My all time favorite claim from a Mac user was "all the other PC's are made overseas".
With that said, we use an Apple laptop for traveling but really love windows 7 on the desktops.
Adaminak, back to your original: Get rid of Vista if you can. You wont regret it.

 

I've used Macs many times in the past, but I will admit it was many, many years past. Like the late 90's. And everything business related I did was run via Windows Emulator and just sucked the life out of the computer. I was also a fairly serious gamer before I took up trucks, hunting and skeet, and the software companies didn't have a lot of love for Mac. It sounds to me like they've come a long way since then, and maybe if this notebook dies I'll look at a Mac. At least it will burn DVDs quickly and easily.

To all those who suggest other OS options: I set up an 8 computer office network with Win7 and from what I can tell, it's everything Vista should have been from the beginning. I'm having a few issues developing and enforcing Group Policy over a wireless network, but that's minor, and not something I worry about on my home computers. If I wasn't such a tightwad, I'd upgrade to 7, but I cringe at the thought of spending another $178 to make my computer work the way it should have from the start.

I've played with Linux in several variants, including Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian and a few others. I even built a dual-boot machine that shared a FAT-32 formatted partition so I could share pictures and documents between the two. The problems I have with Linux are that I'm just not willing to learn a completely new interface, and the irritating hardware compatibility issues I always seem to run into, especially with sound cards.

Fronty: No idea what corrupted the file. No virus, no power surges. Likely just a bad process in Windows wrote an incorrect value to a nonpaged section of the Win32k.sys file and every time that page was referenced the unexpected value caused the crash. About six months ago I could no longer successfully install updates, so I knew it was the beginning of the end. chkdsk /f didn't solve the problem, registry scans, compactions and repairs didn't do anything either, so I figured it was a matter of time. Last time this happened (different issue, not a BSOD crash) I did a repair of Vista...probably should have just done the fresh install then, but I didn't have time to backup all my files and couldn't afford to lose them.

Bark: Where'd you find the Win7 update for 3 systems for $100? That's something I would bite the bullet and do!

 

Here is the link for the Costco site I bought the last one from. I notice their price for the Family Pack (three computers) is now $125 bucks. It was $99 at Christmas time. I had bought two of them for myself and the old folks place. Upgrading from Vista was a snap. Doing a clean install was also a piece of cake except on my own Dell 8400 (Dells fault). I wound up putting XP back on it and gave it to the old folks home.

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product...t20522&topnav= $125 probably isnt that bad if you have three computers. It comes with a 32bit and 64bit disk.

 

Well its the truth aint it...

All (well most) of PC's are made overseas.

 

Hmm, and Macs are made in China. Guess that's 'overseas'....

MikeyB

 

At no point in my statement did I say that Apple computers were not made in China (or overseas).....

 

Thanks Bark...looks like I need to plan a trip to Costco in the future.

 

You know what they say, once you go Mac you won't go back. Also on new Mac's run intel and you can have both OS10 and windows on the Mac and switch between whenever you want. The best of both worlds. Also much software is now for Mac also. All the things That I found to fail or cause problems in windows like burning CD, updates etc just work perfect the first time on a mac. So there, Tongue sticking out.

 

Been Using Ubuntu for 5 years as well. I will never go back to Gates and Windoze

 

Just tagging along with comment was about the original mac user and manufacture of origin. Nothing against you......

Most of Apple's products and HP desktops comes from a place in China that we call 'Foxconn City'. Talking with my friends it's a craphole of a place. And it's ironic that Steve Jobs is telling Obama that the US needs more jobs.

MikeyB