Windows, Mac or Linux?
I get asked this alot, and as I’m sitting here in Santa Fe, in the Hilton watching my girlfriend fight to the death with her XP laptop, I thought I’d share my thoughts.
The scenario we are in right now is a pretty amazing turn of events from just recently. I’m sitting here with effortlessly connected wireless doing whatever I want with Ubuntu on my HP laptop, and she’s:
- struggling to see connections with her Belkin connectino manager
- struggling to connect to the same one as me
- rebooting and having to wait for Norton or McCaffee ( I can’t watch ) to allow her to get to her work
- trying to work out why Outlook won’t let her write in an email that she wants to send
- Oh.. it just crashed!!!
So, here’s my take on it.
You should buy a Windows machine..
never. You just shouldn’t. Yes, there is the argument that they are so much cheaper than macs, but you are just too special a person to put up with the grief.
You should install Linux when..
1) When you are feeling adventurous. The thing with a distribution like Ubuntu (a good choice for a first taste of linux) is that there is a very good chance that out of the box it will work, and do what you need - but there is so much more it is capable of, that it’s easy to wander into the world of the very very cool stuff - and in that world you need a bit more gumption. That might just mean the ability to google something and follow the steps, even when they seem really complicated, but you have to have that sense of adventure.
2) If you have an old piece of hardware that you don’t think should sit on the shelf. Linux can very easily install on something that has died the death with Windows and be a very useful extra machine for surfing, email etc.
You should buy a mac..
.. if you are not going to use Linux. Simple as that. Do yourself a favor.. don’t put up with Windows anymore.
Sure, Macs are not perfect, and they are expensive.. and from seeing my mac buddies luck, I’d say buy Apple Care, because they are no more resliant than the average PC, but find me a mac user who wishes they hadn’t made the switch.. it’s a no brainer.
‘nuff said.
