[Gripster]

Once you go Mac, you'll never go back....

I'm a self-confessed nerd/geek and one of my hobbies was always tinkering with PC's and Windows boxes. Then a few years ago, I got a Mac to use as a digital jukebox for the living room (an iLamp G4), because the machine had a unique style compared to PCs of the time.

What i found was that OS X and the iLife apps were very well designed. The machine didn't need rebooting (I just use the sleep function) and just worked. Over time it became my main computer and when my PC died, I replaced it with a Mac.

Thing is OS X is just so stable. It doesn't bog down after 6 months requiring a reinstall in the way that XP does. Vista is an improvement (I use it for work) but it runs slowly and the sleep function is still hit and miss. Contrary to popular belief, the Mac apps themselves do crash a lot, but the OS only goes down when there is a hardware issue. The laptop I am writing this on was last rebooted in November and here we are in January!

With virtualization technology, the new Macs can run Windows. I always kept a Windows box around for gaming and the occassional app with no Mac alternative. Now I use my Xbox for gaming, the Mac for computing and Virtualization for that Windows app which doesn't have a Mac equivalent. Oh, and it's nice not to have to reinstall the OS twice a year!