I'm not out of the 20th century in terms of audio gear (late 90's Adcom) but I've recent experiences with PCs I'd like to share.
About a year ago I decided to replace the XP machine in my home office with a machine that could handle general computing chores (something it did quite well) and povide better audio. I decide on a MacMini but never got one and eventually replaced the XP with an almost new Vista machine.
The Vista machine's audio was dramatically better than the XPs. But it was too unrelialbe and unstable for me to use for everyday home office chores. So I did a clean renstallation of Vista, disabled most of the Windows programs that are a permanent part of Vista, and installed various third party audio software. Now it is a reliable (so far), good sounding, music player and music server. And I've ordered a MacMini to serve as a general purpose machine in my home office.
I know many people have not had difficulty with Vista. I had a great deal of difficulty with Vista and am not going to use it for anything other than audio (not even other media).
The only experience I have with Apple computers is with my son-in-law's all Apple home infrastructure. It does everything I would want a system to do and sounds great on his high end Denon HT rig. And there are several computers sharing various files including audio and video and includes an Apple TV and a couple of Airports. This system is completely reliable. I'm not an Apple fanboy, but this system's performance is impressive.
My personal bottom line (based on my own experience): I'm very pleased with my dedicated Vista music server/player but I'm migrating to Apple.
JPO
About a year ago I decided to replace the XP machine in my home office with a machine that could handle general computing chores (something it did quite well) and povide better audio. I decide on a MacMini but never got one and eventually replaced the XP with an almost new Vista machine.
The Vista machine's audio was dramatically better than the XPs. But it was too unrelialbe and unstable for me to use for everyday home office chores. So I did a clean renstallation of Vista, disabled most of the Windows programs that are a permanent part of Vista, and installed various third party audio software. Now it is a reliable (so far), good sounding, music player and music server. And I've ordered a MacMini to serve as a general purpose machine in my home office.
I know many people have not had difficulty with Vista. I had a great deal of difficulty with Vista and am not going to use it for anything other than audio (not even other media).
The only experience I have with Apple computers is with my son-in-law's all Apple home infrastructure. It does everything I would want a system to do and sounds great on his high end Denon HT rig. And there are several computers sharing various files including audio and video and includes an Apple TV and a couple of Airports. This system is completely reliable. I'm not an Apple fanboy, but this system's performance is impressive.
My personal bottom line (based on my own experience): I'm very pleased with my dedicated Vista music server/player but I'm migrating to Apple.
JPO