Found the article quite interesting, in a "fanboy" sorta way.
Although did make me wonder how much I'd spent over the years on maintaining Windows at home.
Starting from the first time I personally bought Windows (Windows 95 as before this, I maintained our Amiga)
[1995] Windows 95 : £45 (3.5" Floppy Version)
[1997] Windows 95 OSR2 : £25 (b-grade supply from work at the time CD-Version)
[1999] Windows ME Upgrade : £35 (CD-Version)
[2000] Windows 2000 Professional : £60 (CD-Version)
[2003] Windows XP Professional : £75 (VLK CD-Version)
[2007] Windows Vista Ultimate : £220 (VLK Retail DVD-Version)
When it still supported Windows, I used to subscribe license Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus until they went Mac-Only (which I only kept purchasing for my Macs until MacOSX Jaguar was released)
That was £35/year from 1995-1998. After that I've not actually used anything other than AVG, and for Vista the built-in Defender (OneCare) seems to work fine.
So for 12years of Windows, it's cost me about £460 for Windows itself, and £105 for Anti-Virus; which when 3.5" FDDs were still being used a lot was an absolute must for ALL OS.
Empire Monkey B was probably the most viriulant out there, just got into bloody everything; being safe from that was fairly important to me as it's only task was to just sit i the boot sector of FDDs and turn any file it came into contact with into random data. Didn't matter the OS you ran, if it was on a disk and you had no protection you were screwed royally.
In total (including Vista) I've spent less on Windows; than I have each time I've been forced to upgrade my bottom-end systems.
I've never been forced to upgrade my computer to use a new version of Windows (including Vista) even on my low-end systems. To me that's quite impressive. Sure Vista normally speaking refusing to install on something lower than 512MB RAM; the VLK and Business Editions will install on as little as 256MB, and run comfortably.
They also install and run on anythig 800MHz and above comfortably, as well as scaling down to run on practically any video hardware.
In-fact I've had Vista running fairly well, on a Celeron 800MHz - 196MB SDRAM 133MHz RAM - S3 ViRGE 4MB PCI. Something that Windows ME and XP just refused to do.. Windows 2000 did however.
Of course many of the features of Vista for that particular computer are off, and it's purely there as a resource server. Has very light power requirements (<70w) compared to this system that uses 2x 640w PSUs at almost 80% capacity.
In previous years I've had issues with hackers, spyware and such.. but only with Windows XP Professional when I first got it. It took a while to figure out how it differed from Windows 2000 to lock it down properly.
From an end-user point of view, Windows while it has a fairly steep initial cost; has been very cheap in every other respect.
Biggest thing that has saved time and money really is that if there is a task I want to do; there is software for it.
This is my biggest gripe with both Linux and MacOS. Don't get me wrong for work, I do like the performance the Macs' have provided over the years while working with Photoshop, Shake, Maya, etc. However until very recently there have been deathly unstable.
Although no doubt many here have experienced Windows blue-screens, anyone who has experienced a Mac crash will know full-well they're ten times worse.. and denying that is just retarded.
Yes MacOSX is more stable than previous versions, but now rather than trying to fix the problem causing massive data corruption before switching off; MacOSX will just close the app unexpectedly. poof! gone. Same with Linux if it experiences a problem with an app. Both situations again can cause data corruption with files you were working with at the time.
This has never happened on Windows. If it crashes, 9/10 it's because of a driver issue rather than software.. more to the point I don't loose data from it.
In a working evironment that has always been a VERY important factor to me.
This said, both MacOSX Tiger and Vista are extremely stable variants on their original versions. But Tiger does still have a tendancy to crash Photoshop and Maya on me; usually when I'm pushing the machine to it's memory and graphical capabilities.
Which brings me to another point actually. Both Linux and MacOSX are considerably slower when it comes with 3D in my experience... unless you have custom graphics driver, they just don't live up to what can be done on Windows. Alright so really this is down to the driver developers more than anything else, but again as my PCs are used for 3D Graphics and Gaming; this is a big factor for me.
For Macs the only cards I've found to be worthwhile, have been the professional FireGL and Quadro cards. Standard gaming cards are just close to pointless.. yes the new Intel based Macs this has changed considerably; but I still own a G5, and their performance is poor without workstation cards. Provided they even support the normal cards.
What's more is the move to Intel is still quick new, with no legitimate way for many to purchase the x86 MacOSX. This to me was quite annoying, because I either paid over the odds for the new Core 2 Duo hardware just to get MacOSX for Intel or ignored it and upgraded Tiger on my G5. That seemed a bad move from Apple, but luckily thanks to work I've been able to get a boxed copy of the software they only sell to business'.
At the end of the day, I don't really give two craps what the hell OS any of you use. That said, I find this constant bashing of Windows especially Vista truely irritating. If you don't like them, don't bloody use them.. and if you don't use them, why bother visiting a forum for a company who's entire product line is 100% Windows dependant?
You want to use Linux, or MacOSX.. fine, but newsflash.
NO ONE F***ING CARES YOU USE IT!
You see me making a post on here when I purchased Vista, saying "PWN3D!". No? Well that might cause there wasn't one, cause no one cares about me upgrading my OS like no one cares about you upgrading yours.
So you're a [insert arbitry POSIX OS here] user. Good for you, what you want a freaking ticker tape parade for it?
OMG I'm running AmigaOS4.0 on one of my computers.. maybe I should be declared forum president for a day if you get a ticker tape parade!
Get over yourselves and your OS. This is all getting old very quickly.
