I don't bother what is the cause of the crash... I simply don't want it to crash, and the only way to have a good and stable workstation for now is to use a mac... at least for me. When one day I'll see a stable pc running musical and non musical software at the same time without crashing... well I'll think to buy it... but since I've payed for my digital performer software I don't think that day will be so close.
Anyway if you feel that a pc is good for you keep it! it's not a problem for me and I'm not a priest who whant you to buy a mac. That's for sure. I do what is the best for me, I don't listen to other since my experience lead me to this path. No more pc for me... untill my mac won't work for me anymore.
Regards, Lorenzo

I've never used a Mac, so can't really comment on that aspect, so I'll comment on PCs.

I feel Windows is also just as bad in the cutesy-cutesy graphics department, and Vista's sickeningly cute graphics (particularly the icons) go right off the scale. I'll go as far as saying I really, really dislike Windows' graphics until I've mutilated all the options to make it less cute, otherwise I tend to projectile vomit all over the screen until I've configured things. But once customised, I love it.

Vista is an absolute bloated hog, though. Requires 19GB of disk space for a clean install with SP1 added! Nothing else installed! No word of a lie. I had to increase the partition from 20GB to 30GB during installation just to fit the OS on.

The antivirus aspect, which the Mac brigade occasionally bring up... whereas it may have been an issue in the past (about 10years ago), it's certainly not an issue any longer. With modern PCs, antivirus software uses few clock cycles and 0% CPU in most use, and it only ever scans a file when you access a file on your hard-drive or on the internet. Within an application it doesn't whirr up at all.

The only occasion where deactivating the antivirus has brought any physically or discernably measurable benefit whatsoever for me was in obtaining extremely low ASIO latencies over firewire. With the anti-virus enabled I can manage 10ms latency at 24-bit/44.1KHz. With the anti-virus de-activated, I can go to the lowest figure of 1.5ms without any glitching.

And this is with a firewire based Motu Traveler (yes, even though it's Motu it works beautifully on a PC!), as opposed to a PCI-based audio card.
On a studio PC you shouldn't ideally use the PC for internet anyway, but I'm naughty and have everything installed, even a little hi-spec gaming.

The Norton issue on PCs is funny, though. Those programs that no-one actually needs, yet if installed they oddly run all the time and leech resources. I don't know how Norton are still in business, none of their software is required. I always recommend people to uninstall it if ever Norton shite is bundled with an off-the-shelf PC purchase.

I'll except Norton Ghost (although there are other alternatives to that).

I'll finally add that XP is bomb-proof. I absolutely love working with it. I've not had a single blue screen since building this (my main) computer a year ago, nor on my other PC that's been running for the last 3 or 4 years, both running XP. They've been solid as a rock.

Regarding antivirus - Norton is not the same thing as Symantec: the professional endpoint protection is now excellent (although it wasn't a few months ago). Norton on the other hand really slowed me down.

In my opinoin, we want a specific job done with a DAW and a general purpose do-everything OS isn't the right way to get it done. That's why hardware appeals to me, the firmware is written to just do one set of tasks. "it just works" (or doesn't) more than a Mac or PC can.

Timo, bomb-proof is a bit over the top. Code and idiot tolerant sounds more like it to me :)

B

For Internet Security software, I rate Kaspersky pretty highly. It has a number of features that are genuinely useful and simply are not found in other softwares that purportedly do the same job.

For example, Kaspersky will let you see exactly which ports you have open, what traffic your computer has been having (how much, where it was destined or received from, etc), and shows a list of your active connections.

This is very handy for monitoring suspicious looking applications - if they connect to the internet and start doing stuff, you can see which process is creating the connection, the IP address they are connecting to, and how much data they are transmitting.

Kaspersky Lab also release updates more frequently than any other Internet Security Suite. An average of 2-3 updates every day is entirely normal, and the update process happens totally in the background without any user intervention required whatsoever. It's completely transparent and has never interrupted my work, ever. In some cases updates are released at a rate of one per hour. Their tech support department are awesome and every single member of staff I have dealt with has been exceptionally knowledgeable and overly willing to help me fix my problem.

Like many things on PCs, it takes a little bit of work to set it up. Once it is running, you'll never even know it's there. Unless something tries to hax you, of course... then it rears up with a vengeance and allows you to smite would-be attackers with a single mouse click.


-Annikk

you should really firewall your outgoing internet connection with a router and aside from that, people get viruses, not the PC. have a separate PC for torrenting, message boarding porning ect and don't take stupid chances opening emails. you have to practically invite a virus onto your pc by visting unsafe sites or opening dangerous files.

the problem with PCs is the users. the difference with macs is they hide or automate everything so the user can't mess it up as easily.

Actually almost all consumer routers don't contain a firewall in the textbook definition; they just translate the open internet into a NAT network, which effectively does the same job as a firewall would. In a lot of them there is even a section in the configuration web page called "Firewall", but this is still not a true firewall.
</geek>



Also, this:
..is roughly how I feel about the whole thing.


-Annikk

I think people can compare windows & mac os not pc & mac because the difference between pc & mac is too small at this moment. For an example, pc owners can use Hackintosh and mac is powered by intel processor... :rolleyes:

right...but pc are much cheaper ;)

Additonally I want to say that I don't think of mac as of more stable computer than pc. There is so many software for pc and almost everyone pc user have to install too many software (simply there isn't so many software available for mac os users) and it's clear that a small part of this pc software works unstable; and there is too many pc users that install unstable software that they don't really need ) So this is the cause of rumours about mac is more stable.

There is a great deal of Bloatware for PCs. I am not sure if it's the same for Macs, but a brand new Dell PC generally takes between 1 and 2 hours to completely clean of all the unnecessary crap.

I'm still not 100% sure why Dell and other manufacturers do this. If I'm buying a computer from a manufacturer I'd be perfectly happy with them simply pre-installing windows. I really don't need 50 free games and some crappy multimedia software that duplicates functions already present in applications that come free with Windows anyway.

I especially don't need a hidden update tool that automatically downloads new bloatware and updates to the existing stuff without my knowledge or consent. Especially not when it tracks and stores usage data and sends it to a mysterious central server.....
AOL and Creative Labs are the worst for this kind of maliciousness.



-Annikk