After so many years of using a Mac at home, I started to have thoughts, like, “well maybe Windows isn’t that bad. People seem to get along OK with it. My work computer has problems, but that’s probably because I do weird things with it.”
But then reality hits and I realize how dreadful it is to use a PC.
Things that annoy me about Windows:
- Since Windows has such a good reputation for security, it is mandated that I have Symantec Antivirus installed at work. This wonderful program causes explorer.exe to hang when I browse files. Then I get to CTRL+ALT+DEL and restart explorer.exe. Woohoo!
- The MDI paradigm is so clunky! I have two monitors, but apps like Visual Studio can only occupy a single monitor. I’d very much like to drag my output/find/project navigation windows to the other screen, but that’s just not practical in Windows. MS has tried to make some apps like Word more SDI-like by putting each Word or Excel doc in its own task bar item. However, Excel has the wonderful habit of closing all spreadsheets when I close a single Excel window. Word doesn’t behave like that. Excel, why can’t you be more like your brother?! * Those handy reminders the pop up in the task bar, like “Outlook is taking too long to respond.” I’m glad that Windows is barging in and spending more CPU cycles to tell me that something is taking a long time to process.
- IE7 is still the worst browser ever made. How many times have I told it to save my username/password for that site that needs HTTP authentication? Does it listen? No! And let’s not forget IE’s outright flaunting of web standards.
How is Mac OS better?
- No viruses so far. However, I have run Windows without AV software for a couple of years without any problems - you just have to stay up to date on patches, stay behind a firewall, and don’t open suspicious attachments.
- I love SDI. Not ever Mac app is SDI (like Eclipse) but I love having separate windows that I can put anywhere. I like having a consistent spot to look for the “File” menu.
- No annoying popups.
- OK, browsers aren’t OS-specific, but at least the browser isn’t built into OS X. I still can’t understand why Microsoft has left IE so tightly coupled with the OS.