I learned on a Mac Plus many years ago, went through several Macs to an entry level 64040 with OS/7 and then went to Windows. I've missed the Mac ever since. Where can I find objective articles comparing today's Mac's with Windows? Comparing my old Mac to Windows 98, the Mac was light years ahead in ease of use and common sense. Is this still true or have the necessary changes in OS made the Mac as confusing as Windows? Is there a place that lists the features, pros, and cons of the two systems side by side? I'm a home user, not into sound or graphics, just lots of web searching and basic home programs of word processing and finance. I might be into photo processing from digital pics in the future. Thanks Geoff

There's no such thing as "objective" when it comes to comparing the two platforms. There are several good sites out there that have comparisons every so often. John Droz's "Why Schools Should Have Macs" (or something like that) is a pretty good site, and surprisingly enough, *most* of what you find on Apple's Mac OS X site is *not* marketing hype. p

Geoff, You have plenty of company. I'm a recent "switcher" and became mac-addicted due mostly to exposure to Macs through my kids' schools and my wife, who is a public school teacher. Brilliant move by Apple! Like yourself, I'm mostly a home-user...web searching, e-mail, digital photo & sound for fun. I still have two Windows machines as part of my wireless home setup and they are seldom used ever since Macs came into the house. Everything I can do on a PC can be done easier (and with better results) on a MAC. And the darn things are just plain fun to use. And when something goes a little "flaky", you've got places like this message board to help you out. I too believe Apple is giving you the straight story as you read through this page: http://www.apple.com/switch/whyswitch/ Happy computing

One of the most difficult things for my users is adjusting to the changes made in osX. However, this OS is absolutely beautiful. It's basically BSD with a Graphical User Interface on top. What this means is that it is a lot more stable and thus nicer overall. No more of that force quitting everything constantly. I think you should try out OSX. I've been very pleased with it. I'm getting fewer requests for service from the mac users that are using it (once they get used to the new look and feel of the OS) so it seems to be significantly less problematic.

And the great thing about OS X is it's BSD with a *good* GUI on top of it, rather than the mess of GUIs that most *nixen use these days. p

Pickle, could you tranlate for me? OS X I know; BSD and GUI and nixon I don't. Sounds like some of the STDs I hear about. Geoff

GUI = graphical user interface BSD = Berkeley System Distribution, a form of Unix *nixen = a generic term for any Unix-oid OS, including the various distributions of Linux, the various flavours of BSD, and others. p