[MichaelB43]

I have a Win XP machine, and just bought an iMac 17" to replace it. I still use a Win laptop for work, and I thought it was time to give something else a try for home. I love the style of the iMac and want to take advantage of all the photo and video editing features that I hear are much easier on the Mac (especially the video editing for my home movies taken with a Mini DV cam).

In reading through many Mac forums, it seems that Mac users have absolutely no respect for XP. I just wanted to chime in and say that XP was absolutely rock solid for me. I left it on all the time, and I NEVER had to reboot for anything other than software updates. I found it to be fairly intuitive too.

Hopefully, I will love my iMac. I just got it a few days ago and have not even had a chance to plug it in! Many of the interoperability issues have been resolved since the last time I looked into a Mac (especially MS Office), so I am hopeful that I will be getting the best of both worlds with the iMac. The only bummer so far is that it seems I will lose the ability to videoconference with my relatives on the west coast through XP's messenger (unless someone can tell me how to do this between an iMac and PC).

Well, that's all. I guess I don't have much of a point to make here, other than to say that even though I switched to an iMac, I really enjoyed my experience with XP.

[macrob1n]

Get that iMac up and running....use for a week......ask again about "whats wrong with Windows XP".

Welcome to the fold

[Link]

get yahoo messenger.. it has video conference for both mac and PC and they will interoperate

The isight does work with this as well as most usb and firewire cams.

It will become obvious to you in a while that there are many things true about mac os:
1. it's consistent
2. It's elegant.
3. It's almost fully *n?x compatible. If you start to get into webserving and really want to customize your machine you can make that imac do everything a linux box can do, yet still turn around and play ut2003 or whatever
4. the machines are beautiful. Say this about a dell, hpaq, or some emachine.. and then look at the simple, pretty imac.

:shrug: The iapps are a little less funky to deal with too. But yeah, one thing right now mac os has that windows does NOT (and probably never will) is the ability to run *n?x apps natively.

As for stability.. I bet you were restarting every day or two lol... windows updates come quite often (more like once every week or two actually).

I wouldn't worry about stability. ONE THING you might want to do if you intend to run the machine 24/7 as a server is get familiar with the terminal and learn how to restart the window manager (this is simply done by using 'ps' to find the process id, and then kill (pid) to close it (and it will automatically restart)... this will keep your memory problems minimal... and while not necessary to ANY extent.. is handy when you like to have your computer on more then 3 or 4 weeks

otherwise.. set your windows around.. try xchat, put up a little transparency, go to unsanity.com, grab a few h4x0r utilities (cleardock is an awesome way to have a dock that matches your background), and you'll be enjoying the stuff os x can do (and windows can't easily) in no time at all.

If I just freaked you out there.. don't worry.. a year or so down the line you'll be loving the h4x0r features.. it took me a while to get the hang of it and when i first started out with my g4 2 years ago i used MS word to make my websites lol.

Now I use dreamweaver and photoshop to their fullest extents and such.. and can chat while I'm working on some long and hard code ^_^

:shrug: Good luck!

[MichaelB43]

Well, you freaked me out a little, but no worry. I'll learn to walk before I run. Right now, my primary focus is on Internet browsing, MS Office, Videoconferencing, photo and video editing. That should keep me busy for a while (like years).

I don't know what the heck h4x0r is...should I?

Anyway, thanks for the tip on the Yahoo IM. That makes me feel a lot better, as it was the last remaining interoperability issue keeping me awake at night.

Hopefully I won't run into problems keeping it running all the time. With the broadband connection, it's just easier not to shut it off. It's a pain to restart a computer every time you want to go and check the net. I'm not running it as a server or anything. Rather, it's just convenience that is driving my desire to leave it on 24/7. When I had the XP machine go into a sleep mode, all hell broke loose, so I just set up power mgmt. to shut the monitor off, and that kept things running solid.

Thanks,
Mike

[mbryda]

Originally posted by MichaelB43:

In reading through many Mac forums, it seems that Mac users have absolutely no respect for XP. I just wanted to chime in and say that XP was absolutely rock solid for me. I left it on all the time, and I NEVER had to reboot for anything other than software updates. I found it to be fairly intuitive too.

Because XP deserves no respect. By day I fix the many problems with Windows - it's comforting to come home to computers that just work (Mac).

Windows seemed more intuitive, but after working with my Mac for close to 2 years now, it is much more intuitive than the PC. Want to delete a program? Drag that sucker to the trash! Want to move a file, drag it to your HD and the HD pops open and you can traverse the directories. No registry (that alone is a MS Pit Of Despair), which was a great idea for under 2Gb HD's, but is simply a PITA now.

Look at the recent worms: NT/2k/XP. Now, NT has been around for what, 10 years now and they still can't get things right....

[Link]

compared to other OSes i still find it incredible at times that i liked windows at one point and etc. Windows 98 was definately a little cleaner looking then OS 9 (one of those things that depends on the person), but since then windows has only gotten uglier, more bloated, and less functional.

When apple uses effects they're quick and simple.. in panther when you log out the desktop fades but it happens very fast...

in windows they try to make it extremely obvious that fading and sliding and all of that crap happens, it's like a k-mart version of OS X or something.

Besides that problems and the lack of hosting featuers are a few reasons I don't use my PC often anymore .. right now it's been sitting without being used for weeks and this happens all the time.

[nredman]

I use my wifes dell with XP, i have used windows 95, 98, 2000 and now XP over the years...used them before and after i started using a mac (8.5-X). My perceptions of XP are pretty much the same as earlier versions of Windows...that perception is that the OS makes things more difficult then it needs to. I believe XP to be more stable then earlier versions...i haven't had my wifes computer crash on me once, and she has had it about 1 1/2 years. Everything is easier in the mac os in my opinion. thats why even if pc's are cheaper i will always use a mac.

[Raining Down in Texas]

All of our Dell laptops at work have a strange problem with Windows XP (which they came with). If the machine ever has to run Scandisk on boot, it will get through the entire process, then the screen will black out and stay that way forever. Of course, your only recourse is to hold down the power switch to reboot, which triggers Scandisk, which retriggers the problem. After four or five cycles of this, the machines will eventually properly boot into XP. The machines have the latest "approved" video drivers.

The best workaround that we have found is to boot the machines into safe mode, run Scandisk from there, and then reboot into normal mode.

I agree that XP appears to be more stable than its predecessors (except for maybe 2000), but it still has enough legacy Windows wierdness to make it annoying for use.

BTW, I was a Windows-only user for 10 years (since 3.0), and used to ridicule my (ex-)girlfriend for buying Macs. I switched her over to Windows, and then I switched to Macs about 3 years later. My friends and coworkers still come to me to fix their Windows problems. I have found that the Mac is elegant, simple, and just works even when I abuse it. I am one of these people who downloads every piece of (possibly junky) software I think is cool to try out - this forced me to reinstall Windows every 6 months, but I have never had to reinstall a Mac OS. I have never had a Mac problem that I could not trace the root cause of; starting at Windows 98 I started finding that it was just easier to reinstall the OS and all the apps than to try and chase down the problems.

Windows has become one of those systems where there are patches on patches on patches. It has not been designed as a cohesive whole; it has been designed to maintain compatibility with legacy usages and to fix the bugs associated with maintaining that compatibility. The result is that Microsoft is locked into bad design choices like the Registry or the application DLLs that live in the system folder and can be overwritten at will by any app that feels like it. If MS fixes those problems, lots of applications will no longer function.

I think Apple took a better approach with the Classic environment under OS X. It essentially runs independent of OS X in its own virtual machine. It is not hard to see a day when you'll just drag your OS 9 system folder to the trash and it'll be gone forever. MS has chosen to keep components of DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows 98 built into the guts of Windows XP. It is an inelegant solution, and will cause lots of pain when it is eventually removed because users and developers are not being weaned away from it.

Windows XP might be the best version of Windows possible given the architecture that MS has chosen for Windows. But it is not an elegant OS by any means.

[MichaelB43]

Originally posted by Raining Down in Texas:
It is not hard to see a day when you'll just drag your OS 9 system folder to the trash and it'll be gone forever.

Now that you mention this, do I need OS 9 in my new machine considering this is my first Mac and I don't own any old Mac software? Just curious...

Thanks,
Mike

[sniffer]

Originally posted by MichaelB43:
Now that you mention this, do I need OS 9 in my new machine considering this is my first Mac and I don't own any old Mac software? Just curious...

Thanks,
Mike

No. The only reason I have OS 9 on my drive now is to have a fall back system and b/c my mac is not the fastest around. In the start I needed it b/c the printer drivers didn't work in X, but that's a long time ago. Since you are a new user and X are now over the difficult transition from OS 9, I doubt you'll ever need it. Honestly I can't remember the last time I started classic.