Windows reinstall hell!
For anyone who’s been trying to reach me for the past 2+ days, I’m sorry to have disappeared. My main computer has been acting worse and worse for months and finally got to the point where it was SO messed up (don’t know what… antivirus & whatnot found no problems… no fragmentatino, etc.) that I had no choice but to backup, format, and reinstall windows from scratch.
I’m sure you know how insanely painful that can be if you use Windows! it’s taken me totally offline for just over 2 days and counting. Hope to be back up by tomorrow…
So if you have a support ticket or email that has gone unanswered by me, that’s probably the main reason. I’ll be in touch ASAP!
Jonathan
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:51 am
Jonathan,
When are you gonna get yourself a real computer, buddy?
Once you’ve used a Mac, you’ll never go back … believe me, you will not have the headaches like with those damned MS-DOS based hunks of junk, no viruses, no exe-files to clog up your registry and well, your fans will finally get your tools based on MAC OS X! You earn enough money, buddy, step up into the real world of computing and trash that DOS PC!
Cheers,
Marty
December 3rd, 2009 at 1:39 pm
LOL Marty… I’ve been a Mac user longer than anyone I know - since my dad had a Lisa pre-1984. I’ve had just about every single Mac desktop model ever made pass through my hands, as well as several of their very very early powerbooks and even a “Mac Portable” if anyone remembers that.
I have a Macbook Pro to my right at the moment, and my other half’s only machine is a Macbook. I have at least 4 other Macs in the attic right now… a PowerPC clone, 2 B&W G3s and an original G4. Oh yeah and I have a dual processor PPC G5 somewhere too… probably also in the attic.
But back around 1999 I bought my first Windows machine because some stock options stuff I was doing had NO Mac software in existence. I was SUCH a Mac snob until then… HARD CORE. I fought the good fight! But eventually I became platform agnostic and just used whatever got the job done. In my video post production company, I had one primary edit station that was Windows NT based but everything else - 5 other stations - were all Mac. oh and a headless network render machine.
But now my main desktop is an HP, and even though more and more Mac stuff is available now, it’s often behind the Windows version. How many firefox addons don’t support Mac? It’s really annoying. And I can’t stand Mac Skype compared to Windows skype. And Mac & Windows Office aren’t even in sync. Plus eve since Mac went to OSX, I can’t troubleshoot a damn thing anymore and I have more mystery issues than ever. Back in the OS7 through even OS9 days, things were SO simple. Boot without extensions, add them back in one by one, and you’d find your system problem inside of 10 minutes. Permissions issues? What are those? kext modding? WTF? Oh and the numerous apps that I run that are Windows only, plus the websites that won’t render properly in ANY browser other than IE (and yes I know that’s due to MSFT being stupid but it’s still a fact).
Now since Mac has gone *nix, I personally find it to be a big fat hairy pain in the ass since I’m not a *nix geek and don’t want to become one. I also can’t do “real work” on my laptop… the screen is too damn small. My desktop setup has a 30″ and 20″ monitor side by side and I’m not willing to lose my 20″ in exchange for the 15″ Macbook screen even though it can drive the 30″ as a second screen. Plus I’d lose my dual layer DVD burner and firmware-modded DVD reader that are on the desktop… oh and my pair of large internal HDs. I also don’t want to go shell out the cash for a new Mac desktop… they are just plain premium priced and I don’t feel there’s enough premium there to justify it for me. When I’m at my desk, I want to work with a desktop. I’m not a laptop guy unless I’m traveling… in my world, that’s what laptops are actually for.
BUT certain things I really prefer about the Mac. The UI is so much more fluid… I love Expose & Spaces, Time Machine absolutely rocks, and I NEVER have memory leak problems on the Mac that I suffer through constantly in Windows. Keyboard shortcuts on the Mac are standardized where on the PC, developers can make them whatever the hell they want… which is just dumb.
In my perfect world, I would have MacOSX running on my HP machine, I would install Parallels on it and run Windows 7 inside of that. I actually tried this the other day and discovered the hard way that the “hackint0sh” scene isn’t as evolved as I had hoped. It works, sortof… but you better be really prepared to dig into and mod the hell out of your OSX install. I’m just not willing to do that these days. I don’t have the interest.
So anyway, the whole point is that I don’t see any one OS as being inherently better than any other across the board. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. I’ve lost all traces of OS snobbery years ago… sure I bitch when Windows takes a dump, and I bitch when OSX craps out too (and yes it happens). Nothing’s perfect and I accept that… I just want to get my work done quickly & easily.
Jonathan