Oh, sure-valid points all around. Trouble is...these darn Macs run forever. I use a G3 500 MHz iMac at work every day, reading e-mail, updating the company web site, and recording and editing tons of audio. Works just fine. Doesn't even have a Cd burner IN IT! Sure, it's not blazingly fast, but it gets the job done. My 3 year old emac is in the second home office, my old beige G3 is being used by my Son, Hell, I've even got a Powerbook 145 (yes, a 25 MHz, I believe) that I still use to read e-mail now and then, with the 14.4 dial up modem! They work forever. The Dalmation iMac I bought my Daughter (used) for college 4 years ago is in line to be my new "upgrade" at work. Maybe that's why they hold their value..no one sells them..we all keep on using them!

Oh..you may ask why am I using my own Macs at work? Because the company provides Windows machines, and I refuse to use one. My old Macs at work have NEVER needed service. They've spent more repairing the work gear than the stuff COST in the first place! So I insist on having at least ONE reliable, virus free machine in the place. So, I buy my own!

Sheesh, where do we start?

First of all, OS/X has nothing to do with Linux. Rather, it is based on FreeBSD, a Unix derivative. If you want to understand the difference, the internet is your friend. Then perhaps your rantings will make some sense.

Secondly, FOR FREAKING YEARS NOW, Macs ship with four button mice. Wake up and quit spreading untruths, please, it does nothing for this discussion.

And, finally, granted it is just form, but for crissakes, it is BIMMER, not "beemer".

Your cooperation is appreciated! ;-)

~gtd

... put Ubuntu or Knoppix or whatever flavor of Linux floats your boat on it. Free!

Sure it can be an adventure trying to get things like Wine (the Windows emulator) or various pieces of hardware running on it. If that frightens you, go only with vanilla hardware and the simplest distribution you can find.

But it honestly won't take long before you realize that 90% of the things you use a computer for, like reading nonsensical tech-infused rantings from a writer who convinced Salon's higher-ups that he was genuinely savvy about technology, can be done just as easily from a Linux Firefox window as a Windows Firefox window.

I never sell computers. I had to admit to the insurance company that some uneducated thief stole my 10-year old Pentium/150 Tecra, a machine that's worth $30 on a good day. But for me, that was the machine that I could bring out and talk to my car's electronics, and I didn't care how much danger it was in.

I've used Macs for my business from the very beginning 1993.

My very first Mac II purchased in 1987 in Champaign, Illinois for 7k (had to take aloan from the University credit union) is in the basement and it still works... sort of - the floppy disks it used to accept don't load so well anymore. The G3 Desktop that followed it in 1997 I think? is still functioning as an experiment a friend of ours is conducting with networking that I don't really get...but it runs and it runs...Not really a Ford exactly more like my grandpa's old orange International truck to be honest with you strong and steady and for many years. - I just replaced my 6 year old G4 and G3 laptops with the newest MacBook Pro...but the old machines are still functioning and usable for back=up and for friends and family to use or if I need to hire locally to help with a given project (always short term and contract only) The Laptop is for kids to game on when they work for me when I'm travelling. They take care of my animals. They stay here longer if they are allowed to game. The old laptop suits them fine and they don't download trojan horses and spyware onto my husband's windows box if they do go onto porn sites (they are teenage boys after all and I have no intention of monitoring them every minute they are working for me). I have told them that if I catch them or find any crap on my laptop I will inform their parents. (My husband insists he needs something in the Windows set-up he has - bits of this and that from all kinds of different companies - for video games that the Mac doesn't have and he does have to use windows at work - but at least his company told Microsoft to forget Vista) I just have work to do an do not want to make an annual capital layout for my machines. I also do not have time to waste trouble-shooting or dealing with the kind of conflicts and tedious babystepping that Vista especially forces on people. I actually liked NT quite well - it worked. I teach on Windows and I design so that everything I do works with Windows Web browsers but I find I spend a lot less time helping students trouble-shoot technical crap if they are on Macs in the first place.

I work maintaining a 50 computer network evenly split between MACs and PCs. I've done this for 14 years. The PCs need replacing every two years, the MACs have a useful life of 3 to 4 years. The MACs essentially require no maintenance, the PCs need careful attention or they devolve with adware, spyware and other malicious worms and viruses. We needed both systems because some of our older proprietary accounting software is not available on MAC. Recently we've found a very good balance with the Intel iMac. We are running Parallels/XP for the accounting and leaving all email and web based activity to the MAC. Nice balance and everyone wins. To us it's cheaper to spend time in production then in IT work. As far as MACs being dumber - please, real world business technology requires simplicity and a user friendly atmosphere not hoards of IT twits running around thinking they are gifted because they know the secret handshake.