I don't normally get involved with these debates but one of my colleagues has installed Vista Business (64 bit version) to test the software we develop and tin a word it is terrible (okay 3 words
).
It is constantly dropping the wireless network connection, his machine locks up randomly, but the most annoying feature he is faced with is the constant nagging dialog boxes asking if he wants to do something and if he is really sure (guess this is what Dark Fire meant by Windows being more secure
). I am not sure if this is an option he has managed to turn off yet but there lies another problem, they have hidden, moved and probably removed items in the UI that it takes you minutes (if you are lucky) to locate them, case in point "adding removing programs", in XP this is simple, in Vista this is hard to find. This is not unusual when they release a new version of Windows, they change the UI so much it takes you days to figure out where they have moved things.
One user on the Lightwave forums has said that on his machine if Lightwave is busy processing then after a while Vista shuts Lightwave down causing him to lose his work, really useful feature that, not!
I am waiting for Leapord to appear on the Mac to see what that is like but I have no issues at all with OS X, I find it easier to use and just as productive as Windows, things just work with OS X.
Sure, Windows has more software available to you but if the software I need is available on the Mac I use the Mac, that is my choice and personally I prefer OS X over Windows.
Now let me clarify my position, I am not a fanboy of any platform, I use what I need to (Windows/OS X/Linux) in order to get a job done, I have used and developed Windows applications since Wndows 3.1 (both client and server applications) and have been lucky enough to see the Windows NT source code (I worked for a company in the UK who wrote software on behalf of Microsoft to put in one of their server products) which was an eye opener. But I have to say as it stands at the moment Vista is not worth upgrading to, for me I will stay with XP as long as I can and need to.
Drocket.