Anand is using an dual Apple G5

[isus]

I saw some kid at school today pull out his new 17'' PB G4, and when he left school he get in his new escalade, stupid rich kids... Or stupid kids with rich parents...

You can play music on a 75mhz Pentium laptop....

ahh, i'm not rich, but i've been saving my money up for awhile. $100 a week for 6 months... $2400...

[aristotle-dude]

Hmmm... is it really necessary to do that on a laptop? Surely that sort of thing is just best left to a desktop? Also, laptops should become smaller and lighter - before we used to be limited by technology and had to be big; now we're increasing the screen size and having 17" laptops? Smaller = Better. Most of the time running demanding tasks is just unnecessary; laptops are convenient for typing, working on projects, watching DVD's, working on/viewing websites, etc - not for being a DVD movie production studio or developing the next Disney blockbuster... :pinch: That's just my opinion - there's obviously a very good market for it, otherwise they wouldn't be selling so well.

But how are you supposed to lug that desktop onto a plane, take it on location or in your hotel room? :) You may not create the next blockbluster movie on a laptop but a laptop can be useful for storyboarding, testing out effects or just cutting together your home movie on the road. :D

Smaller is not always better. I would not want to have any screen smaller than my 12" pBook and I don't get why some 15" laptops have really huge resolutions. How are you supposed to read text/see buttons/dialogs with that res?

I would not want to watch a DVD on the road on anything smaller than a 12" screen.

Maybe you use your laptop for different things but I like to hook up my pBook at home to a 19" Flatscreen CRT when I'm at home. It still has enough power for me to be a desktop replacement for my needs.

[XiXora]

my m200 has a 1400x1050 screen on a 12" screen. i find it fine to read things, remember you look at a laptop screen close than a desktop

[aristotle-dude]

my m200 has a 1400x1050 screen on a 12" screen. i find it fine to read things, remember you look at a laptop screen close than a desktop

And you will need glasses really soon too. :)

[isus]

my m200 has a 1400x1050 screen on a 12" screen. i find it fine to read things, remember you look at a laptop screen close than a desktop

you want a cookie? :rolleyes:

and no, i don't look at a notebook screen any closer than i do my lcd... i am about 2 feet away from the lcd, and in a normal sitting position, i am about 2 feet away from the notebook screen.

[Fusion]

you want a cookie? :rolleyes:

and no, i don't look at a notebook screen any closer than i do my lcd... i am about 2 feet away from the lcd, and in a normal sitting position, i am about 2 feet away from the notebook screen.

What is with everyone and cookies on this forum?!? :huh: :laugh:

[adamp2p]

Anand's blog continued:

Mr. Scott, You know the drill - Thursday, Feb 12, 2004 12:07 AM

I've got about 50 minutes left in my download of the Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo for OS X but I don't think I'll stay up to try it out tonight, I got an early start this morning so I'm going to cut this post (and my awake time) short tonight (sorry guys, I promise more later).

What originaly convinced me that it would be possible for me to use a Mac was the fact that virtually every application (read: not games) I needed to use was available on the Mac. There was actually one point a long time ago where absolutely everything I was running on my PC was available for the Mac (I was only playing Warcraft 3 at the time), I almost did the switch-experiment then but I wasn't feeling adventurous enough. Other than the normal apps that everyone uses (FTP, IM, email, etc...) I have a couple of requirements: Photoshop, MS Office and Dreamweaver. I've grown accustomed to using those three applications in publishing articles for AT and luckily they were all available for OS X.

The first thing that's important to note is how simple the application install process is under OS X. In most cases there's no need to run the Windows equivalent of a setup file, instead you just drag the program onto your hard drive and it's installed. Some programs do have an installer, in which case the process is identical to it would be under Windows. Removing programs works in the exact opposite way; drag the app into the trash and it's gone. The one benefit here is that applications seem to properly remove themselves after this is done with, although I haven't tried removing Office just yet :) (under Windows you pretty much need a surgical procedure to truly remove Office from your system)

Photoshop and Dreamweaver are identical to their Windows versions, although Word is a bit more uncomfortable for me. I'm not sure if it is just the floating toolbar that puts me off but Word definitely feels much more foreign than I would expect my wordprocessor of choice for the past decade to feel, even if it is under OS X. I'm curious as to what Office 2004 for OS X will be like, because v.X definitely doesn't "feel" like its XP counterpart. From a functionality standpoint, everything is the same - except I haven't been successful in locating a wordperfect conversion filter in v.X. The rest of the Office suite seems pretty normal, although I haven't used Entourage (Outlook for OS X) as I'm currently quite happy with Apple's Mail.

One complaint about some apps that are on both OS X and Windows is that they often feature Windows shortcuts. For example, in Word v.X the home and end keys will take you to the beginning and end of a sentence just like in Windows, but there is no other OS X app that will do that. Instead, you have to use control + left/right to go to the start/end of a sentence. Neither option is "better" it's simply a matter of which one you are used to, but being in an OS where everything uses one method and having a single application stubbornly stick to another method frankly doesn't make sense. I guess that's a Microsoft gripe but I'm not so certain how responsive they will be to feature-requests from Mac users; then again, I'm probably jumping to conclusions, the Mac Office team is actually probably committed to their users.

I have yet to use any of the content creation applications such as GarageBand or FinalCut so I can't comment on those now, but I do have some words about Apple's Calendar and Mail clients. Calendar is a great application, it's very simple, the interface is great and the application itself is decently powerful. The UI is impressive but my biggest complaint about the app is more of a complaint with the platform - no blackberry support. I am a blackberry addict, I need it to get through my day and the fact that I've been unable to sync it with my G5 has been a huge issue. (the fact that I gave up blackberry sync functionality should say a lot about my interest in this experiment). The lack of blackberry support is more a fault of RIM as they don't see the demand in this market, but the fact of the matter is that you won't see sales until there is support out there. There's Palm support for OS X, there needs to be blackberry support. The blackberry sync application is a relatively simple app to begin with; porting it to OS X should not be a mammoth task by any means. If anything, the limited hardware/software configurations should make support a much simpler issue than on the PC if a client were developed. If I end up liking OS X enough I may have to ditch the blackberry for a Treo 600.

Apple's Mail client is also quite impressive; it's extremely easy to use but also extremely powerful, especially if you're willing to put in the time to learn how to script it. Without any modifications I had Mail doing everything Outlook 2004 was doing for me, including filtering spam. Just like Outlook, Mail's spam filter isn't 100% and it lets a decent amount of stuff through - but luckily we've got a filter on AT's mail server that picks up the rest. I'm hoping that Apple will continue to update the Junk Mail filtering engine on Mail as time goes on like Microsoft has, but only time will tell. I haven't accumulated enough email to judge performance between Mail and Outlook, but for someone who receives ~100 important emails and thousands of others to filter through on a daily basis I can say at this point I prefer Apple's Mail. We'll see if things change once I accumulate more messages but right now I'm liking Mail. My only complaint about Mail? There's no way to directly import Outlook .pst files; you have to export your .pst to a different format and then import them into Mail. So I left all my old email on my PC...every single message I've received since sometime in 1998, all organized into a nice hierarchy of dates corresponding to individual .pst files. Ah well :)

With the productive apps talked about, there's the next point that inevitable had to be made: gaming. Being a hardcore gamer on the Mac (by PC definitions) is basically impossible, unless you only play a game that is available on the Mac. The gaming scene has improved tremendously since I last remembered it, surprisingly enough Halo is even available for OS X. There are a few gems, such as the UT2004 Demo being released for OS X alongside WinXP, but the Mac is not a gaming platform. Luckily I've got multiple PCs in the house for just that purpose as I like keeping games off of my "work" computer(s). Gaming is something that will prevent the cold-turkey switch to a Mac for a lot of users, myself included. There's no getting around that, regardless of how nice the OS is.

My final comments on software on the Mac is about IM clients: OS X needs a port of Trillian. There are a number of clients with potential being developed for OS X; I first started using Fire because that's what everyone told me to use and its functionality was there, but the interface was horrid. Right now I'm using Adium which has a significantly improved interface, but lacks key features (can't check away messages, no file transfer, etc...). The Trillian developers mentioned the port to Objective-C as an issue for bringing Trillian to OS X, but it is desperately needed - unless Adium can get out of alpha quicker. The benefit of open source clients like Adium (other than the free aspect) is that they are constantly being updated, even in their alpha states (the v2 alpha has received an update a day for the past 6 days). If there is to be a Trillian port to OS X it needs to be done before clients like Adium are given a chance to mature, otherwise there will be very little demand for it. I wouldn't hold my breath though, it doesn't seem like OS X is a top priority for Trillian at this point - the hope lies in the open source community.

With all of these applications installed I've managed to bog OS X down to where I expected it to be; I've got a total of 15 apps running (including Finder) with 20 windows open and I'm beginning to see points where the system isn't as responsive as I would like. If I had to compare it to the previous PC I was using (Athlon 64 3400+) I would say that the system isn't actually any slower, but granted I'm running on a dual processor G5 setup vs. a single Athlon 64. I'd say any "seat of the pants" performance difference there is between the G5 and an Athlon 64 system is largely due to the OS. The aggressive caching OS X does seems to prevent disk swapping a lot, which does make the system feel faster overall than my PC when heavily multitasking. I have a feeling that with a little more memory (system and video) this thing would be running even smoother. Actually, that's a good word - smooth is the best way to quantify how the system seems to react when you're heavily multitasking.

The smooth comment being made, the G5 could use some faster CPUs. I've heard all the rumors about 2.5 - 2.6GHz 90nm G5s due out soon with 3GHz available by the end of the summer; if they are true, then that's exactly what this system needs. A nice 25 - 50% increase in clock speed (assuming no architectural changes) should improve overall system performance significantly; I think the G5 would be perfectly setup (given current software requirements) with a pair of 2.5GHz CPUs, at 3GHz we'd be talking butter. I don't know if I could deal with anything slower than the 2.0s I have right now, but the plus side of higher clocked CPUs being released is that the 2.0s will drop in price.

We always need more power, regardless of which side of the fence we're on :)

Thanks to the helpful comments from a number of you I did some looking into Expos?'s performance as a function of video memory size. It does seem like 64MB isn't enough video memory to keep Expos? running smoothly with two high resolution diplays and a number of windows open. I've requested all of ATI's 9800 Mac products so I'll hopefully be able to do a 64MB 9600 vs. 128MB 9800 vs. 256MB 9800 comparison here with respect to high-res Expos? performance. I'm beginning to think there may be a need for a Mac section on AT; hardware is hardware after a:) :)

I know I said I'd keep this one short, but when I get to writing I can't really stop (I know, I talk too much). Keep the comments coming and I'll keep the blogs coming. Quick question for the keyboard junkies out there: is there a Safari equivalent to CTRL+Enter for completing a URL? I'm looking to be able to type 'anandtech' then hit a keystroke combination to add the www. and the .com. I swear I haven't been able to figure it out on my own if it does exist, it's probably the simplest thing in the world and I'm just missing :) :) I'd appreciate any and all help as usual.

Take care all.

[jack_canada]

good

[isus]

i too am interested in how a mac would use 256mb vram... as many mac users know, the more ram you have, the happier osx is... maybe the same is true for vram?

[SPeedY_B]

What is with everyone and cookies on this forum?!? :huh: :laugh:

Cookies are goooooooood. :D

Nice to see a (popular/public) Windows user switching and documenting it for all to see, good to see he's obviously enjoying the experience too :)

[adamp2p]

Continued:

Stability, Gaming and other ramblings - Wednesday, Feb 18, 2004 2:57 AM

If you've been following my personal blog as well as the Macdates section you'll know that it's one of those incredibly busy weeks for me; if you haven't been following the personal blog: it has been one of those incredibly busy weeks for me :)

That being said, I'm still using the G5 and there's much more to talk about so let's go for it:

I mentioned that the very first upgrade I tried on the G5 was to stick a full 4GB of some of the fastest OCZ memory I had laying around. I was met with failure at that attempt thanks to Apple's motherboard not playing too well with aggressively timed DDR400. OCZ sent over 8 - 512MB sticks of their G5 DDR400 modules which are rated at 3-3-3-8, the slowest DDR400 I've ever used. Unfortunately it is the only stuff that the G5 will work with. I will admit that for my work machine I never really tweaked memory timings, I just left everything at SPD but in most cases SPD was at least 2-2-3-7. I'd like to see Apple migrate to some faster memory, especially considering the price premium these machines are going for, but that'll most likely have to wait for the next revision of the G5 systems. Lower latency memory will also give more of a benefit on the higher clocked G5s in any case.

The installation process was simple; it is memory after all. Unfortunately the first time I booted up the machine it only recognized 3GB. Luckily OS X's System Profiler will tell you what memory slots on the board are populated so I got the exact banks that weren't registering. I shut the system down, opened up the case (read: lifted a latch and removed a panel) and reseated the two DIMMs that weren't being detected properly. The second boot proved to be successful at 4GB. I did miss having a memory counter at POST to tell me how much memory I had installed before getting into the OS, but waiting a few seconds to get into OS X wasn't too bad.

The added memory helps a lot, right now I'm using 1.55GB and couldn't be happier. The OS seems to handle memory extremely well and will do its best to keep disk accesses from happening when they don't need to. I figure that for my needs ~2GB would be just about enough to have a very smooth running system, but I wouldn't recommend any less than 1GB for anyone putting together a G5 that's a decent multitasker. You can do just fine with only 512MB but throwing more at the OS does help.

When I first started talking about the way OS X favors keeping all programs open I mentioned that stability would be the determining factor as to whether or not this would be a good thing. I can say that I have encountered my first application crashes under OS X and they were as follows:

- Adium crashed when I was tinkering with antialiasing levels for my fonts in system properties; this has since been fixed in an update to Adium.

- Mail crashed randomly while dragging some text from a Safari window into an email

- Safari crashed once, I did not get a chance to completely document the crash; I was just surfing

- Dreamweaver has this issue where the page will disappear in design view while the HTML is there; I have to change something in the code to get the page to appear again. I encountered this problem while writing the ATI roadmap story.

Now the first two crashes were related to me doing funky GUI stuff; the first one has since been fixed and I haven't been able to duplicate the second one. Dreamweaver has issues under XP as well, although I've never seen this one in particular I've seen others so I'd be willing to accept that Dreamweaver was a Macromedia issue. Safari's crash was the first I had encountered, which was a bit surprising since I've been purposefully trying to bring it to its knees and haven't had much luck other than that one time.

So far I'm happy with the stability under OS X; the OS itself hasn't crashed and I would say that it is definitely no less stable than XP at this point and definitely with fewer individual application issues on a regular basis. I do believe (at least on the latest Apple hardware) that the Mac OS stability issues of the past (I've encountered them personally) are not an issue. But another thing to keep in mind is that just as is the case with PCs, a poorly maintained machine will be unstable. People installing everything they see, including poorly written drivers, will bring even the most stable of OSes to its knees - this applies to both OS X and XP. So be careful before you judge the stability of an OS based on a computer you used somewhere; would you really want people calling PCs "unstable" because of a crashy Windows ME machine they used in a public library somewhere? :)

After restarting several failed downloads, I finally got UT2004 to download. First of all, I couldn't find a link to the UT2004 Mac download on any of the official Epic sites when it was first released - I had to go to some Mac enthusiast sites. That's just plain wrong, I'll talk to Epic about it next time I get lunch with Tim and the gang. After I got the demo and installed it I decided to see how gaming on the Mac worked when you've got two displays.

Under XP, you pretty much have to disable your second display or close all the windows on your desktop so they don't get reorganized when running a game at a resolution different than that of your primary display. It is an annoying ordeal, but it's something that should be fixed once and for all in Longhorn. It's what we get for having ATI and NVIDIA late to the multimonitor game, otherwise we would've seen support in XP.

Under OS X, the second display shuts itself off, UT starts on my primary display and then when I'm done both displays return me to my desktop - nothing has moved an inch. I'm happy. It's the simple things that make the platform impressive (e.g. keyboard shortcuts, yes I'm a nut).

The speed of UT2004 at 10x7 on the Radeon 9600 was very good on the G5; the game was definitely smooth, but at higher resolutions the Radeon 9600 began to be a bottleneck. At 10x7 UT2004 is still fairly CPU bottlenecked but the G5s seemed to crunch along nicely. I would estimate that the higher end Athlon 64s and Pentium 4s would be faster, but the gap would definitely narrow at higher resolutions. I asked ATI for both an OEM Radeon 9800 Pro and the 9800 Pro SE so I'll be able to give you an idea of the 3D and more importantly, the 2D performance improvements offered by the two cards. As I mentioned before, once I get over 10 - 15 windows Expos? gets choppy, seemingly a video memory limitation issue. In theory moving to a 128MB/256MB Radeon 9800 should speed things up, but how much memory is necessary and what sort of a performance improvement are we talking? That's what I'm hoping to find out. I think I will start that Mac section on AT, these are the type of questions that need to be answered. The Mac section will not be another Mac vs. PC deal, that's not what the Mac community needs. It will be a section dedicated to Mac hardware and will offer articles like the one I was just talking about (impact of video memory size on Expos? performance), make sense? Any requests for comparisons to start off with? It won't launch until after the new AT database is in place (March) but I'm definitely committed to making it a reality.

As usual, I've got more "how do I?" requests for those with more OS X experience than m:):)

1) Is there a keyboard shortcut to maximize a window? Is it even possible?

2) By default is there any keyboard shortcut to launch Terminal?

Hmm I honestly thought I had more questions than those two, I'm sure I'll think of them. It's getting late, time for me to turn in.

Hope you're enjoying these things, I sure am. Take care and goodnight.

[SonComet]

I like how he says that OSX is no less stable than WinXP. Finally maybe this will help to educate mac and pc zealots that both operating systems are not perfect for stability, and are about equal. I can't wait until march. I am hoping that the 2.6ghz G5 will be announced or out by then. Then it will be time to search ebay for brand new and now very "obsolete" dp 2Ghz G5's, hehe. (Anyone else hear about how the current DP G5's are out of stock since late January? Maybe this rumor is true and I really can get my G5/20" without too much more saving.)

[aristotle-dude]

XP for me is pretty stable at work. It's the applications (IE included and mostly MS Office apps/dev tools) which crash a lot and freeze. I rarely have to reboot to get back stability. That being said, I still prefer my mac at home and on the road.

[isus]

I like how he says that OSX is no less stable than WinXP. Finally maybe this will help to educate mac and pc zealots that both operating systems are not perfect for stability, and are about equal. I can't wait until march. I am hoping that the 2.6ghz G5 will be announced or out by then. Then it will be time to search ebay for brand new and now very "obsolete" dp 2Ghz G5's, hehe. (Anyone else hear about how the current DP G5's are out of stock since late January? Maybe this rumor is true and I really can get my G5/20" without too much more saving.)

:rolleyes:

i have only had 1 kernal panic in osx... i have had a bajillion problems with os9 (thank god that's over ;) )... and i see bsod's all the time, even with windows xp... i found out that it's not even overheating, which was what i suspected... when something overheats, the computer just freezes. but i still see the bsod, so something dimwitted is still lurking about in the xp core.

then you get into the specific apps... i don't think i have ever had an app break down in xp or osx that could not just be force-quitted out of without sacrificing os stability... i have had safari crash a few times, but i am still on jaguar so i can't say how well the new versions work. msie 6 has crashed a few times on me. apps made by companies besides the os maker are not fair to speak of, as what works well on xp may not be as great on osx, and vice versa, just because somebody didn't spend as much time on one as they did on the other.

both osx and xp are the most stable operating systems released by their parent companies, but osx is still leaps and bounds ahead of xp.

[SonComet]

I don't want to hijack this thread but I just have to inform you that if XP is not unstable unless it is the users problem. I haven't had a single program crash or give me an error in months (ever since I got my P4 hardware all paying nice with eachother). However, my roommates who are not very computer literate have tons of problems with XP (not saying that you are not great with comps cause most likely you know your stuff very well). They are excellent at destroying it. This reminds me of when people used to claim that pentiums were more stable than athlons, and it would end up being just there hardware.

That being said i will admit that I do love how osx looks and works. That's why I want a G5 so badly. Anyways if thats what you meant, then all I can say is "oops."

[Chad]

I don't want to hijack this thread but I just have to inform you that if XP is not unstable unless it is the users problem. I haven't had a single program crash or give me an error in months (ever since I got my P4 hardware all paying nice with eachother). However, my roommates who are not very computer literate have tons of problems with XP (not saying that you are not great with comps cause most likely you know your stuff very well). They are excellent at destroying it. This reminds me of when people used to claim that pentiums were more stable than athlons, and it would end up being just there hardware.

That being said i will admit that I do love how osx looks and works. That's why I want a G5 so badly. Anyways if thats what you meant, then all I can say is "oops."

This is true. Neither OS is any more stable than the other. It all comes down to the user.

[aristotle-dude]

I don't want to hijack this thread but I just have to inform you that if XP is not unstable unless it is the users problem. I haven't had a single program crash or give me an error in months (ever since I got my P4 hardware all paying nice with eachother). However, my roommates who are not very computer literate have tons of problems with XP (not saying that you are not great with comps cause most likely you know your stuff very well). They are excellent at destroying it. This reminds me of when people used to claim that pentiums were more stable than athlons, and it would end up being just there hardware.

That being said i will admit that I do love how osx looks and works. That's why I want a G5 so badly. Anyways if thats what you meant, then all I can say is "oops."

What are you trying to say? Are my crashes caused by something I do? Maybe if I did not use the programs, they would not crash. :p

I've got real work to do during the day and I don't do anything out of the ordinary with my office apps.

Forgive me but you you sound like an MS fan and your post sounds like a bit of a troll.

Here's what I generally use during the day:

Outlook XP - connnected to Exchange Enterprise server.

Word XP

Excel XP

Visual Fox Pro 8.0 with SP1

Visual Source Safe 6.0c

TextPad 4.0

FireFox 0.8

Simply Time - Time tracker

Here are the apps that crash on me almost daily:

Word XP

Outlook XP

VFP 8.0

I'm running XP with 512MB ram and the swap is on a separate physical drive.

Sometimes, I have to reboot XP to get back stability after a few crashes.

[SonComet]

I'm not a troll, I am currently saving for a mac cause I love the os and design. However, if word xp and outlook xp crash on you ever, then there is something wrong with your computer or windows install. Srry, if I insulted anyone by having a stable pc and not a stable mac (yet).

[aristotle-dude]

I'm not saying that XP (the OS) is not fairly stable. It's the MS Office application suite has become unstable since the last MS office service pack. It's possible that the installation has become corrupt somehow but MS should not be using the registry in the first place.

The only other thing I could think of is that some of the security patches might have introduced a bug in a common dll used by office which may have caused instability.

I don't think doing a reinstall would remedy that type of situation because you would have to install the patch anyway. :) It's also not worth my time investigating a problem like that on a work PC. That's the support departments job. ;)

[the evn show]

however, if word xp and outlook xp crash on you ever, then there is something wrong with your computer or windows install.

CONFIRMED: Microsoft Office (word and outlook) XP is absolutely 100% bug free. If you experience ANY application problems with these programs it is a result of a corrupt or damaged Windows installation OR faulty hardware. Would you extend this "absolutely not microsoft's fault" mantra do Windows XP?

Are you sure you said what you meant here? If not, now would be a good time to retract.

[SonComet]

This is true. Neither OS is any more stable than the other. It all comes down to the user.

Thanks for the support.

For the rest of you I'm not trying to say one os is better than the other or that they don't both have there own problems. I'm just saying that anyone who says that osx is more stable than windows and vice versa is just being ignorant. OSX is more user friendly, prettier, and from my perspective something new and fun to explore. However, when looking at it from a stability standpoint XP is no worse than OSX. Both os's will have the occasional error, but overall they are both equally stable. If you are experiencing numerous/daily crashes in MS apps such as outlook, word, ie, windows media player, etc. then that is your problem. I am not saying that you will never under any circumstances crash out of one of those programs, but it does not happen often and it is not triggered by sp1 (never tried the beta for sp2 though). I'm sure the same can be said for OSX. From what I can gather both os's can suffer from a program crashing every once in awhile, but the main os rarely ever crashes (never crashed out of xp and I hear that most ppl have never crashed out of osx). Just trying to say that both os's are equally stable without my posts being misinterpreted and used to attack me.

[aldo]

I agree that I find some Office apps very very crashy. Excel is the worst on Windows, Word is the worst on OSX.

[Chad]

I agree that I find some Office apps very very crashy. Excel is the worst on Windows, Word is the worst on OSX.

I would disagree. I've NEVER...yes never....had Excel for Windows or Word for OS X crash for me. In fact, office for os x is one of the few programs that haven't crashed in the 2+ years I've been on OS X

[macman87]

I would disagree. I've NEVER...yes never....had Excel for Windows or Word for OS X crash for me. In fact, office for os x is one of the few programs that haven't crashed in the 2+ years I've been on OS X

agreed. i have never had word crash on my system too... :D

[Xe|oN]

I've managed to completely crash both operating systems (Mac OS X and Windows XP), and not with a kernel panic or bsod either. Generally though, if an OS X program crashes it is less prone to freezing up the whole system like often happens in XP. This can be quite bad in Windows, especially if Windows Explorer crashes. As someone else said the reliability of both operating systems largely depends on how much "crap" you install.