If I had the energy, I'd fire up Vista and take a snapshot of the comedy dialog it puts up when you change workgroup, and tells you that you need to *REBOOT YOUR OS* for the changes to take effect. For changing the workgroup. This is something that OS X does without pausing for breath, and SMB is not even an Apple network protocol.

Sometimes I think the devs at Microsoft forget that not everyone has an AD server at home/in the office.

The ad comment is always fair though - Apple ads are good because they are well written, acted, directed and edited (a point which is lost on most people who try to do lame parodies). As a user of both Windows and OS X, I can agree that the truth part is usually lost in the wind. Although I have to say the one with the 'Vista Wheel of Fortune' is, for my money, bang on the mark. I've never seen a more honest advert.

Yes. Have to agree. I've just returned a MacBook for a refund after giving it a try for a week or so. I was hoping for a system which never crashed (if you beleive what you hear), but my experiance wasn't especially good. Ho hum.

Now, Charlie -- that could've been caused by any number of things. Bad drivers, bad extensions installed, glitchy memory, etc. The honest truth is: I see far fewer hung apps in Leopard than I do in Vista, or did in XP. You're right, neither OS is perfect, but calling out a random glitch in another OS seems a bit like sour grapes to this reader. :)

That said, I agree with much of your previous "open letter". As well, I'm actively using both Vista and Leopard these days, and both companies could stand to improve a few things. The "Stacks" feature in Leopard, in a word, sucks. Over to Vista: Not being able to change the metadata for a recorded show in Media Center, in a word, sucks. We could do this all day. :)

Besides, next time you want to quickly calculate something on your MacBook, just hit APPLE-SPACE to highlight the Spotlight textbox, and type in your query, such as "(2+4)/2"

Done and done.

This is great! One question: Is there any way around the authentication issue? I have a portal which requires a login/password. Am I out of luck? --thanks

very nice