In my flat there are both Macs and PCs. I use the PCs and my flatmate uses his Mac. Over the last three years I have been noticing the problems that each system encounters on a daily basis. Neither platform is perfect but each has its own personality which he should think about if you are buying a new computer.

The Windows clock
Using Windows XP I've never managed to get the clock to sync correctly. This only sounds like a small problem but in reality it has led me to miss trains before. The clock will start to lose minutes in a matter of weeks if it is not synced on a regular basis and to some reason it can't find the timeserver. On the other hand Mac OS X doesn't have any problem at all keeping the time synced and it even accounts for daylight saving adjustments. I've read tons and tons of articles that try to get a definite answer to the question which are better Macs or PCs? Never have I come across this glitch in any of the arguments. It seems that most articles are written by people who may not use the computer day in day out from long periods of time.

Sheer processing power
Considering that both desktop machines were bought roughly at the same time as roughly the same amount of money they should by rights have the same amount of processing power. However, Macs are normally more expensive and PCs. When we open at the same photograph in photo shop and then apply some filters might Windows-based system can often outperformed the Mac by two or three times. If you want to use your computer for Photoshop work, video encoding, or other processor intensive activities then you definitely get more bang for your buck with a PC.

Hibernation and sleeping
Lots of PCs are left on all day and all night. If you have ever passed by a block of offices at night you might have seen many screensavers from computers that have been left on. This is not just because of laziness, it's because Windows it has not been well designed to hibernate. On the other hand a Mac will awake from a low-power state in seconds and be ready to use. From an energy usage point of view the Mac wins hands down - hibernation is available on some PCs but it is never as quick as the Mac version.

Aesthetics
There's no doubt that Windows XP had some massive improvements over Windows 2000 or 98, but it was never quite as good looking as Mac OS X. Everything in OS 10 has been designed for super slick presentation - they sometimes does impact on performance if you have a low powered Mac, but for most modern Intel Macs this should no longer be a problem.

Overclocking
This won't apply to most people, but overclocking is a fantastic way of getting huge performance from a budget PC system. By running the components at a faster overclocked speed you can get the sort of performance that you would expect from a system worth two or three times as much. I have seen Max overclocked but I would imagine that there is far less support on the web for this kind of activity.

Overall
At the time of purchase I think my PC word is definitely the right machine to get in terms of getting as much value from money as possible. If you are a completely non-technical person then the Mac would have been a better choice. Nowadays with the Intel processor Macs I think that my next computer will probably be from Apple. The price might be 10 or 20% higher, but the operating system is supposedly the best around, and every single application for the Mac is pretty awesome.

Zach Hope is the author of Speed-Up-Windows-XP.com, a site that can teach anybody to really speed up Windows to invigorate old computers. You can eliminate slow boot performance problems today and transform your sluggish slow computer.