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.
|