To begin with, I have to state I am a long time, die-hard Mac user. But recently, I have been using Windows 7 on my (formerly hackintoshed) HP 2140 netbook (the past couple of weeks). I have been a bit tech-bored lately and wanted to give it a try. A Windows-friend of mine gave me the final Windows 7 RC and urged me to give it a go. The installation of the OS and applications went seamlessly. After everything was installed and tweaked the way I like it, I have been extremely surprised how much I am enjoying the experience (perhaps because how Mac-like it is). It is very well done, zippy, most everything works seamlessly, pretty to look at, etc (yep, very Mac-like). With Windows 7 due to be released this month, my question to all you Mac users is: How many of you are tempted to try or better (worse) yet are thinking about switching to the Darkside ;)???
Gadgeteer Comment Policy - Please read before commenting
I have the beta ISO file, but haven’t tried it on anything (Netbook) yet… Now you make me want to take a look! 🙂
You know, I was born into an IBM household, so the PC indoctrination was strong and relentless. We got our first PC in 1984, and I owned nothing but PCs until just a couple of years ago (I experimented with Linux and BeOS for a while, naturally, but neither of them seemed ready to become my full-time OS).
Nearly two years ago, I bought my first Mac. And now I no longer have a Windows PC in my home. I’ve played around with Windows 7 in Parallels, and it’s nice (certainly better than Vista), but I haven’t found anything there that it does better than Snow Leopard. If I had a spare PC on which to run Windows 7 just for fun, I’d be happy to do so, but I don’t see it drawing me back away from the Mac world. Things are just so much less frustrating here.
I would say I’m curious, but not tempted. Installed it in a vm, but really, i can’t think of anything to do with the vm that would give me a good idea of how Windows 7 works. I like OSX and my mac world too much to bother. At this point, I pretty muh only use Windows at work. The techy side of me can’t help but think “ooh, new shiny”, but so far, I’ve been too lazy.
@Tamara I’m in the exact same boat as you 🙂
As long as Windows still has a registry, I have zero desire to use it. It might be “zippy” today, but tomorrow will bring the same horrors.
Not at all and I have used 7 extensively. Mark is right about the registry for one. As long as there is a registry there will be Windows rot that slows down the OS and causes instability that can only be resolved by installing the OS. 7 is still a security sieve. I don’t think its UI is nearly as good as OS X. 7 also does not scale to multiple procs, multi-core procs, or large amounts of memory nearly as well as OS X or any Linux/Unix OS for that matter. Plus it is very difficult to find the level of hardware quality and OS integration that you get with a Mac.
I was a Mac user from 1984 to the early ’90s and then was forced to switch to Windows (and have not regretted it). I am now thinking about going back to the Mac because I want some variety. I know I will have to pay a “Mac tax” as Microsoft refers to it, but how about the MS tax associated with Windows 7? I listen to several Windows podcasts and most agree that to get Windows 7 it is best to buy a new PC! That’s got to be a big Microsoft tax!
I am a Mac user and have 5 Macs and 1 pc in the house. I love OS X. That said, there are unforgivable inconsistencies in OS X that KILL me. Number one peeve? Spotlight search is obviously meant to be FINDEResque and there are even search boxes in finder windows, but when you search in spotlight you can’t sort search results by size. WHAT. THE. HECK? I despise turning to 3rd party applications for something that has been in every GUI based OS for 20 years… Except OS X.
I’m not a Mac user, and I doubt I’ll ever be a full-fledged Mac user, though I suspect most of the problems I’ve had with the college Macs are due to it being a network or having restricted rights on my log-in (I’m not even allowed to alter the dock settings, for crying out loud… apparently, that ability might result in a malicious attack on the server. Yes, I’ve still not figured this one out either). The thing is, I found it to be remarkably UN-customizable, and sometimes outright illogical. With right-click, I can copy, move, paste, delete, view the properties of and even change the colour of an icon, but… I can’t rename? Giving up on that venture, I press, “Enter”, with the intent of, “enter”ing the folder, as one, “enter”s a website in Safari, or, “enter”s an E-mail in Mail… yet I start renaming it.
… wait, what?!
I’m actually a lifelong Windows user who is really wanting to switch to a Mac, I just can’t afford it. I will probably buy Windows 7 and upgrade my Dell E6400 from Vista.
I have no desire to use Windows 7.
i just want to pay twice as much for a mac and get half the performance
Windows has sort of copied Leopard OSX from Apple and seriously, with the new snow leopard, there cannot be any software that’s better than that. Windows 7 is just like a cheap version of mac.
It’s the insufferable smugness, condescension and uninformed opinions from a good segment of Mac users that prevent me from even considering OS X.
Why would I want to be part of a group that considers me ignorant for my OS choice?
I’ll wait for my netbook, which should come with Win 7 installed 🙂
Let me replace “good segment” with “a certain vocal segment” in my comment above 😉
Maybe it is just me but it is not the most intuitive operating system…
I have my 15″ macbook pro set up with a dual boot (through bootcamp) with Windows 7 RTM (32bit). I have been mainly using it to play games while on travel but have found that it is too similar to Vista for my taste. So far it feel as if Windows 7 was rushed and lacks the stability and refinements of OSX. I still need to give the OS some more time before I make any decisions….
At work, spend about 60% of my time on the Mac, 35% on Linux, 4% on Windows 2003, the rest 1%? slacking 🙂
Oops, I click sent before finishing my post. Due to peer pressure, I am going to give Windows 7 a try and promise myself to keep an open mind.
I’ve been using Windows 7 RC for a few weeks on my HTPC – My first attempt at using a windows media centre. I have to say I’m pretty impressed, Win7 boots very quickly (compared to XP) and is about as quick as Ubuntu 9.04. It also looks good, and just seems to do the job. I would also agree with the person who pointed out that any fresh install of windows always runs quick! the Media centre application seems excellent, very slick.
Does Mac OSX come with a media centre type application? I’ve never had a mac, so I honestly don’t know.
Just my two penneth.
PS I’s love to be Linux only, but despite trying Ubuntu several times (and thinking it’s a suberb OS, that is also free!) a few things bug me and send me back to Windows
1) Flash performance is woeful (often ruins web experience)
2) I still find that far too often, command line intervention is needed for reasonably simple things (e.g. automounting a NTFS partition at startup)
@Chris Mcneil: Yes, OSX comes with a media center type app called Front Row, which is basically a TV-and-remote-friendly front end to iTunes. And all Macs have an IR receiver for Apple’s remote (they used to come with one, not sure if they all do any more). Personally I like Plex (a fork of XBMC for multiple platforms) better, though.
As for whether I’ll be using Windows 7… well, I’ll probably give it a shot on my gaming PC, once I see what happens with DirectX and so forth. And since I’m not a bleeding-edge gamer by any means, that’s not very urgent. There is no way I would ever give up my Mac to use Windows full time though… I’ve been a Unix guy for most of my computing life, and OSX is a wonderful Unix workstation OS…
When hell freezes over.
@Jonathan Cohen – get over yourself. It’s an operating system, not a social club. You post comes off just as intolerant and condescending as the fanbois you are bashing.
I’ve upgraded the laptops in the house to Windows 7 and am very pleased.
Upgraded the iMac to Snow Leopard and had to battle for ages trying to get wireless working again. Still miss opening finder directly rather than having to “explode” the apps folder and click “show in finder” (probably a better way to do it exists..)
Maybe Windows 7 has the registry but by the hokey there are a damn site of problems with OSX as well which involve poking around in .plist …
I’ve never had to reinstall any OS at home over the years – so a lot of the anti-Windows spouting is bunkum.
please review mice which work on macs to prove that you match the performance of a PC in fast mouse tasks e.g. 3+ buttons for quick tab opening printing spining (It is a matter of saving the dieing mac book).
🙁 sorry mac lovers but I don’t see how you can perform tasks as fast or efficiently with macs multi-touch track pad.
Well jose… I have no idea what you’re talking about. I use both Macs and PCs, and any minimal speed increase by having a billion buttons is lost by system crashes, unexplained system slow downs, and just plain bizarre error statements. And Macs have nearly as many button options anyways – I don’t know what so called advantage you’re referring to.
Sorry I mean their seems to be a advantage of speed when surfing the net on a laptop than on the latest Mac book. Also when playing games on the Mac book the same disadvantage occurs with the track pad. That is why I would like to see some reviews of mice that are tested on Macs.
I have pre-ordered Windows 7, but I am not planning on switching to it(i.e. making it my main OS). I use my Mac OS for EVERYTHING, the only reason I keep my windows side around is incase I find a program worth using that isn’t available for mac. Luckily, and decent company out there makes their programs for mac as well as windows.
sorry for the double post, but I missed jose’s last comment.
@jose, I am currently on a Macbook Pro, and am using a Microsoft BlueTrack mouse. It has 5 buttons, all customizable on my mac OS. I have yet to find a mouse that does not work on a mac, but then again I havent been looking (I just buy any mouse, expecting it to work, and it does). My room mate is using a razer, gaming mouse on his Macbook. It works as well.
Please, please, you are asking Mac users ‘would you use Windows’ er…no! That’s the whole point of using a Mac ‘you don’t go back’ you do not need to? I use PC XP/Vista’W7 – all day – everyday, the pure joy of coming back to a Mac and just working is great.
My uptime on my Mac apart from OS security forced restarts after software update is 914 days. That’s a statistic I can’t run from…