Win XP Platform vs. Mac OSX

[SteveH44]

We are a large and long time user of Mac G4 w/9.22 and PT Mix+ systems (17 workstations), and we are now in the process of making the jump to PT HD2.
As has been the case with Mac and PC users alike, depending on who you are talking to, you will get two completely different if not emotional responses to the question PC or Mac ? Granted there was a time when Mac was the only solution in town, but frankly I don't believe it was truely a stable system until Mac OS9.2 and PT v5.13 were implemented. And then, just like that - they were gone - obsolete!
Now its Mac OSX 10.3 (only the 3rd OS incarnation in less than 3 years, and all of which cost $120 per upgrade - thank you Mr. Jobs) installed on the all new (gotta have it) G5 platform.
I get the feeling that even though Digidesign writes software for both Mac and PC, they seem for the moment to be siding with the Mac platform (is there stock up this month?). They are responsible for writing software for Avid workstations, a great deal of which are run on solid PC platform systems, but when it come to PT's - Mac seems to be the platform of choice (at least this month). I believe this is the case because Mac builds very few models of machines compared with that of PC's, of which - there are hundreds, which means less machines to have to qualify.
What do we gain by buying a dual processor 2.5gig Mac G5 for and application that only uses one? If you listen to Apple, their machines have always been the fastest things on the planet, so why do we need more speed, and that second processor will be used for - WHAT! When you open a new G5, you will instantly notice that Apple removed a PCI slot (must think we don't need it), making it necessary to now buy a Magna expander chassis - we're going backwards again (the G4 1.25g Silver Bullet had 4 PCI's)! PT's is a little like word processors, they don't really benefit from tons of speed. What they benefit from is good media drives for higher track counts, and faster GPU's for faster screen draws. After using G3's,G4's & G5's, there is still little overall speed difference, it still takes several long minutes for the machine to boot, and more minutes for the app to launch. Its still agonizinglly slow at bouncing to disk or processing audiosuite effects.
Sure - there are a few plugins not available for PC, but since Digi owns most of them anyway, does it really matter. A Neve plugin still doesn't really sound like a 1073 module does it ? Its a really good advertising and exposrure tool for those companies though.
So in closing, the fact is that Mac's are so close to being a PC (look at the new machines - PCI(X)bus, DC DDR ram, water cooling, 3D video cards, ATA serial drives - sounds like a PC to me), it seems that Digidesign can give PC's (and its software) the same attention it gives to Mac's. Faster and less hassle hardware qualifing might be the answer, instead of stating that only 1 or 2 high end PC corporate workstation are qualified, or that only certain CPU's,chipsets, drive buses, CD/DVD roms, and video capture cards will work - further confusing the consumer . Almost any good highend gaming/multimedia machines (Alienware, Dell, most of which use the Asus P4C800E mobo which are already built to be state of the art speed demons) would work. Win XP is much friendlier to networking, system restoring, NTFS disk stability, and all the basic disk & system maintanence utilities you could want, plus tons more software available, and Mr. Gates hasn't charged for a software upgrade since the OS came out.
How about it Digi- it walks like a duck and talks like a duck - it might be a ----!

Steve Hallquist
Technical Dept - LA Studios