Microsoft investigates Windows 7 'screen of death'

I think mac's blow, and I've used many. But I also hate windows. I really just hate the whole money part. It's a waste of money when there are tons of free linux OS's out there.

Agree with Mindcruzer 100%. Using Linux for the last 3 years has spoiled me. When I get on a Mac or Windows machine now it frustrates the hell out of me. Not for lack of knowledge either. I've provided tech support for both Windows and Mac.

"Microsoft loves these types of people, of which there are many, because what do these types of people do when their computer gets ruined like this after 2 years? They run out and by a new Windows PC."

Yeah, and now, with the Vista disaster, they are now running out and buying Macs, too, and if you don't think stuff like this doesn't make folks think twice about another windoze box, you've got another think coming.

Yes, you CAN do all the anti-virus/spyware/rootkit stuff, defragging every month and re-installing it all again every six, but most people don't want to do that. They want to sit down at their computer and just have it work. They want the computer to do all that for them, and the Mac does, mostly.

I bought software that could defrag my mac once, and it was a waste of money. OS X does that job for you, every time it optimizes the system during an update or upgrade, or installing software. It just manages the file system better, resulting in fewer fragmented files.

And don't get me started on malware. With just two trojans in three years on the OS X platform (both of which need user intervention to work), the comparison just isn't fair, windoze loses every time.

"but most people don't want to do that"

Because most people are lazy!! .. I don't like to clean my house, brush my teeth, or change the tires on my car either, but I do it..

So? What's wrong with wanting a computer that is easier to take care of? I used to have cars that had batteries that needed to have water put in them every week, but modern batteries don't need that level of care any more. Is THAT bad?

Some car manufacturers put out cars that only need tune ups every 100,000 miles. Is THAT bad? I'd say its progress. The less we have to screw with things under the hood, the better they work.

That's certainly the case with computers. I've seen users that I wouldn't trust them under the hood for love nor money, they are just that dangerous to the good health of their computers.

For MOST people, Macs are truly good in that respect. They let you go about your business without having to worry about viruses, malware, defragging the stupid things or having to worry about emptying the idiotic temp folders. The software update keeps you informed about updates, and it optimizes the disk when it does those updates. Keep it running overnight once a week to allow it to do some housekeeping chores, and it'll keep ticking for years without having to defrag or reinstall the OS.

Sure, the geeks among us LIKE to screw around under the hood - just like car enthusiasts like to change the oil, tune them up and water the battery. So, let the geeks keep running windows, but the common folk that just want to do their stuff without worry can easily do that with their Macs.

And there's nothing wrong with that either.

Yeah, I've used XP on my old laptop since I got it in 2002. I've upgraded the RAM and the Hard drive on the machine and it still runs a lot slower than it did new. It also has it's fair share of problems, program crashes, and freezes. Nothing extreme, just what I expected from the machine and a windows OS. And I do know what I'm talking about with Windows. I've been using Windows since 3.1 and the DOS system was much more reliable.

I did finally get a Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard. The amount of errors, freezes and holdups are incredibly few compared to any windows systems I've used. And although the computer can crash like any other computer, I have yet to have it do so. That is something XP never could do for me. The programs might be limited in comparison to what is available for Windows, but the functionality is not. So far this Macbook can do everything that my old XP machine can do, and then some.

I'm not trying to call you out or anything, but I'm curious: did you regularly run and update virus scan programs like McAfee? Did you regularly run spyware programs like Ad-Aware and Spybot? How about disk defragmentation, disk cleanup, and regular cleaning of files?

I learned a lot about my laptop when I got it and went through maintenance sites. It doesn't take much to keep a *good* laptop running smoothly. Of course you'll see more issues on cheap-o laptops. My Thinkpad T60p still runs just like the day I bought it. I love it.

Defragmented the hard drive once a month. Ran McAfee. Tried various spywares. And I reformatted the hard drive once every five to six months. The reformatting helped a little, but not too much. My windows machine is a Dell Inspiron 5100.

Says the mac user: "virus scans, adware, spybots? what are they?"

Uh, I'd say that running anti-virus, anti-spyware & having to defrag a PC on a regular basis is more than a "little" work - especially if one has to regularly reinstall the OS and all one's apps.

I do desktop support for a major federal agency, and we take VERY good care of our machines, but we still have to defrag the darn things, we run very expensive McAfee enterprise software, and I'll swear some machines have to get re-imaged every doggon six months, just to keep em running smoothly. Otherwise, they gum up, get slow and start crashing, just running Outlook, which is the biggest memory and resource hog on the planet.

I run Macs at home - because I'd rather get my own work done than have to do desktop support at home on my own machines like I do at work.

I don't run anti-virus. I don't run anti-spyware. I don't have to defrag my Macs, cause the OS takes care of that chore without my having to do squat. I haven't done a clean install in at least two OS upgrades and numerous point updates in between. Yet my Mac runs as fast, if not faster, than it did when I bought it three and a half years ago. Other than a couple of app crashes, my OS hasn't crashed the whole machine more than one time since I bought it, and that was the fault of an app - deleted the app and it never happened again.

I can point to numerous folks with similar stories, and none of them are desktop techs, they're just regular people, keeping their macs updated through Software Update on a regular basis.

The last virus I had was on System 8, over ten years ago.

Well that's Mac's cornerstone innit? So easy, you can use it no matter how fucking stupid you are. I don't call those habits more than a little bit of work. It's just maintaining a machine that you put a good deal of money into. Similarly, I paid a good deal of money for my Jeep, so I religiously change the oil, differential fluid, tranny fluid, t-case fluid, spark plugs, fuel filter, rotate and balance the tires, align the steering components, run Seafoam through the engine, wash and wax it, keep the inside clean, and, sheesh, I could go on and on with this.

It's not a chore, it's responsible maintenance. If there was an automobile that didn't require all that maintenance, would I buy it? Fuck no. I like to put the time in to learn how things that important to me work, and enjoy knowing that if any problem ever arises, I know enough about the product that I can fix it myself.

"Says the mac user: "virus scans, adware, spybots? what are they?"

99% of that is the popularity of the OS, not how crappy it is. Mac isnt bullet proof either, its just that virus makers dont give a shit about it. You should be happy windows is so popular, I am, it's like a shield.

Yeah, because spending hours, in which I cannot use my computer for any power absorbing task, defragmenting my hard drive once a month is preferable to not having to do so. The same applies for reformatting, except that always takes my old laptop all damn day, during which it is not just useless for power absorbing tasks, it is useless for anything and everything. Just what I want, to spend hours and hours maintaining my computer so it can work less effectively than it did after my last hard disk format and/or defragmentation.

Also, why would I want to use an operating system that I'd have to be a fucking genius to successfully use? I'm very proficient with Windows, but I've been using their different operating systems regularly from 3.1 to XP, and every time I went through an upgrade it was like having to learn a new goddamn language to accomplish the same bullshit. Sure, I could get the basic rundown of the system in a few days, but actually making use of the system and it's resources took weeks.

The apple computer I just got was the first apple computer I'd done anything on since the 7th grade. Do you know how long it took me to figure out the more complex tasks? Three days in which I spent no more than a couple of hours each day casually skimming through the computers applications. It was easier to operate this apple two weeks after I got it than operating XP for seven years. Vista was a complete screw up compared to XP, and the only real praise I've heard and experienced from Windows 7 is that it is soooooo much better than Vista. That's like people thinking that the movie "X-Men Origins, Wolverine" was the king shit movie because "X3" blew ass in comparison. "X-Men Origins" was a decent movie, but it got way too much hype because the movie that followed it was such a piece of shit that in retrospect it looked brilliant.

mindcruzer, you are wrong.

Popularity is not the issue, it is that there are millions of windoze boxes out there that have not been patched. It is the low hanging fruit.

The Mac OS has not had a successful exploit that doesn't depend on the user's intervention in over ten years.

Most botnets are smaller than 5 digits in size. The largest has been in the six figure range. At that scale, with thirty million Macs in the wild, many of whom are connected to the internet without anti-virus protection, you'd think that somebody'd figure out how to do on the mac platform what they can easily do on windoze - especially since Mac OS X has been out for 9 years already.

But they haven't, because they don't need to, due to all the idiots that run windoze and never upgrade their system, and let it hang out on broadband without some protection.

Under those conditions, market share doesn't mean spit.

Take a windoze box without anti-virus, put it out on the internet without a firewall or anti-virus, and it'll get infected in an average of less than a minute, without user intervention. That has been shown to be true in tests year after year. It doesn't work on a Mac.

Live with it.

OK, fine. Windows is at about 91% market share right now. Lets pretend that somehow turned into a 91% Mac market share. What do you think would happen to the amount of malware for Mac OS? It wouldn't go down, that's for sure, but I bet you the amount of new windows malware would. You can't tell me that when some rogue programmer(s) is considering developing some malware they aren't thinking hmmm, do I want to infect 9% of computers on the net or 91%? Because there are always vulnerabilities, they just take time to find, and the more people that are looking for them the faster they seem to show up. I agree with what your saying, but it's not the whole story.

No, the amount of windows malware wouldn't fall, since all the low hanging fruit - old unpatched windows boxes - would still be out there. At least it wouldn't until those boxes began to be dumped and replaced. You are still trying to say that sheer numbers are the reason for malware attacks, which is false.

The reason is OPPORTUNITY. All those old boxes that are unpatched, are vulnerable to old known vulnerabilities, for which there are already written exploits. All one has to do is alter the code to fit one's purposes, and one has one's own botnet! Whereas, to put one on the Mac, one must put in weeks of work, first finding an exploit, then trying to make one that doesn't require the users' help to load. So far, nobody as been willing to do that. Even the guys that won the security competition needed someone to click on a web page! (and the guy admitted that it took weeks of study and preparation to find the vulnerability and figure out how to use it.)

Criminals are NOT known for their extensive R&D budgets...they tend to stick to the easy stuff.

As for that 91%? It is a false number, based upon an amalgam of markets used just to make Microsoft look better.

In practical terms, that overall market is better split into smaller, more meaningful segments.

There is the Enterprise market, the industrial market, the retail market, and several other smaller specialty markets, such as medical, small business, graphics and video, as well as any number of others I may have missed. Oh, and education, I missed that.

Apple has a larger percentage of several of those, including graphics, video, education and especially the consumer market, for which it is estimated to have a hefty 60% of that market for over $1000 units.

The Enterprise, industrial and retail markets are not amenable to macs, as those are often specialized computers that are simple, low powered units running specialized software and often only do a single repetitive task. Plus, Apple has never tried to offer the extensive, and expensive, support that Enterprise systems require, so their low numbers there are no surprise.

Apple does not compete in the lower tiers of the computer markets, where units are under $900-$1000. Margins in that segment are razor thin, as Dell's constant losses in the last few years will show. They choose to market their products in the higher tiers, where there is more money and higher margins, and customers can afford to pay higher prices.

So Microsoft apologists water down the numbers by lumping it all together, as if those numbers are really meaningful.

They are fooling themselves, as Apple's double digit growth figures show for the last five years running. So keep your head firmly stuffed into the sand while Apple keeps on growing. We'll wave as we pass, if you can even see us!

I love my mac. I haven't had any issues with Snow Leopard, but I confess that a friend of mine has had issues and had to go back an OS version. It's still a mystery. Still, I'd take my mac over my old pc any day.

"oh there are issues. mainly that snow leopard was a bit underwhelming in terms of visual changes. "

???? Apple said that it was a maintenance release and that is why it was cheaper. A vast majority of its changes were under the hood, for developers, as you noted.

It didn't NEED visual changes - it needed the changes under the hood that Apple made, to make it cleaner, faster, and bring it another step on the road to 64 bit.

I think they did a hell of a job for $29.

Or get it for free from their university HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA

Actually I guess I payed for it in my tuition... dammit

Interesting. I don't have any need to do video editing, but Sound Engineering on Linux is eons ahead of Windows.

I'm actually not sure about sound but I have found the best video/image editing software to be on windows and mac for sure. Although that's probably just because of those two OS's popularity.

would love to see that as a commercial! Justin would just be deadpan.