Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, may only be six months old, but rumours are already abound as to the next update to Apple's operating system. According to several sources, it's going to be called Snow Leopard, it won't contain any major new features, and is planned to go gold master December 2008, available a month later. The big rumour: it's going to be available for 64bit Intel machines only.
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Member since:2005-07-06
I've been using NT based systems since NT4 came out. I've had NT4, windows 2k, and XP systems all "self destruct". Not very often, but they have. I've also had machines that ran forever. Like my brothers 2k pro machine that has a 7 year old installation and is running perfectly smooth (I'm typing on it now). I had an nt4sp6a server than ran 24/7 for over 2 years before a hardware failure killed it (ran internal software, wasn't accessible from outside the network, so I never bothered to do updates. heh).
It all depends on how well you keep up with it and what you do on it. I've seen 2 week old towers riddled with viruses and spyware/malware because of users that don't have a clue. I've also seen REALLY flaky OSX installations. How users manage to do that, I don't know. I've never had issues with OSX 
Windows /can/ be a battle. We have over 60 machines at work that are running imaging software that reload themselves after every reboot. Windows STILL, somehow, has issues from time to time. :/
Member since:2005-08-11
Member since:2005-06-30
While I have yet to see a recent production-quality OS going hara-kiri for absolutely no reason, software update systems are a new threat to system health. It's getting even worse since updates are done automatically or strongly suggested by an user-friendly window. You could argue that such systems are not self-destructing alone, but it's still a core functionality going wrong after a while.
Perhaps I have offended some computer god, but practically every OS I have used for a while went FUBAR at least once by an update. Fortunately, I can fix things up by my own, but it made me quite cynic when I hear claim on system robustness.
Anyway, there are so many variables in computer systems that most claims are really a matter of anecdotes based on personal experiences. Hey, I know users who were genuinely happy with Windows Me, yet it's the worst crap I have ever used! Well, actually, it's Solaris, but that's another story based on anecdotes...
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2005-11-10
Member since:2005-08-11
I wouldn't call XP or Vista broken, any more than I would call BSD or Linux broken, I use them all, and I have to say, they all have issues.
Member since:
2005-08-11
Perhaps the "crap" you went through is due more to your skill level than Windows? Perhaps you spent your time surfing for porn and clicking on dodgy links in your mail? It's a poor mechanic that blames his tools....
False generalizations can go both ways.
I also have been supporting Windows for a long time, I started working full time in 1993, and most of the people whose computers I have fixed stayed fixed. I always take the time to explain to my clients what went wrong, why it went wrong, and what could be done to keep it from happening again. Most of the time it is malware or hardware issues.
Windows NT based OS's have never tended to self destruct like Win9x, and the situation has only gotten better with each release.