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Comment by berberous | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. I recently started using Windows 7 Enterprise for work, and I'm surprised at how often I need to reboot to make things work or to avoid slowdowns. Granted, that's usually due to Adobe and Java hanging, but even killing those processes in task manager won't fix it. Maybe there's a better solution, but I just reboot.

I don't think I've ever had to reboot OS X for similar reasons.

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I've been running on a Mac for the last 2 years, after 20'ish years of Windows work. At this point I'm 50/50. There are things I HATE about both system.

* Window management in OSX is a complete joke (docking and sizing), I've lost all faith that Apple will ever get that right. * The shell and terminal support is better in OSX (yes, powershell is there, but not by default, and the standard DOS shell sucks) * I have to reboot both systems once a month to keep them working. Others disagree here, but I find OSX no more stable than Windows. * OSX Sound Drivers (WTF! -- I constantly lose sound support on my MacBook Pro) * Microsoft is much faster at fixing issues than Apple (I have a bunch of long standing OSX bugs that span multiple versions, and a couple of new ones with the current release) * I no longer feel the love for Apple hardware. Every iteration is made harder to upgrade than the last. * The Apple App Store is so much better than Microsoft's Store. * Safari is IE: they are both browsers you should only use to download a better browser.

>Safari is IE: they are both browsers you should only use to download a better browser.

Safari's great for battery life. I've switched from Chrome for that reason. Judging from the system-wide beachballs and frequent fan spin-ups for no obvious reason back when I used Firefox, I assume it would be even worse than Chrome.

Its developer tools aren't that different from Chrome's, either, and it's got a decent selection of plugins. I have Chrome installed and occasionally use it, but close it ASAP.

That's crazy. I haven't rebooted my home Windows 7 desktop in forever. Even when I install new graphics card drivers (AMD pumps out a new one every month) my screen flashes for moment and I keep working. The installer recommends I reboot but it's never at a good time.

That's crazy. I don't know how technical you are, but personally I'd never ever trust my data to such a machine without fixing it or replacing it. I have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to stuff like that.

FWIW I've never had to reboot windows beyond once a month for the updates, if at all. I run Win8 and it runs well, pretty much like my other machines - OSX on my MBPro7,1 (Snow Leopard b/c anything else degrades the performance and/or has bugs) & CentOS 6.4 which has been rock solid on my 8 year old repurposed desktop-as-server.

My work laptop runs Windows 7 Pro, and I usually reboot it once a month, when it installs updates.

It is slow as a turtle, but rebooting does not really help with that. (To be fair, it slow at least in part because it is five years old, has only three GB of RAM (remember the days when we would have drooled at the thought of that?), and I installed way too much software on it, a good part of it usually running when I use it.)

I am an OSX user primarily but I have never seen this kind of behaviour on any of my Windows installation. There is something wrong in what you describe.

I've had a very different experience to you. On my home PC running Windows 7 I only have to reboot every few weeks, normally due to a Windows Update requirement.

There are times when the system slows down, but normally that's temporary and due to a misbehaving program rather than a system wide issue.

My main gripe with Windows at the moment is the amount of time I'm staring at Windows updates. It gets ridiculous at times.

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