Tim
Life is good Joined: Nov 2007
Location: Kalamazoo

In all my years of computing I've nearly always considered myself a Microsoft person. Well with the exception for a few years on the Commodore 64 and 6^th grade where I was forced upon an Apple 2E. But by and large, I've always wanted Microsoft products. So it's no surprise my fervent attempt to always be in the know about the current OS, and I even try to stay up on other products, well when I have time. But with the ever growing costs of buying what ever the newest flagship OS from Microsoft I'm starting to wonder why I do it.

To back up a little; my adoration of the Windows brand started in 8^th grade with the advent of Windows for Workgroups 3.11. We had an awesome computer lab. It was 25 computers all with there very own keyboard, mouse, and crystal clear 14" CRT monitors. Oh the glory days of computing, when there really was black on monitors. Back when an 80386 was king and 12MHz was considered fast! The lab had a grand total of 10 gigabytes of hard drive capacity. This was the era of passive CPU cooling, large toggle switches for the power, and a "turbo" button to boot! Since this time there have been endless iterations of processors and processor models. Some good, some bad, and some that should be taken out back and beaten with a hose. But I wont bore anyone with any more of a history lesson. If your wanting a trip down memory lane, or just enjoy inflicting pain on yourself go check out Wikipedia and bore yourself to tears.

Back to my main point, I look at buying computers like buying a car. Yes computers only cost a fraction of a car, or should for a normal person, but I still liken them to the same level. They both come in different shapes, sizes, colors and have many different features and more combinations than your head can tolerate. But above all there is always one difference between all cars or computers, price.

In computers I measure it as price per performance. When I built my server two years ago it took me a month, I scoured eBay, Newegg and many, many, many review websites finding each and every component one by one that was going to give me my maximum performance for the price I was willing to pay. In the end it cost me just over $700 for a top of the line machine that will run for many years to come. Then it came to OS selection and I of course went with Windows. Why? Because it just works.

When I bought my laptop, a Lenovo Y510, I did the same thing. Find the features I want and find a matching laptop. Granted, I cannot build a laptop, but if I could I sure as hell would. I paid less than $700 for my laptop. I received it in the mail two days later from Newegg, unboxed it, turned it on typed in my name, and boom, I was up and running with a fully functional, fully capable laptop. What OS did it have one it, well Windows Vista of course. A week or two later, I wanted to do some advanced features that were not included with the OS, like join a domain. Why was it not included with it, because it was the HOME VERSION. And why would it be included with the home version, there is no reason for the vast majority of people to have this ability. Why? Because no everyone has a server sitting in their basement! So I upgraded to Vista Ultimate. This took my total up to about $850 for a wonderful machine. When looking for my laptop I did my home work, I priced them out to spec on every website I could. I found zero others that could compete with my Lenovo at this price point.

I paid a mere $850 total for mine including the upgrade. The feature set it included at the time should have put it in at around $1200. A Mac at similar spec was more than double what I paid for my Lenovo. Even still a similar model is over $1,600. But the real question here is the OS. Why did I pay an additional $170 for an upgraded OS of the same version? Mainly because I'm not your typical Home user.

I could have purchased a Mac and upgraded to the new release for a mere $29 to the new Snow Leopard now on preorder. I'm sure at the time they had a similar upgrade for a similar price point. Mac "traditionally has all the features built into the OS" (so I'm told) so no real reason to upgrade to the version except for a new release. But with one large restriction, the OS only works on a Mac. Where as with Windows I can run it on a plethora of different builds of machines, even on a Mac. But with any of the OS-X releases and every other Mac release, your bound by proprietary hardware to a Mac.

But wait, isn't Microsoft just a software vendor? CORRECT!!! When buying into a PC your buying into the OEM's, NOT Microsoft. If for some weird reason I decide to shoot myself in the foot and want to install Linux on each of my machines I can by owning a PC. Owning a Mac and thinking your upgrades are cheap or maybe even free makes you diluted and about as bright as a black hole.

I'll stick to buying my "over priced" OS. And I wont stop you from buying that new Leopard that is about the same deal as buying a Kia. But hey Kia's just work too.