This is opinion, and is not necessarily the views of the University or Academic Computing.

But it should be.

Hello. My name is Jerry, and I am a Windows user.

Please, do not make my mistake. If you haven’t purchased your computer yet, for God’s sake, buy a Macintosh.

If you do purchase a Windows computer, make sure they have really good 24-hour tech support, and squirrel away at least 50% of the cost of the computer in the bank for things that the salesperson “forgot to tell you about”.

You know, I used to be a lot less militant about this—before I got into user services. I mean, I bought a Windows computer myself, three years ago. The only thing I used it for was word processing, and for that, it worked. For me.

But I’m a computer geek. I’ve been a computer geek since I was fifteen years old. When I turned sixteen, I saved up a thousand bucks and, instead of buying a car, I bought a computer, an old TRS-80 Model I, complete with black and white screen and 16 kilobytes of RAM and no hard drive because they hadn’t even been invented yet. I didn’t buy a car until I was in college. I’m as at home with computers as mechanics are with cars. Sure, my Windows computer hasn’t given me any trouble—because I only use it for one thing, writing; because I can tell what’s going wrong before it becomes a problem; because I understand computers and don’t ask it to do something that’ll screw it up; and because I never upgrade it. I have no sound, no CD-ROM; I had to replace the monitor once because the old one blew up. It’s a much better monitor than the old one, but I don’t use the extra capability because it just isn’t worth the trouble. When you hear that “Windows isn’t hard to use once you get used to it”, that’s what it means: it doesn’t mean you’ll no longer have problems, it just means you’ll have resigned yourself to the fact that you won’t be able to use your computer for what you bought it for.

The last—and only—time I upgraded my Windows computer, I needed to switch the monitor quality on the old monitor from 16-color to 256-color. On the Mac, all that requires is pressing a single button. Windows? Windows promptly de-installed my working 16-color drivers, installed a non-working 256-color driver, and I had to wait three days to use my computer, because the new driver didn’t work, and Windows had thrown out the old one. Re-installing required DOS knowledge. It required a computer expert—myself. What would you have done?

Probably called us up at Academic Computing and told us that “your computer isn’t working.” And, of course, we’ll help you to the best of our ability. But while we’re helping you, there’s someone out there on a Mac whose computer is working, and needs to know how to download something from the Internet, or how to transfer files between Microsoft Word and WordPerfect, or send e-mail to their mother—someone who actually wants to do something useful with their computer, rather than just get it to work at all.

They’re on hold, because you bought a computer that wasn’t designed for real people to use. Do them a favor. Make your next computer a Macintosh.

One of the problems we have with Macintoshes in the Academic Computing labs is that people will come in and install new hardware while no one’s looking. That’s right: the lab assistant’s head turns and the user will plug in an external hard drive, or plug their powerbook into our Macintosh network. That ‘problem’ sure as hell doesn’t occur on the IBM side of our labs—installation just isn’t that easy. The only disadvantage you’ll discover on going Macintosh is that your three-year-old will be able to use your computer without asking first for permission.

You have to be a rocket scientist?

McDonnell-Douglas’ Space Station Division in Houston recently purchased 241 Power Macs and 67 Pentiums. “From out of the box to up and running on the network took only 40 minutes, on average, for the Macs,” said Kurt Klaus, desktop support manager. Weeks later, technicians were still struggling to get the Pentiums configured and connected.—MacWEEK, 2-12-96, p. 68

You get more done with Macintosh:

(from Apple’s The Macintosh Advantage)

In 1994, the Arthur D. little consulting firm asked Macintosh users and Windows users to perform a number of identical, typical business tasks on their computers. What it discovered was that the people using Macintosh computers got their work done in almost half the time required by Windows users—and got it done more accurately. (Study conducted by Arthur D. little, Inc. 1994)

In another study, the Roper Organization surveyed Macintosh and Windows users, and found that Macintosh rated significantly higher—both in overall satisfaction, and in the amount of work accomplished. (Study conducted by the Roper Organization, 1993)

And a third study, by Evans Research, surveyed people who use both Macintosh and Windows software-based computers. It came to the same conclusions: People get more done with Macintosh and were more satisfied with Macintosh. (Study conducted by Evans Research Associates, 1992.)

Recently, GISTICS Incorporated, a research and consulting firm with expertise in broadcast video, performed a study on desktop publishing and illustration. Director Michael Moon summed it up:

“Frankly, I don’t care one whit what type of computer you use. However, I am honor-bound to report that our activity-based survey research conclusively proves the Macintosh remains hands-down the best tool for the job for low-cost video production, image editing (e.g. Photoshop), illustration, and desktop publishing. Not only do you produce higher quality work faster, but you make more money than competitors.”

Comments!

Microsoft Fights Back

Microsoft is now claiming that Windows ’95 picks up and goes beyond the Mac in ease of use. They’ve even got what they call an “independent study” to prove it. But their definition of “independent” seems different than the rest of the world: they paid the research company to do the study. They chose the subjects. They designed the test’s tasks. They even chose the hardware that the subjects used.

From Infoworld, December 11, 1995, p. 29:

“The study’s design is sufficiently flawed that the significance of the results is called into question,” said Peter Hartsook, editor of The Hartsook Letter, in Alameda, Calif.

At issue is whether letting Microsoft choose the users, provide the hardware, and design the tasks to be performed made Windows 95 seem better than it really is…

Microsoft concedes that Win95 users were chosen from the ranks of the Windows 95 preview program, a group whose members might fairly be described as enthusiasts. Mac and OS/2 users were chosen more randomly from Microsoft’s database of Excel and Word users.

At one point users were instructed to change their screen resolution of their PCs but were warned not to change the number of colors, because changing the colors would force a restart of Windows 95 but not of the Mac…

Intel: The Chip-Maker’s New Clothes

So, you’re looking into buying a new MMX computer because you want a massive speed increase? Look again. That “speed increase” comes only under specific uses of specific applications. From I, Cringely’s “Photoshop of Horrors”:

For a few specific Photoshop features, that improvement can be significant… but only if the setting for that feature is just so. Set the Unsharp filter for a blur of four pixels and a MMX-enabled Pentium performs 800 percent faster than a standard Pentium. Impressive. But change the blur setting to five pixels or more and the Pentium with MMX is faster by around 10%. Not quite so impressive. The same happens with Gaussian Blur, another Photoshop filter. And that eight to twelve percent increase is simply because the newer chips have a little more memory built into the chip than the older chips did. Nothing to do with MMX at all.

But wait, there’s more! One of the reasons that the Pentium with MMX is so much faster at particular settings is that the original Pentium runs many times slower at these same settings than it did with the same settings on the non-MMX version of Photoshop.

Intel not only made the chip faster, they made the application slower, but just for certain processor types. How did they do that? Intel actually did the Photoshop optimization themselves. Adobe handed Intel the code, Intel tweaked it and gave it back.