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So Popular Mechanics decided to go out on a limb and do a head to head comparison of Windows based PCs to similar Macs, with predictable results. At the time I saw the article, there were some 300 or so individuals with full flame on. Crushed Windows True Believers and Gloating Jobsians clashed in heroic style, complete with namecalling, misinformation, and outright lies.

In the name of full disclosure, I'll come right out and say it. I'm a switcher. I was a Windows user for years. I was a phone support monkey for Gateway when MS launched Windows 95. I received an MCSE certification in the dark ages (1997). If you had GIVEN me a Mac prior to OSX, I would have had *BSD running on it before you could say "Steve Wozniak". But as soon as I hear that 'they' - Steve Jobs, Apple, you know - was going to release a commercially supported home-user-ready operating system based on *nix, I was sold. I knew then that I would switch eventually. I started running Linux in 1995, and had a *nix machine from that time on. At the time I switched, I bought a G4 Mac Mini. I sat it on the desk next to my 2.4Ghz P4 HT. Two weeks later, I realized I hadn't logged into the Windows box since.

And let me tell you, that Mac Mini was NOT a fast machine compared to my Windows box. No matter what the Power PC Zealots say, the Intel chips kick the CRAP out of the PPC chips, even Hz to Hz. Now, just to be clear, you would NEVER KNOW the PPC was slow if you didn't do some cpu intensive task like, say, encode video, or process audio or similar. If you run Office, you'd never know - the Mini's interface was just as snappy as Windows ever was, on any machine I've ever used. That's because the OSX interface is all Open GL accelerated. Put a current video card in an old G4 tower, and you'd SWEAR you were on a much faster machine - until you click "encode" on your video application.

How does that relate to the PM article? Well, basically, I'm trying to point out that it doesn't matter what kinda "cool" stuff they put in a Windows machine. It doesn't matter that the Mac runs Vista faster, or that OSX boots quicker, or that critical applications load faster on the Mac. Those are just gravy. The fact is that on a Windows machine, you can't (officially) run OSX. And that is a deal breaker.