set up, but once you do, you'll be pretty much armor-clad If Comodo is too much for you, you could just use the firewall included with windows and maybe get a free spyware scanner like spybot and malwarebytes instead.

Great advice. I found a coupon code for NOD32; about $20 for a year, I think it is the best. That plus MalwareBytes and Spybot pretty much cover all bases.

 

[Qbit]

Well I'm bi - as in I can use both Mac and PC. But at the moment I'm using a Mac as I'm into producing music, and I use Logic and other software that's only for Mac. The user-friendliness of the Mac is also important as getting software to make music just the way you want it to is complex enough without having to worry about system issues as well.

But I miss the PC as a gaming environment - nothing beats a nice PC when it comes to that, and I love a good game. However, budget and priorities say not at the moment.

 

[SkeletonLips]

Qbit, I too use my Mac for music. I am running Ableton Live 8 right now. It's a very fun music creation environment in my opinion. How do you like Logic? I too love the ease in which my music equipment and programs just run flawlessly with my Mac. Just plug and play on just about anything.

 

[bstar]

I'm constantly fixing family members' computers and I have my own preferred setup if anyone is interested:
Firefox with Ad-Block Plus, Ad-Block Plus Element Hider, Flashblock (for advanced users)
Ad-Aware
Spybot S&D
Avast! Antivirus (This is FREE and by far the best I have ever used!)

So far with this setup I haven't had a virus or ad/mal/spyware problems for years. This is bad but I don't even remember the last time I manually updated and scanned everything. (Avast does update itself and watch everything coming and going though.) A little common sense while browsing does go VERY far but using this setup has saved me a lot of time cleaning other people's computers. In my experience it's also quite good as far as not using up all your PC's resources.

There's nothing like building your own computer! I was pretty nervous but my husband got me all the parts for Christmas. With a few tips from the saleswoman I was good to go. A few hours of my time was well worth it! Not to mention I learned SO MUCH doing it. I've never been even close to this happy with a computer. And yes, we saved a bundle! We paid half or less what we would have spent on a comparable premade computer. Not to mention it's everything I want and nothing I don't, plus no bloatware to deal with. Only bad thing was XP cost $200 more than Vista, lol. After "hacking" a few settings though I've bent it to my will.

And my first PC... don't remember. I was 5! But just imagine whatever was out 20 years ago. I remember being SO AMAZED at a blocky little dancing man on the screen, ha ha.

 

[ZigZag]

i got a mac and iv had it for almost 5 years still works great, just fully upgraded it for less than 100$
fast as hell, running windows xp also, iv never ever had any problem with it. i was pretty amazed coming from a p.c