To be fair, my Windows XP box at work runs fine

But it's got 2GB memory and a 3GHz dual core CPU. I hammer it 8 hours a day with compilations, complex calculations and Wrath surfing. I've often got 40-50 applications open at any one time. Only thing I've noticed is that it inexplicably pauses for no good reason; my impression is the old problem with Windows: over time it starts to bog itself down and the only solution is to wipe & reinstall. Our EOD W2003 servers run at near 100% CPU usage all night and use masses of memory; but rarely fail.

So, it is possible for Windows & PC hardware to be reliable. XP is by far the most stable Windows I've used - it's twice as good as NT and orders of magnitude better than other versions.

Of course, Mac OS was always stable - it's one drawback that it didn't have protected memory, so one badly behaved app could bring down the whole system. But this was solved with OS X, which has never crashed on me (although apps do from time to time). And, it's still the easier OS to use - I find myself fighting XP to get it to do certain things that are easy on the Mac and I've never found anything on Windows that's easier than on the Mac. Oh, save for bloody PTV!!! But that's not because it's not technically possible; just that MS wont licence their DRM and PTV wont implement a cross platform solution.

Posted By: BerlinCanary, Mar 11, 11:50:10