THanks, samrigel. Been meaning to give Linux another go. I do have 8gb on my main machines.

Evan as a stockholder in Microsoft, I am disgusted with their product and communistic marketing methods. We are running a laptop on Vista, and four PCs, one XP, one Vista, and two Win 7. They all have their endearing qualities and we like them, What we do NOT like is Microsoft's panic mode attempts to force us into Win 10 when we have no desire for it. It is not compatible with some of our programs, it is geared toward kids, it is set to gather and transfer information about where we shop where we surf the web, and who we are, which Micsfoft can sell. I used Media Play often, and am not about to stop because Win 10 dropped it and it is not even an option! I became disgusted with Microsoft when they gave up on Vista, without a fair attempt to sell it. At first it gave us a lot of "can't do" messages, which, if ignored, proved to be hot air, it worked. It is still fun to use and a solid version. If Win 10 is so great, why is Microsoft already planning a not too distant roll out of Win 11? They don't care about the consumer or any problems, they just see unearned dollar signs. Before I uninstalled their gateway update for 10, which fails to describe it as such, they tried to load 10 on my PC 37 times, without my permission! That is NOT caring about your consumer, when you have to block them at every attempt. They would do well to fine tune their regular updates so they do not cause issues, which we all know they do. That is why I have never loaded updates the day the come out, they just don't clean them up. I just want value for my money, and I do not feel that is their future. My next upgrade is likely going to be Apple.

http://www.miniclip.com/games/8-ball-...

I'll try to remember.
Just talked to my son.
He said he may switch at the end of the year and his only reason would be video games, which I'm not really inro.
A simple easily accessed quickfire beat the clock eight ball game that ain't eight ball at all is the only PC video game I play once or twice a day.
To beat the clock at Level Nine is a great game for me. I've only managed to reach Level 10 twice. Levels 7 and 8 are average.

I just gave the why upstairs and I've been reading other replies here.
Windows 10 can do their own fixing.
I'm happy with what I ain't fixing got.

Yes I have. However the computer I run my Ubuntu on is limited to 4GB of memory so the VB running Windows XP and 7 is sssllllloooowww. But it works and occasionally crashes the VB. But if you can run 8 or 16 GB it should run very good. Hope that helps.

W7 works better than 8 and both seem to work better than 10...going back to 7, disable updates until such time I can go to apple...$$$ or a different operating system.

Apple has about 9% of the desktop OS marketshare, compared to Windows at something under 90%, with about 1 or 2% to Linux. The acceleration is benefiting Apple though, with sales of Mac improving by about 10-25% year over year (but a lot of those are existing customers upgrading obviously).

At the same time though, Microsoft's annual unit sales have been shrinking by double-digit percentages annually, with the same numbers pretty much going to the Apple side, or people just deciding they don't need a PC anymore (common to the elderly for example that are happy with their iPad). Mac sales are down a bit in the last quarter, but Apple also released the iPad Pro at the same time, which is pretty much a laptop. Heck, I'll probably move to one eventually, I like light, not bulky.

When you consider though that the Mac market is a single vendor, versus 100s or 1000s in the PC space, it's pretty obvious that Mac is a big ticket item for Apple's bottom line.

Although, with half a trillion or so in the bank, I don't think any one item in their portfolio helps or hurts them particularly other than the iPhone.

The growth of Mac is obviously iOS... Android is obviously a competitor with marketshare, but I've had both and I really don't think Android compares much in terms of quality or workmanship, I think the open aspect of its OS is the lure for technical folks and the cheaper price tag is the lure for others.

I use all of the above for various things obviously, but when I travel across the US, bring a projector and need to do a cyber security presentation and it -MUST- work and -MUST- be reliable, I'm grabbing the Macbook obviously... I'd never risk it on on a PC. I don't have problems with them often, or even once a year, but it always seems to be something at the worst possible time... or just that infinite boot up thing drives me nuts. Heck, the MacBook is up & ready before I have the laptop open and in the right spot for my hands to type it seems like.

The millennials entering the workforce at some point in leadership positions will be a game changer though, my son is 23 and in college, you don't see a PC anywhere... about 30% of our consulting work is for higher ed institutions and the top 5 or so K-12 districts... same thing, I can look at device-counts on any given education network and the numbers are exactly flip-flopped... 90% Mac & iOS versus about 10% something-other. We can identify the Apple devices pretty easily by their hardware MAC address on the network when they request a DHCP, the pre-amble to the request is the manufacture designation, so Apple is all in one family basically, with all-else in the others pile.

People have always thought that the lack (like practically zero) virus issues for Macs are because of the small marketshare, but that isn't true, the closed/known hardware aspect with zero variations in hardware drivers, closed OS, and unix foundation of it are all pretty strong adversaries to any kind of malware or viruses. Microsoft has to manage a planet load of hardware ecosystem, where Apple only knows what it has and has to worry about it. Combine with that the unix security model, no registry junk to get corrupted, very little shared system files for applications, and unix networking, antivirus is really just kind of optional on a Mac.. and not something you really need to pay for, the freebies are fine.

So from a cost perspective... you figure an average 7 year life of a Mac, plus the free OS, and the free/zero-need for the McAfee cartels, and you pretty easily get to Mac being a lot cheaper... probably cheaper than even the $250 junk at Walmart to be honest, if you are comparing 'apples to apples', no pun intended, of high performance/high quality construction WinTel to a MacBook for example, there isn't a big difference in the upfront cost, but the advantage goes heavily Mac in the out-years.

Wonder how important mac computers are to Apple now.

Aint that the truth. (statement, not question)
Ethics rarely win over threat of extinction.

Just say "no" to all W7 updates.

Have you used VirtualBox (or equivalent) to run Windows virtal machine on Ubuntu? I still have some windows apps I need to use.

"my macs from 10 years ago still work to do the things they did when new"
So do old windows machines and old linux machines. My 1985 compaq transportable still works. I agree, term2, but newer equipment often does the same jobs better, faster, and allow additional functionality.
There are advantages to each platform. More in the market bought windows, but that doesn't mean they are right (or wrong.) It does likely mean that the x86-windows hardware will be less expensive due to the volume. Even that is becoming less important with more powerful phones, watches, raspberryPi's, etc, taking some of the tasks that bigger hardware had to do in the past.
The big news is the return of Windows 95 (joke):
http://www.geek.com/games/someone-got...
Life goes on (grin)

If he ever does and you follow, PLEASE post how it goes.

Go into your Windows updates and uninstall KB 3035583 and don't allow your system to reboot. Go back into the Windows update and have the system check for updates. After it has found the updates simply "right-click" on the KB 3035583 and tell it to hide the update. Then go ahead and reboot the computer and you are good to go and no more tray nagging "Upgrade to Windows 10".

IMHO the press put out on issues with Windows 7 have more to do with MS wanting to cast it aside for the more covert collecting of data and information that comes with Windows 10.

I use Linux Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and it runs great without any issues. It doesn't even require anti-virus or anti-malware software. Now and then it receives updates to keep it running smoothly. And if on the rare occasion a program crashes, that is all that crashes the program NOT the entire OS.

I do not remember the source of this. I read that the new W10 lets all of your data be mined for advertisers to be able to target you with their products - thus MS can 'give it away' to users. MS will be paid by advertisers the way Google, etc. get their revenue. Given that Bill Gates has gone over to the dark side, I suspect there will be a lot of government trolls in W10 computers also. I am also using Ubuntu almost exclusively. I keep a W7 computer that I need for a couple of specific programs, but it is not connected to the 'net.

Lots of games coming out in that genre, looks like this year will be the VR coming-out party. No Man's Sky, Elite Dangerous... etc..

I kind of game up on Windows gaming though, got frustrating over time, I'm kind of sold on the console route but I'm looking for some better add-on hardware for it over time (VR headsets for example), but I'll probably dive into the PlayStation 4 world I think. I've never actually bought one before, but I don't play games very often anymore either.

Vista was a good for me, I'm on widows 8.1 at the moment, My next new laptop will have Vista installed on it, For me it was very similar to XP and worked well with both games and office software.

True, there isn't much in the mid-range for a desktop from Apple. I think the philosophy is to just sell a MacBook Pro in that market.

Porting Star Citizen to Mac wouldn't be tough for the developer, OS X is actually almost entirely BSD Unix with whiz-bang GUI on it. If you open a terminal window on OS X, it's very obviously BSD immediately.

Macs are fine, I just do not like the premium and I build my own desktops. I am building an I7 5930 system now, and play Star Citizen, so OSX is out. I do not have a warm fuzzy about running a VM within. Besides, desktops form Apple are a pretty lean selection.

Chuck, you are correct, a lot of that can be stopped in the privacy settings and some registry hacks, but it is painful and I do not think I should have to protect myself from them. I will pay for Win10 when they get it fixed, but I will not let them harvest my data.

You can delete the "Upgrade to Win10" thing in your tray, it takes a couple registry edits but it is worth it since it also downloads 3 GB of stuff in order to do it. Just search for "How to delete Win10 upgrade in tray" or so and there are a few, I found one that gave you 4 different methods to kill it, the registry edit for "allow upgrade" I think,was easiest.

Exactly the point, in situ data suggests MS is full of ....just trying to get to as many peoples personal data as they can. Until that question is clearly resolved Win7 is my mainstay.

OS/2 was used in ATMs for many years, long after it was withdrawn from the market. It was also used as the OS in the P/390 system which we still have. I have an OS/2 book with a preface where Gates claimed that OS/2 was the OS of the future. I used it at home for many years as well.

I'll stick with Windows 7 as long as I can. It's working fine for me and I'm a fairly heavy power user in CAD and other processor and memory intensive applications.

There are just too many horror stories associated with Win 10. I've disabled the nagging Win 10 update icon in the System Tray and as much of the "tracking/snooping" features in Win 7 as I am aware of.

I run a dual-boot system with Ubuntu Linux and Windows. The software I depend on doesn't run on Linux, else I'd heave MS overboard instantly.