HTen that answers my question thank you

Uhmm I believe that is a universal rule for Norton just don't install Norton it mangles your system for no good reason.

In my experience with Vista, I found that true crashes hardly happen.  First, it corrects problems, it may temporarly freeze but rarely crashes.  When it does crash, the restoration features are great in Windows Vista.  Crashes and Virus may be less likely to occur in a Macs, but they tend to be catostrophic to your work when the do happen.  (I use Macs at school, because there's a free color printer in the Mac lab and some other neat gadgets; they crash all the time.  Not saying my PC doesn't but it's less often.)

Also, if a PC is built right it will run circles around any Macs available.  PC's suffer from inconsistency but an informed buyer can get more for their money.

maybe they should advertise it as a feature 

I see your point and you make a fine one but i have a question what about the hardware nowadays(quad cores, i7), because windows can run off all of them, unlike macs. 

The third party, I was talking about  the software that are made poorly, the ones that are not made by big software makers. 

the fastest xp/vista laptop was the macbook pro, as featured in pc magazine 8-9 months ago (im pretty sure of the time frame, but may be off).

also in your lab i bet your dealling with networked macs, with launcher sys apps that track what you do... those things kill macs, most of them are written rather poorly. also i bet your using  word on mac which is also written poorly,  most universities ive visited the macs are very poorly maintained, I remember when i was at UTK, they had never been updated after being installed.. i did a dumb thing and worked around the protocalls to update them, but they were much better after that

well its the easiest operating system to hack.

EDIT: bullshit, i find hard to believe macbooks are faster than overclocked alienwares. and gamming pcs.

and as now vista is more secure than mac OS, slower YEs, but more secure.

hardest to hack system is ubuntu and linux counterparts.

As for the PC is more expensive than Mac's myth, here is an article you should read.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/apple-mac-leopard-windows-vista,1985.html

It isn't that macs cost more than PC, but rather Macintosh does not make cheap computers.  The only make mid to high range computers.

@ a12331

A lot of people have the misconception that Macs and Linux are invulnerable to viruses.  However, viruses have been made for both.  Experience will tell us that no operating system is perfect

@ Anarchyz

I remember hearing about that contest.  It is interesting, but doesn't really mean anything.  When they hacked the Mac system, they probably took advantage of a certain security vulnerability they new of.   Also, one contest does not establish a trend.  I am not necessarily saying you are wrong, but it is not enough to establish that Macintosh is easy to hack.

@ NiKKoM

Thanks for re-inforcing my point.  Since I do not deal with video and picture editing, I cannot explain why Mac is so good at it, just that most professionals use it.

As for the stability issue, I should narrow down what an operating system is.  An operating system is a program that interfaces with the hardware and provides a platform for applications to run on.  It also regulates the processing time for applications.  Therefore, applications locking up or crashing is often not the fault of the operating system, but rather the fault of  the application designer.  Also, I don't care if a certain application doesn't work very well right now or that a certain glitch exists.  I am looking at Mac vs Win vs Linux as a trend, not at a particular point in time.

Since interfacing with the hardware is such an important job for a Mac, it makes since that it would work better.  All Mac computers are built by Macintosh (the individual parts may not be).  The drivers are made by Macintosh.  The operating system is made by Macintosh.  It all works in harmony.  In Windows, you can have automatic updates install a Windows driver for a non-windows product and suddenly your computer won't boot windows.

In conclusion, each operating system is good for certain uses.  That is why when I work at the computer shop, I have three tech machines: one running Vista, one running Ubuntu, and one running MacOSX.

since the rise of x86 mac, apple has tired to control what the os runs on. however, you can with help of a great comunity use almost any hardware you want to build a new box. the most powerful system apple sells is the powermac, which is  a bad ass work station, but it does need a refresh, as the ram could eb speed up, it needs a new controller chip, and updated versions of the cpus, and gpus, but that is normal for a mac close to refresh. 

found it, though its a year and change old, not 9 months.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/136649-3/in_pictures_the_most_notable_notebooks_of_2007.html

Fastest: Apple MacBook Pro

The fastest Windows Vista notebook we've tested this year (through 10/25/07) is a Mac. Try that again: The fastest Windows Vista notebook we've tested this year--or for that matter, ever--is a Mac. Not a Dell, not a Toshiba, not even an Alienware. The $2419 (plus the price of a copy of Windows Vista, of course) MacBook Pro's PC WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88 beats Gateway's E-265M by a single point, but the MacBook's score is far more impressive simply because Apple couldn't care less whether you run Windows.

and it was pcworld, not pcmag...