[Mihai]

It's roughly the same with winXP. About the same with Vista, the high ram usage has been hyped, plus many things may actually run smoother since it uses the graphics card to display those vector icons. Much of this power is now being used for mostly eyecandy, but hopefully it will help evolve some really nice productive features. Transparent/translucent windows for example can be useful when you have several overlapping windows.

[jdp]

...Transparent/translucent windows for example can be useful when you have several overlapping windows.

to be honest I got this since my first linux try (redhat 7 maybe?!) and it wasn't so revolutionary as I thought (for me, for a coder might be the opposite)... but it runs quite smoothly eating a very few resources. you can already have this in windows with gtk+(if I am not wrong) application as gaim, the multi-protocol IM client.

I have a limited experience with macosx because I run a pc both at home(linux+win) and at work (win, it is the only pc in the room, but I got hired when all the mac were taken). But I can say that working with a mac is quite refreshing for the eye and for the brain: you can run a lot of tasks quite easy, without messing with the interface too much (generally few clicks). this is in my opinion the ergonomics that one need. On the other side sometimes you act stupidly, means you don't know what really happens: this changes when you start managing the console, wich is powerfull as in *nix system... oh and I am in love with exposé...
Although I probably wouldn't ever considered a mac before macintel because of low rendering capabilities, but now I am seriously thinking will be my next machine...

[lllab]

i have just a few days experience with osx with my new macpro.

but it is very nice, wuite minimal, still elegant. memory managment seens much better than windows. also it feels extremly faster than xp in browsing windows, images etc. nothing spectacular, but very cleaned up and crsip display view.

...havent much tested yet, but overall a very good enviroment i think. to bad so much apps come out late for it or dont work yet.
actually i feel osx might be the better windows.

cheers
stefan

[ivox3]

also it feels extremly faster than xp in browsing windows, images etc

I've watched this activity on more than one occasion and on a friend's G5 it sure does seem like instantaneous --- and we're talking about thousands of RAW images. ...always a bit envious of that.

[michaelplogue]

Not to hijack this thread any further, but why hasn't any motherboard company come out with a MB that has a couple gigs of high speed flash ROM onboard? Seems to me that it's silly to keep putting your OS on slow hard drives now-a-days with memory getting much smaller and faster. Just flash wondows, or whatever onto the board and you've got an almost instant boot-up. All you'd need to keep on your HD would be your configuration files and device drivers.

Heck, you could even make it a removable chip so you can change OS's when you want. They could even sell their OS's already on a chip.

[jdp]

michael I don't know if it is exactly what you are thinking, but that already happens: there's a couple of linux distribution booting directly from usb rom, and a load of livecd booting from the cdrom driver.

[Tyrone Marshall]

Not to hijack this thread any further, but why hasn't any motherboard company come out with a MB that has a couple gigs of high speed flash ROM onboard? Seems to me that it's silly to keep putting your OS on slow hard drives now-a-days with memory getting much smaller and faster. Just flash wondows, or whatever onto the board and you've got an almost instant boot-up. All you'd need to keep on your HD would be your configuration files and device drivers.

Heck, you could even make it a removable chip so you can change OS's when you want. They could even sell their OS's already on a chip.

Great idea, its something that Micro$ did not put this kind of R&D into Vista. Then it would really make sense to get a whole new computer because this kind of technology would really be a sign of the times.

I may wait it out on Vista, heck, if the Mac boxes could install and run all my winXP software at 1:1- I would jump ship on my next computer.