I’d have to ask anyone who doesn’t have more than 20 minutes of experience with, well, anything to refrain from comparing it to products they have extensive experience with. You simply cannot adapt to a new operating system, or much of anything for that matter, in only 20 minutes, making any opinions created during that experience essentially invalid.
It’s an opinion, how can it not be valid? Because it differs from your opinion? 
I’ve used Mac OS for quite a bit more than 20 minutes, although in fairness I have to admit that it was Mac OS 1 thru 7 so it’s not very fair to compare it to modern Windows computers.
I never did like CP/M, but I have a pretty good feel for MS-DOS.
Every now and then I drag an old Kaypro luggable out of the basement and play with CP/M, just to remind myself how bad it is
Ubuntu Linux > Windows 7 > Mac OS X.6 > Vista > XP
I’m currently running Ubuntu 9.10 on my laptop and desktop (desktop is virtualizing Win7).
Screenshots 
http://tinypic.com/r/2ak0i9z/6
Linux allows me to have a lot of flexibility over my system and frankly it’s a saviour for programmers, built in Python/PHP and a majority of the GNU Compiler Collection. Ubuntu’s gedit is a great programming editor IMO and it uses only a few MB of RAM on my system. Not to mention it’s external tools plugin is awesome.
I always had a preference for Unisys 1100 series Exec 8. Mainly because where I worked, I had the source code and could modify it as needed.
It got to be too much work, cheaper to just throw hardware at it. But, some of it still lives at Apple.
Good story, hope it gets fixed fast.
If you think a mac runs fast, try running DOS on a modern computer. That was when elegance wasn’t an option - if you couldn’t make it run in <640k RAM, it didn’t run - and people still had to get things done as fast as possible, but with a 5 MHz clock speed.
For certain (non-commercial) programs, I still run DOS, because it’s easier to write in and executes very fast on a 100 MHz Pentium. Same calculations in XP take longer.
Of course, my daily PC runs XP. Another prisoner of Windows. It could be worse (CP/M for instance):rolleyes:
No, because it’s an uneducated opinion. I won’t voice claims about Linux (which I have used for about an hour or two), and I would certainly hope that people who have attempted to learn another OS would do the same.
A rational person wouldn’t claim that a particular brand automobile is inferior to another if all they’ve done is test drive both. They wouldn’t gain any insight into the reliability, durability, or performance of the car in various conditions.
While a first impression is a valid aspect of an educated opinion, it simply isn’t sufficient to create one on it’s own in the case of operating systems.
Ok…
I don’t want to spend the money it would cost to acquire a “valid” opinion of the current Mac OS.
I grew up on Apple II through Mac OS8 through elementary school. After that, it was Windows all the way.
I made it a whole two weeks of no Windows by using Ubuntu, but that was as long as I could stand it. Just took too much time to research and read how to get everything working like I wanted too. Too many things I can do with a mouse in Windows, that I had to do with a terminal window in Ubuntu. For a server, Linux is great. But for a desktop, I think it’ll be quite a long time before I give it another try. Just too many things I do work only on (or better on) Windows. Every now and then when I’m feeling nostalgic, I do enjoy firing up the 8MHz Mac Classic with System 7.5 though.
It’s hard to form an opinion about something after only twenty minutes or less. I bet if you put a seasoned driver of automatic cars into a car with a manual, and told them to drive across town, they’d probably have an unfairly negative opinion of manual transmissions after only twenty minutes due to stalling at every red light and gear shift on hills.
After a day or two of driving gets them over the initial learning curve, their opinion will be much more realistic.
Try out Windows 7 (whether it’s a friend’s computer or one of the computers at Best Buy or similar stores). Download Ububtu (it’s free). Try out Mac OS X (at Best Buy or the Apple Store. The Apple Store will let you use the computers there as long as you want). Use all three long enough to get over the intial learning curve, and then you’ll have an accurate opinion of what works best for you (it might be more than one OS).
Gigabytes are cheap, so dual (triple?) booting is really easy nowadays. Computers are even getting fast enough to run one operating system in a virtual machine inside another operating system without any noticeable lag. I personally dual boot Windows 7 and Mac OS X, use them both daily, and wouldn’t give up either.
Good point about multi boot Art…I have Windows 7 RC and Ubuntu 9.10 on my computer, but I still use XP all the time, and hardly ever use the others. I find them to be kind of lame, and they don’t offer anything that I can’t do with XP.
I can’t put OSX on my machine because Apple doesn’t want me as a customer. Says so right in their EULA.
I voted for Mac, I use linux, and windows 7 is impressive. 
I know that my opinion on OS X is invalid; I felt as though my opinion was requested on all three OSes, so I put down what I felt about all three. I prefaced my opinion of OS X with the time I spent operating them in order to show that I am not, by any means, a reliable source on an “OS X vs -” debate, and that my opinion should not be counted, if the final decision is between a Mac and Linux/Windows.
I am sorry for any misunderstandings.
I wish there was an option for multiple in this poll. I use both windows, and os x in equal amounts. They both have their pros, and their cons which makes it easy to want to switch between the two.
I like Mac OS 10.4.1
until about a month ago, I was running Mac OS 9.2
My internet browser was “Wamcom” which was a custom build of Mozilla 2 or something like that…I had ZERO javascript support, and it was slow as a snail…Not to mention it only had a 6GB hard drive.
Now I have Safari 4 with my OS 10.4
I am still running it on my G4 quicksilver, so not much about the speed has changed.
But overall It works much better, and I upgraded to 120GB of space!
The only downside is: I still only have 512 MB of ram :mad:
I dual-boot XP and Ubuntu… Ubuntu works well for general stuff, and I use XP for CAD and gaming.
Dude! use Ubuntu! it works with netbeans programming OOTB! anything you need is just an apt-get away!
i <3 windows vista basic.
I am currently using Win 7 pro 32 bit on my desktop/laptop and Win 7 pro 64 bit on the mobile laptop and only one problem so far and that is with one radio programming software from Butel.nl (the one for the 396/996XT series), it doesn’t run properly on 64 bit and fails.
So far I have found win 7 to be as problem free as XP from back when.
Ideally learning all OS’s and being fluent in them is a good idea, why not? you never know when you might need that knowledge let’s say at work.
I’d like to learn Linux before Mac.
Fortunately linux is free, and you can use it on your non-Apple hardware, legally
Buy another hard drive to put in your computer to experiment with linux. Or run if from the CD, to get the feel of it.