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Comment by rdw | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of Mac users are forgetting how awful the Windows ecosystem still is. One gets used to everything mostly working and think that that's how it is on the other side, too.

Meanwhile, one guy I know bought a new Windows laptop to replace his flaky older one. On the new computer, audio doesn't work. Programs load slowly (~10 minutes to start up software that takes 10 seconds for me). It turned out the flakiness of the old laptop wasn't its age or power, it was the software. Lots of folks have stories like this. There's still a huge amount of uncertainty in that world.

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1. Some Windows PCs are shitty because there are so many choices. You can't expect a Mac pro speed and build quality from a $300 laptop. But you can get Mac pro level build quality and better specs for less from some manufacturers (Microsoft, Dell,..)

2. Windows and any other OS gets laggy is you load it full with crap. On Windows this is easier, since everyone targets you on the web.

I generally prefer my windows machines, but you absolutely cannot get an equivalent quality screen. I've looked very hard for such a thing. Sure you can get a high DPI monitor, but it won't have a proper finish and will appear textured.

Even after all this if you happen to get a perfect monitor, Windows software performs very poorly in a high DPI environment. Even the OS itself was very poor in this regard until a year ago.

There's a huge additional burden on the customer to select the right device, do special steps on purchase to remove the manufacturer's crapware, avoid mucking up the internals by installing the wrong software.

If you value your time at zero, and there have definitely been times in my life where I have, then this is a fine tradeoff to make. But I think a lot of the busy professionals who are bemoaning the touch bar aren't thinking about how they'll spend a few weekends trying different driver versions, or that they'll miss out on an important deliverable because their computer restarted itself in the middle of uploading the file. Externalities!

OK, I'll bite.

You buy a mac for 2k and a Windows on some cheap Asus crap which has 40 bloatware applications pre-installed and then blame Windows on it?

I have both, a mac and a PC. When you compare MacOS and CLEAN Windows10 on same hardware they are both very fast and snappy.

Is his "new" machine using spinning rust for Win10? Cause that is what it sounds like, I don't get why people inflict non-SSD computers on themselves, its just a positively awful experience.

It's an SSD. I suspect there's some sort of middleware that's scanning every file, like antivirus or something. That kinda thing adds up quickly.

I've had the built in MS antivirus cause problems before but you can whitelist applications if it is causing problems.

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