I know that people have done this survey before, but I want to conduct it for my English research class.
I would use someone else's survey, but my luck it would be my teachers! 
Just need to know what you consider to be the best operating system and why?
And if you have time, do you prefer a laptop or desktop and why?
And then if you are really bored..... What is your ideal computer and why (specs)?
'Preciate the help. Trying to get a head start on this thing. Counts for 70% of my grade :~~~
OS: Windows 98SE, why? I have not had the pleasure of using anything else other than that and Win95 
Lap or Desk: Desktop
Specs:
CPU: AMD ATHLON XP 2500+ Barton
HSF: THERMALTAKE A1725 VOLCANO11+
Case: ANTEC PLUSVIEW1000AMG
MB: ASUS A7N8X-E DELUXE
RAM: OCZ DUAL CHANNEL OPTIMIZED 2X256MB DDR PC3200
HD: MAXTOR 120GB SATA 7200RPM 8MB
Monitor: SAMSUNG SYNCMASTER 753DF DYNAFLAT 17IN
Video Card: ATI RADEON 9600XT 128MB DDR
Power Supply: ANTEC TRUEBLUE 480W
Sound Card: CREATIVE SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY 2 ZS
DVD: LITEON 16X DVD-ROM
CD-Burner: LITEON 52X32X52
Keyboard & Mouse: Microsoft® Wireless Optical Desktop Pro 2.0 drool
Copied right off my wishlist! 
OS: Linux for desktop, BSD for servers. Why? Cuz Windows sucks ass IMHO
L/D: Desktop
System Specs: It can get better, but here's what I have:
CPU: 2.8GHz P4 800MHz FSB
Mobo: Soyo Dragon 2 Platinum Edition (I love this thing, see here)
Memory: 1Gig Corsair DDR400
HDD's: Various Western Digital and IBM drives = 320Gigs
Monitor: Dual setup: 21 inch HP, 17 inch IBM Flat Screen CRTs
Video: 128MB NVidia GeForce 4 Ti 4800
Sound: Sound Blaster Audigy MP3
Blah, CD-RW, CD-Rom, Floppy, 400W PS, yada yada yada.
The mobo supplies ethernet(gigabit)
OS: WinXP – Because the majority of apps are made for Windows and I know how to use it over other OS’s. Although I would like to get into Linux.
L/D: Desktop – You can get a much more powerful desktop than you can a laptop for the same price.
Spec: I've priced out a good one for a person here
You get 70% of your grade result for asking people what kind of computers they like?!? What the hell kind of school do you go to? ;-)
I can tell you the answer - they like computers and software which they are used to using and which doesn't break down very often.
OK - if it helps:
Comp:
AMD Athlon 1.8GHz FSB266
512MB DDR RAM
Nvidia GeForce something or other (5000?) with 128MB RAM
ASRock mobo (forgotten the spec)
Seagate HDD 40 GB
Currently using Acer USB modem V.90 - yes, it's slow, but it's fast enough for me on most days.
OS: WinXP Home (SuSe Linux 9.0 Pro is on my shopping list for anytime in the very near future). WAMP is OK but I want to get into LAMP.
Preference: desktop, because it's cheaper, easily upgradable and I can do things to it with a standard screwdriver and my fingers.
Hope you get an A
Norm
processor: Dual AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-51s
mobo: MSI K8T Master2-FAR
RAM: 2GB Kingston DDR333
vid card: ATI RADEON™ 9800 PRO 256MB
soundcard: Creative Labs SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pre
Hard drives: remember the 1 terabyte drive? o and a 120GB Western Digital for backup
DVD: Plexy DVD +/- R/RW CD-R/RW PX-708A
CD: Plexy 52/24/52A CD-R/RW
Speakers: Altec Lansing XA3051 5.1s
Keyboard: Logitech Cordless Access keyboard
Mouse: Logitch Cordless TrackMan Wheel
Moon, I'm assuming that's your ideal rather than actual?
Originally posted by Moonglobe
Hard drives: remember the 1 terabyte drive?
Hrmm....not even using the 8 IDE/SATA slots on my mobo, I have 8 built in USB 2.0 slots. That could be 8 terabytes with those drives. If I didn't expand them.
Of course, I'd have to sell my truck to be able to do this, but why would I ever leave the house anyway?
Hrmmm...............
isn't that what we're talking about? well my actual:
Athy XP 2500+
MSI K blah blah blah .... nForce2
512MB DDR (dont know the bus)
Plexy 40/12/40A
Broken LG DVD drive
Radeon 9200
SB Live 5.1
80gig western digital
altec lansing 251s
Must say that my computer sucks...and I agree fully with the 'dream' systems here....
Best OS: Windows 2000 (haven't used Linux)
Desktop computers are better than laptops...laptops are too expensive and their screens go bad very quickly...pixels start to lose red, green, or blue...
My computer (don't know all the specs)
20GB hard drive
863Mhz P3 processor
nVidia Riva TNT2 Pro video card
256 MB RAM
Dual CD-ROM and CD-RW drives (don't know the speeds)
Floppy disk drive
2 USB ports (and a bunch of serial and parallel, and some others)
ViewSonic Graphics Series G771 CRT monitor
Dowa computer speaker system
Kensiko microphone
Microsoft keyboard
Compaq mouse (with scroll wheel)
Not the ideal system...but a nice low-end one that you can definitely live with if you're not a gamer.
Originally posted by Moonglobe
processor: Dual AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-51s
mobo: MSI K8T Master2-FAR
RAM: 2GB Kingston DDR333
vid card: ATI RADEON™ 9800 PRO 256MB
soundcard: Creative Labs SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pre
Hard drives: remember the 1 terabyte drive?
DVD: Plexy DVD +/- R/RW CD-R/RW PX-708A
CD: Plexy 52/24/52A CD-R/RW
Speakers: Altec Lansing XA3051 5.1s
Keyboard: Logitech Cordless Access keyboard
Mouse: Logitch Cordless TrackMan Wheel
ATI RADEON™ 9800 PRO 256MB? The ATI Radeon 9800XT 256MB is faster!
indeed indeed jeb, but i couldnt find much info at ATI's site so i decide to go with what i new more about
Go here: http://apps.ati.com/ATIcompare/ and select those two, all the info I need 
OS of choice: whatever I'm using. That said, I don't know BeOS, TheOS, Minix, AIX, etc....
I prefer FreeBSD, but I can't play many strategy games on it. The real world is slightly deceived about what computers ought to do vs. what they want them to do. It's nice that they can do all this entertainment schtick, but BION they'd do better IMO to give us all the details and let us fix the stuff ourselves.
I have 2 desktops (FreeBSD && Win98SE) on a KVM switch at my desk. Across the room are some more boxes which run either of these OS'es depending on which HDD is slapped in them at the time, and usually at least a couple of broken winboxen I'm trying to revive for someone. In the house is WinXP Home, which is better than 98, of course, but still gives occasional problems which seem to be more cryptic to decode and fix than anything was with 9x. It could just be that I've not spent as much time fixing XP machines, but I like a quote from ST's Mr. Scott --- "the more they overthink the plumbin', the easier 'tis to stop up the drain..."
My (dead) laptop is XP Pro; I do kinda miss having the laptop. Hopefully the extended warranty people will hurry up with the ** thing... which brings us to l/d: desktop is preferable; laptop is portable. Where have I got to go today?!!
My BSD desktop is AMD 1800+; the win98se box is a K62/475, IIRC. I'm a gadget freak ("oh, it's got an automatic discombobulator on the network card AND a built-in doomflitchie? Cool!") but I'm not that performance oriented (if it works, good enough, a few extra milliseconds aren't that big a deal, 'cause there's always something to do while it's booting or whatnot...)
And yeah, I'm kinda with Norman G. What does this have to do with real education?
Good luck!
Originally posted by dalecosp
And yeah, I'm kinda with Norman G. What does this have to do with real education?
I suspect it has something to do with this being for an "English research" class - that the computer slant to the question doesn't actually signify.
Originally posted by jebster
Go here: http://apps.ati.com/ATIcompare/ and select those two, all the info I need
thanks for that
btw, OS im running: Win XP Pro, but only because i've got such an old monitor its too much of a pain in the as for a newb like me to get the FireGL gamma things up properly in linux. as for laptop/desktop: desktop, just cuz they're cheap and so am i.
