Mac or PC?
I intend to give a more balanced treatment here -- really! Just now, though, what I have is an excerpt from a posting that George Graves made on comp.sys.mac.system, which is very pro-Mac. (I would find the figures more compelling if I knew how many users were interviewed, and how they were selected.)


The "Personal Computer Satisfaction" study from Evans Research finds that users that use both Macintosh and Windows 95 PCs rate the Macintosh higher in user productivity, overall satisfaction, ease of use, creativity, and other key areas.

This study of "Dual Users" is significant since it eliminates the bias of studies that compare Mac users against Windows users in arbitrary tests. Since dual users use both systems, they can give an informed and unbiased comparison.

Details of the study:

Dual users were asked to rate both their Mac System 7.5 and Windows 95 systems systems on a 1 to 10 scale, with 10 being excellent. The following are the percentage of dual users rating the respective systems from 8 to 10:

Mac-System 7.5 Windows 95 PC
Overall satisfaction60%41%
Overall productivity59%42%
Overall ease of use78%37%
Graphics and publishing85%27%
Multimedia71%36%
Ease of learning78%29%
Ease of connecting peripherals74%39%
Ease of setup and installation69%33%
Ease of connecting to a LAN62%42%
Ease of trouble-shooting41%21%
Running educational software46%32%

When users were asked to pick the best system, they chose the systems in the following percentages:

"Which system is more enjoyable to use?"
Macintosh 52%
Windows 95 PC 39%
No preference 9%

"Which system allows you to be more creative?"
Macintosh 53%
Windows 95 PC 27%
No preference 20%

"Which system is more stable?"
Macintosh 58%
Windows 95 PC 29%
No preference 13%

The dual users used the systems in business, home, and education environments. The study was performed by Evans Research Associates, an independent marketing research firm established in 1975 and located in San Francisco, California.