Worst Windows Experience that forced YOU to switch?

[balamw]

Aw mom, can't I keep him? He's so scared and doesn't have a home! I promise I'll feed him RAM and repair disk permissions at LEAST once a month!! Pleeeease?

Pretty much, replace mom with endearing term for spouse of your choice. Followed by:

"You know honey, they can run Windows too now..."
"Why would we want to do that?"
"Only for the kids' older games, thank you very much!"

B

 

[great high wolf]

It was more a hardware thing. TIME PC that had 2 dead hard drives, 1 dead DVD-ROM drive, 2 dead CD-RW drives and the odd problem with stuff falling out inside the case.

But then there was the software issue as well... I saw OS X and saw that there was another way, then an ICT technician at my school started using an old iMac G4 because he wanted the UNIXy bits, and then I bought the iBook. And that was that.

 

[macEfan]

lets see

1) I had about 40 pieces of spyware
2) The computer got slow after a couple of months
3) the filesystem got corruped
4) the computer died

Reasons I switched:

1) OS X
2) ilife
3) cooler computers
4) hardly any spyware/viruses

 

[sunfast]

There was no single event. Just a gradual accumulation of lots of small niggles (each not an issue on their own, but together...) to the extent that OS X seemed worth a try.

So secondhand eBay Mac and here I am.

 

[macidiot]

I switched to Mac when the secondary 5.25 floppy drive on my Apple IIe stopped working...

 

[wasimyaqoob]

Just the fact that every week, I had to do a Virus Scan + Spyware Scan + Disk Defragmenting in order just to keep my Windows PC from crashing.

And every 6 months, I would back up all my data and format - Resulting in good performace.

But in order to do Nothing with Mac's - That alone MADE me switch and the sexy GUI which comes with Mac OS X is a Bonus.

 

[biohazard6969]

my worst experience would have to be the fact that you need a goddamn code to get it past a 30 day trial!!!!!!!!! acutally i've had a mac my whole life, but recently put windows on my intel iMac. it works fine, but it won't accept my perfectly valid code, and MS phone people don't help becasue they say i violated the end user agreement....

 

[webcookie]

I had a Dell desktop that kept eating itself. I'd turn it on in the morning, check my email and whatnot, then turn it off (this was some time ago when my mom used to make me turn my computer off every time I left it) and go to school. I'd come home from school, and everything would be gone. Dell came and replaced the HDD twice and the motherboard twice. Problems persisted. I finally installed my own HDD and Windows XP (it had ME) and it seemed to stop. But then I sold it anyway.

I had a Dell laptop that liked to freeze all the time. One time I came home and turned that on and Windows had eaten some crucial file.

I think that was what finally made me decide that I needed a Mac. I had that Dell laptop for less than a year before buying my iBook G4 the third day they were out (Panther release day!).

 

[Kingsly]

Total and devastating lack of logic, understanding, and intuitiveness made me switch from windows.

my worst experience would have to be the fact that you need a goddamn code to get it past a 30 day trial!!!!!!!!! acutally i've had a mac my whole life, but recently put windows on my intel iMac. it works fine, but it won't accept my perfectly valid code, and MS phone people don't help becasue they say i violated the end user agreement....

Wait, how did you violate the end user agreement? Does it say anywhere in there not to install windows on a mac?

 

[balamw]

Wait, how did you violate the end user agreement? Does it say anywhere in there not to install windows on a mac?

He doesn't say, but if he used an previously installed OEM (e.g. Dell) provided license, these cannot legally be transferred to another machine. Only retail, full packaged product, can be transferred.

B

 

[matthew24]

Test new signature:

:

It works! Credit to 'lom8104'

 

[jdechko]

i got sick of windows shortly after using OS X and seeing how much better things could be.

Yeah, that about sums it up for me. I don't have spyware or adware problems, and my computer doesn't have any viruses. In fact, I don't think I've ever actually been infected by a virus (knock on wood). I'm of the opinion that Mac and OSX provide a much better overall computing experience.

 

[MS bulldog]

no problems yet but still looking to switch

i still use xp. in 3 years, i've never had a problem, virus, or lost data. can't recall last time its frozen one me, and i've never done an os reinstall.

currently, i'm rocking a celeron 1.2ghz machine w/512mb ram. the most stressful thing this box does is burn dvds and edit some home movies. the main reason i'm switching is for a change of pace, and the fact that i can now run xp and macosx on the same machine...plus it's about time for an upgrade.

 

[4God]

Worst Windows Experience that forced YOU to switch?

Daily usage.

 

[electronboy]

in 2000 I experienced a fatal error followed by the blue screen of death that resulted in a non bootable operating system while away from the office. my friend let me use his beige PowerMac and the rest was history.

 

[MacBoobsPro]

My restart button failed!

 

[Blue Velvet]

...and there is nothing you can do on a mac that you can't do on a PC. Nothing.

The real question is: how easy is it to do it?

Ever tried setting up a colour-managed pre-press workflow in Windows? Or using ligatures in fonts?

 

[timmac]

For me, I constantly had some new hardware or software conflict arising on xp, despite the fact I had not installed anything new. It got to the point I spent all my free time at home diagnosing the computer and trying to fix it.

I know lots of people who say they run windows for years and never had to re-install the os, but it would always seem to me that for one reason or another, I had to re-install at least once a year.

Now I have an iMac and it is, I feel truly what a computer should be. I can just USE it. I don't have to understand how it works. Just like a car, tv, or any other complicated machinery (ok, those are bad examples because I understand how they work in theory if not in detail), you don't have to understand how they work to use them.

 

[Oryan]

I didn't have a bad experience which made me switch. In fact I still use my Windows laptop daily. I bought a Mac so I could run Final Cut/Motion/DVD Studio Pro.

 

[Eraserhead]

He doesn't say, but if he used an previously installed OEM (e.g. Dell) provided license, these cannot legally be transferred to another machine. Only retail, full packaged product, can be transferred.

B

No way, that is simply *NOT* true, I have spoken to senior people at MS about it (I wanted to sell my copy of XP Upgrade on eBay, and included SP2 for convenience, that breaks a licence agreement so I had to sell without in the end, anyway they said you *ARE* allowed to sell *any* copy of Windows (even OEM) as long as you sell everything (including the manuals and COA etc. etc.))

Call MS (for free if possible) to activate and ask why you cannot use the OEM, eventually if you waste some time on the phone they'll let you do it.

Basically they have to let you activate it.

 

[SC68Cal]

Windows had nothing to do with me moving to OS X. I wanted a UNIX laptop that just worked. At the time Linux notebook support was crap, so here I am.

Ubuntu is pretty good, but it's still such a pain in the ass trying to install stuff. Frankly, I didn't have a reliable package source to download from, out of the box. I was like, I'd rather have Windows that I can get software for instead of messing around with config files trying to find somewhere to download RPMs.

 

[SC68Cal]

The real question is: how easy is it to do it?

Ever tried setting up a colour-managed pre-press workflow in Windows? Or using ligatures in fonts?

It's more of a question of how many times you feel like seeing a blue screen of death while you're trying to get things done. I'm dead serious, in our Tech Center there is at least one Dell machine that is sitting there with a BSOD at all times.

 

[akino]

I just switched with a purchase of a MBP (my dream machine), primarily because of final cut... But i was hesistant to make the switch, thinking it would be imposssible for me to get used to mac after using windows for half my life. But i got tired of the viruses, the crashes, and the fact that i had to to keep it healthy just for my machine to work decent... i eventually gave up after getting blue screen of death and then i kicked my desktop (literally), and it never went on again. Windows has that way of degrating after a while, which pisses me off... i recently rebuilt my desktop for my dad to use, it gave me the chills just working on it... mac user for life now...

akino

 

[Psycho Therapis]

I switched because of OS X, rather than because I hated Windows. I didn't completely "switch" however, since I still have PC's in my collection and only recently built another PC, but my PowerMac G5 is my main system now.

1 year ago I had a room with 7 PC's & 2 Mac's. Now that same room has 7 Mac's & 2 PC's. A complete reversal.

 

[Waiting4MacBook]

I actually decided to switch before I had this problem but it was horrible anyway. I got the printer that I bought with my MBP and tried to install it on my roommate's less-than-a-month-old Gateway. First I was greeted by a "High Risk" warning that something was trying to create a DNS Server. Thinking it must be part of the installation, I clicked allow. After that "Windows Installer" decided to open up and put up a screen telling me my Product Key for MS Word was invalid and that I needed to enter it again. WHAT? Why the hell is this happening while I don't even have Word or anything besides the Canon installation program open. My roommate never got the CD's for MS Word as the PC was a shelf unit sold "as is", so I couldn't even get the Product Key. Long story short(er), the printer never got installed on the Windows machine and the thing still asks for the MS Word Product Key every 3 mins. When I got my MBP and QUICKLY installed the same printer with the same software, my roommate immediately decided to get a Mac.