Windows 7 is the most solid version I have used so far. XP was pretty good, 7 gives me awesome power.

Yesterday I began running a program to combine 17 lidar data sets into 1. I had all 12 processors running at up to 98% and used up to 12 Gig RAM. Meanwhile I read and edited stuff, read email, and IM'd colleagues.

I shifted to W7 late last year. I think I had a couple of program crashes (ArcMap 10.1 using Stereoanalyst). I am almost certain it's an ArcMap problem with memory allocation. Not W7 per se.

Microsoft has a solid product. Finally.

As y'all know, I'm a Macdrone at home. I have had Apples since Apple ][+. It looks to me like Apple is on the opposite trajectory from MS -- Making the Mac increasingly counter-intuitive.

The primary reason for the Mac (IMO) was the superior interface for the user who doesn't want to get under the hood. Apple is slowly losing that superiority, mostly by its own actions.