Winn Schwartau is swtiching to Macs becuase Windows computers with Intel processors aren’t secure. I’m not the biggest fan of Microsoft or Intel, but I think Winn is a bit coo-coo.

I expected to find some a decent explanation of the problems with Windows, but Winn doesn’t do it. Here’s the explanatory part of his column:

Even though I’m a security guy going on 22 years now, my day-to-day work is pretty much like everyone else’s. I live on laptops and use my desktops at home and the office for geeking and experimenting. My two day-to-day laptops (two, for 24/7 backup) are my business machines. I don’t need them to do a whole lot – except work reliably, which is why I am fed up with WinTel.
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I want my computer to function every time I turn it on. I want my computer to not corrupt data when it does crash. I use a handful of applications: Microsoft Office, e-mail, browser, FTP client and some multimedia toys. Regardless of format, they should work without crashing.

I live on the ‘Net. I do not want my browser to eat up all of my memory. In the WinTel world I need an assortment of third-party tools to try to keep my PC alive. That’s just crazy.

Why does WinTel have these problems? I have heard all sorts of explanations, and I don’t subscribe to any of them. I’ve come up with my own (hopefully rational) reasons WinTel will fail – and has to fail:

Windows is complex, trying to be everything to everyone. This complexity comes at a terrible price: downtime, help desks, upgrades, patches and the inevitable failures.

When a new operating system or service pack is released, there are tons of changes to the functionality.

WinTel machines use different versions of BIOS. They are not all equal, nor do they all have the same level of compatibility.

Some Windows software applications are well written; others take shortcuts. Shortcuts may work in some environments, but not all, and ultimately the consumer pays in lost time, availability and productivity.

Hardware. There are hundreds of “WinTel-compatible” motherboards, each claiming to be better than the next. Whatever.

Memory. Not all RAM is equal. Some works well. Cheap stuff doesn’t.

Hard disks. Same problem: cheap or reliable. Your call.

I know that hard drive crash and corrupt data, but that’s never been a problem for me or for anyone I know. Ever since I switched to Windows XP, crashing as been a thing of the past. My main personal computer has crashed a few times, but it is overclocked and when you overclock a processor, you can expect that kind of thing to happen. It makes we wonder if Winn is running Windows 98 or Windows Me or a piece of crap operating system like that.

Winn’s most convincing complaint is about service packs. I have read that some people have problems with Windows XP SP2, but I haven’t seen problems in my personal experience. He also complains about bioses, and other hardware issues like memory and hard drives. All I can tell him is that you get what you pay for. If you buy crap hardware, don’t get pissy when it breaks down.

I was hoping for a real explanation of the problem and all I got from Winn were generalized complaints. I assume that he used crap hardware, a computer crashed and he lost something important. It isn’t WinIntel’s fault if that happened. One of the reasons Windows computers are cheaper than Macs is because there are many manufacturers. When you buy Mac, you are paying for a premium experience–a premium that is more expensive than a premium Windows machine.