Mac vs PC, and Why Mac Wins

It has always irked me that there has never been any service to speak of upon purchasing a PC computer embellished with Windows. I think the world owes Microsoft and Bill Gates a great deal, and there is so much about Windows that I adore. Vista is a beautiful operating system and I have had good luck running it, in spite of the painful wait for the service pack.

At this point in my life, my computers, and any electronic device that has to sync to them, are my most valued means of productivity. My TV broke – it didn’t get fixed for months. Good riddance! My surround sound went on the fritz, but I still had two speakers out of five that were working, so who cares. But let a computer, BlackBerry, external hard drive, or other piece of prized gadgetry become inoperative, and panic ensues.

The impact of customer service on product choice has become less important as goods become cheaper and more disposable. Computers are certainly one of those items that can be easily and cheaply replaced. However, because of the nature of my data (photography, writing, and years of research data), migrating to a new computer is a burdensome process for me, so I tend to look at computers as long-term keepers. I’ve had the same custom-built, PC desktop for almost five years, along with two rebuilds to keep it up-to-date.Then I had two very bad computer experiences almost back-to-back. The motherboard fried on both my custom-built ABS desktop and my HP laptop (it was the second time in six months for the HP laptop). ABS had contracted with an outside company to perform the warranty service for my 3-year warranty, and when I called them to get the computer fixed, I found out that company had just gone out of business the night before. Such is my good fortune! So on the day I called ABS, they were swamped with phone calls and complaints, and they offered no support to replace their dissolved service contractor. With my HP laptop, my Comp USA extended "gold" warranty went away when all Michigan Comp USA stores went out of business. So I had two dead computers and no warranty for either one, though I had paid for two extended warranties. No service whatsoever, and everything came to a halt. I found a local guy who does good work, and he now does all of my PC repairs and rebuilds.


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Desktop or laptop? Help me choose my next computer

It’s time for me to decide what my next computer will be. I’ve been using a desktop as my main machine since I purchased my first computer back when 10mb (yes, I said MegaByte) hard drives were considered ginormous. The question I’m trying to answer for myself is – should I finally ditch the desktop and go with a laptop as my everyday computer? I welcome advice on which way I should go…

How about a little history first? After several false starts, I finally made the switch from Windows to OS X back in the summer of 2005. My first full time Mac was a 20″ PowerPC iMac. A year later, I upgraded to a 24″ Intel iMac and have been using that same machine ever since. Now that three years have passed, my iMac is starting to exhibit some hardware problems. For the past few months I’ve been dealing with intermittent lockups that require a complete reboot and weird graphics anomalies.With the help of new Gadgeteer writer Adam Scinto, we figured out that it is a GPU (graphics processing unit) overheating problem that has plagued my particular iMac model. Since the machine is 3yrs old now, I don’t think it’s cost effective to have the problem repaired, so I’ve been considering my options for upgrading.


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