First OS problem - fixed but interested in discussing.

Got up early this morning to do 2h work before having to come and do my real job - but instead spent the morning fixing my first "problem" (after 2 weeks).

10 out of my 12G was wired, iMac grinding to a halt. All apps closed. Culprit appeared to be that Time Machine was stuck "indexing backup disk".

Despite the iMac being really really unresponsive it never crashed. I was able to google, conclude that I needed to clear the spotlight cache and found out how to do this using mdutil from a terminal. After a reboot, spotlight fired up, and Time Machine did a successful backup in a few minutes - all seems back to normal.

This was what I would describe as a "Windows" experience. I have no doubt that mac OS is better than any Windows environment since it is a Linux derivative. But I am not sure how better.

I guess I have 2 questions.

i) How rare are such experiences - I can't extrapolate from 2 weeks of experience. I am seriously thinking of pursuading my Dad to switch to Mac when his Windows 7 PC dies as I am fed up of the never ending support calls.
This is only worth doing if dumb users really can power on and forget.

ii) I conclude my fix was a "power user fix". Is that a fair statement. If so what on earth would a non-power user have done - make a genius appointment?

 

Yes, I considered this and concluded that the drive had been in place for a week or so with my 300G or so of data backed up so this could not be the first spotlight was doing an index ...

But I might be wrong.

I was tempted to go to work and leave it but I did have some things I needed to do there and then - if it happens again I am tempted to leave for a few hours.