Switcher's Lament: CNET Editor's Case Against The Mac

It's been a fun year watching those cute Apple commercials urging you to switch to a Mac. Yes, many of us love Apple's beautifully engineered hardware, and may have fallen for the charms of an iPhone (although strictly as a case study in usability... :), but switching to the Mac OS as your primary computing platform? I'm not so sure.

Having run Windows Server 2003, Active Directory, and Exchange 2003 on a Mac Mini in the past, I've come to love the form factor. They're virtually silent and virtually invisible— great for that lone server at home. However, if you need to run a few servers, Mac Minis can quickly get very expensive. Using Hyper-V on a loaded server is more effective.

Another great application for the Mac Mini form factor - Media Center PCs, aka HTPCs. Sony's great-looking HTPCs are available in a similar form factor. They are comparable, if not more attractive than the Mac Mini. But at $1350, the VGX-TP20E/W— the cheapest of Sony's HTPCs is priced more than what you may have paid for a decent high definition television this past holiday season!

Nothing against OS X per se - it has some nice usability touches, along with its own set of quirks. However, if you're used to using Windows, switching isn't exactly as easy as those Apple commercials make it seem.

CNET Editor Rafe Needleman laments:

But I moved us to Macs to avoid this kind of hackery....after two weeks of resisting, I am dropping back to Vista on my MacBook, at least during this critical week, when I will be covering both MacWorld and CES and will have no patience for a computer that gets in my way and apps that don't work the way they should.

Interestingly, Needleman arrives at the same conclusion as I did: Apple's hardware is great for running Windows Vista. It is also overpriced for running Windows Vista. More in Switcher's lament: The case against Mac on News.com.

Over the past year or two, we've come across quite a few switchers who continue to run Windows Vista or Windows XP using Bootcamp, Parallels, or something else. Very alluring, but thanks for now! I'd rather run Windows on a real PC.