It’s unfortunate that your PC-based notebooks have been of such low quality. My last two notebooks have been HP and I can’t believe the quality of these devices. Both long outlived their expacted lifespans, and this one here (almost 5 years old, now) is still kickin’ along just great. This is despite the fact that I brought it to work everyday for years, and I’m not too nice to it when I’m losing the occasional video game

I’ve used Macs for a while in a previous life, and I found that they crashed more often as their PC counterparts. That said, it seemed that only the Apple software would give me the happy little bomb, whereas software written by Adobe or other publishers would be rock solid. The same is said with Windows-based applications. Some designers are just better at writing software than others. We can’t blame all of our problems on Windows or Mac OS.

That said, at the end of the day it comes down to personal preference. I’m now running Ubuntu full time and, aside from the occasional quirk here and there, it’s been rock solid. It can’t run most of my old software, but it can give me exactly what I need for the next little bit. That, and I don’t have to worry about viruses quite as often.

To each their own, right?

When Apple moved the Mac from PowerPC to Intel x86-based processors two years ago, everyone was talking about running Windows on their sexy little MacBook Pro’s. Could it be done? Would Windows handle the Apple-brand hardware? Would it be something t…

Mac doesn’t support “crap hardware”. So when you go to the store and buy the cheapest thing to fill a need, you can’t be guaranteed that it will work with OSX, whereas you’ll at least get some half-assed performance in Windows.

A great example of this would be a video capture card. Real video capture cards are at least $200 and need to be installed inside the computer. But you can get a basic capture device for $80 that connects through USB. The quality sucks, the video resolution sucks, the software sucks, and there’s barely any support for it in Windows. But at least you know it will “just work” with XP (or Vista). You won’t be able to do this with OSX.

Most of us have hardware that will work with both Mac and Windows (printers, usually) but millions of us have hardware that is Windows-only. So if people install OSX only to find their $40 webcam, game controllers or other external hardware doesn’t work, they will either go out and replace that hardware with something that will work (which benefits Apple indirectly) or they’ll live with it until they can afford a Mac (which benefits Mac directly).

Just like when you bought a new printer because your old Canon wouldn’t work in Vista.

That’s the theory, anyways. I might be completely wrong, but Apple usually doesn’t make it easy for people to do unexpected things with their hardware and software. Installing OSX on a PC is definately unexpected.

Of course the other option is that Apple is gearing up to be less Apple-centric (yeah, right) and wants to entice people to upgrade with their $130 operating system. I don’t think there’s a single version of WindowsXP or Vista that we can buy for that price, and XP’s been out for six years.

People practically fall over each other trying to buy iPods, iPhones or iWhatevers. If they wont’ buy a Mac, why not entice them with an iPC?