I still have no idea why vista was even distributed in 32 bit, there is nothing left to do with four gigs of memory
if they wanted to improve speed AND features they needed 64 bit, they really can't improve both on a 32 bit operating system, 32 bit is as close to maxed out as it can get in xp...they can add features but not with added speed, as I say, you can only do so much with 4 gigs of memory
they needed to ship their new boxes dual booted with 32 bit xp "in vista trim" for people that didn't want to get new 64 bit hardware all at once, and they needed to have 64 bit vista on the same box as the main os, dual or quad core
then people would be buying in droves and developing in droves, and there would be no way anyone could say "32 bit xp was better", games would be written every day for the 64 bit potential, people would be installing 16, 20 gigs of memory and gaming industry would be having a friggin ball
that would have been the way to go and I am amazed they didn't make 64 bit the main release with the 32 on the box for legacy purposes
as far as the mc vs pc let's get something straight to begin with;
all you are buying is an interface, they are both based on the same os technology and principles with driver and interface pacs pre installed
I don't even know how apple and microsoft still sell friggin os's with Linux coming out with driver and interface pacs pre loaded
I guess the only reason I can think of is microsoft pretty much gives their os away to the hardware distributors and users are used to the familiar face.
never the less, if I'm a hardware distributer best strategy for me would be to reload with 64 bit, 32 bit and a full driver, user interface pack of some Linux distro
I personally consider both microsoft and apple to be the America on line of operating systems, neither are giving anything at all except the convenience of familiarity
I've used both and see no discernible difference between the two, we prefer the os we learned on or the os our friends used when we started
personally, I prefer the os that's cheapest with the most programs available and I'm pretty sure that's the only reason pc is more pervasive then the macs