Windows or Mac?

[Stringent]

Just because it says Mac compatible on the box doesn't mean it is IN the box. Also you tried ringing tech support for something to do with Mac or is compatible, they go errr what?

I love the look of Macs. I am very tempted to buy a MacBook Pro. But I am always put off when I have to do something on my dads iMac (10.5). Nothing makes sense, things are in odd places or hidden. I end up having to Google where things are. I wish MS kept Office the same as the Windows version though.

Been using Windows 7 now for a while and I like it. Be either getting it on my MSDN subs or an OEM with a hardware upgrade to my PC. As for the Macbook Pro, for the same money I can get a Dell XPS with Windows, Office and Adobe Premier/Photoshop Elements and have a wealth of games at my disposal.

[badass]

Depends on your business surely? Not having to maintain an A/V solution etc would save a fair bit of cash, plus it's built on BSD, so implements a sensible security policy.

The only businesses that OSX is best for are ones with arty-farty types. Anyone else that wants to get proper work done either runs their business from *nix, windows or a mixture of the 2.
Linux is useful for single specific applications. It's rubbish for running a network.

[Jiff Lemon]

Windows Vista Business at work (goes to windows 7 next week).
Home is Windows vista business on Laptop, 7 on Desktop, A Windows home server, OSX10.5, Windows XP and unbuntu. Oh and 2k8 HyperV server running all sorts of wierdness!

[directhex]

Linux is useful for single specific applications. It's rubbish for running a network.

Except that whole "internet" thang

[TheAnimus]

Neither is Windows? So you're advocating using what?

It really is at that volume, hell once your beyond 10 CALs and into the world of Volume Licensing. I'm going out on a limb here and saying that you've never been involved in setting up a business IT stratergy, or even had to use one that had more than 1 site! OSX has little in the way of tools built into it for helping maintenance of the network, and there is sod all 3rd party tools in comparison to the alternatives.

Right, so they don't spend money on advertising, but that's not what you said. You said that businesses would be mad to deploy on OSX? How does advertising hook into that?

If your going to build your business on a technology, you need to be certain that you as a client are going to continue reciving the service, at the level you expect. You have to have confidence that you are an important part of the business. Apple squander millions on their advertising, whilst the adds like we've seen in the last week are sloppy and full of fail, they used to have a clean slick simple message. It always neglected the businesses. Why buy into someones propertry junk, if you are not an important area that they are obviously going to be continuing to support! This is REALLY important, and must be taken into consideration by any business.

You can go to Dixons or PC World and buy a Mac compatible scanner. You plug it in, and it will talk directly to iPhoto or something similar. Plug in a camera, and it'll even fire up iPhoto for you and ask if you'd like to import the photos. Drop in a CD and it'll open up iTunes. Log in to iChat, and the video camera will become live.

You can't do that with Ubuntu. You can do bits of that with Windows, but it's not as intuitive. You're talking about all sorts of stuff from the perspective of someone who is a coder/geek.

You can do all of it in windows, every single bit. You can also in Ubuntu netbook edition, i jam in a SD card, it opens it up, and views the pictures. The only difference is that when i open skype/msn my camera isn't active, not until i switch it on (i like the idea that its physically power starved when not in use!).

The scanner point is interesting, whilst i was at Heathrow waiting for my delayed departure, i was watching someone who was moderately geeky buy a netbook, she choose a £200 offering, and then wanted a webcam, dixons actually had a member of staff who said that it was easy as long as you bought the right one, and promptly used that to upsell her. Thing is she will have gotten a set up that worked!

As soon as you stray away from everything is written for the monopoly that is windows, be it to mac, linux or even Acorn (yup Castle are still going apparently!) you have to have either knowledge or good sales people.

[TheAnimus]

Except that whole "internet" thang

This i think is actually an intresting point against linux.

Look at the fricken mess, wasted money that is the internet! If you where SME who owned that mess you would be desperately trying to cut cost, centeralise managment of the boxes etc.

Linux when used properly provides a very solid (and inflexible) collection of unix apps. The anoyance is there are so damn many that do pretty much the same job. Given the way that the people who maintan these things love to have spats with each other, linux has proved time and time again in my industry that it is very expensive in the knowledge skillset required.

A company I've worked for has just fired 30% of its staff. All the expensive network contractors have gone, and you've got desktop support staff maintaining the servers. The solaris systems haven't been working properly since that guy went. All the windows stuff is still fine.

That is the ultimate problem with the word linux, it covers such a wide variety of things, each one different because the developer wanted to do it "best" in his mind. This means that a tremendous knowledge is required to do very simple tasks.

(that said my personal dedicated web server runs debian, it has been compramised once, and that was because i was stupid enough to use pearl, and not spend every waking second of my life poised and ready to update a critical flaw. But it still is running linux rather than windows, purely because serving a very low volume of files, apache just fricken works fine.)

[Maccer101]

I was under the impression that the Google search engine runs on a few thousand networked Linux machines, so it can't be that poor.

Linux for me, I don't game, its free and my 3 Ubuntu machines are rock solid stable (one crash out of 3 machines since last September, happened whilst streaming media from my NAS) I never have to restart it except when I gets a Kernal update.

Updates are intergrated, massive one-stop software repositories, no antivirus needed, I've found it great for all my home needs plus it zooms along faster than when I was using MS on the same machine.

[badass]

Except that whole "internet" thang

Forgot to add the work corporate in front of that.
Linux is utterly useless for running a corporate network compared to windows server 2003 and 2008.
Although I wouldn't say linux runs the internet. A lot of ISP's mailservers and web hosting, but most of the real internet is run by specialist hardware with its own propietry firmware.

[aidanjt]

Linux is utterly useless for running a corporate network compared to windows server 2003 and 2008.

Care to quantify that?

Although I wouldn't say linux runs the internet. A lot of ISP's mailservers and web hosting,

And domain servers, and routers, and financial transaction servers, and time servers, and file mirrors, and web archiving crawlers, etc, ad nausium.

but most of the real internet is run by specialist hardware with its own propietry firmware.

You'd be suprised.

[Mnia786]

XP Pro SP2. Mainly due to the fact most apps work on it over Vista and to use OSX, need to give money to the money grabbers at apple -.-

[badass]

Care to quantify that?

Find me a solution based on linux where:
1. I can pay a yearly fee for an operating system that the average office worker can use straight away without expensive training for the vast majority of users.
2. There is a large pool of engineers available with experience in troubleshooting desktop issues for £25,000pa or less (in the home counties) that actually have enough social skills to not annoy the users.
3. The server operating systems are compatible the majority of software that most businesses need. Things like book keeping software, groupware etc that our users can intuitively use.
4. The server operating systems can easily be used for desktop imaging.
5. There is a sizable pool of non fundamentalist nutter IT engineers available from local/regional support companies that can supply holiday cover.
6. Has a simple to setup centralised update management system that comes free with the server OS.
7. Has an office suite that can open Office 2007 xlsx and docx files.

Like I said, linux has its place, but it's not running an office network. I don't care if it's technically better at anything, in reality it costs too much to use.

[martinp]

Other version of Windows for me - Win 7 RC.

[peterb]

Find me a solution based on linux where:
1. I can pay a yearly fee for an operating system that the average office worker can use straight away without expensive training for the vast majority of users.
2. There is a large pool of engineers available with experience in troubleshooting desktop issues for £25,000pa or less (in the home counties) that actually have enough social skills to not annoy the users.
3. The server operating systems are compatible the majority of software that most businesses need. Things like book keeping software, groupware etc that our users can intuitively use.
4. The server operating systems can easily be used for desktop imaging.
5. There is a sizable pool of non fundamentalist nutter IT engineers available from local/regional support companies that can supply holiday cover.
6. Has a simple to setup centralised update management system that comes free with the server OS.
7. Has an office suite that can open Office 2007 xlsx and docx files.

Like I said, linux has its place, but it's not running an office network. I don't care if it's technically better at anything, in reality it costs too much to use.

Hmm - they used to say that about IBM...

[badass]

Hmm - they used to say that about IBM...

They used to say "no one got sacked for buying IBM"
Pretty different I'd say TBH

[ixos]

Win 7 here too. Very pleased with it so far

Regards

[peterb]

They used to say "no one got sacked for buying IBM"
Pretty different I'd say TBH

That is indeed what they said, on the basis that it was the safe option - nothing outstanding, but safe, and although there were other products available, IBM pretty much had the monopoly - which is pretty much where Microsoft is now. Buit when you are at the top of the heap, there is only one way to go...

Look at IBM now - a completely different business from what it was 30 years ago.

On a different (but related) theme...

The interesting (to me) analogy is the one of malware - not for nothing termed viruses, and biodiversity - or diversity of the operating system. With a large population of one species, a virus can spread unchecked, until immunity is acquired, when a mutaion causes similar damage. Other species (operating systems) remain immune or less affected. That isn't grounds for complacency - an appropriate virus could cause equal damage to populations of Macs or Linux machines although the lower population density (just as in the biological case) could limit the spread of infection.

That isn't going to be a cause for Windows to die out, but it is an argument for corporations to keep a mix of operating systems in their computing network - reliance on one particular platform can (and has) caused severe disruption in the past and will again at some point.