** A Mac fan is stunned - Windows 7 **

[Barzakh]

It is a stunning realization - Windows 7 is the Mac Killer, the beast prophesied by Jobs that would appear from the West and rend asunder the happy Mac faithful.

I was a Windows user till January 2007, when I switched to a Mac, and Mac OS X Tiger.

My last experience with Windows was Windows XP.

I have been using my Macbook Pro for nearly three years now exclusively and have narily touched a PC since - ever. It was a total immersion into Mac OS X culture, Starbucks, and a new Bohememian wardrobe from Urban Outfitters.

I completely forgot Windows. I smugly glared at non-Mac users while sipping green iced yea and reveled in utter Mac glory and the Mac brotherhood.

My MacBook pro developed fan problems recently and was noisy as **** whirring away ... since it was Black Friday, i moseyed down and picked up a Sony Vaio, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB GDD, Blu Ray, at only 650 bucks.It came with Windows 7, Home Premium.

I was attracted by the stunning design of the Vaio (VGN-NW), certainly as sexy as an Mac laptop line. I thought it was time to start learning Windows and how it's changed , with the new OS, Windows 7, and use my MacBook Pro and Mac OS as the primary OS.

After unwrapping, charging, and exploring Windows 7 and trying to duplicate tasks I'd done with Snow Leopard, a stunning truth was revealed - Windows 7 is actually (blaspemy!), as good, and better than Snow Leopard in many respects.

The Windows 7 interface was fresh, fast, and made me want to be productive.

One important and almost cosmical fact I had almost forgotten or ignored was made startling clear -- I am much more productive and motivated in working on Windows 7, then on a Mac , while on a Mac , for some odd reason, makes me tend to lose focus and just kind of goof around.

When I open Thunderbird, check and write mail on Windows 7, I feel more productive and feel like working , writing essays, working.

In retrospect, I noticed that while on a Mac, my productivity has lessened, and for some odd reason I am less focused when using a Mac .... this phenomenon has been widely observed, and attributed to hidden registries in OS X that make you want to look at icons and just feel good just chilling.

Windows 7 is aesthetic, but not in a distracting way. Aesthetic in a productive way, and actually work. I think Windows 7 has brought Windows to a level where Mac OS X can no longer justifiably claim any superiority - just equality.

I'm still going to use Mac OS X, for casual web browsing, music, videos, and some things.

But I realized, when it comes to productivity, I just feel like working on Windows 7 that I never felt like doing on OS X.

Comments from people that have used both Windows 7/Snow Leopard, and comments ?

I am not hear to disturb the pastures of the faithful, nor create dissension.

I am a PC user, that got tired of Windows and switched to Mac because it looked cool, used it exclusively, and realized that Windows 7 makes me productive in a way that OS X somehow doesn't.

It seems OS X does the opposite effect - it creates a procrastinating effect, akin to smoking a blunt.

 

[dukebound85]

i like and use both

however, I have more time and apps invested in osx as that is what i use primarily so I will not be switching over completely anytime soon

 

[spillproof]

In my lite experiences with Win 7 RC, I have to say it is the best OS Windows has produced yet. There are some minor things I liked about Explorer that I can't get in a Mac but I was willing to trade for Preview.app, Quick Look, and the style/look/feel of OSX10.5

 

[Barzakh]

for the record, I did not *switch* back to Windows 7 exclusively - I will use both, my Macbook Pro (Snow Leopard) and Sony Vaio (Windows 7)

I'll use Windows 7 for work and study - work e-mail, writing papers, and other work stuff, and Mac for fun and sometimes writing/e-mail too.

I'm not STOPPING using a Mac, I'm just using Windows and Mac for different reasons - work and play.

Oh, and the Sony Vaio has a BluRay Player and can connect it to my LCD TV.... wish THAT was on my Macbook Pro

 

[jav6454]

I played with both the Beta and RC. Liked them, but not enough to want to make me switch.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Widnows 7 is too KDE 4 like for me.

 

[nuckinfutz]

The production advantage of Windows 7 is nothing but a mirage. You are reacting to new shiny stuff which in turn piques your curiosity and motivates you to compute. Nothing more ...nothing less.

It's human nature. Had you really found substantive improvements to using Win 7 you would have delved deeply into the featureset and compared/contrasted the two OS paradigms.

I've made few decisions in my life that couldn't be accompanied by a multiplicity of backstory about how I arrived at my decision.

I look forward to your 10.7 report.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

^ I agree with that comment above.

I installed SL beta and was totally stunned for a few days. And then I found that it was just Leopard cleaned up and polished.

I also installed Windows 7 beta and was totally stunned for a few days as well. And then I found that it was just what Vista should of been. Less focused on eye candy and more on performance. Something ready to wipe out the old XP dinosaur. But at it's core, it's still Vista, but cleaned up and tweaked.

Overall, I still prefer Mac because any PC I buy will have a version of Windows full of crap I need to remove and uninstall. It's gotten better over the last year or so, but still a significant difference from a Mac. I don't have time to play the "which one has bluetooth, which one has DDR3 ram, which one has a discrete graphics card, etc" game. I trust Apple to make these decisions for me and make sure that the system I buy has the latest hardware standards and components. And that it performs well all around, not just for gaming, or watching movies, or etc that PC vendors sometimes advertise.

 

[ziggyonice]

It was a total immersion into Mac OS X culture, Starbucks, and a new Bohememian wardrobe from Urban Outfitters.

I completely forgot Windows. I smugly glared at non-Mac users while sipping green iced yea and reveled in utter Mac glory and the Mac brotherhood.

I'm a Mac, and I'm a stereotype.
No really, I hate Starbucks. Mountain Dew, FTW!

 

[DeepIn2U]

Personally I'm still in Windows mostly; I need to else I won't get another helpdesk/deskside job. Learning OS X is going to take me some serious time, about 12mths fully before I can begin to even gander at supporting OS X complete or mixed environments.

When I get my 13" MBP/MB Unibody Aluminum unit, if you ever catch me at Starbucks I'll be drinking Hot Chocolate or Gingerbread Cocoa with Whipped Cream. I'll never go there completely of my own accord. Its the "culture" there that I just don't fit in with, nor even like.

I love the Mountain Dew though, the original.

Owning a Mac NEVER should've become something to be a status symbol or a quo. For the same reason it took me so long to consider the iPhone. I use it because it suits my needs.

To be honest I think the op got bored of OS X and was happy basic things finally got to windows:
search (Vista)
more secure file sharing (users' drop box)
overlay of windows, and a somewhat simpler way of displaying multiple windows of a specific application (already in OSX).
QuickLook = Expose in Windows fashion.

But productivity? hard to say. I'll have to revisit this when I'm running Outlook with several emails open, IEv8 with 8tabs minimum, Remedy AR, a few web-based apps from Citrix XenApp/MetaFrame Farm (oops no support in IEv7/8 just yet for MOST corporate apps), MS Excel, MS Access, remoting into 2 PC's at the same time. Well I can already imagine what that TaskBar will look like. Without a decent video card I wonder how QuickLook will hold up under pressure. Also I've noticed that not ALL Control Panel sub-sections open up under 1 TaskBar listing, and same goes for WindowsExplorer.

I find when I use Win98SE, Win2KPro, or WinXP at home it works VERY differently at work with regards to admin rights along with certain GPO restrictions, group policies etc along access as well. Hopefully I'll get to find out how Win7 works in a corporate environment vs WinXP this summer.

I'm craving the opportunity to use Mac OS X in a corporate environment as well.

 

[MorphingDragon]

To be honest I think the op got bored of OS X and was happy basic things finally got to windows:
search = Spotlight
more secure file sharing = Public Profile DropBox

Uhmm, you haven't used OSX at all have you?

 

[toolbox]

I use both. Windows and OS X. I have no problems with either. Both good Operating systems However OS X is my choice for my primary OS.

I am yet to play with win 7 properly - yet but looks very impressive. But in my opinion and this is my opinion. OS X is far more superior

 

[OllyW]

i like and use both

however, I have more time and apps invested in osx as that is what i use primarily so I will not be switching over completely anytime soon

This sums up my experience with Windows 7 and Snow Leopard.

Looking back to when I "switched" to the Mac, if Windows and OS X were as close to each other 6 years ago as they are today, I not sure I would have made the jump a Mac.

 

[chstr]

good to hear, I am looking forward to trying win7 hoping it's up to snuff. but... does it come with garageband or imovie? just sayin

 

[GSMiller]

(I'm not pointing this out as a flaw of Windows, but as a genuine question)

Did your Vaio come loaded with tons of crapware?

 

[T.Verhoeven]

W7 clearly is a lot better than Vista.. i like the new interface too. But i can run W7 on my macbook, so why buy a Windows laptop that doesn't run OSX?

 

[OllyW]

good to hear, I am looking forward to trying win7 hoping it's up to snuff. but... does it come with garageband or imovie? just sayin

No, but it also doesn't come with Snow Leopard.

 

[elppa]

Widnows 7 is too KDE 4 like for me.

This is an interesting thing to say. In what way?

 

[MorphingDragon]

This is an interesting thing to say. In what way?

Behavior, it behaves exactly like KDE, even the half screening! (Note this is with kWin activated.)

 

[kate-willbury]

windows 7 blows snow leopard away. the taskbar alone is light years ahead of the mac osx dock.

like the OP, my macbook is now my general 'regular use' machine for internet browsing and other low-end computing etc. my windows 7 pc is my real workhorse.

 

[alent1234]

I'm a win 7 user and someone gave me a mini yesterday with tiger on it. After using it for a few hours the one thing it reminds me of us vista with the uac pop up all the time

 

[nissan.gtp]

Got my wife a W7 laptop (she has some windows only apps), and I found it to be a typical windows PITA for cleanup and configuration

I have not used it enough to see other than cosmetic differences in the interface

I'm anxious to see how it's doing after 6 months or a year of use -- in my experience windows deteriorates pretty rapidly and needs lots to upkeep (registry, defrag, spyware, etc)

 

[cebritt]

I haven't tried Windows 7 yet but I have two PC notebooks with Vista and I run Windows XP in Parallels on my MacBook. I've owned Macs since 1985 (anyone remember Font/DA Mover?)

Windows is to Mac OS X what Ford is to BMW. Is the Ford good? Sure. But the thing I notice when I'm in Windows is the low quality of most Windows apps. A lot of them are just plain ugly, not elegant like a Mac. And inconsistent use of the interface. Right-click in a few apps and you'll see what I mean. Uninstallers that don't uninstall completely. Slow printing. And please let me know if you find a backup program as good as Time Machine.

And finally, as long as Windows has the Registry, it'll be inferior to the Mac OS. Try to remove Norton without having to use RegEdit...

 

[K3mp]

Windows 7 looks good, but I still like Macs WAY more. My experience with Vista was that it was great for the first few months everything mostly worked great but after I started to do stuff it was terrible. I have not used W7 enough to get past that point and hopefully I never will. Right now I just have the RC to play around with.

 

[Winni]

It was a total immersion into Mac OS X culture, Starbucks, and a new Bohememian wardrobe from Urban Outfitters.

It's fascinating - and saying a lot about this forum - that you are still getting serious replies and sparked yet another platform discussion after having posted such an obvious parody. Maybe it's an American thing - Americans do not necessarily have a reputation for understanding sarcasm and dark humor.