All I can say… and I don’t want to turn into the typical Mac convert is….I started out in Unix - 15 years of it before Windows. Unix was never built to be a desktop experience and IMHO the various incarnations of Linux don’t demonstrate a high-level of maturity right now. I’m sure they will in the future, but I can’t see them catching up with the Windows experience in the next 5 years - even though there is a more “open” style of development - and arguably more brain-power being applied to development; the problem lies in how you channnel that voluntary brain-power into real commerical decisions that benefit the user, not just the developer. It’s that challenge that Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Siebel, BT, GE, Novell and just about every other technology company on the planet has always faced - and will continue to be challenged by. 

I love Unix. Always have done. It’s more resilient, more powerful, more adapatable, more versatile, more robust, more dependable - and just generally so much “more” than Windows is - in the right place. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not slagging off Windows or Microsoft here, but the background/pedigree of Windows is very different to Unix. *nix systems were always bult for the “back office” environment. They were built to serve information and data. The operating system was built from the ground up to provide resilience and versatility. Windows was never built that way. Windows was always built to provide the user with a point and click approach. Windows materialised because of the Mouse, not despite it! 

The ethos behind Windows was to develop a solution for a user at the desktop. Sat in a chair within the four walls of any company there is no better, repeatable, dependable, skills-free solution. As an employer I can hire a secretary, an accountant, a mechanic, a help-desk operator, a Director of Technology, a Director of Customer Services confident they know how to use the tools I am going to provide them with and expect them to use. Once again this is because of Windows, not despite it! In essence I can hire people to do the job I am paying them to do, not working out how to communicate about there work with a set of tools they’ve probably not seen before and are unlikely to see again, should they decide to leave my employment. And the cost of maintaining/supporting this infrastructure is low (I didn’t say cheap!), certainly lower than trying to maintain the Unix equivalent, with the associated higher skills required, training, development etc…. Again this is because of Windows, not despite it! 

Take this to the next level - arguably, one of the highest levels. Ever watched an interview with a leading scientist, technologist, biologist, astonomer or renowned guru in a particular field. You can bet your bottom dollar that as well as all the multi-million pound Unix, mainframe computers, SAN technology, wireless networks, nano-technology, microscopes, etc… he/she will write their findings report using a Windows machine - probably with Microsoft Word. Why? Because it’s probably the right tool for the job! And that is probably the crux of the Windows/Unix/Linux debate. 

Computing, like mechanics is about using the right tool for the job. I wouldn’t expect the guy fixing my car to use a spanner to remove my spark plugs, even though it would do the job, but I would expect him to use a spark plug wrench. The spanner will do the job time and time again without any problems, but then at the most critical time, 10 minutes before the customer is due to come and pick up his car it’ll slip and round off the corners! Now, trying to get the spark-plug changed enters a whole new ball game! If only the mechanic has used the right tool in the first place, the problem would probably not have occurred!Microsoft’s big move and big strategic play into Server computing took place on two occassions - firstly in the early 90’s with the development of New Technology (NT) and secondly in the early naughties (W2K3). Now we are seeing a truly more graphical enviroment enter the “service delivery” aspect of computing. Is it perfect? No, but thanks to wholesale improvements in hardware resilience, redundancy, a drop in hardware costs and improved distribution of computng knowledge many of the Windows challenges and hurdles can be overcome without sever downtime penalties. 

I guess my “moral of the story” is the same as it has always been - “Use the right tools for the job”. The reality is I use Windows on the desktop at work. Do I have a problem with it? No, but I do moan about it because I’m still using W2K and it’s now 2007! That’s not my fault, but more of a strategic decision taken by my employer. However, it does pretty much everything I ask of it and only occassionaly forces me to reboot. Would I choose to use Unix, Linux or any of its deriviatives on my desktop? No. For all the reasons I’ve kind of indicated, it’s not the right tool for me to do my job. Windows and the software I have installed are absolutely the right tools for me to do the job. So, there you go. 

What about at home? I’ve just “gone Mac!” Now this is a totally different experience. It boots quicker than I can say “Please”. The graphical experience has a fluidity that is slicker than water. It does everything I have asked of it. It can be a pain to have to drag my mouse to the top of my screen every time I want to get to the menus - especially as it’s a 20″ screen, compared with the 17″ screen I have in the office, but I’ll get used to the shortcut keys in time and that problem will be banished to childlike memories. I find it fun to use, a pleasure to use; I can actually get on with the job I booted the machine for in the first place, rather than trying to fix it. The base Operating System (Leopard) comes with so much as standard there is little need to install any additional software, therefore I don’t intend to bloat it in any way, not that I ever did that with my Windows machine. Just for the record that machine had XP, UltraEdit, iTunes, BBC iPlayer and nothing else installed. Also, for the record, it was used every day for the preceeding 4 years. I never did a rebuild on it and I never saw a Blue Screen of Death, so despite my moans it was OK. It just becamse progressively slower and slower and slower, until it finally didn’t boot - but that was because of hardware, not the software. 

Of course with the Mac I have the best (for me) of both worlds. I have a great GUI experience to learn and enjoy. However, I also have the joys of Unix bash, vi etc… So far things are going great and like many others before me I don’t envisage switching back: there’s no going back from Mac.!At this point I’ll step of my pedastal, but I’d be interested to hear what you have to say.