Every day, Windows tends to annoy me more & more.
It might be because my laptop has taken a good couple of minutes to wake from ‘hibernate’ or it might be because 80% of the times I switch my vista laptop on, it requires an update which will almost certainly require a restart… or it could be because my work PC (running XP) has restarted itself whilst I am away from the screen because it has finished installing updates…
Obviously I didn’t need all those pixels I had been working on.
I’ve been using Windows for at least 15 years and that is one hell of an annoyance.
I want something better from my OS.
I’ve tried various flavours of Linux but couldn’t really get on with the command line and the compiling every time I wanted to do something; so I’ve always ended up back with Windows.
Another alternative would be a Mac & the OSX system – and the Mac is the in thing with these designers! Believe me, I’d like a Mac. The MacBook Pro is a lovely looking machine, the unibody is rather fetching. The iMac’s look gorgeous too! The only thing I have against a Mac is the obscene cost. Or at least I thought it was obscene.
You see, two months ago now, I grabbed a clean hard drive, put it in my laptop & installed OS X. Essentially, I created a hackintosh. It was fairly easy to do & will write about the install process further in another post along with the learning curve involved.
But using OS X for the last couple of months has been an utter joy. My laptop has never run faster, apps start & perform a lot quicker than ever & booting up is lightening quick.
OS X, as far as operating systems go is definitely a fine system. There’s one or two things I’d like to change just to make things a little easier, but overall, the ease of use, the speed of the system and the usability of it just leaves me in awe everytime I use my laptop.
So after using OS X on a budget laptop which was designed for Windows, I definitely want a MacBook more than ever. I now understand the price point for these computers. Before hand, I thought it was Apple applying an obsurd mark up because the MacBook, iMac & other Apple products where in demand… but now, I realise that to get a system as nice as OS X running at the optimum level, you need to pay for the hardware that will work, and work at a high level.
PC manufacturers design their computers to run on a budget. They know Windows will run on most hardware so they will use the cheaper components. To that end, software developers & indeed Microsoft need to code up new drivers & new work-around’s to get Windows and other software to work on the plethora of hardware configurations available on the PC market. And as they say, your computer is only as fast as your slowest component.
I see Apple differently. They know what hardware is required to make their system run fast, effective & smooth. And these hardware configurations do cost. It’s not a budget screen paired with a cheap motherboard, slow RAM and a ropey hard drive that you’ll find in most budget computers.
PC’s in general are made by so many different companies that there is always that element of competition and all of these companies are vying for your business. If Microsoft where to launch their own computers in line with Apple, filled with quality hardware components that would make Windows 7 run how they imagined, they wouldn’t sell many purely because of the price.
Apple have a monopoly, but because of that, you know you’ll get a quality system with quality components. And this is exactly why I still want a Mac.
I can’t bring myself to pay the money yet, but at least now I know it’ll be easier to swallow when I do.
Links of Reference:
Previously: What Was I Thinking?
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