Windows is buggy and slow lets buy a Mac

[Trev]

The idea of an OS has changed to automate more and more functions. The problem is that Windows assumes you want certain functions automated and 'disappears' everything thing else. I haven't used OS X so I can't comment on that.
Maybe because it is based on NT nobody at Microsoft has thought of making it user friendly to alter the base configuration.

They do it because my grandmother doesn't know what a service (or deamon or detached process et al) is, let alone what something like the "Application Layer Gateway Service" serivce does. The same principle applies to everything else Windows "disappears."

What's the deal with a minimum virtual memory? I didn't install 4GB of RAM so I could hear the hard driving ticking away with god knows what.

Your hard disk is obviously counting down the milliseconds to armageddon.

Having a page file allows Windows to flush unused pages of memory and make better use of them, e.g. caching files and running foreground processes. In general, your page file(s) should be the higher of total system RAM or the commit charge peak less total RAM under load (viewable in Task Manager while all your stuff is running). There are very few valid reasons for having a smaller page file, and in a world of fast, low latency terrabyte-sized hard disks, storage isn't one of them. SSDs, while small, make the arguments against page files even lamer. They're uber fast and getting less expensive by the day. Even the pricey ones are less expensive than the equivilent amount of RAM. Imagine how much fun they'll be when they're connected directly to the memory bus (or a future perhiperhal bus running at full CPU speed). ;-)

Now, let's talk about swap partitions in *nix and OS4. Actually, let's not. The arguments for and against are exactly the same as Windows. Idle memory pages should be temporarily flushed and made available to active processes.

[Trev]

I think everyone is entitled to question Microsoft's design motives, but they should at least be questioned fairly. Most of Microsoft's product managers have active blogs and respond to comments and email, so you can usually get the answers you need directly from the people responsible, assuming you're polite.

I was a Novell zealot in the mid to late 90's, so I'm no stranger to questioning Microsoft.

[Trev]

Sounds SUSe to me..!

I jumped off the Novell wagon shortly before Linux went mainstream. At the time, I still preferred NetWare to everything else out there (and still do, in some respects), but it was impossible to convice the people with the money not to give into Microsoft's promises. Microsoft did eventually deliver, but it took years for them to catch up in terms of file server performance and directory services capabilities. Windows 2008 R2 may have finally brought Active Directory up to par with Novell Directory Services.

[Trev]

Actually, Mac is pretty sucky - at least from a hardware upgrade perspective. For example, what are the highest supported AMD / nVidia graphics hardware? Even linux has vendor provided drivers for most of their the most recent cards.

Bad from a tinker standpoint, good from a run-of-the-mill user standpoint. I pitty Microsoft's position of having to support (sometimes at their own expense) every cheap piece of garbage that comes out of a Chinese factory lest they suffer the wrath of the user community.