SP2 for Windows XP is a fix, not an upgrade (except for the firewall.) It didn't offer anything new to operating system.<br>Likewise, fixes/patches for Mac OS X are free. It is only the times when they are new functionality that they charge for the upgrade. They just don't go skipping around version numbers like Microsoft does. They increment very steadily.
<br><br>As for the cost, the price vs. user friendliness wins out in my case because my girlfriend doesn't want to learn how to do things in Linux and I'm not a fan of using Mandrake/Redhat that provide pretty GUIs for everything (I won't get started about my reasons for disliking those distros.)
<br><br>All in all, I believe that the easy of use, the power of the underlying UNIX system, and the huge strides in providing excellent integration with open source software make the Mac a great platform for desktop and server deployments. It's not for everyone, but hey, what is?
<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 10/20/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">David Champion</b> <<a href="mailto:dave@visionary.com">dave@visionary.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Barry Von Ahsen wrote:<br><br>> Stuart Thiessen wrote:<br>><br>>> I am still on Panther (10.3) on my laptop so I don't know if the<br>>> improved Safari on 10.4 has changed<br>><br>> safari in 10.4
has "back" in the right-click/contextual menu. that<br>> alone ought to be enough to justify an upgrade :) (having to mouse back<br>> all the way to the top drove me nuts in 10.3)<br>><br>> -barry<br>
<br>Don't mean to sound all RMS here, but...<br><br>The new version of Linux and / or Firefox didn't cost me anything. That<br>alone might be enough to justify not buying a Mac. How much do those<br>incremental MacOSX updates cost?
<br><br>Microsoft doesn't even charge for those - once I purchased WinXP, I get<br>incremental updates (as in SP2, and security releases) for no additional<br>charge. Dang, now you've got me sounding like a MS fanboy...<br>
<br>MacOSX is a nifty / pretty *nix, but it's:<br><br>a. Proprietary (read today's comments on /. regarding OO.o and Carbon)<br><br>b. Not OSS (would follow a. then, wouldn't it?)<br><br>Uh, end rant.<br><br>-dc<br><br>_______________________________________________
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