I use a PC only because I have been using them since 1985. I tried to use the Apple ecosystem some time ago and I sound it awkward.
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First PC around 1984-85. Memory 512kb, no HD, two 5ÂĽ" 180kb floppy drives, DOS 2.11
Today 16 GB memory, 512 GB Micron SSD, Win 11
EDIT: Never felt the urge to switch to Mac, especially not after reading Steve Jobs bio (!@#$%).
Considering to move over to a Unix type of OS (MS is behaving as bad as FB or Goggle)
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I have only owned PCs, but I have used Macs in high school.
Many PCs offer more bang for your buck than any Mac available, which is why I prefer PCs.
Also, there is more software to choose from for PCs than Macs.
EDIT:
Actually, my first computer was a Commodore 64.
I don’t think it’s considered a traditional “PC” because it isn’t an IBM compatible system.
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PC, largely out of inertia and cost.
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PCs since the 8088. Repair-ability and open hardware. Plus network environs - Novell - Token Ring (who misses T-R?).
Was a Microsoft OEM in the 8086 to Win XP days.
Been building systems since DOS 2.
Old Microsoft saying:
DOS isn’t done till LOTUS don’t run…
All the Best,
Jeff
Macs are fine machines, especially the new M2 machines. But way overpriced, both for hardware and equivalent software. And yes, you are stuck in the Apple ecosystem. Real difficult to design and build a system with Mac hardware. Which is always what I have done for my machines…
You can still get much more bang for the buck with an Intel/AMD based system. I have both Linux and Windows based systems. Linux for sort of system based background tasks. My everyday driver stuff is still Windows. Maybe because by banging my head against it for all of these years, it is just easier to use. Would love it if Windows wasn’t so full of extraneous crap and what is basically spyware, but that is mostly fixable. At least we are still able to do that. Unfortunate that it takes so much time and effort.
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I often have a LINUX PC based system sitting around.
Just fine for most everything. If something FUBARs, I just reload.
Too old and cranky to learn a new OS to the fix-it level.
All the Best,
Jeff
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Been a PC user since the mid-eighties. I did use an Apple II for about a year, until I needed to actually work on a computer. I am also a cheap bastard, so most of the stuff I have at home is older and won’t support Windows 11. Runs Windows 10 okay…
I also support servers for a living, and the vast majority of what I work on is Windows. Occasionally a Linux machine, but that’s generally because they need to interact with the Windows Active Directory space.
I do have a VMware host machine running as my lab, and figured out how to get a bunch of different OSes running there - including a Macintosh (does that make it a virtual Hackintosh?).
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I tend to use everything under the sun but no doubt PC/Android user here. That will never change. I even had a Sun Sparc 20 at one time. Miss that machine.
PC with Linux here. Because it’s the best combination of performance, security, flexibility, freedom and cost-effectivity there is.
Of course the user has to put some time & effort of learning the ins and outs, but it’s pays over a thousand-fold in benefits (you only have to learn something once).
PC, because I don’t want to give Apple a single dollar. I think it’s an obnoxious company.
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100% agreed. And Steve Jobs was the worst conman ever. I never fail to be impressed that he and his company are revered to this day.
EDIT: actually it’s a photo finish between them and Microsoft/Bill Gates. But at least the latter only effed people with software – Apple/Steve Jobs did it with software and hardware and just keep doing it.
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And “Frontpage ain’t done 'til Netscape won’t run.”. That was the M$ way forever and ever and ever and ever, amen.
FP would create webpages of nested tables to place headers, footers, multiple columns, margins, etc. But they’d bust the html spec deliberately by, say, opening 13 tables but only closing 12.
HTML spec REQUIRES closing all tables. You could leave open table cells (td) and even rows (tr), but the table itself MUST be closed.
So NS would properly do its best guess to reserve the space and even place the text, but would leave the text invisible. The text was there, and you could even see underlines where links would be, etc., but the actual rendering would be halted until all tables were properly closed.
And FP and Exploder exploited that way of doing things by being in cohoots. IE would know the little tricks where the last table-close should be, and fill it in, or alternately, wait until some tag would force a table-close.
So to The Muggle, NS would appear “broken” while IE would “work”, in that IE would display a broken/noncompliant webpage, whereas NS would be remain properly confused… until that hole was eventually plugged.
Naw. Gates is flat-out evil. He’s buying up farmland at a breakneck pace and is one of those pushing the abolition of meat and forcing people (excluding himself and his cronies, of course) to eat bugs and be happy.
He was conman and pir8 back in the early MSDOS days, but he was a piker compared to what he’s doing today.
No idea what Jobs would be doing today if he were alive, but I sincerely wish Gates would’ve shared the same fate if only to spare the world from what he’s done and is still doing.
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Me personally, I was teethed on a TRS80 and Unix/VMS at school, rarely having anything to do with peecees except in passing. AT&T Unix, SunOS/Solaris, HP-UX, you name it. Only had exposure to those goofy Appletoshes (the beige upright-shoeboxes) when I needed to do a resume or the like, as they had better sw for that kind of thing.
Held off on any non-TRS80 peecee until I got a '386 system. Nice to be able to mix’n’match components from mobos to supplies to drives, etc. From there I’d frankenbuild various’n’sundry peecees.
Stuck with MSDOS 3.1 but then ditched anything with the M$ stank on it, in favor of PCDOS and 4DOS.
Pretty much been that way until i ditched desktops in favor of laptops. Then other than installing Linux in whatever flavor, it was whatever was come-with.
Oh, the TRS80 was the model 3 all-in-one vs the model 1 with all the separate doodads. Customised the shiite out of that, with an amber CRT from Langley-StClaire, beige case from a DT1, “air movers”, ie 220V fans run on 120V to just lightly whoosh air from the drives out the top (kept the innards amazingly cool), and installed the “high res” graphics card, which was fun to play with.
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Same here.
I reluctantly admit that Apple hardware is very high quality, and their M1/M2 CPUs appear to have absolutely incredible performance and efficiency. But I’m not willing to shell out the huge premium for something with very limited upgradability. MacOS is not as annoying as Windows, but I found it totally confounding to use the few times I’ve played around with it. PC hardware quality and design is quite frankly garbage quality these days, especially laptops. But the value proposition still tips the scales in favor of PCs for my needs, as long as the particular device runs Linux well.
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Yeh, that’s why I run systems into the ground. Only way I ever get my money’s worth.
Just to expound on that, I got an ancient — and I mean ANCIENT — HP laptop without any battery in it that needs to be run off AC, with an actual 4:3 screen, that’s how ancient. Still runs, actually, but only XP, and of course, you can’t get any new sw that’s even allowed to play with XP, so sits unused.
Similar but newer Dell, also no battery in it, but that’s gone buggy so bad that I have no idea why I’m even keeping it, maybe to scrounge the drive or something, forgot.
What I’m on now is also an HP laptop whose drive makes eerie noises when it gets too hot (various "sproing!"ing noises like the heads are hitting the stops and bouncing back), but it’s still holding on… for now. I leave it on 24/7 for various 24/7 activities, so when it goes kaboom, another will just take its place.
Funniest thing is that I was given all 3 from work! They wanted systems connecting to the in-house net to be “compliant” in various ways, so I’d let IT fling whatever they needed on one of their hand-me-downs, which they’d toss at me.
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Yep, same here. Especially if I really like the hardware, invariably the newer generations are objectively and subjectively worse in several aspects, which just grates on me.
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See my addendum about my “menagerie”. 
I had the misfortune to be forced to deal with Macs a few years ago, and I second that: good quality, but absurd prices.
and their M1/M2 CPUs appear to have absolutely incredible performance and efficiency.
That’s what everyone says. But I bet the latest Zens from AMD and *Lakes from Intel are not far behind. And mark my words, RISC-V is coming for all of them and is going to eat their lunch before too long (I estimate 5-10 years maximum).
But I’m not willing to shell out the huge premium for something with very limited upgradability.
To say nothing of Apple’s infuriating “Walled Garden” policy…
MacOS is not as annoying as Windows, but I found it totally confounding to use the few times I’ve played around with it.
Agree, the GUI is crap. But CLI is basically *ix, with some Mac-aquisms (pun intended) that can be weird at first, but heads and shoulders better than Windows.
PC hardware quality and design is quite frankly garbage quality these days, especially laptops. But the value proposition still tips the scales in favor of PCs for my needs, as long as the particular device runs Linux well.
Again, agree. I’m typing this on an (at the time I got it) top-of-the-line HP Zbook 17 G4 I managed to snatch in 2018 for a not-so-outrageous price as it was being replaced by the G5, and so far I’ve had a bad keyboard and GPU fan.
Thanks Dog it has a detailed service manual available and a ton of spare parts cheap from eBay (actually Dog has nothing to do with it, I selected that model because of that, among other reasons), so I serviced it myself… And now I’m having some intermittent, weird and accentuated screen-flicker that only manifests itself (sometimes) when certain colors (in the red-orange range) are being displayed… not sure about what I’m going to have to replace this time.
OK, so 5 years and change is a little long in the tooth – but my previous laptops (all of them Thinkpads) lasted over 10 years (the last one, bought in 2012, still works good and is used by the wife).
And I decided to buy this HP after hearing that Thinkpads had gone down the drain quality-wise. Oh, well…
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