Linux, windows, macintosh.

[luciusad2004]

There's a very good reason for that.

Personally I've just never really meshed with OS X. Partly because I've never been able to bring myself to buy a Mac, partly because I don't like the idea of having to hack on an application management system in a *nix OS....and not having the ability out of the box to compile my own stuff if I want to.

lol. I realize the reason for the similarities. I've never really bothered with compiling applications from source though so that's never bothered me but i know my old copy of OSX came with a Developers Suit of some sort. Not sure if they still do in the "modern" releases.

I can't vouch for any recent changes in Lion but I never had a problem with the way OSX handled applications. But I probably never used package management in Linux to its fullest potential. I'm not a huge fan of the Mac App store though as I would prefer to get software on my own as i see fit instead of through the "Apple approved" channels. I'm not a huge fan of the "iPodification" of the system that they seem to be working towards.

I would by a Mac for a laptop.
I like the build quality, the form factor is easy on the eyes, and i probably wouldn't user a laptop for heavy lifting. It's rare that I find a "PC" laptop that makes me WANT to look at/touch it. For a desktop i would much rather build my own system.

All that being said, if *nix distributions were a bit more polished and worked as seamlessly as OS X they would probably take my number one spot. And fwiw i really do hate the Apple lock in. My best friend has a mac that is probably no more than 3 years old that is virtually unsupported at this point. I just think they make nice machines.

[x88x]

I can't vouch for any recent changes in Lion but I never had a problem with the way OSX handled applications.

It's not like the Windows way is any better, and I can't really comment on the Mac Store having never used it. It's just do hard to go back to anything else after having used a well designed and well integrated application management system like so many of the more mainstream Linux distros have.

I would by a Mac for a laptop.
I like the build quality, the form factor is easy on the eyes, and i probably wouldn't user a laptop for heavy lifting. It's rare that I find a "PC" laptop that makes me WANT to look at/touch it.

Yeah, they definitely are easy on the eyes. Personally I prefer Thinkpads though...I guess that says a lot about my aesthetic tastes.

[luciusad2004]

I see what you mean about the Repository system. I haven't used lion myself but if anything I think the Mac App Store will bring it slightly closer to the way the repository system works in linux. Of course it will just be in a much more locked down, less useful way. lol

And nothing wrong with Thinkpads lol. We support them hear at work and I think I'm the only person to compliment them. They may not be lookers but they aren't anywhere near as gaudy as consumer laptops and I've always had good experiences with them in terms of reliability. Just don't ask any of our sales reps what they think of their laptops.

Do you have Thinkpads running linux? I would eventually like to get a laptop that has good Linux support. My current laptops a Dell. I haven't tried it out yet, but if I can get spare harddrive I was going to see how Ubuntu runs on it.

[x88x]

Heheh, yeah, in my laptop choices I go less the 'does it look pretty' route and more the 'will it still work after I'm done beating the crap out of it' route. Best upgrade I ever made to it was replacing the HDD with an SSD.

Do you have Thinkpads running linux?

Yup! They have a very large following in the Linux community, so they're usually very well supported. I ran Ubuntu on the R61 I got in college, and I run it now on my X200. Both have worked beautifully. The only problem I have with it is that since the power management stuff isn't as well developed in Ubuntu (or at least, I never bothered to get it configured properly) I get less battery life than I did in Vista (what the X200 shipped with). In Vista, with all the special drivers and everything installed, if I had the brightness turned down to ~50-60% and the bluetooth turned off I would get around 9 hours out of my 9-cell battery. In Ubuntu, with a similar configuration, I only get around 6 hours. Still plenty for my purposes, but it would be nice to be able to get the full potential.

For details on Linux support for a specific Thinkpad model, check out this site:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki

[luciusad2004]

Awesome, thanks for the link.
X200 and T400s are what we support here at work.
I think I liked the T400 laptops a bit more but I don't get to keep one of those at my desk as most of our Reps have the X200t because they need the tablet screen.

Id love if we could convert to *nix or something a little more lightweight than the image we run on these things. Ours run XP and they run like garbage. They are supposedly hoping to upgrade to 7 by the end of the year but every time we talk about how they want to deploy the update it just sounds like its going to be a nightmare. The current, rumored plan is to mail out flash drives to a few thousand sales reps all across the nation and have them back up and then upgrade on their own.

[x88x]

Ours run XP and they run like garbage.

Sounds like there's something funky with that image. Mine flew with Vista, even when it only had 2GB of RAM.

[luciusad2004]

Sounds like there's something funky with that image. Mine flew with Vista, even when it only had 2GB of RAM.

It's the software they run. We do tech support for Pharma Corp Sales Reps and the software they use for logging interactions with doctors takes up massive amounts of resources and/or just doesn't run that well.

[x88x]

Hurray for poorly written custom applications.

[AmEv]

My brother's computer is an HP with Vista and 2GB RAM.
I personally think it is cruizing.

(very tempted to remove the "HP Advisor"...)

[luciusad2004]

My brother's computer is an HP with Vista and 2GB RAM.
I personally think it is cruizing.

(very tempted to remove the "HP Advisor"...)

What's the HP Advisor do? OEM Crapware? I always remove stuff like that on my computers as most of it is useless.