To be fair, as has been pointed out, you can install windows on a mac these days so you can have a dual boot system and still run all your games and apps. But it would still be on an overpriced system with suspect build quality that you can’t upgrade yourself. Looks nice though.
Yeah, I thought of that and edited my post to add a bit at the end, but it still seems like a lot of effort to get more or less back to the starting point.
And I think a one button mouse would annoy me to no end. It certainly did when I ran a mixed computer lab at uni.
I confess that I have no experience with Vista, but I can attest to troubles with Windows XP Pro. Currently, I have a Mac and a PC connected to a router, so I use both, but when it comes to going online, I do prefer one over the other, frankly.
BTW, it’s impressive that Vista can go more than a year without de-fragging. No way could my XP go that long, especially if I used it online.
My last machine was XP and it went 3 or 4 years without being defragged. Didn’t notice much degrading in it’s performance either and it was online almost all the time. I occasionally fired up disk defrag but it was never fragmented enough to make it worth doing.
Maybe, as is the case with most IT issues, it’s the user that has the problem not the windows pc 
OK. The recommended procedures have been completed, and the machine is considerably faster now.
Thanks so much.
Best wishes,
Jerry
That’s another issue…
I’m a build-it-yerself guy and my last three systems have been DIY.
My current system triple-boots between XP, Vista, and Debian Linux.
By building myself and shopping carefully, I keep a reasonably high-end system built for a fraction of what you’d pay for a new one.
Not only that, the hardware DIY side of things is a greatly appealing part of the hobby to me. I like to go under the hood, get my hands dirty, so to speak.
–James
Yeah, my last desktop system was a DIY, it was fantastic and was still going very strong after four years (when I sold it to move overseas). Unfortunately they don’t have DIY laptops yet and my current requirements necessitate portability.
kinda good thing for a systems dude, innit? 
PEBKAC errors… 
Dual boot nothin’. I installed Parallels on my iMac and then loaded XP on a
virtual machine. It runs natively on the second core of the cpu, so I have 2
OS’s running at the same time. It’s pretty seamless, (except that Windows
doesn’t let MacOS have the printer). I was most impressed with that. So far,
I can run any windows game I want (caveat, I’m not much of a gamer). I’m
going to try to put Vista in a second virtual machine soon.
I agree with the overpriced part. But the rest can be said about any
commercially produced PC these days. Everything’s on the motherboard,
and two outwardly identical Dells, for example, could have a different brand
of motherboard, chipset, memory, etc. Honestly, the only way to be sure of
your build quality is to source the parts yourself, which has ceased to be a
cost-effective PC solution, sadly.
And as for upgrading, that was the idea behind USB and firewire… You
could add on externally.
Still, I enjoy this take on the commercials:
OK, here’s an update.
Yesterday, it seemed my computer had slowed to a crawl. So much so that I couldn’t get anything done. So I hit “cntrl/alt/del” and what came up was “teatimer.exe.”
I though that might be a virus or spyware, so I Googled, “What is teatimer.exe?” Turns out, it’s a screening program that runs all the time in the background as a feature of the Spybot Search and Destroy spyware protection software. On message boards, many people reported it slowed their computers horribly and they wished they hadn’t installed it. So I removed Spybot Search and Destroy, and the computer’s pleasantly quick again. I have the AGV anti-spyware on board, and that doesn’t seem to slow anything down, so I should be OK.
Overall, I’m happy with Windows XP. It does everything I need, doesn’t crash. No complaints at all.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Hurrah!
(Running Spybot permanently in background? Eeeep!)
Who knew? Spybot came highly recommended, and I’d never had any trouble with it. I suspect when it updated itself after I upgraded to XP, it installed teatimer.exe to provide the maximum service the new OS would support.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Imagine that. Something designed to slow computers down that wasn’t invented by microsoft. Glad you found the problem. Some of the older Norton stuff had that same effect. Brought everything to a screeching halt, then complained when you tried to banish it from the computer.
Yes, it did. I dumped Norton for Grisoft a long time ago.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Norton did nothing but cause me problems.
Last time I used Norton, I gotta admit it did help me. I got hit by an especially virulent virus. No porn sites involved. Norton screamed out a partial message about an infection as it died.
The virus targeted Norton first, then proceeded to wreck everything else it could. Thankfully, Norton’s death caused my computer to lock up, and I was able to reboot directly from a protected CD and begin to fix things. The guy who actually got me back running said he had never run into anything like that in his experience.
Norton gave its little digital life to protect me. Imagine that. 
Never did use it again after that. 
OK, so Norton’s no good.
Has anyone tried Kramden?
Best wishes,
Jerry