I like Windows 7

Before I start this let me say one thing. I prefer OS X. It’s clean, it just works most of the time, and it’s what I’ve had a lot of success with over the course of the 20+ years since I bought my first computer (A Mac Plus). I’m not a software/OS bigot though and in my regular 9 to 5 I use a Windows XP machine and manage to accomplish everything I want to do without too many hassles. Most of the problems I encounter have more to do with how locked down the computer is (not surprising with Windows in a corporate environment) as compared to just not being able to do some task. So when Apple came out with 10.5 with BootCamp (naturally you had to have an Intel Mac to make it work), I thought why not install Windows to try something new? It also didn’t hurt that many of the games I would like to play are either Windows only, or have expansion packs not available for the Mac.

Step one’¦get a copy of Windows.

About a year and a half ago (not long after 10.5 came out), I went to Tiger Direct and bought an OEM copy of XP Home for about $80. I gave BootCamp about 100GB of hard drive space and easily installed Windows XP. With great anticipation I went down to a local retailer and bought some Windows software (including Half-Life 2 Orange Box) and installed those as well. While playing some of the games, I noticed I started getting some video artifacts across the screen. Enough to be annoying, but I was still able to play the game’¦at first. Then the computer started either locking up or BSODing. It was very distracting and really took away from enjoying the games. I shrugged thinking, ‘Well it IS Windows after all.’ The few times I delved over to the dark side didn’t make it worth spending a whole lot of time worrying about it.

Then late last year after the first service pack was released for Windows Vista, I went out and bought an upgrade version of Home Premium. That also installed with little problem, but the BSOD’s got even worse. I upgraded the video drivers with the latest for the card in my iMac directly from NVidia, but nothing helped. I also shrugged this off knowing about all the problems that Vista had. I rarely even tried anymore as I was busy enough with Mac stuff (not to mention two boys entering their teens) until the release candidate for Windows 7 came out. I thought why not give it a try? I had nothing to lose since Vista had hardly been a stellar experience. So I went through all the steps to download the release candidate which including going into Windows again since it wouldn’t let me download it through OS X (possibly some mistake I made). I got through it, made the ISO DVD as requested and tried to install it. It was a massive fail. It would get nearly through it and then stop, reloading all my Vista settings first. Very frustrating. So I went the nuke and pave route. I got out my OS X Leopard install disk, went through making a BootCamp Partition, installed Windows 7, and lastly finished off by inserting my Leopard disk while in Windows to finish installing all the Apple created drivers for Windows. Everything seemed to be fine at first. Played around with it and oddly enough it was much better experience than either XP or Vista.

Then it happened. BSOD city. No matter what I did I got BSODs. After trying some various things (too lengthy to go into here), I decided to hell with it and rebooted into OS X. Or at least I TRIED to boot into OS X. It would get as far as a blank blue screen with the mouse cursor and stop. When I moved the mouse, the cursor would follow but an odd thing happed as well. In the original spot the cursor was, was another cursor arrow. Uh-oh, that just isn’t good. I should preface this by saying that on occasion in OS X, I was also seeing some left over artifacts or horizontal lines going across the screen. Not all the time, but often enough that I should have been concerned. Usually just rolling some window over it made it disappear and it didn’t happen often enough to make me think about it, but as a self-proclaimed Mac geek, I SHOULD have been thinking about it and doing something about it’¦like quickly signing up for Apple Care for this computer’¦but I didn’t. I knew what the problem was and I also knew it wasn’t going to be cheap and for once in this story I was absolutely correct.

A quick trip to the Clarendon Apple Store confirmed my worst suspicions. The 128MB 7300 graphics chip in my 2.16GHz iMac was shot. It’s now going to cost a little more than $350 to replace it though the good news is that the Genius at the Apple Store for not much more than I was going to have to pay anyway, is getting me the 256MB 7600 card instead.

Those who know much about putting together computers are probably choking with amusement at the thought of a 256MB 7600 card costing a Mac user $350 to replace. That’s the world that we as Mac users have to live with and to use OS X and to use it well I don’t find that high a price. This computer will now easily last at least another 2 years before I need to give any serious thought to replacement. Sure in the PC world we could probably replace every component for 4 to 6 hundred bucks and keep rolling, but I prefer OS X. I prefer it trouble-free (mostly anyway as this tale tells) and while the hackintosh route has a certain appeal, I don’t find the building process of computers nearly as interesting as I would have before I had a family.

The other good news is that once I get it back, I should be able to run Windows with absolutely no trouble at all!
Oh wait’¦when did that become good news? Kidding’¦kidding. For all you Windows users out there that have no intention of switching to a Mac, give Windows 7 a try. It really isn’t that bad and truth be told? I kinda like it.