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Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?
I am surprised nobody has submitted this poll, it's interesting to know anyway.
- MikeW 17y agoMy main laptop runs Windows 7 - nearly all development is done on this, compiles using Visual Studio 2008 and Cygwin. My netbook runs Windows 7 - I do nearly all my social/recreational stuff on that machine. Also it has VGA out and I've come to rely on Win7s projector detection magic for presentations to just work. It's the only machine I travel with. My top-of-the-range Alum Macbook runs just OSX, got it for xcode, which is gathering dust because most of my dev work is in VS.net and even after months I still can't get into the swing of using OSX. Machines synced with the amazing DropBox of course. In serverland, 1 dedicated server (France) and 1 slice (USA) running Ubuntu 9.04 server, the other vps running RHEL; Mono 2.4.2. I always have a stack of Putty windows open.
- minus1 17y agoI assume this type of poll is self-selecting and that Windows is greatly underrepresented. In a 2005 article, PG states that the ycombinator visitor OS breakdown is as follows: Windows 66.4%, Macintosh 18.8%, Linux 11.4%, and FreeBSD 1.5% I would love to see the current OS breakdown from ycombinator logs to compare. Anyone?
- derefr 17y agoIt wouldn't help much: I imagine people are mostly on HN when they aren't working, and so are possibly on a secondary computer that doesn't necessarily run their preferred/default OS.
- khingebjerg 17y agoA lot of people have to use Windows at work, and i think that's why Windows scores that high in the visitor OS breakdown.
- ratsbane 17y agoHere's a breakdown based on referrals from YC to a short essay I wrote about a month ago comparing Bing Travel and Kayak. There were 2382 uniques from YC over two days to that page: 45.5% Windows 37.6% Mac 15.1% Linux Comparing that with an e-commerce site I work with which has a less geek-centric audience, during the same two days: 84.94% Windows 12.46% Mac 1.55% Linux
- minus1 17y agoThanks for the information. These numbers seem more plausible given my own anecdotal evidence. Now compare this to the poll percentages: 21.37% Windows (199) 40.28% Mac (375) 35.12% Linux (327) My conclusion is that a Linux user is far more motivated than a Mac or Windows user to respond to this poll, making the results interesting, but not accurate.
- nanijoe 17y agoIt's also possible that a lot of the Windows users are not registered here and are therefore not able to vote in the survey
- Xichekolas 17y agoIt's also possible that linux/OSX users are less likely to be interested in a Microsoft product (bing) or an article about one.
- minus1 17y agoIt's certainly possible, but I don't think it can account for the full difference. Hopefully PG will provide some recent server stats.
- ulvund 17y agoSurely some people are in possesion of more than one computer. I for one browse hn on my Macintosh, play tf2 and warsow on my windoze xp machine and have wholesome programming fun on my Linux box.
- 17y ago
- jyothi 17y agoActually we would need 2 set of numbers from PG. [1] ycombinator visitor OS breakdown [2] ycombinator visitor OS breakdown of people who actively contribute by voting/comments. (note intentionally avoiding the ones who post) Given what user ratsbane reports (above) - windows 46% & mac 38% the gap is not big. So it could be like among visitors the breakdown win-(mac+linux) is like 60-30, then among ones who check out articles 45-50 and among ones who contribute it is 30-60. Additionally it might be the case looking at comments people vote on both mac & linux as they use both and at same capacities.
- jamesbritt 17y agoWhat's the HN general consensus on polls? They feel sort of Reddit-ish. :)
- effektz 17y agoYou should make a poll about it
- jonsen 17y agoHow do you make a poll?
- johngunderman 17y agoyou have to have a really high karma :)
- pg 17y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll, if you have over the karma threshold
- jamesbritt 17y agoI seem to have the karma. I'm thinking my first poll should be, "Should James make a poll?"
- slig 17y agoThere's a minimum karma threshold to make polls. That's why we can't do them yet.
- thenduks 17y agoTurns out reddit doesn't have polls :P
- jamesbritt 17y agoWell, faux polls then. :)
- sfphotoarts 17y agoIn some ways the poll is hard to answer, lets say you use gmail a lot, is the OS of the client or the server the one you're really using?
- johngunderman 17y agoGmail isn't exactly an OS in itself. If we were to answer the poll according to the OS that the web pages we visit use, we would see a poll dominated by FreeBSD and Linux. Somehow I don't think that is what the OP intended.
- sfphotoarts 17y agoof course Gmail isn't an OS, that's not what I meant, but when we use Gmail we're really making more use of the server operating system than the clients, so my point is that it very hard to really say what operating system we're using. It would be interesting to measure the usage of say posting this comment, how many machine instructions were used at the OSX end, and how many by the various routers (running their own operating systems), servers etc used in the full life cycle of what I am doing.
- zimbabwe 17y agoThe question is what OS we're using, not what OS we're using. From my own experience, using Gmail is a different experience in each OS. I can't stand to use it on OS X, whereas on Windows it was always open.
- path 17y agoWhat's wrong with Gmail on the Mac, the experience on Windows is identical (practically)
- zimbabwe 17y agoGmail stays the same; the external set-up changes. I saw no advantage to using Outlook over Gmail, whereas Mail.app offers substantially more than the Gmail webapp does, even when used with Fluid.
- rewind 17y agoDoes it not make a bit more sense to indicate why you're conducting the poll? I don't mind polls, but usually they're only interesting if the poster sets it up and comments on his/her own choice and the reason for the poll in the first place. Polls like this seem to serve no more of a purpose than "What's your favorite color?". Could you indicate the reason for the poll? That will get the conversation going in the direction you want it to and will give everybody some context when replying.
- w1ntermute 17y agoI think the reason for the poll is just curiosity as to what the OS distribution is among HN users.
- btw0 17y agoI am just curious about how HN readers are different from the general computer users when it comes to OS preference, this is interesting because HN community is a special group of people who are interested in technology startup, usually tech savvy and practical. This poll is different from the favorite color poll because it's technology related, I guess it's not only me who is curious about this question, as people are actually upmodding the poll.
- dkarl 17y agoIf you wanted to know our preferences, you should have asked what we wish we used. However, I think the question as you stated it is more interesting, since people are quite vocal about their preferences anyway.
- dpcan 17y agoAll my contact management, todos, calendar, etc are on the web on a Linux platform, SO, you could technically say I'm on Linux all day, however, I access everything from Windows and code in Windows so...
- bkj123 17y agohello dpcan. what software do you use on linux for the tasks you mention - contact mgt, cal, todos, etc. Do you sync with other devices like an ipod or cell phone? Thanks.
- hugs 17y agoI voted twice. I develop on Linux (Ubuntu) running inside VMWare on my Mac.
- davi 17y agoYup. I voted three times. My microscope & downstream processing tools use Windows Server 2003, XP Pro x64, XP Pro, Ubuntu, and OS X. MacGyver hacker, here.... and yes, I use them all every day.
- barnaby 17y agoWhen you do a cost-benefit analysis, do you find that it's worth your time to tinker with all that and switch between systems? That's why companies standardize on a toolchain. By the way, we standardized on Ubuntu at my company. And while the the home computer is my girlfriends Macbook I hardly ever really use it, so I voted once.
- davi 17y agoIt depends on the context. In my context, we are building something new, that has never existed before, and we don't know the design we are going to converge on. Of course we have some reasonable ideas that we want to try out. But for us, slapping components together to achieve a desired behavior is way more productive than building that behavior cleanly de novo, because we don't know if the behavior we have in mind will work. The immediate goal is to try out a broad gamut of possibilities, quickly; find something that works; and then to push ahead to the next stage of the workflow. The medium term goal is to assemble a workflow that takes us from sample to analyzed data. The longer term goal is to iterate this workflow, so we go faster and faster from sample to analysis, on bigger and bigger data sets. As we complete a single iteration, we get a chance to clean up our toolchain. But we only to clean it up enough that it will support the amount of scaling up we want to do in the next iteration, since the next level of scale will introduce new, unexpected problems. Once we have a system that runs fast enough, and big enough to be worth deploying on an ongoing basis (say for a five year lifespan) it starts to pay to build a clean toolchain, reducing our ridiculous, MacGyver'ed, Rube Goldberg monstrosity into something clean, maintainable, and extensible. But if we tried to do this from the beginning, by now we would have gotten exactly.... nowhere. Of course there's a balance. One perpetually runs the risk of creating an intractable hairball. That's another sign it's time to clean up the toolchain...
- pavelludiq 17y agoKubuntu. I occasionally reboot to xp to play starcraft or LOMAC.
- chez17 17y agoStarcraft works almost perfectly in wine. Th only thing that doesn't work are the background on battle.net when you are in the lobby. Game play works 100%.
- pavelludiq 17y agoIt doesn't work with a launcher i use to play on a private server, its retarded, but i don't mind.
- Zarathu 17y agoOS X is perfect for me, thanks to its Unix terminal. Linux is now useless, but I still use BSD for my servers. I use Windows to play Quake Live.
- chops 17y agoMy desktop OS is Windows, but all my servers run Linux and OpenBSD, and I ALWAYS have a handful of terminals open.
- CyberFonic 17y agoMy desktop and all servers run Linux (Ubuntu) the notebook is Mac OS/X and the home PC is Windows (the wife can't get her head around Ubuntu nor OS/X). All the applications I write run on all three platforms and I spend more time in a browser (FireFox/Chrome/Chromium/Safari) than any other program. Oh yes, I use both OpenOffice and iWorks. Write complex documents using Latex / Lyx which in turn run on all three OS. Does the OS really matter that much these days? I use OS/X on the notebook because everything works! Could only get 90% of stuff to work reliably on a HP notebook (C700) with Ubuntu. The Mac Book Pro cost three times the HP, but it's worth every dollar in saved time. Don't get me started on how much Vista kept getting in the way as originally shipped on the HP.
- andrewljohnson 17y agoOur team develops on two MacBooks and a Linux box. We virtualize Windows via VirtualBox (which is just amazing). Our production server runs Ubuntu on EC2.
- jhickner 17y agoI use vmware fusion, and I keep hearing great things about virtualbox. But when I tested the new 3.0 version a couple of days ago I still got multi-second freezes, increased CPU usage and a lot of general slowness. And yes, I have the virtualbox tools installed. What am I missing?
- andrewljohnson 17y agoYou might not have enough memory allocated for VirtualBox. That would make it jerky. I give it 1 gig of my 4. I'm not sure about CPU performance differences between VB and anything else, but it's never been a problem for me.
- jhickner 17y agoThanks, I'll definitely give that a try. I have 2g of ram on my macbook, and usually only allocate 512 mb to my XP VMs.
- andrewljohnson 17y agoJeez, you really need to add another 2GB. It costs like $60 and takes 5 minutes.
- jhickner 17y agoYeah, I definitely should. I didn't realize the price had dropped so low.
- sho 17y agoHm, have you tried any other VM solutions? Any killer feature VirtualBox had over them for your use? Apart from being free + open source, of course! Just wondering what would make VirtualBox "fantastic", VMWare et al are already pretty good...
- there 17y agomany laptops and servers running openbsd over the past 10 years or so, with the occasional mac os-powered powerbook/macbook pro.
- Tudisco 17y agoWindows/Linux side by side.. two large monitors and sharing keyboard and mouse with synergy.
- jamesbritt 17y agoI've a Mac, Kubuntu, and Vista, with two 24" monitors and a laptop, via Synergy. Synergy rules.
- ianbishop 17y agoI find the comments in this thread really show the potential in virtual machines. Personally, I develop on a macbook and virtualize Windows XP and Linux (Arch Linux). I tend to just use which ever is the native environment for what I'm working with (eg: C on linux, ruby on mac).
- dkarl 17y agoI work with my Windows laptop and my Linux workstation side-by-side. I use my laptop for Outlook, company IM, Office documents, and web surfing. I use my workstation for everything else. That gives me a strict division between productivity sucks on the Windows laptop and productive work on the Linux box. When I want to focus, I can sit with the laptop outside my field of view, so I don't see new emails and IMs. If I need to consult html docs while I'm coding, I use Conkeror on my Linux box so I'm not tempted into random surfing. Using Conkeror and Awesome WM on my Linux box makes it very no-nonsense and very conducive to concentration. Ummm, so, I already voted for Linux since that's where all the work gets done. Should I vote for Windows, too?
- anigbrowl 17y agoYes, I do think you should vote for windows too. you just don't enjoy the work you do in that context as much, but that isn't Windows' fault.
- dkarl 17y agoI was wondering if we were supposed to choose only one option. And I'm flattered by your assumption that I enjoy doing my job more than surfing the web -- it isn't always true, even though I try to work as if it were ;-)
- GeneralMaximus 17y agoI use: 1. Mac OS X - for "normal people" stuff. Web browsing, IM, Twitter, music, movies, foo. 2. Linux (Ubuntu) - so that I can build (3). 3. Haiku (http://haiku-os.org http://haiku-os.org) - because I can.
- antirez 17y agoI've two laptops, one with Mac OS X and one with Linux. I use both for development but as a client I prefer Mac OS X that Just Works. It was fun years ago to hack on config files and even to write my own device drivers when it was needed, it was a game with the benefit of learning a lot of stuff, but seriously, I expected Linux to be mature enough after a few years... instead it's the same problems again and again. All my wishes for Linux are instead incarnated by Mac OS X, so after more than 10 years of only linux one year ago I switched to mac os x, and I'm very happy so far.
- jamesbritt 17y agoI have a Mac mini and Linux laptop, and use both for development, but prefer Linux Kubuntu that Just Works. <snarky comments about quirky Leopard UI elided> Not sure what your specific issues are, but I've been finding development on Linux to be much more accommodating for me.
- path 17y agoLinux seems to be a development "Just Works" environment, e.g. apt just works, and getting dependencies is simple, or at least reliable. On the mac getting libraries can be painful with MacPorts (I don't use Fink, does anyone know if it's better?)
- stewiecat 17y agoWhy bother with macports? I installed XCode and just download the source and do the ./configure;make;sudo make install dance.
- zimbabwe 17y agoWhat about the Leopard UI is snarky? As an interface geek, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it. The specific issues the OP mentioned were installing drivers and tweaking system preferences.
- jamesbritt 17y ago
- uriel 17y agoPlan 9 from Bell Labs ( http://plan9.cat-v.org http://plan9.cat-v.org ) and Inferno ( http://code.google.com/p/inferno-os/ http://code.google.com/p/inferno-os/ )
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- dtf 17y agoQuestion for Mac/Windows users: I develop on Linux, but occasionally on Mac or Windows. To be honest I'm pretty happy with a text editor and a few terminals on any platform, but one thing I miss is fast window management. Specifically: * Focus follows mouse * Alt+LMB drag to move whole window * Alt+MMB drag to move nearest corner (ie resize) The default Mac interface in particular I find difficult, as there's just one tiny resize tab in one corner. Is there anything that can help me here? Or do you do things differently?
- psadauskas 17y agoI'm the same. I use Windows for gaming, and I have a case of Mac envy for all the slick apps, but everytime I get more than a couple windows open, I really, really miss my tiling window manager (http://awesome.naquadah.org/ http://awesome.naquadah.org/). Not having anything I need within one or two keystrokes (or having to reach for the mouse) feels very cumbersome now.
- krakensden 17y agoI feel the same way about window managers. For some reason, the less user friendly they get, the more usable they are.
- mixmax 17y agoRelated question for Mac users: Don't you ever view windows in fullscreen? It seems there's no easy way to get windows to fullscreen, except for laboriously resizing and dragging to make it fit with the screen. This is one of the things that threw me off Mac (I bought one that I used as my main OS for about half a year, but I just never really liked it) So do Mac users simply not like fullscreen windows, do they all have some utility that does this, or am I just missing something? To me it seems like an extreme shortcoming, but I'm sure there's a reason for the limitation.
- bayareaguy 17y agoAlthough it does me little good at the moment since HN's text area is a mere 6 lines, I'm posting this from Opera's fullscreen mode which I use quite frequently. While few applications on any platform seem to support this kind of true fullscreen mode, I use "almost fullscreen" windows all the time: on OSX the green orb in the upper left corner of every window acts as a toggle which maximizes the window or returns it to its original size. I say "almost fullscreen" because the omnipresent menu bar and window decorations remain visible when you work this way.
- ivanstojic 17y agoI've been using Mac OS on and off for the last six years, but in the last year it has replaced Linux as my dominant workstation OS. I still have a few Linux and Windows build machines around the office.
- thorax 17y agoI use: Windows/Windows/Windows/Windows/OSX side-by-side, shared keyboard through Synergy (w/ synergy server as a Vista+Vaio). With 4 perpetual ssh connections to different flavors of Linuxy servers (CentOS/CentOS/Fedora/SuSE). With 2 perpetual RDP sessions open to 2 more Windows boxen.
- mattmcknight 17y agoI use Blackberry OS quite a bit as well...
- mathogre 17y agoMac OS X is what I use at home on my iMac and MacBook. At work I use Linux on compute servers for development and data analysis, and connect to the machines via (cough) Windows.
- cema 17y agoI use Windows, various versions, both at work and at home. Ubuntu only at home, but more and more. Going to try a Mac OS just for fun.
- wavesplash 17y agoMost used? My smartphones: I used WebOS (linux underneath) and MacOS (stripped down iphone version) the most.
- 10ren 17y agoLinux, but one annoyance is about 10% of the time I have to manually enable the LAN connection to my ADSL modem. I never had to do that with Windows. For developing it's great though.
- MaysonL 17y agoI wonder how much, if any, significant difference there is between this poll and data from the server logs?
- csomar 17y agoMac was recommended by many of my friends, so I'll say it's good. However I tried linux (mandriva) one time and I'll never get BACK to any linux version (although I like the servers os), wonder how you work with them. Linux is fast, but not comfortable to work with
- lallysingh 17y agoMac Laptop, (Open)Solaris desktop. A good combination for me.
- drhowarddrfine 17y agoI have 10 FreeBSD server boxes, 1 Linux box for compiling web apps for Linux and one Windows box for testing in IE. My laptop runs FreeBSD, too.
- ntoshev 17y agoIt would be interesting to compare the results from this poll to the actual browser statistics of the Hacker News site.
- kellishaver 17y agoI have a Macbook that runs Leopard and my desktop runs WinXP Pro. I prefer the Mac OS to Windows, but the Windows PC has more powerful hardware for running the graphics apps and my little white Macbook just can't keep up.It also has a 24in display and a full-size keyboard, which makes it a little more practicle to use for long periods of time. Some day, when I can justify the expense of a 24in iMac, I'll switch entirely to Mac. In the mean time, I use them both about equally. The Mac is far superior as a dev environment.
- wglb 17y agoI use Linux (major parts of the workhorses) open BSD (routers) Mac (for video conferences and development support). There is a freebsd there for good measure.
- cubicle67 17y agoWork - Linux Home - OSX
- theschwa 17y agoSo about 78% use a Unix based system and 22% use something else.
- bayareaguy 17y agoAll of the above: at work I have a Windows desktop and several servers running Linux and Solaris, at home I use a Mac OSX laptop along with a colocated FreeBSD server.
- crabl 17y agoI just recently migrated from a late-2006 MacBook Pro with Leopard to a shiny new ThinkPad T500 with Ubuntu Jaunty. I'm actually impressed with how well Linux on the desktop has matured over the past few years (I experimented with Ubuntu in late 2005 and it was nowhere near as refined as it is today), moreover, how easy it was to get everything working as seamlessly as it did on the Mac. Granted, in terms of user interface (among other things), OS X is far superior to Gnome; however, aside from the gorgeous design of Aqua, in terms of actual day-to-day usability, they are pretty much on par with each other (at least as far as I'm concerned).
- duairc 17y agoI use Linux exclusively. I did try OS X before (I have an iBook), but I just couldn't get into it. Linux users trying OS X have already commented on problems with window managers etc, so I won't repeat what they've said. The real thing is that I just can't stand about OS X though isn't about practical like not being able to get a certain application or type of application working or anything like that (I do generally prefer the applications I use on Linux to their OS X counterparts though). It's simply that it's non-free, and the whole ecosystem of software for it is generally non-free. I know lots of Mac users and this doesn't seem to bug them or occur to them at all. When I first turned on my iBook, I have to tell it more than once "no, I don't want a .Mac account". When I start iTunes, and possibly other applications (I just remember iTunes specifically), I have to click "I agree" to a license agreement. There are lots of really trivial bits of software which you'd get with `sudo apt-get install x` in Linux but the OS X equivalent is some sort of shareware crap... I found this to be particularly bad for tools that convert between file formats. Am I just crazy or does this not bother anybody else that uses OS X?
- zimbabwe 17y agoIt's simply that it's non-free, and the whole ecosystem of software for it is generally non-free. I know lots of Mac users and this doesn't seem to bug them or occur to them at all. That's because the exchange for a lot of OS X stuff is: You pay a small sum of money in exchange for developers that work their asses off on making your user experience perfect. Delicious Monster, Cultured Code, RealMac, Blacktree, Panic Inc. - especially Panic Inc. Then there are the developers who don't make commercial Mac apps but who are part of the same developer scene: Coudal, 37signals, Neubix, on and on. They're actually why I bought OS X: Once upon a time, I used Virb - designed by Neubix - read their blog, and slowly came across these other developers and their blogs, and fell in love with all these small development teams whose lives focus on developing their applications and making a profit. When I got my Mac, I started with a few of those teams' applications. Specifically, I bought Panic's Coda and demoed CC's Things. The experiences I get with those applications are stupendous. Coda's the only thing I use that makes me love coding; without it, I get bored easily with the processes. I'd say it's absolutely been worth my $100 purchase. A hundred dollars for a code editor, FTP transmitter, CSS styler, a set of well-formatted reference books, and in-app browser testing? That's a damned good deal. And yes: I can do that for free, I could open emacs next to Safari, download free guides online. But it's worth my money not to ever have to bother with that stuff at all. The license agreement... I don't find the license agreement at all frustrating. You click "Accept" once, then never see it again. MobileMe I got almost immediately: It syncs up everything I've got, gives me a nice email system, and it's worth the money I pay for it. I've seen the free alternatives, and they're not worth paying money for. As for the "trivial bits of software", I've found I need very few applications to complete my Mac experience. I used the free OnyX to tweak my settings, I got Dropbox, and outside of Coda and iWork I find I rarely need anything else. I used to use Fluid.app to run web applications I liked, and that was free. Max converts every file format I need converted, excepting WMVs which I can convert using iTunes in a virtual simulator, and I need to convert WMVs very rarely. Some people need free. Some people think that everything should be free. They're absolutely allowed to go that route. But most Mac users don't find it outrageous to pay developers for their time. A hundred dollars for a product is nothing, when that hundred dollars ensures never once having to look in a help manual to get something done or dealing with a crash or a slowdown or anything, really. It's similar to the thousands of dollars spent on the Mac itself. You don't pay that money for the RAM, or the screen. You pay that money because Apple tries to guarantee that things don't fuck up for you, and the impressive thing about Apple is that things really don't fuck up. I've been on my current set-up for a year and I've had five total crashes, each from weeks of multitasking processes without ever putting my computer to sleep. I have no problems that I can't find an app for. A lot of things on the Mac are so simple that I now have problems using Windows and Linux because they can't handle the functions that I use now. So no, that doesn't bother me, because for my money I get trust. Working with Ubuntu bothers me, because things don't feel like part of a logical whole. It's a matter of personal preference.
- path 17y agoI have a few Mac's and I run VM's on them with Ubuntu and OpenSolaris, I also have Windows XP available on a VM, but I have less and less need to use it.
- dhughes 17y agoLinux at home for seven hours a day and Windows at work off and off for 9 hours per day mostly just office stuff. I prefer Linux for its freedom, I'll put up with the lack of a polished OS and inconveniences for the freedom it provides.
- iuguy 17y agoAll of the above. I use a Windows Vista laptop for most work, A Mac Mini hooked up to the TV for Movies, Music, Photos and syncing my iPhone, a Windows XP VM with Adobe Lightroom for touching up photos, a Linux box upstairs for Music, file serving and number crunching, various Linux VMWare images for development in Django, Perl, Ruby etc., an OpenBSD PC as a Firewall and IDS and an Amiga 1200T for Email (YAM) and Usenet (NewsCoaster).
- catch404 17y agoI use Fedora Core on my laptop and desktop pcs, and use a windows box with terminals to Fedora Core servers at work. I've been thinking of getting a macbook lately - I've never used OSX and have heard good things (I also love the look of them). I'm torn between my tried and true Fedora/ Thinkpad (I'll upgrade my existing one) combo and a shiny new macbook. Are there any converts here? Did you miss the package manager? Do you find the paid upgrades not worth it compared to the 6 monthly Linux distro revisions? I have a bad feeling I'll miss the convenience of yum install [package].
- celticagent 17y agoI have 2 desktops and 2 laptops, all running Windows. FWIW, I still like being able to open the hood and tweak. But not enough to change my OS completely (a la Linux)