I started in CP/M, and went through several flavours of DOS and even more of Windows, with side trips into OS/2, Unix, Xenix and Linux. I use OSX (irregularly) but, like you, don’t find it nearly as intuitive as its proponents claim. Mind you, the last true bits of programming I did were in Basic and Turbo Pascal, so maybe I’m just behind the times.

Just for the hell of it, I’m posting this reply on a 14-year-old AST laptop I pulled off the shelf (one that’s long outlived the company that made it). No loose keys (but Netscape version 4 sure doesn’t render modern web sites very well). Incidentally, I feel the same way about OSX when I have to use it. I’m sure I could get accustomed to it if I had to, but I’d rather not have to. Various flavors of Linux, on the other hand, I don’t mind at all—they’re quite natural to a Windows user, but OSX annoys me

Hmmm—are you sure? Unless your laptop is very old, I think it’s more likely that the 1680×1050 display option is just hidden until a monitor capable of that is connected. I you know anybody with a 22” monitor you can attach you laptop to as a test, you might try that. Or just buy a monitor from a store where a return is easy.

Beryl: $500-600? I haven’t seen anything in the 20-22-inch range selling for more than about $300. What sort of specs are you thinking about?

He may be thinking about more expensive monitors based on true 8-bit IPS or MVA panels instead of cheaper TN panels. But unless you’re a graphics professional who needs a color-calibrated monitor, you probably don’t need to worry about it. A simple test—if the colors on your laptop display look fine to you, then don’t worry about it (since virtually all laptops use TN panels —Apple has even been sued a couple times over this). And I don’t think there’s any reason to think more expensive IPS or MVA based monitors will last longer.

$500-600? I haven’t seen anything in the 20-22-inch range selling for more than about $300. What sort of specs are you thinking about?

If Microsoft wasn’t forcing Vista on everyone, I would never consider anything but a barebones PC with XP on it for the forseeable future. Of course, given the enormous turd which is Vista and the inconvenience of using an alternative OS, my next computer purchase will be a tricky one. I may just go find a hacked version of XP. No guilt included.

Slocum’s advice is pretty good here, but I would actually recommend considering significantly upgrading your monitor. They have very nice flat panel displays now in the $500-600 range that won’t need to be replaced even as frequently as your desktop/laptop and for many users a better monitor will do more to upgrade your experience than anything else.

Oddly enough, there don’t seem to be. Over here a Second Life developer documentation wiki discusses profilers, mentioning Apple’s Shark, a linux command-line profiler, and two commercial Windows profilers which cost $599 and $699, respectively. Of one product, from Intel, they write “sampling and call graph profiler. The UI is terrible – but there aren’t many other sampling profilers available on Windows.”

Here’s a comparison of VTune and Shark by someone on the Mozilla team:Why can’t VTune Be More Like Shark.

I can see how another platform would be better for Eclipse (though there’s always Windows in VMWare! Heck, at a prior job everyone used Eclipse in Windows on VMWare on Windows. Made it easy to distribute new iterations of the development environment and framework as new images.) but I do Objective-C and C++ coding of neurobiology lab experiment-driving software – near real-time OpenGL, displaying stimuli, collecting data, etc.

I’ve had about a dozen computers since 1983, among them three varieties of Mac (including the original) and a few roll-your-own generic PCs. Saved a bundle not buying extended warranties. Only one machine truly failed (first the HD went, then the motherboard) and a favourite NEC monitor had to be discarded after a power surge; all the others were still working when I traded up. I currently use three computers – an older Mac desktop in my office, a Dell desktop at home and an Acer laptop (15-inch screen, 3GB memory; 320 GB HD, dedicated video card, &c) for travel. I’m seriously thinking of giving away the two desktops (but keeping a monitor and keyboard), and adding an external HD backup and a proper mouse. No loss of computing power and a smaller carbon footprint!

Free operating systems such as Windows. I didn’t pay a dime for my copy.

Anyway, let’s be reasonable, we’re on an academic group blog – John Holbo will almost certainly never need such things. My major complaint is that people are paying vastly over the odds for shiny rubbish :)

I’m a developer, and the development and performance tools that are free on OS X cost quite a lot of money on Windows, if equivalents are available at all. (I don’t believe there are free tools for Windows that are as good as the Shark profiler or the Instruments gui for dtrace.)

Also, I use USB trackballs with my Macs.