Herman
The Image Stimulator
- Location
- The Netherlands
- Name
- Herman
Is Windows 10 and 11 as stable as Mac Os?
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Mac Os - Windows
- Thread starter Herman
- Start date
- Location
- Massachusetts, USA
I use Windows 10 Pro at work and restart regularly when things start getting weird. I use Mac OS v10.13.6 and v13) at home and restart once a year whether it need it or not.
My wife and son use Windows 10. My wife again and again calls me to fix things. My friends with Windows 10 Laptops have called me multiple times to get a problem fixed. My son has a good friend (IT specialist) doing it for him. During my professional life I've been working with Windows PCs starting with XP.
For the last two years I've been working with iMac OS 10.13.6 (21'', High Sierra) without a single problem doing PP, writing and editing texts, doing translations and mixing and mastering many music recordings (over 80 GB mp3, the original wav files are on an external HD). That means having the iMac running for six to eight hours daily (or more). From 2009 to 2021 I've worked with exactly the same model (System 10.6, Snow Leopard) till the motherboard gave up after 12 years of intensive use.
When I work with Mac software only, I don't know any problems. If I have to use MS software (for sharing files with PCs), there are program crashes from time to time. But that only affects the program itself (which I can shut down from the desktop - the Finder), the system is never affected and continues to run without any problems. So that makes 14 years intensive use without one major problem.
For the last two years I've been working with iMac OS 10.13.6 (21'', High Sierra) without a single problem doing PP, writing and editing texts, doing translations and mixing and mastering many music recordings (over 80 GB mp3, the original wav files are on an external HD). That means having the iMac running for six to eight hours daily (or more). From 2009 to 2021 I've worked with exactly the same model (System 10.6, Snow Leopard) till the motherboard gave up after 12 years of intensive use.
When I work with Mac software only, I don't know any problems. If I have to use MS software (for sharing files with PCs), there are program crashes from time to time. But that only affects the program itself (which I can shut down from the desktop - the Finder), the system is never affected and continues to run without any problems. So that makes 14 years intensive use without one major problem.
- Location
- Salish Sea
Win 10 and 11 run fine here. Never had a problem.
- Location
- Beaumaris, Melbourne, Australia
- Name
- John ...
Under Windows 7 Pro 64 bit, my wife's PC would run for about a year without needing a reboot.
Ditto, my main workstation, which is used for far more heavy duty stuff than her's. About 265 days continuous running (hibernating at night) between reboots.
The reboots were necessitated by the virtual memory manager losing the plot.
Windows 10 Pro 64 is still being updated relatively regularly, and these updates very often require a reboot. Nothing whatsoever to do with the stability of the PC. Sometimes my antivirus software requires a reboot to enable it to scan the shadow BIOS, virtual memory file and other locked system files, prior to the GUI booting up.
My wife's PC is 2010 vintage, a Core2Duo with 8 GB RAM and an SSD running at SATA2 speeds, plus a couple of HDDs.
Mine is a somewhat higher spec PC, but my old one was the same as my wife's, except with 16 GB RAM. It was equally reliable, with 6 to 9 months between reboots.
IME, when Apples go wrong, they go really, really wrong.
As to the periods people are quoting, may I ask if they are continuous?
Or are these machines being shut down each night?
I fully expect this post to be deleted, as it appears to be against the rules here to criticise Apples, but not against the rules to criticise PCs ...
Ditto, my main workstation, which is used for far more heavy duty stuff than her's. About 265 days continuous running (hibernating at night) between reboots.
The reboots were necessitated by the virtual memory manager losing the plot.
Windows 10 Pro 64 is still being updated relatively regularly, and these updates very often require a reboot. Nothing whatsoever to do with the stability of the PC. Sometimes my antivirus software requires a reboot to enable it to scan the shadow BIOS, virtual memory file and other locked system files, prior to the GUI booting up.
My wife's PC is 2010 vintage, a Core2Duo with 8 GB RAM and an SSD running at SATA2 speeds, plus a couple of HDDs.
Mine is a somewhat higher spec PC, but my old one was the same as my wife's, except with 16 GB RAM. It was equally reliable, with 6 to 9 months between reboots.
IME, when Apples go wrong, they go really, really wrong.
As to the periods people are quoting, may I ask if they are continuous?
Or are these machines being shut down each night?
I fully expect this post to be deleted, as it appears to be against the rules here to criticise Apples, but not against the rules to criticise PCs ...
- Location
- Tanagra
I don't see your post getting deleted. I haven't seen that sort of modding here.
Windows 11 is not very well received among the folks I read in the tech forums. It has some regressions in functionality (taskbar is stuck at the bottom, for example), and gamers aren't all that impressed with the inconsistent performance when compared to Windows 10. Some folks have no problems (which was my experience), while others seemed to suffer, and it wasn't from a lack of good hardware. Windows 10 is still the safer choice. I just don't care for the telemetry and MS's way of doing things. They can't even get the control panel figured out. Every edition of Windows it is different. MacOS's control panel has been pretty much the same for every release that I can remember, and that goes back to 10.3. They just add a new applet when something new is introduced. MS moves it all around and often makes it less functional than the previous iteration. Just seems like they can't decide on what they want the OS to be.
Windows 11 is not very well received among the folks I read in the tech forums. It has some regressions in functionality (taskbar is stuck at the bottom, for example), and gamers aren't all that impressed with the inconsistent performance when compared to Windows 10. Some folks have no problems (which was my experience), while others seemed to suffer, and it wasn't from a lack of good hardware. Windows 10 is still the safer choice. I just don't care for the telemetry and MS's way of doing things. They can't even get the control panel figured out. Every edition of Windows it is different. MacOS's control panel has been pretty much the same for every release that I can remember, and that goes back to 10.3. They just add a new applet when something new is introduced. MS moves it all around and often makes it less functional than the previous iteration. Just seems like they can't decide on what they want the OS to be.
- Location
- Beaumaris, Melbourne, Australia
- Name
- John ...
I have, Randy ...
Microsoft should have stuck with Windows 7 Pro 64, IMNSHO.
Same reason/s that I consider MS Office 2003 to be the last stable version of Office.
- Location
- Salish Sea
I'm running Office 2007 without problems. I do have a copy of 2003. What was the last version before they started renting it?
- Location
- Beaumaris, Melbourne, Australia
- Name
- John ...
I THINK it was 2013, but I'm not sure ...
As for 2007, I believe that they removed the programming modules from 2007 and onwards. They certainly stopped publishing the programming manuals for Word, Excel and Access.
- Location
- The Netherlands
I run macOS Ventura on my Mac Studio M1 Max and Macbook Pro (2018, Intel i7) and I run Windows 11 on a recently bought HP Envy i7 laptop for my radio amateur stuff. Grossly speaking I'd say they're both equally stable. I reboot my Mac Studio once every 2 weeks or so and I sometimes have to reboot when Finder goes berserque (yep that happens and sometimes even a Finder force quit doesn't help). The Windows laptop isn't used as heavily as the Mac Studio and gets regular reboots because of updates; so far I haven't had a crash that needed a reboot.
My wife uses an old (10 years? don't remember) HP desktop, that's now running on Windows 10. She only does the simple stuff like mail, web browsing, WhatsApp and the machine runs just fine, even manageable despite its magnetic hard disk; might even upgrade that to a SSD if the hard disk breaks down.
I prefer the Apple ecosystem for my daily use including photo editing, we also use iPhones and iPads. From a stability viewpoint, I don't think there's a real difference between Windows and macOS. I have tried to use Parallels on the Macbook to run Windows for my radio amateur stuff and quickly gave up on that, way too many problems: the radio stuff uses all kinds of USB interfaces that often wouldn't cooperate with that setup and many programs for radio amateurs are exclusively made for Windows.
My wife uses an old (10 years? don't remember) HP desktop, that's now running on Windows 10. She only does the simple stuff like mail, web browsing, WhatsApp and the machine runs just fine, even manageable despite its magnetic hard disk; might even upgrade that to a SSD if the hard disk breaks down.
I prefer the Apple ecosystem for my daily use including photo editing, we also use iPhones and iPads. From a stability viewpoint, I don't think there's a real difference between Windows and macOS. I have tried to use Parallels on the Macbook to run Windows for my radio amateur stuff and quickly gave up on that, way too many problems: the radio stuff uses all kinds of USB interfaces that often wouldn't cooperate with that setup and many programs for radio amateurs are exclusively made for Windows.
In my experience Windows as super reliable if you have good hardware. My Dell workstation is still running Windows 10 and it is rock solid. My Surface Pro runs Windows 11 and it is rock solid as well. Windows gets into trouble when people start putting all kinds of questionable hardware / drivers on it in my experience.
FWIW - Macs are super reliable as well in my experience until they start getting older when they start getting very slow.
Per usual, YMMV, but I think that the rule of thumb is, if you have good quality hardware/drivers - both are going to be reliable.
FWIW - Macs are super reliable as well in my experience until they start getting older when they start getting very slow.
Per usual, YMMV, but I think that the rule of thumb is, if you have good quality hardware/drivers - both are going to be reliable.
- Location
- Fairfax, VA
- Name
- Chris
The single, biggest mistake that virtually all Windows uses make is having a general usage account with administrative privileges.
In my little mind this is the source of most of the issues folks have with Windows.
None of the six Windows boxes in my house have general usage accounts with admin privileges and we've had no issues whatsoever.
The only time I've run into issues was in deliberately installing software that could frankly you would consider janky. Stuff I shouldn't have been installing.
But I was consciously installing it and had to enter an admin password to do so. If your general usage account has admin procedures, this type of poor computer hygiene is simply a click away.
I've been using the sandbox in Windows 10 Pro to do this lately and it's much smarter.
Do a Google search on enabling a real admin user account and then set the privileges' on your general account to user.
Seriously
In my little mind this is the source of most of the issues folks have with Windows.
None of the six Windows boxes in my house have general usage accounts with admin privileges and we've had no issues whatsoever.
The only time I've run into issues was in deliberately installing software that could frankly you would consider janky. Stuff I shouldn't have been installing.
But I was consciously installing it and had to enter an admin password to do so. If your general usage account has admin procedures, this type of poor computer hygiene is simply a click away.
I've been using the sandbox in Windows 10 Pro to do this lately and it's much smarter.
Do a Google search on enabling a real admin user account and then set the privileges' on your general account to user.
Seriously
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- Location
- Massachusetts, USA
I don’t shut down my Mac OS computers at night. They just go to sleep. My Windows work computer does get shut down at night but still needs to be rebooted a couple of times a week because the Microsoft Office applications stop working. This is separate from the updates that require restarts.
The once a year reboot of my Macs is an exaggeration. The occasional OS updates require restarting.
And just to be clear, I don’t really like Windows. I never have. I’m not really all that objective on this subject.
Stability-wise, Windows runs on a huge variety of hardware and peripherals, the support of which generally falls on the manufacturers. Some are not very good at software, and driver instability has long been a major source of crashes of various sorts. Dittos with various software. Not that MS is blameless, certainly they have made inexplicable snafus from time-to-time and I hated Windows 8.1 so much I skipped it completely. My day-to-day experience both professional and personally, when running on quality hardware, is that Windows 7, 10, and 11 are all very solid. I seldom have any problems, generally run 24x7 and never reboot for other than updates. Same with my wife's laptop. Work requires me to reboot at least once a week, but that is due to their management of the device and the laptop otherwise is fine.
GUI-wise, MS does make seemingly senseless changes. I suppose it keeps up the interest in the marketing world or something. The weirdest example is the aforementioned Control Panel, which has mostly moved into Settings. Funny thing is when you get to things like properties on something, it is sometimes the very same dialog you would have seen in say Windows 7. I will say Windows 11 is better about this as the bulk of things have made it to the new "style" of Windows 11 settings' UI. Whether that is an improvement is in the eye of the beholder. But I've mostly adjusted to The Win11 Way by now, though there is the taskbar/start menu still-missing functionality, don't even get me started on that.
John, here's the reference material for Office programming if you need it.
Doobs discussion on admin accounts is worth consideration if running Windows. My workplace does this with some exceptions, mostly for IT folks like myself, and the desktop support people certainly believe it helps a lot, which does make sense. That said my wife and I both run with admin privileges on our respective computers and I do not ever recall having any issues attributable to that being the case. I suppose that will change now that I said something, lol. If you are running Windows and particularly if not technically minded, it might be worth doing.
When comparing Apples and Windows, in my opinion, Apple devices are increasingly locked down and designed to work better with other Apple devices. If you are willing to live inside their product portfolio things will generally work well, and many people do not care about customizing anything. I think Windows is considerably more flexible and lets you do things your way, and you have way more options hardware wise (obviously), something I value but definitely a personal preference. And that is what it all largely comes down to - a personal preference.
You thought you were going to get through this excessively long post without a car analogy? Apple's are like a luxury car, where you will need to take it to the dealer if you want to tweak something or to fix a problem. They may or may not be willing to help you. Windows is like a non-luxury car - if you want to tinker or customize something, have at it. Just don't assume the dealer will fix it if something goes wrong.
GUI-wise, MS does make seemingly senseless changes. I suppose it keeps up the interest in the marketing world or something. The weirdest example is the aforementioned Control Panel, which has mostly moved into Settings. Funny thing is when you get to things like properties on something, it is sometimes the very same dialog you would have seen in say Windows 7. I will say Windows 11 is better about this as the bulk of things have made it to the new "style" of Windows 11 settings' UI. Whether that is an improvement is in the eye of the beholder. But I've mostly adjusted to The Win11 Way by now, though there is the taskbar/start menu still-missing functionality, don't even get me started on that.
John, here's the reference material for Office programming if you need it.
Office Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) reference
This reference is for experienced Office users who want to learn about VBA and who want some insight into how programming can help them to customize Office.
learn.microsoft.com
Doobs discussion on admin accounts is worth consideration if running Windows. My workplace does this with some exceptions, mostly for IT folks like myself, and the desktop support people certainly believe it helps a lot, which does make sense. That said my wife and I both run with admin privileges on our respective computers and I do not ever recall having any issues attributable to that being the case. I suppose that will change now that I said something, lol. If you are running Windows and particularly if not technically minded, it might be worth doing.
When comparing Apples and Windows, in my opinion, Apple devices are increasingly locked down and designed to work better with other Apple devices. If you are willing to live inside their product portfolio things will generally work well, and many people do not care about customizing anything. I think Windows is considerably more flexible and lets you do things your way, and you have way more options hardware wise (obviously), something I value but definitely a personal preference. And that is what it all largely comes down to - a personal preference.
You thought you were going to get through this excessively long post without a car analogy? Apple's are like a luxury car, where you will need to take it to the dealer if you want to tweak something or to fix a problem. They may or may not be willing to help you. Windows is like a non-luxury car - if you want to tinker or customize something, have at it. Just don't assume the dealer will fix it if something goes wrong.
- Location
- Illawarra, NSW, AU
- Name
- Alan
I’ve run mac and windows pc’s alongside each other since about 2004 when I bought a macook to supplement my windows 98 (?) and FreeBSD PCs. Back then, Windows wasn't great. Unstable and a huge security risk. Once windows moved to the Windows NT code, things improved dramatically stability wise, but it wasn't until Windows 10 that I'd say MS got security right.
If I could only pick one though, I'd take a Mac. In fact, I put my folks on a Mac years ago. IMHO today's Mac is quieter for the same muscle using less power, with less maintenance for the average home user. Whereas Macs have a home user in mind as the default, PC's need to fill a wider user base - bean counters, tech, professionals, gamers etc and so have far more configuration options (despite releasing several different versions), and the more options you tweak, the more that can go wrong.
Case in point - I replaced my dying Lenovo Laptop with a Dell. I saw Nvidia had some 'studio' drivers (instead of the gaming drivers installed on my laptop) and so I tried it. A few days later I noticed my new PC wasn't going to sleep. I'm not sure if it was the NVidia driver updates, or a software update, or one of the other auto updates, but regardless, it is an issue that is not unexpected for my various windows PCs, but rarely seen on my Macs. Eventually after some more software updates and a bios update, it started to work again.
If I could only pick one though, I'd take a Mac. In fact, I put my folks on a Mac years ago. IMHO today's Mac is quieter for the same muscle using less power, with less maintenance for the average home user. Whereas Macs have a home user in mind as the default, PC's need to fill a wider user base - bean counters, tech, professionals, gamers etc and so have far more configuration options (despite releasing several different versions), and the more options you tweak, the more that can go wrong.
Case in point - I replaced my dying Lenovo Laptop with a Dell. I saw Nvidia had some 'studio' drivers (instead of the gaming drivers installed on my laptop) and so I tried it. A few days later I noticed my new PC wasn't going to sleep. I'm not sure if it was the NVidia driver updates, or a software update, or one of the other auto updates, but regardless, it is an issue that is not unexpected for my various windows PCs, but rarely seen on my Macs. Eventually after some more software updates and a bios update, it started to work again.
- Location
- Beaumaris, Melbourne, Australia
- Name
- John ...
Totally agree. My new box build is a testament to that. With Windows, I can build exactly what I want, without costing more than half a kidney.
Yes.
Classic Shell is your friend, Bob.
Thank you for that. I have the original Microsoft books, which used to come with their manuals, which came with their product/s ... Nuff said!John, here's the reference material for Office programming if you need it.
Office Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) reference
This reference is for experienced Office users who want to learn about VBA and who want some insight into how programming can help them to customize Office.learn.microsoft.com
Agree,
For a very inflated price ...
That's what I used to do for a living.Windows is like a non-luxury car - if you want to tinker or customize something, have at it. Just don't assume the dealer will fix it if something goes wrong.
- Location
- Beaumaris, Melbourne, Australia
- Name
- John ...
Fred, Excel is a memory hog, and it doesn't give it back when shut down (!). The secret is to start it once and never shut it down. If you do shut it down, when you restart it, it uses another block of RAM, leaving the original block in stasis. Etc, etc.
No other Office component behaves this way.
- Location
- Tanagra
My favorite error message when using Office for Windows at work: "There was an error using the clipboard, but you can continue to use it anyway." I fail to understand the point of this message, other than for some comic relief.
Running Windows at work, and macOS at home, I don't see a huge difference in reliability. In both cases, it comes down to external hardware support.
Off the top of my head, I recently had an issue with the Paragon NTFS driver for macOS, triggering a kernel panic in a repeatable but avoidable scenario. One could argue that third-party driver crashes aren't Apple's fault, but one could also argue that Apple really should have native NTFS support.
On the Windows side, my work laptop has sleeping trouble. Sometimes USB doesn't reconnect, sometimes window positions on external monitors get scrambled. It all seems to be related to the (first-party) docking station. On my Surface tablet, which doesn't connect to much periphery at all, everything works fine.
I will say, however, that the amount of parasitic almost-ads that Microsoft pushes for things like Edge, Bing, and OneDrive, is highly annoying. Theoretically similar things exist in macOS, but they're generally disabled with a single clearly marked setting, and don't come back on every software update.
In terms of flexibility, it is mostly a wash, I would say. I can easily replace my entire start menu in Windows, with tools like Startallback. Such things are not possible on macOS. But then there's things like MonitorControl or SoundSource or BetterTouchTool that don't have a good Windows analog. On the other hand, there's AutoHotKey and MagicUtilities, so it's not like such things don't exist at all on Windows. It mostly just depends on what cool things third party developers build. Even the Unix shell is no longer a macOS-only feature, now that WSL exists.
(The reason I run macOS at home is simply to separate my work environment from play. It feels less like work if it looks a bit different, even though I'm using the same desk and periphery for both.)
Off the top of my head, I recently had an issue with the Paragon NTFS driver for macOS, triggering a kernel panic in a repeatable but avoidable scenario. One could argue that third-party driver crashes aren't Apple's fault, but one could also argue that Apple really should have native NTFS support.
On the Windows side, my work laptop has sleeping trouble. Sometimes USB doesn't reconnect, sometimes window positions on external monitors get scrambled. It all seems to be related to the (first-party) docking station. On my Surface tablet, which doesn't connect to much periphery at all, everything works fine.
I will say, however, that the amount of parasitic almost-ads that Microsoft pushes for things like Edge, Bing, and OneDrive, is highly annoying. Theoretically similar things exist in macOS, but they're generally disabled with a single clearly marked setting, and don't come back on every software update.
In terms of flexibility, it is mostly a wash, I would say. I can easily replace my entire start menu in Windows, with tools like Startallback. Such things are not possible on macOS. But then there's things like MonitorControl or SoundSource or BetterTouchTool that don't have a good Windows analog. On the other hand, there's AutoHotKey and MagicUtilities, so it's not like such things don't exist at all on Windows. It mostly just depends on what cool things third party developers build. Even the Unix shell is no longer a macOS-only feature, now that WSL exists.
(The reason I run macOS at home is simply to separate my work environment from play. It feels less like work if it looks a bit different, even though I'm using the same desk and periphery for both.)
Herman
The Image Stimulator
- Location
- The Netherlands
- Name
- Herman
Which manufacturers have quality hardware to run windows 10/11 without any problems on their laptops?
Which windows laptops do you recommend?
Looking forward hearing from you, thanks in advance.
Which windows laptops do you recommend?
Looking forward hearing from you, thanks in advance.
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