Microsoft makes the Magic Formula!

[Guest misterstockwell]

I'm a happy user of all sorts of Microsoft products that don't crash. Have any of you used Media Center for TV and music? It's fabulous. Apple's TV product is a toy in comparison. We have Xbox's all over the house for extenders.  When I hear all these people complain about crashes, I wonder what exactly they are referring to. My Vista office machine has been on for months, IE8 open with a god-awful number of tabs up, and not a glitch. The Windows 7 HTPC just works. The Windows Home Server has been going for over a year, quietly doing its backup job, and I have not even touched the machine once since putting it together(for $400).

[rmitz]

I'm a happy user of all sorts of Microsoft products that don't crash. Have any of you used Media Center for TV and music? It's fabulous. Apple's TV product is a toy in comparison. We have Xbox's all over the house for extenders.  When I hear all these people complain about crashes, I wonder what exactly they are referring to. My Vista office machine has been on for months, IE8 open with a god-awful number of tabs up, and not a glitch. The Windows 7 HTPC just works. The Windows Home Server has been going for over a year, quietly doing its backup job, and I have not even touched the machine once since putting it together(for $400).

 

Microsoft has gotten much, much better over the years; a lot of their reputation really comes down to crappy third party drivers, and historical problems with windows 95 and 98 (and previous).  Though to be honest, my XBOX crashes an awful lot, probably due to heat issues.

 

That said, I use the mac because I need the unix underpinnings; for me, it's a commercially supported unix, and that is what I'm used to.  (I also loved the old NextStep machines which OSX is based on.) The hardware in my experience also has tended to be better, but that doesn't mean there are no lemons; memory issues have been the one problem I've ever had (though that was with some additional memory I purchased for a later upgrade).  I also ran into issues with an old machine after it had been upgraded a few times--a fresh install of the OS solved those issues.

 

For PC hardware I used to use various versions of Linux on Thinkpads, but the build quality is not as good now that they're run by Lenovo.

[biaggio]

"Microsoft has gotten much, much better over the years; a lot of their reputation really comes down to crappy third party drivers"

 

I wonder why Microsoft has not done what Apple does-design the software + hardware together?

[ERICOPOLY]

"Microsoft has gotten much, much better over the years; a lot of their reputation really comes down to crappy third party drivers"

 

I wonder why Microsoft has not done what Apple does-design the software + hardware together?

 

I tend to wonder where hardware innovation would be today if Apple had won this fight back in the 1980s.  That would really have been a monopoly.