Timepass said:
You have to rememeber people here think XP is not stable at all. The truth of the matter is XP is a very stable OS. What make XP unstable is not the OS but poorly writen application. Spyware and Adware(Adware is something Mac users are just as easy to target as XP users because it is user installed, spyware you dont know about it and installed with out your knowlege)f They just are not coded correctly. XP problem with adware is a numbers game. No one going to really make adware for a Mac because of market share. OSX does NOT protect you agaist Adward (Spyware yes adware no).
Basic system maintaince is really pretty easy. To tell you the turth it is very easy and can easily be done with out you the user rememebering to do anything. My parents XP computer doesnt have a human do anything in maintaining it for up to 6months a time and it runs with out any real problems that are not hardware related (computer is 6 years old now). Windows updates, Virus updates, and spyware scan/update are all installed/done with out any human intervention at all. When I come home I may spend 5 mins-10mins on it doing a few minor things and checking to make sure everything ok. So every 3-6 months spending 5-10 mins of human time doing stuff is pretty good. Even on the macs you should spend 5-10 mins doing basic maintaince and most of you do. Now on my on XP rig the only added maintaince I do is I manual choose to install the updates.
As for system stablity (on both parents and mine) no real problems minus ones that do not related to hardware issues and the hardware issues are just parts failing (old hard drive that are 4+ years old, or a graphic card going bad).
People here act like XP can not be stable at all. Is OSX more stable yes. Does OSX market share help protect that stablity yes. Few apps are made for it and general the 3rd party apps for the most part are better coded since they are made by larger companies that have the resourse to delevpo for the OSX. That on top of the lack of Adware helps out a lot.
To top all that off there are not any virus or worms for the OSX and very few trogins (which again OSX does not offer any extra protection agaist) trogins are a market share protection. Spyware and virus being much harder to mac for the OSX (saying it is impossible is just stupid. It just no one has done it/figure out how yet)
I'd agree and disagree with some points here.
I'd say that the way in which people treat the OS they're using has a lot to do with its longevity or succeptibility to problems. Older generations often don't try to do very much with their machines, and therefore could run an XP machine without too many troubles if all they do is word processing and web browsing. However, they'd still need a significant (recurring, paying for virus definition updates) investment in antivirus software. On a Mac this is
not the case at present.
However, look at the things younger people try to do with a computer (and I'm generalising here, obviously) and it can be a lot more reckless. P2P software, which I've seen friends
ruin their XP machines with, will not bring down your Mac.
