I disagree with ubuntu being the best operating system there is.

Kind of a bold statement when you haven't tried any of the more advanced distro's like ArchLinux (<3) or Gentoo. Or something extremely secure like Openbsd

mac-attack for me

http://www.amazon.com/Pavilion-HDX18-1020US-18-4-Inch-Processor-Blu-ray/dp/B001GQ35NG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1241278686&sr=8-3

My laptop is over there, and it costs 1450 dollars.
There isnt anything compared to that laptop for less than 2800 dollars in the apple store.

By the way, the extra 1.4 inches are really good, specially when working with video. I have blu-ray and fingerprint reader. I am really really happy with this computer and more with its price.

By the way I HAVE to use macs in my everyday workflow, because of Final Cut Pro, that is the single software that I use and that is not on a PC, I prefer the adobe suit on PC thank you.

Also, my HDX18 runs MACOSX just fine ;).

those might be better, but in the end it's a victory for LINUX-BASED computers! Hurraz!

Mac for me. I switched three years ago and I haven't looked back since. The whole experience of owning and using a Mac is miles ahead of anything I ever experienced as a Windows user.

 except when windows 7 comes out

I prefer MacOS X over WindowsXP, but Windows has more and better software available for it due to its market dominance. I prefer Apple's styling, but ordinary PC stuff is much cheaper.

Linux is pretty sucky from the end user perspective, but is free. All have their pros and cons, you can set up a dual or triple boot system if you want. I am not impressed by any of the modern mainstream desktop solutions nowadays.

I think there's a severe lack of commercial competition, which results in very slow progress and lack of effort to optimise and innovate (compared to the 80s and 90s). It overall looks pretty stale to me personally with regard to general desktop OS progress.

haha... i triple boot xp, windows7 and ubuntu... and once you start using linux you just can't revert to the others, I haven't booted my windows os's in a long time.

@ 786_ali

If you are a PC gamer, Windows is pretty much the obvious OS. Luckily PC gaming has taken the backseat and is much less relevant today if you own a PS3.

MacOS X is underneath pretty powerful (much better than older releases). Linux is powerful, but is ussually a pain to setup properly. All 3 OSes can easily cover the main things people use on a desktop (Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, chat client, etc).

But if I compare all of this to what I already did on my Amiga in the early 90s, IMO progress has been slow (in terms of responsiveness and multi-tasking, the experience was usually better back then):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a-fEE_7BC4 (CPU used here is about the equivalent of a 286/386, back then I had a 68040 which was many times faster and allowed me to 'emulate' a Mac faster than a top spec Mac of the time as well)

Hopefully AmigaOS 4.x will someday become advanced enough to regain ground (and support mainstream hardware):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx3q2wFIn6k

linux>>>>>mac>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>windows