[Sapporo Guy]

I have never had a virus.
I started using apple computers in 1985.

The worst "virus" I had was actually a "hack" ... made my space bar beep when I used it. Drop hack in trash ... 5 minutes out of 22 good years of usage.

I'm a heavy user, as in time, utility, and in physical abuse.
Hardware problems have been:
90's
- 1 frozen seagate drive in 1990 (grease leaked)
2000's
- DOA screens found at purchase time (notebooks)
- 1 powerbook started to have monitor flakeyness only on startup ... but I forgot if this was before the wife pounding on the keyboard or after ... I got the waranty to cover it.
- My ex whacking the ***** out of my keyboard with the vacum cleaner (tank and tube type) nozzle head (heavier than a whiffle bat by far) ... keys flew every where. I bought 2 off of an auction ... still am typing away right now with them.
- cats pee'd on my desktop keyboard ... pried it slightly apart, soaped it up, ran it under the faucet for 3-4 minutes ... once it dried out, it never gave me a problem.
- have literally slammed my powerbook on the ground after slipping on a ice patch (it was in one of those cushion softcases ... not a full bag) ... dented it in several areas and need to pry apart the opening to the cd/dvd drive. The machine is now a little more picky about cheapo DVD discs but not CDs ...)
- tripped over the cord for my powerbook and so has my daughter about 4 times. 2 foot drops ... no visible problem.

OS wise:
- No kernel panics
- I used to do a lot of web work so browser refresh would cause the cache to grow and grow ... restart takes care of freeing up memory and cache. I put this here because Safari is an Apple product but could also be considered 3rd party.
- No software conflicts
- I have frozen my system before ... still not sure what the problem was ...

3rd party:
- windoze only printers (esoteric models only so far) have stumped and stopped me before
- memory pig browsers causing slow downs and restarts
- no rootkits from sony
- can play any CD without something being added to my system
- I can actually read those virsus emails and not have to worry
- I don't need Nortons, AVG or any other security software (money, time and update time saved)
- internet problems ???? what is that? Yes, there was a quicktime problem or something like that last year ... but ... I have been to many swanky and iffy places on the net.
- lack of service by certain businesses because they only support IE properitary standards ... I downloaded Opera at the time ... faked my way in.
- I am locked into a proprietary software for the Japanese Post Office. To use that dam software I have to keep a floppy in my machine (no, external usb won't work). Even though this is a WinTel issue I post it here to show that Apple does not have full support by all software companies.
- games, games, games .... apple suscks big time!

Training? That's the interesting thing. I've taken a complete newbie to computers and had them up and running within hours. Most time was spent on using Word, Browser and mail. Computer basics. Almost no time on the actual OS.

Consultant? Maybe for heavy duty networking but in general, Apple system help was more than enough to figure out my problems ... However, I still can't really understand what the hell is going on in my router and its internal software.


I have always thought in general you pay more for Apple hardware but the long term cost of ownership normally either becomes cheaper or will break even compared to any cheapo grey box ... even those that cost next to nothing to build (you still have to count the time of building those machines, the time to figure out what software needs to be installed and what not).


yes, I am a mac user and I have built my pc boxes, and have 2 pc boxes in my office.


This goes back to my time allotment idea.
Your time = money $$$