[SlowToady]

I wonder why people who build their own PCs seem to have problems with them? Probably skimp somewhere on componets. Spend lots of $$$ on a fast CPU and maybe a decent mobo, a killer graphics card, and then put **** RAM in it.

I have an Intel DK440LX motherboard with dual 300Mhz PIIs, 512MB of Crucial PC133 RAM, Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller, 2x 9.1GB Atlas IV drives, VooDoo3 3000 graphics card and a Thermaltake PSU. It's been running the same install of Windows 2000 Pro for YEARS, with nary so much as a problem. The only problems I *did* have, is when I forgot to connect the fan on the 2nd CPU so it overheated. My fault. Windows never crashed on it, despite having the CPU pegged at 100% 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. My longest uptime on it was just under 300 days, and then I only shut it down because my room flooded.

Same deal with the Windows 2003 box sitting next to me or the NT4 SP6a machine I used to run as a file server/test web dev. bed and RC5 client. That thing was 133Mhz with 128MB of RAM and you couldn't get it to crash for anything.

Buy good stuff and you likely won't have problems.

I tried using a Mac running OSX, and it was pretty alright, but just didn't do it for me. I found the UI to be hard to navigate and I felt hampered by it. It could just be because I'm used to Windows, but then I know my way around Solaris pretty well.

And, no, OSX isn't based on UNIX. The OSX kernel is based on a modified BSD kernel which isn't UNIX(tm) certified. However, Apple is applying to The Open Group for UNIX certification.

The Macs do throw out awesome performance though, the G5 with that PowerPC 970 CPU made by IBM. In RC5-72, they stomp x86 based machines at less clockspeed. Kudos to IBM I guess.

Me? I'll stick with SUN gear and quality x86 stuff, although I'd like to move completely to SUN (but can't afford it).