New hardware needed

[LP]

"why" windows still is the king of the hill? 'cause the inmense software base, think about, if a designer can run photoshop on linux natively, he will switch out of doubts, same happens for any other kind of software, another reason many people didn't switch is because nothing can compete with microsoft office, even if you can use wine. linux, unfortunately has been related to geeks or rocket scientists and it is not windows. the ubuntu distro has made a good job on making linux easier for humans, but still not enough.

Exactly, I wanted to mention this in the end that the software base creates a vicious circle. Granted, there is Microsoft Office for Mac among other alternatives that work on Linux too (e.g. OpenOffice, LibreOffice, GIMP, Autodesk Maya). I myself have spent some time working in LibreOffice on Mac, but unfortunately, it doesn't handle well Word 2007/2010 documents that have shapes, equations, custom formatting and other visual customizations.

This is unfortunate, as I personally think that Windows 8 Metro style similarly to its mobile variant are regressions in terms of visual interfaces, yet Windows users including partly myself will have to cope with this silliness.

[Cybermonkey]

Just to keep you updated, my new hardware works, Windows 7 is up and running, too. The specs changed a bit, it's now an AMD FX-6100 (6x3.3 GHz) and a Radeon HD 7770. Man it's fast! And silent. But no more time now, I've got the Orange Box and have to play Half-Life 2 (waiting for this since years ...)
Of course it was a bit more expensive ... but less than 500 €.

[SilverWarior]

I'm glad you got yourself a new PC.
But I seriusly hope that this new machine won't draw you away from programing (by playing all the latest games) to much.