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if used correctly and built correctly, PC's are amazingly more powerful than Mac. Don't have too much experience with Linux.

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Nikon D5000
Sigma 18-200mm
Sigma 50mm 12.8 macro

Lol, I bought a 100ft ethernet cable just for that. It only costed $15. And btw, macs cost too much for what you get. Unless of course you actually care about having a shiny box.

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I use Windows, always have since the days of Windows 3.11 in 1994.

It means I'm not restricted in my choice of applications, that's the main reason I wouldn't switch to anything else , but another important reason has developed too. I'm 60 years old, I know Windows inside out and I don't want to have to learn a new OS at my age (by "learn" I mean learn how it works under the hood like I know Windows, not just learn how to use it).

A previous poster said Windows 2000 was the best OS, and that XP was the start of Microsoft's decline. I don't agree. XP was actually Microsoft's winning formula and represented the high point in it's fortunes. By far the most popular and most-liked OS from the Microsoft stable -- most users or former users will tell you so. Vista is the one that nags you about everything you try to do, not XP.

Just trawl any Windows forum and see how many Vista users have gone back to using XP -- that speaks volumes in itself.

haha, this is true. apples biggest weakness is the lack of games and ability to run games smoothly.

but I'm not a gamer.

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Canon 40D + 70-200mm f/2.8L IS + 50mm f/1.8
Manfrotto 055CX3 + 496RC2
www.thomaslowe.com

I haven't gone back to XP simply because I would miss some of the tiny features in Vista. It feels like XP except slightly better as far as usability. That being said, Vista is a step back performance wise. We're all hoping Windows 7 will be a step in the right direction, and from what I've heard out of the beta, it looks promising. Hopefully Windows 7 will run faster than XP ever did, with better 64bit implementation. Windows XP is no good for 64 bit drivers, Vista is still the best for 64bit. Windows 7 should be even better though.

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iMac with OS X (and XP through parallels) and an ageing Dell laptop running XP.

A lot of users have upgraded to XP since Vista was released. I never stopped using it. My three computer network that runs the simulator all have XP Pro installed. I've never had a crash, BSOD, or other problem with this OS. This is one of MS's best and is going to be supported until at least 2014.

First of all the question "Are you a Mac or PC?" appears to be more hardware than operating system based. There are many people who own a Mac but do not have Mac OS installed on it. And with several PC configurations it is possible to install Mac OS (I think not quite legal though). Plus with the uprise of virtualization many modern operating systems can be run simultanously without a reboot etc. Now speaking for Mac OS .. it actually is a close relative to Linux with its Unix core (Mach kernel) and GNU/BSD foundation.

So the question should more be like:

What is your operating system of choice for your image workflow including/or PP?

- Windows XP/Longhorn/7
- older Win32
- Unix (Mac OS X, OpenBSD, ..)
- Linux (one of many distroes or your own)
- none of the ones mentioned above
- more than one of the mentioned ones

That's not entirely true. Apple is building excellent machines, especially the Xeon based Mac Pros are well built/designed work horses. Of course, Apple is not keeping up with Intel's speed, so it is possible to configure a faster system yourself. But if you want the same quality as Apple's system you will have difficulties building it for less money. On the other hand I advice everyone to buy the cheapest Mac configuration, since Apple is charging way too much for extra RAM etc. £1,700 for a dual Xeon system is a fair price, but not £940 for 8GB of memory.

Just my opinion

OS X and Ubuntu here.

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Tobywuk personal website || My Flickr
Gear: Sony a700! || CZ 16-80mm! || Sony 75-300 || bag: Crumpler PB xxxl / Lowepro slingshot 200

Longhorn LOL

Not heard that in YEARS man, haha

Beta 1 FTW! It was lightning fast.


The problems in Vista and Windows 7 - its to pretty!

Its less of a Power User Interface and more of a Simplified User Interface.

Basically, allowing stupid people to do simple things easier.

I like how XP is layed out, some under the hood stuff would be good to speed it up even more. The XP theme in Vista and 7 is ok but i want all my old icons and network connections back! haha!

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Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!

Windows wins in price and customization. I don't like Mac OSX menu bar and dock. Windows 7 is a good step forward and I will be moving to it from Vista as soon as it comes out.

Windows for the powertools, Linux for security testing and breaching.
Used a mac a couple of times, hated the fact that it limited it's features for ease of use. That, and overpriced hardware with poor performance kept me from going mac.

But it looks nice

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

I'm a full time photographer, after 20 years in IT. I was stuck with Micro$oft platforms in the past and now that I'm freelance I decided to go OSX.

No way back for me, there is *nothing* I miss from my switch, quite the opposite....

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Visit my :BLOG
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> I was a CompTIA and TAFE qualified Windows Technician for 11 years. Which is what put me off the system. It's basically a 1980s style "stack" system - and the more Redmond "improves" it - the deeper the stack - and the more CPU grunt and faster RAM it needs to run at a workable speed. Many of the problems with Vista hardware are due to this. The Windows / NT - Windows 2000 is NT-5.0, the XPs are NT-5.1, Server 2003 is NT-5.2, and Vista is NT-6.0 - systems are at a "point of diminishing returns". That is - further attempts at "developing" it will just need more CPU-grunt - dual-core and quad-core and more - to get them to run at a User-acceptable speed.

Linux is "brand-new" with every full new release of a Distro. The Kernel is new - and the Modules are fully rebuilt and upgraded. If you have specific uses - e.g. video editing-encoding-transcoding - your Distro is likely to have a Kernel tuned to that. In Linux, you can replace the system Kernel in a few clicks - something totally impossible with Windows-any.

Linux is a Modular System - that is - the Kernal messages directly to each Module - the User interface, Graphics functions, Audio, Video, Networking (including Internet) - so on. Not up-and-down through a Stack. That's why Linux is so much quicker on User input-response, runs faster, and does heavy work - e.g. Video Encoding - faster than Windows, if you have a modern PC - or, other way around, will run at good speed on older PCs - P-IIIs and early to medium P4s.

Also - it's free - easier to install than Windows, easier to use than Windows, in a good Desktop Distro, like PCLinuxOS - is totally immune to Viruses and Trojans - not because there are fewer Linux PCs than Windows PCs, as some claim - but because the system architecture doesn't run them. There are Worms and Rootkits which CAN run in Linux - but they're rare - fewer than 30 this Century, and are usually aimed at Servers, not PCs.

I've been running Linux PCs for 9 years - and have never seen a Worm or Rootkit, and of course - while I could have no Viruses and Trojans in my User Logon - or 50 of each - I'd never notice, as they're harmless to Linux. What you DO have to watch with Linux because of that - if you give material to a Windows-er friend - you must check it first. Linux has several AV apps - some of which are updated several times a day, for doing that - because that CD or DVD you just wrote (or a mail-attachment) - could be swarming with Viruses / Trojans - that will wreck their Windows install...!

So - with Linux you don't waste time with constant Virus-sweeps, you never need to "defrag" as Linux has Fully-Journalling filesystems - and there are no "Registry" problems - Linux has no Registry, only Legacy stack-systems do.

As I do a lot of video work (and that now includes re-encoding the 1280 x 720 from my Fuji S2000HD to MPEG2 at PAL 720 x 576, to put into DVDs for standalone players) - I couldn't imagine going back to the kludgy slowness of Windows for that - or anything else, really...

There are no Blue Screens of Death - you can install from your Distro's Repository any of (in the PCLinuxOS case) - the 7000+ free programs, tools, utilities, so on, you want - automatically, in a few mouse-clicks - and you can choose 6-9-12 things to install - say "Go" - and Synaptic (the automatic installer app) - downloads and installs them for you while you enjoy a nice coffee. Very quick. No need to reboot - just install-open-and-use. The only thing you need to reboot for is to change a Kernel. And you can have several Kernels installed - then just reboot between them when needed.

>> The current and recent Mac Systems are based on BSD - the Berkley Systems Distribution of Unix.

> Folk who say they "never use Linux" - must never use Google - which has the largest Linux Server Farm on the Planet. Yahoo runs on Unix - HP's UX.

Regards, Dave.

A little disclaimer: I'm a C++ software engineer by trade, and I've developed for Linux, OS X and am currently employed writing the GUI layer for a computer security package for the various flavours of Windows (they also do Linux/Unix and OS X versions too, but I'm not involved in that). At home, my primary machine is a x64 Ubuntu laptop.

Hopefully that should give you an idea of where I'm coming from.



I'm uncertain as to what you mean by "brand-new" and "fully rebuilt and upgraded". The kernel code goes back to '91 and developers do not go around fully rewriting everything in the Linux kernel once ever 6 months. If you're talking about a re-compile, any shipping software project will be recompiled from scratch anyway so I don't quite see how this is important? All software companies have some sort of production process whereby release code is compiled in a clean environment, then tested, then released to the public.

There's practically no reason to replace your kernel. That's a throwback to the old monolithic kernel (i.e. primitive) from the pre-2.6 era. Thankfully, Linux has matured since then. Windows and OS X do not need kernel recompiles as this is unnecessary.



OS X is highly modular (see all the Frameworks and *.dylibs). Windows is modular too (see all the various *.exe and *.dll). Where do you get the idea that this is unique to Linux? If anything, Linux came late to the game with being modular.



Can you drag and drop an image from one app and then drop it onto another? Can you do this consistently across applications?

You can't, because there is no defined clipboard format that all applications adhere to. This is a pet whine of mine when writing Unix/Linux software. Copy and paste, drag and drop work well in Windows and they work even better on OS X. To see what I mean, go to an Apple shop and try dragging information between applications.



Computer security is as strong as its weakest link. In the majority of cases, this is the user. See the definition of a Trojan. Now tell me how _any_ OS protects you from user stupidity?

Viruses and trojans are not the only route into your machine. Use Flash? Then see this. It affects _all_ platforms where Flash is running. Hurray for cross-platform security exploits .



I started out on Windows in '95, Linux in '00 and Mac OS X in '03. I've never had a virus. Does that mean that I can claim that Windows has no viruses?



Windows has had filesystem journaling since Windows 2000 (with NTFS v5). That has absolutely sod-all to do with filesystem fragmentation. If Linux file systems do not get fragmented, why is there an ext filesystem defragmentation tool? OS X has taken this a step further by providing on the fly defragmentation on each file access (!). Fragmentation is a problem that affects _all_ filesystems. Whether you need to worry about it, is a completely different issue.

Linux has no registry because it's just a kernel. GNOME has a registry called GConf. The registry can be useful but I agree that the Unix way of storing information in .files in the home directory is a superior method.



Do you do much beyond re-encoding? I ask because of the dismal state of Linux video editing. Photo editing on Linux isn't much better either.

There's a reason Linux doesn't have mass appeal. Until that gets sorted, talking nonsense about other systems isn't going to help spread Linux adoption.

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PhilipGoh.com