Worst Windows Experience that forced YOU to switch?

[Uma888]

Having to wait 20 mins to startup, then another 20 mins for a "quick" virus/spywear check, then BSOD (FAULT_IN_NOPAGED_AREA) caused by faulty RAM (Which works fine in Linux), restart, repeat, hopefully with no BSOD

I miss OS X

 

[MacSA]

That's also noted as being one of the worst OS versions in existence.

Try 2k, XP or Server 2003 Much better, more reliable. Millennium feels like a halfassed try to get something out there to go between (better) releases.

Well i've been using it since Jan 2001 But should be switching to Mac soon.

 

[^squirrel^]

Having to wait for Vista and having the release date put back about 300 times!

I have had enough!

 

[DevilsRejection]

Having to wait for Vista and having the release date put back about 300 times!

I have had enough!

That's my main reason, I have no issues with XP it's just 10.4 has such a rich feature set I want something better. XP has treated me very nice, if you're a responsible user then it will preform flawlessly for you.

Tired of people insulting XP, most of the problems people have with it are USER ERROR. People install crap and go to horrible websites and then blame the OS for their spyware and malware issues. Sure it's an outdated OS, and that's the sole reason I'm switching. When I read Vista delayed to 2007 I was like... Screw This!

 

[ajbrehm]

Think Different

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

~Steve Jobs

Huh?

 

[XForge]

I switched when my Windows browser was hijacked and it took me, I'm not joking, FOUR DAYS working ~3 hours a day to get all the crapware off the machine - and the browser STILL doesn't work right!! And I'm not one of those clueless users either, I was studying for an MCSE at the time. I had to switch to Firefox just to get a usable browser. And I had to add a firewall, even though my router has one, and that box is still running AdAware AND SpyBot AND of course SAV10. I still turn it on once in a blue moon to laugh at it.

 

[XForge]

1) The "Unused Desktop Icons" folder, which just took up space on the desktop!

That "Unused Icon Wizard" makes me want to go all stabby on things. EVERY time I log onto ANY machine on the ENTIRE corporate network, that stupid robot asks me if I want to clean up "unused" desktop icons. Dude, I've NEVER USED THIS MACHINE, why would I care what icons there are?

 

[MatthiasC]

I switched from Mac to PC (becuase of a course I did in my last year at school) but now I'm happily back with the Mac and I don't think I ever even want to even consider going back.

Security was a reason why i switched back to Macs and of course I couldn't have more than one app running at the same time becuase the computer would just give up on me and would crash or just go really really slow.

Also I was fed up with little assistants telling me what I should be doing?!? What's that all about? I want a computer that does what I want it to do not what it thinks I should do. Hours of fun closing silly little paper clipped assistants in Office.

 

[gerbilbox]

Worst Windows Experience that forced YOU to switch?

To give a little background, my first computer was a DOS system in 1990, and I started using Windows a few years after that. I had learned to reformat/reinstall, troubleshoot driver conflicts, etc. This wasn't because I enjoyed it, although I can enjoy the tinkering if it wasn't something that *needed* to be fixed. Things needed to be fixed just to use the computer properly, and over time I got really sick of it.

But what really pushed me over was a mother/logic board upgrade. The old one had died, so I was forced to buy a new one. Right before that failure I was using Windows 2000 successfully for a few months, eventhough it was still Windows and had many Windows flaws it was fairly stable and allowed me to be more productive.

When I upgraded to a new board to replace the broken one, I could not run or install Windows 2000. I tried many things to get it to work, but I wouldn't install. This forced me back to the horribly unstable and barely usable Windows 98. Using Windows 98 again made me decide that as soon as I could save enough money I would buy a Mac. Late that year (Dec. 2002) I bought a PowerBook G4.

Since then I've never looked back, my machine still runs flawlessly except that I recently been using more processor extensive programs.

But if the old motherboard hadn't had died, I would have still been using Windows 2000, which would have delayed my Mac purchase. Up to the time I switched, I had not had a virus on my Windows machine for many years, perhaps because I never used Internet Explorer or Outlook.

I've also tried Linux, but it was a pain to install and setup. I'm more than confident that it's a stable OS and if I spent the time on it I could have gotten it going, but I didn't have the time nor did I want to (burned from using Windows).

 

[Gurutech]

Actually, I wasn't getting any serious issues with my Windows XP machine.

Of course, I was doing all the mandatory things to keep it operational.
I got frustrated by doing all the things.. (virus check, spyware, adware, registry cleaning, etc), I wanted to try different platform.
Linux wasn't appealing to me.
And since many students in CS department use macs, getting advices and tips from them was a lot easier.

I still have to use Windows, and now, my macbook satisfies my need perfectly.
Mac OS X is highly reliable, and dependable. I do all the out of class activities on Mac OS, and school works (yes, unfortunately, being an EE major, most of the programs work only in widnwos) are done on Windows.

 

[mikes63737]

I just remembered another reason...on my IBM craptop Windows 2000 installed an update while I was working on a huge thing, I saved it, and relied on Autosave in Word to save it every 10 minutes. Well, at 9 minutes, my computer suddenly shuts off, and after a 30 minute long reboot, it starts up, and I get a bubble telling me that "Windows has rebooted automatically to install a critical security update".

Oh, ya, and when I was shutting my computer down, I kept getting popups that said "The memory could not be 'read'" and it kept cancelling my shutdown.

 

[Kaioshin]

There was never really one single incident that caused me to switch.

For a long time I was switching back and forth between Windows and Linux, but the only reason I didn't continue using Linux was lack of hardware support. It was the hyperlegal version of OS X that was cracked to work on normal x86 computers (no, it didn't work too well) that made me switch. I used Macs at work, too, so I had at least some experience, but using it at home, exporing it for the very first time... Even though most of the hardware didn't work it was a neat experience.

The last straw was when my last computer's hard drive got destroyed, but Windows wasn't to blame for that, I have to be honest about that. Since I would have upgraded my PC anyway, I took the opportunity and got an iMac.

...and later the MacBook Pro.

 

[SwitchedBack2XP]

I switched out of sheer curioustiy.

3 months later i switched back due to many small quirks that just drove me insane, and the finder is down right horrible. when you spend as much time as i do moving files around then you realize the limitations of the finder very very very fast. the first hour i owned a mac i was fuming there wasn't a cut commad nor was i able to switch between folders using the back and forward buttons of my mouse like i can in explorer.

why am i still on these boards? because i'm very curious to see what 10.5 has to offer, and i want to buy a mac mini for my HTPC

if 10.5 isn't all that then i'll just get vista

windows has never been bad to me, i mean the one thing that sucks about windows really is you have to reformat atleast once a year if you want your box to be snappy still. that's the one thing that sucks horribly. but besides that, i get no viruses or spyware since i have astronomical levels of common sense! something that i can't say for the average windows user ::grumbles::

 

[aaron.lee2006]

My PC fan would turn on every 2 minutes while playing a game, so i tried to clean it out it stopped for one miniute then it started up again. Then my graphics card like broke so it would click every secon. So I went to school and used some eMacs with Tiger and I was amazed So I saved for six months and now I am typing this with a MacBook Pro.

 

[SwitchedBack2XP]

My PC fan would turn on every 2 minutes while playing a game, so i tried to clean it out it stopped for one miniute then it started up again. Then my graphics card like broke so it would click every secon. So I went to school and used some eMacs with Tiger and I was amazed So I saved for six months and now I am typing this with a MacBook Pro.

that's called hardware failure, not windows failure

fans speed up when you game because you're using more of your machines horsepower so it has to loose all that heat.

use any processor intensive app on any mac and watch the fans turn on faster.

 

[ricksbrain]

In 1997, lightning fried my pc. God made me switch. He was right. Who'd a thunk it?

 

[dsnort]

I bought a desktop in the early 2000's, with one of the first copies of XP home, pre SP1. ( Anyone remember the Windows Messenger debacle? ) After fighting with that OS for several years, (a fight that ended with it slowly eating itself, loosing function after function with System Restore being first to go), I decided there had to be something better out there. I bought an iMac 20" core duo in january. I had forgot how much fun a computer can be. What a vastly superior computing experience! I'll never go back!

 

[jaxstate]

Funny thing. I didn't switch because I disliked Windows, I still use it everyday. What really made me switch is when I was talking to some buddies about getting a new computer, and I tossed out the idea of getting a Mac. Their response were something like "why get a Mac, Apple's going to be out of business in a few years. They don't have any software for it." These comment peaked my intrest and I did some research. And after I saw the iMac G4, I was hooked.

 

[Navintar]

I made a switch in the summer of last year. I always liked my toshiba laptop but since my girlfriend went to film school and bought a mac I had a chance to try it out. Since she also liked to ask me about how to do things on her new mac, inevitably I had to learn it.

And I was hooked ever since!

The decision to buy my own mac came right after having this stupid problem I always had with toolbar keeps disappearing. I'm not sure if anyone have had the same problem but it did happen to me twice. There was no way I could fix it so I reinstalled the OS, knowing later that there was a patch written, not by microsoft, specifically to fix this issue. I understood that it has something to do with the antivirus program I use.

Now when it happened the second time, annoyed I was, but I knew exactly what to do. Unfortunately, it turned out that I downloaded a wrong patch because the right one doesn't have a virus in it!

I usually do normal system maintanance and am very cautious to open any unknown file. But understanding that I have no choice other than reinstalling everything I was willing to take that risk. To no surprise my computer was infected with 10 different viruses that day.

I realized that using windows will keep me in this endless cycle of problems. Going from one thing, you will get another. Using my antivirus software gives me this problem. Trying to fix this problem gives me virus and if there is no viruses I would never have to use that software in the first place!

So I went to apple store and bought my first imac.

 

[drummerbooker14]

mine was that windows gave me a lots of spyware. it ran super slow. so i reformatted it and it happened again. oh, and i realized that the macs that i have been using were som uch better

 

[Sesshi]

No real reliability issues at all. If anything, the Windows software/hardware is more reliable in my experience. My 'back end' is still all Windows Server.

I moved to Macs because I'm not a gamer and that was the only thing I figured I'd be missing out on while enjoying just the more personally productive OS X interface and the way that little things in terms of the way a computer or software works are thought out better on the Mac. As a result, you end the day in front of a computer feeling not too bad because there aren't a hundred tiny little annoyances throughout a working day such as in Windows, even if you're a very experienced user. Thing is unless you actually try a Mac in-depth, you'll never know that you're suffering these tiny little annoyances and how good it feels to get rid of them.

Boot Camp and Parallels was certainly not the reason for moving. I am not moving to a Mac to run Windows in any way. Both are installed on some of my Macs but I have not used the Windows environments at all - there just has not been any need.

I think that everything they say in the current round of ads is BS. Macs definitely aren't more reliable, and they crash more often (I mean once a week, as opposed to once every three to six months on my properly maintained WinXP machines). But Apple never really seem to get across the real point of switching, which is the elegance of the OS. It's all lost in the hip smugness that I find intensely irritating about the Apple image. Despite the abysmal hardware reliability to date, I've worked around those issues and am still curiously happy about the move to Mac.

 

[aaronb]

Why I WILL switch...

Here's why I WILL switch:

We own a few computers (all Dell's, go figure...). In A SINGLE WEEK, we receive a virus and try formatting our desktop computer. It is quite troubling to format your hard drive when both of the disk drives don't work for some reason. So, about 6 boot disks were gone through trying to figure it out. I tried to use my Dell laptop to copy a CD to use on the broken one and my laptop's disk drive magically breaks and does not eject.

4 days, 13 headaches, 1 broken disk drive later, we have a newly formatted Windows XP computer with only one of the disk drives working and a constant boot up reminder about the other one not working.

Not to mention the formatted computer does not stop asking us to activate Windows. I have entered the serial number 4 different times and have even called the telephone number they gave us. I was put on hold for a good 5-7 minutes. When someone picked up, they either did not answer or they did not talk loud enough for me to hear.

I am done with Windows. I am done with Dell. MacBook Pro Merom's, please come out soon so I can get out of here.

 

[BoyBach]

Despite having two firewalls, up-to-date anti-virus software and two anti-spyware programmes, and being extremely careful whenever online (only ever using Mozilla), my PC got hacked and I had just over £100 stolen from bank account, resulting in my debit card being frozen

I had to borrow some money from my parents for a few days, whilst my Bank stopped the transactions, refunded the money and sent me new cards. I then "cleaned-up" my computer once more, changed all of my passwords and usernames at Amazon & eBay, etc (just to be safe) and ordered an iMac as soon as my new card arrived, turned off my laptop PC, put it in its bag and it's never been turned on since.

That was October last year!

p.s. unfortunately I still have to use Windows everyday in work

 

[Bern]

I've never owned a windows machine, but have used them over the years of course. I've been a Mac owner since the 80's and whenever I've had to use a windows machine I could never understand what all the fuss was about regarding MS OS's.

Word and Excel were the only MS apps I ever used because they were designed for use on Macs, but the iteration of pc's saw these two potentially greats apps slide into bloatware.

Every time I used a pc or saw someone using one and it would crash midway through performing some task the user would say "Oh that happens from time to time, just hit the power button to shut down and restart" I would be dumb founded that people thought this was a normal and acceptable result of using a computer.

Endless virus scans, defragmentation, scouring the hdd to delete unwanted software, force quit, restart and so on. I just don't get it.

 

[generik]

i switched after i lost all 60 gb of data on my computer, because the HD died, so i learned to use a mac, and backup everyday. warrenties and insurance do help.

Amazon S3 Storage > Any insurance