Does OSX suffer from "Windows residue" over time?

[yellow]

Well you yourself are also a common factor

I find it exceptionally difficult to believe that I have the touch of death for Windows boxes, be they me-built, Dell, Lenovo, VM, or Boot Camp. I don't ask a tremendous amount from them, and I don't use them for normal vectors that can introduce stability & security issues.

Seriously though, when and how often do you get a bluescreen or have seen a bluescreen on your own machines?

Often enough to be annoying, and far more often than I get kernel panics. But it's not about BSODs. Those are relatively rare in modern computing. This isn't NT4, after all.
It's more about real world use of the Windows & Mac OS X operating systems. It's more about bad behavior of the OS, when opening or closing applications, windows, etc and the system stop responding.

Do you build good machines? All these problems can be easily related to poor hardware.

I build the best I can, and yes they can. But the basis here is that Microsoft is in a position where it tries to help developers of cheap and ****** hardware run with Windows. This is admirable of Microsoft to be as compatible as possible.

But this is diluting the original question about Windows "residue" versus Mac OS X "residue". And despite what you say, normal use, over time, does seem to end up with Windows boxes being slow, unresponsive, and flaky. Unfortunately, most people don't know how or don't want to bother with troubleshooting and they end up just reinstalling Windows. This becomes habit, FUD, and habits/FUD spread.

And now, you have people who do annual reinstalls of Windows in order to "speed up" their computer. This is not isolated behavior.

 

[0098386]

Yes, depending on usage of course.

In XP I only have AVG installed to 'keep the peace' as it were. Boot times and performance is the same now as it was when I last formatted over 12 months ago.
In OSX my boot times are certainly getting longer. It's lightning fast after a format but now it takes a while to get into a usable state. I have PeerGuardian and EyeTV set to boot at launch.

 

[contoursvt]

You are right, I guess the discussion is deviating a little. I guess what I was getting at initially was that I dont believe there is that much of a difference between win2K and newer vs OSX with relation to 'residue' buildup. Some apps leave behind preferences be it in the registry or in a plist. Ultimately if a user has a moderate grasp of what they are doing, they wont have much of a build up issue on either platform

I find it exceptionally difficult to believe that I have the touch of death for Windows boxes, be they me-built, Dell, Lenovo, VM, or Boot Camp. I don't ask a tremendous amount from them, and I don't use them for normal vectors that can introduce stability & security issues.



Often enough to be annoying, and far more often than I get kernel panics. But it's not about BSODs. Those are relatively rare in modern computing. This isn't NT4, after all.
It's more about real world use of the Windows & Mac OS X operating systems. It's more about bad behavior of the OS, when opening or closing applications, windows, etc and the system stop responding.



I build the best I can, and yes they can. But the basis here is that Microsoft is in a position where it tries to help developers of cheap and ****** hardware run with Windows. This is admirable of Microsoft to be as compatible as possible.

But this is diluting the original question about Windows "residue" versus Mac OS X "residue". And despite what you say, normal use, over time, does seem to end up with Windows boxes being slow, unresponsive, and flaky. Unfortunately, most people don't know how or don't want to bother with troubleshooting and they end up just reinstalling Windows. This becomes habit, FUD, and habits/FUD spread.

And now, you have people who do annual reinstalls of Windows in order to "speed up" their computer. This is not isolated behavior.

 

[Muncher]

Yes, depending on usage of course.

In XP I only have AVG installed to 'keep the peace' as it were. Boot times and performance is the same now as it was when I last formatted over 12 months ago.
In OSX my boot times are certainly getting longer. It's lightning fast after a format but now it takes a while to get into a usable state. I have PeerGuardian and EyeTV set to boot at launch.

On your OS X partition you might want to try OnyX. It will repair permissions and clean caches, as well of a bunch of other things that really help speed up your computer. I run it every few months.

 

[bluedoggiant]

I am going to say. Use AppZapper, or appcleaner, or something that wouldn't even take any of your energy: apptrap (i personally use appzapper)

You can gain an immense amount of "residue", as you seem to call it, but if you rarely download apps, its no big deal. Depending on the app, it can sometimes store all of its information in a place where when you drag it to the trash, you can even still have up to 10GB (just giving you an example, can be low as 1MB) eating up your space. They also just take up room and are very unattractive to have lying around your mac.

 

[Sambo110]

My 5 year old eMac was running faster than my friends 6 month old, really good Windows computer. That should answer your question.

 

[contoursvt]

Bet my 10 year old Compaq SP700 runs better than your emac

...but seriously, you cant really base something on one instance or example. Lets assume that my 10 year old PC ran better than your 5 year old eMac, that doesnt mean that this will be the case for all other Windows PCs or Macs.

My 5 year old eMac was running faster than my friends 6 month old, really good Windows computer. That should answer your question.

 

[obdave]

I seem to have nothing but problems with my Windows machines. Over time they get slower and slower. I suspect two problems: registry turds and .DLL weirdness as programs get added and deleted over time, but I think the biggest culprit is Microsoft Update. I think their updates end up being a barnacle upon barnacle which slows the machine down for whatever reason.

Five or six years ago I bought two identical machines - 2 GHz machines with Intel motherboards. They both have 2 GB of RAM, which was a lot at the time. Both running XP. One of the machines is a music production machine running SONAR with a MOTU PCI card driving two firewire audio interfaces. Updates have been turn off, and the machine is firewalled off from the internet.

The other machine was my daily use machine where I did email, web surfing, office suite stuff, etc. That machine has Windows Update turned on. Over time the daily use machine gets slower and slower, and about every 2 years I'd do a scorched-earth re-install. Reformat the HD, reinstall the OS and all the apps. But as soon as I start applying all the windows update patches (and that process takes a long time, probably 15 or 20 reboots) the machine starts getting slower and slower.

After a long period of disuse I turned on the music production machine, and I was stunned at how fast it was. BLAM, booted right up in 20 or 30 seconds. Click on a folder and BLAM, opens right up, no hesitation at all. It's really quite striking.

About a year ago I decided to dip my toes into the Mac waters and bought a Mac Mini. I did bring it up to the max 3GB ram, and apart from long boot times it's performed admirably and consistently over the past year. I have not noticed any slowdowns as the machine ages. I've been really happy with it, in fact. I plan very soon to upgrade to a new 24" 3.06 GHz iMac.

 

[Eidorian]

I remember back in 10.4 how the boot times got progressively longer after each update until 10.4.7 came out. They dropped in that update but not to what fresh 10.4.0 was like.