John Scalzi got hit by adware on his PC. The comments section devolved, as expected.

I couldn’t help but contribute. Might as well put it here, though I’m sure you’re all tired of my broken record by now.

Apologies for continuing the Mac/PC thread, but count me on the Mac side.

I’m a heavy user — I download all sorts of software off the web, mainly from VersionTracker, which checks for viruses itself. I have never had a virus on my Mac. In twenty years. Never. Never had spyware or adware. And I have never needed virus protection software. Beyond this, I still have data I created twenty years ago because I’ve never had my Mac totally crash and die so I couldn’t retrieve the data. I consider this worth tens of thousands of dollars to me. I consider all data on Windows to be disposable unless I have a recent backup, because who knows what’s coming tomorrow.

Purchase price of a Mac is nearly identical to an equivalent Windows PC. I built a Shuttle PC recently for work — around $1,000. I can get an iBook for around $1,000 with equivalent performance, in a laptop with an OS that doesn’t suck.

I don’t even use Windows XP at work — I’m still stuck on Windows 2000, because XP isn’t a technical improvement and the OS itself spies on you. Outlook is the single most offensive program I deal with daily and is a massive unprotected target for viruses. A lot of the spam we receive comes from hijacked Outlook machines.

Apple does a better job considering user needs than Microsoft does. I honestly believe Microsoft doesn’t give a damn about anything but making money; Apple is trying to make quality products and hoping the money will follow. No doubt a worse business strategy.

The biggest difference: I get to actually use my Mac for productive work, and I don’t have to spend time dicking with it. I know there are computer people whose reason for being is messing with cards and IRQs and DLLs and shareware. I just want to use my computer to get work done.

I’ve given up on trying to convert people. And at the same time I refuse to help people with Windows problems, because I know how bad they can get and I tend to take it personally that there’s no way to really fix them.

“Don’t know, it’s Windows. There’s always something wrong. Good luck.”