Before I start reasoning my opinion on the whole “my computer is better than yours” argument, I would like to lay down my current computer setup. I have a self-built quad core desktop, almost two years old now, that is currently running Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04 10.10. In addition, I have a MacBook Pro 13″ late 2009 model. I am very happy with both.

Hi, I'm a Computer...and I'm a computer

Since the dawn of technology, and in fact since the dawn of mankind, or rather, since the dawn of natural life on earth, there has always been competition between species members. Whether it is dogs competing for the bigger stick, birds competing for the better nesting spot, or humans competing to have a higher social status, there has been, and will always be competition. In the 21st century, the computer you own has now, to some people, become a status symbol. If you have money, you buy a mac. If you don’t, you buy a ‘PC’. Right off the bat, the term PC bugs me.

A personal computer (PC) is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user with no intervening computer operator

A mac is a PC. A computer is a computer. Choice of operating system is the only real fundamental difference between the way a computer works. Even hardware is relatively obsolete, seeing as the hardware used in the majority of consumer level Macintosh computers is about 2 years behind the technical curve. Lets get one thing out of the way first…

A PC of the same price-point as a Macintosh WILL be faster

mmmmm...sexy

“But it is not all about speed, it is about stability” you may say. “My windows XP system crashed all of the time, and Vista was a complete fail”. *ahem* Windows XP is over 10 years old. At that time, OSX was still in BETA testing. If you compare the stability and usability of XP to OSX 10.0 (cheetah), you will find that XP was the easy victor. There is a good reason that XP is still the default OS on many thousands of business user’s computers: it just works.

mmmm...sexy too

Macs are easy to use

There is no denying that OSX is a pleasure to use. Installing apps is a breeze, full system backups are a snap to set up, and generally, “it just works”. For the average consumer, the experience that one feels when first trying OSX coming from XP is “wow”. Everything is more streamlined, faster, and better looking. Lets bring things to current times: Windows 7. In terms of general use, Windows 7 is just as easy as Mac OSX to get by with day-to-day tasks. It looks good too!

Apple have certainly played the catchup game well, and now own an extremely impressive operating system that is right on par with Microsoft’s latest offering. “on par? it’s better!” you might say. How is it better? How is windows better OSX? Today, in 2010, there is no single task that I can accomplish with my MacBook that I cannot also do just as easily as I can with Windows 7.

The functionality gap between Windows and OSX is closing

It looks pretty good IMHO

Do all of your friends own a mac? you want to fit in? Why not *gasp* be different, and make a decision that will make you happy! In the grand scheme of things, the computer will end up being obsolete within months anyway, so it is worth your time to balance the lifespan of the machine into the equation when making the final decision.

Personal Time...Uhh...Rapetable

It had begun! My journey through Engineering Science at the University of Toronto really officially started last week, after my *gulp* two days of frosh. So far the courses seem quite fun, although it is clear that this won’t be a walk in the park like high school. Already in calculus we have basically covered every major thing that we learned in high school in two lectures 8-O . This is going to be fun.

I look like an avatar!

For those of you who are wondering what 1T4 means, it is the code that the use at U of T for your class year…but it worked much better 20 years ago! The class graduating in 1994 would have had the code 9T4, which when said phonetically, says Ninety Four. It doesn’t quite work as well as it used to, but still an interesting piece of trivia.

Just got back from our family holiday to California! It was brief (4 days) but a fun was to relax after flying for 7 weeks :-)