oh yeah, and that vintage 1998 Mac i've got running the current OS? it's been up continuously, being used simultaneously as a workstation and a web server, for 54 days, one hour and eleven minutes.

temo: first, OS X is not slow at all - unless you're running it on a very outdated machine, and even then it's still usable. i have one 300 MHz Mac notebook that i bought new in 1998 and on which one is not supposed to be able to install any version of OS X higher than 10.2, but which i've hacked to run the current version (10.4.7), and it's a little sluggish but still perfectly usable on there. on my 1.67 GHz PowerBook, and even on my old 450 MHz towers, the OS is perfectly speedy.

second, i've been using Macs personally and professionally for 18 years now and i have never had any problem finding more excellent software than i've needed to do everything i need to do. there is a whole lot more software for Windows, but it's all extraneous, useless trash (99% of it bad games) being sold - if in fact it's being sold at all - for a dollar a box out of bargain bins at CompUSA. the pool of actual useful software is about the same size for both platforms: there's microsoft office-type programs and suites, email apps, web browsers, accounting apps, graphics apps (always superior for the Mac, as the Mac's graphics have always been superior) and the rest is specialized stuff and games, neither of which the Mac lacks. the "more software" argument is meaningless anyway: how many spreadsheet applications do you need to run? one. so what does it matter whether there are four spreadsheet apps you don't run, or fifty? the only software that matters is the software that people use, and that pool is the same size for both platforms, and even includes many of the very same applications. if there wasn't *enough* software for the Mac, the Mac would have died in 1985. but it didn't, and now many people are switching to it because of the superior stability (and increased software availability) of its UNIX core.

and with the advent of MacIntel machines, you can run the Mac OS, UNIX, Linux, Windows, and pretty much any other OS you could possibly want to - and its software - all on one machine anyway. and that machine is a Mac.

i prefer to use Macs and simply not get virii (nor spyware, nor one tenth of the popups Windows users get) in the first place. it's a much easier, less expensive, and less time-consuming approach. :)

oh boy, you want to try something really fun?

live poker for Mac and PC with live people using 3-D avatars in colorful 3-D rooms...wonderful sounds...each avatar has its own voice and mannerisms...in-game chat (at least you can say things to the whole room - i don't know if you can chat privately with other players but i imagine you can)...hold 'em and stud poker...and you can play for play money or real money.

i do NOT recommend this game for anybody with a gambling problem. this game is very addictive for people without a gambling problem. it'll probably ruin somebody who has one.