Funny enough nocturnus, I actually use a lot of windows keys, eg, windows key e for explorer.

I just like having program and folder shortcuts in menues, that stay stil and don't wiggle around depending upon random factors.

Call me a control freak but I like things to stay where I put them, though then again, given my memory I'd never remember where things moved to if they did move which is probably the real reason ;d.

Well I'm not up to two tb yet, but I certainly do have near 400 mb of stuff and I will say i know exactly where all of it is, mostly through creating my own folders.

for instance, I never! use the my music folder, sinse it's in my documents, which is user specific anyway, and thus less logical to get to and play around with. I've got a folder just called music on the c drive, where everything is organized into many folders and subfolders depending upon what it is, and for backup purposes I just copy that folder to my external harddrive.

I've done the same with audio books and radio plays, I have a folder called audio.

I generally don't muck about with too many external drives and lots of things in different places.

I have one copy of everything on my desktop, and when I run out of space I'll have another interal harddrive added (I might have to do that this year). And I have one external drive which also has a copy of everything on just in case my desktop explodes.

Then as I said I organize my favourites, and programs into things that make sense, for instance I have an audio games folder on the programs menue, which then has subfolders for Gma, bsc, usa games etc, and another for interactive fiction games.

I have all my games installed in a directory fun program files, so that I can go in there and mess about without disturbing any majorly important windows programs, and I also have in there several folders just for storing setup files, such as 0 bought games, 1 free audio games etc (I number those so they end up at the top of the directory).

I then have several utility folders, like an uploads and downloads folder, and a folder just called storage for putting anything that I don't have another place for, like pdf or html gamebooks.

this means I can very quickly find anything I have. it's asystem I sort of worked out bit by bit over the space of about 12 years as I started to do more stuff with my computer, eg, I only created the uploads folder when i started uploading, andonly created the audio folder when I started downloading audio books and radio dramas.

The point is though, this hasbeen one of my major concerns with windows 7, sinse I've been using this sort of system right sinse 95, and really! don't want to start mucking about with it just because microsoft are too stupid to let me change where I put things.

At least it seems I can customize the start menue relatively easily, but windows explorer in 7 did look very silly indeed.

Even in vista, its difficult to cut or copy and paste things from or to the program files folder. From my experience with windows 7, it seems very unorganized and annoying to navigate. Although, i know at some point, especially if windows 8 is similar, i will just have to get used to it and learn the layout.

Big catch of course is that most games, whether you're a visually impaired gamer or a mainstream gamer for that matter, just aren't available on Mac. Sighted gamers are getting more and more games for Mac admittedly but as for audio games the vast bulk are Windows only, with a few exceptions. For this reason I don't think I'll ever be able to ditch Windows entirely.

Well as I understand the permissions system I don't see why it wouldn't let you make a new folder, it'd just be set with permissions so that only your account can access it.

As to Macs, yes there are packages which would support MS formats I believe. Crazy game soundtrack formats on the other hand would be more tricky. As to point 3, if you went 100% Mac the Mac itself would cost more but you'd be free of screen reader updates. Point 2 makes that impractical though.

Of course like I've previously mentioned it's perfectly possible to dual boot a Mac with Windows, I planned to do just that gbut I wasn't able to get sighted help to run the Windows installer unfortunately.

There are tons of people who actualy use macs who have discouraged me from doing so and given me tons of things to think about if I do decide to seriously devote myself to investing in one. A bit of research never goes amiss, and so I decided to do it; here's what I came up with.

Questionable: when voiceover crashes, it is necesary to restart the mac.  Can anyone confirm this?  IN its worst incarnations, JAWS is quite a nuisance and requires many restarts of the program at times.  NVDA can be the same when you are using eloquence as a prefered synth.  I've not heard many people speak about WindowEyes or SystemAccess, Hal, or any other screenreader in a negative manner, but have not ruled out that problems do exist with thos bits of software just because they are software and no software is perfect.  Nevertheless, none of these tends to force a complete system restart.

Fact: development is almost non-existent amongst the mac OS's community because there is no real need for it since apple's opperating systems have less users.  this means that if you are looking for personal preference and choice, chances are you're not going to find much.  As an afterthought, most of the people who program for its opperating systems actualy work for the company.  Since the company currently seems to be focusing on money rather than as it once did on its users, perhaps because they have faulsely claimed that their machines can do things they can't and are being sued left and right for it, or some other hidden motive that is worse, this does not show any signs of improving.  There are decisions that apple makes which make no sense to me whatsoever outside of the world of computers, but methinks that's beyond the scope of this subject.

Arguable: unless you plan on doing extensive amounts of powerful editing, be it video or audio, the mac is not really for you.

Fact:  though many mac users claim that no PC laptop can keep up with the macbook or macbook pro, this is untrue, and based on how much you wish to spend, you can get the same results from a machine such as the Toshiba Satellite Pro L630 which is priced at  $749 US, the Dell Latitude E6410  priced at $1219 US, and Sony VAIO Y Series  priced at $769 US.  This last one actually keeps up with the apple machine right up to the battery power.  The real difference is that Microsoft originally sold its system to many manufacturers and is therefore compatible with more hardware.  Apple has stuck to its own products in a closely knit circle, perhaps in an atempt to be unique?  I really wouldn't know.

Fact:  Pc's are generally ready to go right out of the box.  Though I understand the term PC to mean Personal Computer, I am refering to a machine running windows.  Depending on which one of these common tasks you wish to accomplish, IE, playing all of your music on the go, hookig it up to your big screen TV, or, as CX2 said in his earlier post, gaming, there is little you need to do to get up and running.  Apple, from what I can gather, charges $99 US for an online service which allows you to stream files from home or share files with computers on separate networks.  It is also necessary to obtain separate adapters to hook up your mac to other devices, and as far as I know, you don't get a Blu-ray player, TV tuner, or Memory Stick reader built-in.  This is, of course, fairly related to the previous concept of hardware compatibility, but it's worth emphasising if you plan on doing any of this on a mac.

There are, of course, many reasons to get a mac as well if you have some cash to burn, not least of which is the fact that the line between mac and PC is becoming less clear, especially when you take advantage of the Boot Camp feature and dual boot Mac OSX with Windows operating systems.  IN the end, the one thing you should be asking yourself is which benefits you prefer.  It is no secret that macs are pricy, but they will last you longer than your average windows machine if you take care of it properly.  There is, however, more support available for windows machines.  Every aspect will be taken care of by many different outlets that specialise on either the software or hardware side of things.  If you purchase a mac, you will depend on yourself or an apple genius to bail you out of any hot water, as replacing the machine all together may not be your desire.