Extremely late, but seconded. I recently bought a Peavey Classic 30 off eBay and couldn't be happier. I'm not an audiophile, but the difference is night and day. Some of the new modelers (like a line 6 amp) might get you to the same goal, YMMV etc, etc

I heard this lament often working in the computer lab at the University, that although I loved computers *now* I wouldn't after I had my job and hit the real world.

And I have to be honest....it's just not true, for me anyway. 10 years in the "industry" and I still enjoy coding on the train ride home, or tinkering with machines at home. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones that enjoys what I do. However, my bigger hobby was coding, and in my profession I for systems administration. But I still do both at home...

Then again, it probably helps that I don't interact with end users that often, working on the "backend" systems and interfacing with mostly tech staff.

My wife sent this article today, and I have to say, for him, it's time to move on. Be a plumber, or maybe even change jobs, because right now, he sounds a bit jaded. Or maybe he's just ranting and getting it out of his system.

Most of the problems he mentions in the article have a lot of smart people working on them. Ubuntu has made huge strides in making things easier for users, Win7 was a redesign for easier use, and hell, Mac OS markets themselves around it. It's not that they don't know it's a problem, it's that the problems are HARD to solve for everyone.

And that's really just it. As much as some might want the computer to be a appliance, it's not. It's a complex machine that can do a bunch of different things. If you want it to work like your toaster (or car) it might be more feasible if it were devoted to a single purpose. And really for those that say, "it should work like my phone!"...have you ever had to reboot your blackberry, iPhone or even iPad?

I never reply, only signed up for an account because of Discussion2. However....

I also work for Publicis and know David, and I don't know who he knows to be featured in these articles all the time. Yes, they run parallels (no boot camp), our Image Dev team had to build in WinXP support. However, most of the apps they use (Notes, Photoshop, other Adobe products, etc) run native, parallels is a recent addition - and not Enterprise wide. The thing is, we had about 2000 Macs last I knew (2-3 years ago), and Publicis has bought many more brands since, so I don't imagine those are "PC converts" as he implies. In fact, I can't think of a single case where that's true. Either he's misquoted, or the "requests" are getting stopped before they come to fruition.

It's not a convert story at our company. It's creative companies that have always used macs and probably always will. If I wanted a mac (and do) there's no way I'd be able to get it funded - because it costs the same as a HIGH END PC, not our normal Desktop model.

BTW- we have something like 12-14000 Users US wide (more now I think) so 2500 isn't 25%. As a disclaimer, I like the Mac platform - and help support it from the systems end, but this story just isn't what it seems, at least from Publicis.