Backstory:
I’ve always had Mac laptops. After going through graphic design college, then owning a business in that field, I relied on the smoothness with which I could bang through projects and not have to worry about reliability… Until I started messing with system files. I’ve moved on to a different job, but obviously still use Mac, if for no other reason than how many programs I’ve invested in. Plus, I still do a heavy amount of design in side jobs, and as charity. Windows XP, SP3 is what I have to use at work, and the bulk of the technical work there has to do with developing and maintaining Access programs and web-accessible interfaces. So I thought I should get Windows onto my Mac to back up my work, and expand my development skills on my own. So I stuck Windows XP on there. Then Windows failed to start and failed to be fixed one day out of the blue (screen of death). And finally, when I wanted to give a friend a bunch of photos from my wedding and songs from iTunes, I realized that Apple had (over the years) proprietized the heck out of it’s files. Freedom, I yearns for it. So to open up my options I configured my laptop to boot to a selector utility (like Windows’ BIOS) that chooses between operating systems installed on separate partitions.

File-Neutering:
I gave this term to my new mission (I have no idea if it’s been used before). The mission is to eventually get as many files as possible out of databases or proprietary file formats and into file formats that have open-source and multi-platform alternatives. For instance, Apple locked up my photos into a database. So one photo album at a time is being dragged into separate folders to be labeled and organized however I want. iTunes’ protected AAC formatted songs are being burnt to disc and ripped into mp3′s (and yes, audiophiles, I’m smashing them because if I don’t have the storage space to listen to my music, I don’t care how “clear” and “uncompressed” it sounds, I won’t be dragging it around).
There are more complicated portions to this game, but I’ve excepted that a Garageband file isn’t going anywhere, and my Access DB’s just are what they are. PSD’s and plenty of vector formatted logos seem to have been getting more accessible thanks to open-source programs Gimp and Inkscape. Illustrator might dominate the pro logo crafting biz, but if you can take a couple days to open your mind and learn it, I swear you can do nearly all the important things and much faster than Illustrator with Inkscape, and for free.

OS X 10.6, Windows 7 Home Premium, and Ubuntu 9.10:
I have to admit, I’ve become shamefully excited about these latest OS versions. It’s like everything I used to complain about in college is being fixed some decade later! And all the cool features I used to wish for… IE automagically splitting the screen to two half-maximized windows so you can view as much of both as possible. Mac still has to catch up on that one, but Win 7 and Ubuntu do this in spades. I would easily recommend to anyone who can do this, split whatever computer you get to run it’s proprietary OS and a Linux install. I went with Ubuntu because it’s well-known, easy to use, and it’s getting all the press, so the user-base has forced compatibility and reliability that might not have been there. Yeah, some day maybe I’ll be poking around in Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, but this is good for now.
Briefly, in regards to the need for 3 systems, Mac has the most assets for what I need. Programs and abilities geared toward what I do. Windows is pretty (now) and supports things I do for my day job and games. Ubuntu has tools that can get into computer guts quicker and easier, and it’s FREE. It should also be noted the the bugless Zach experience award goes to Apple. Windows 7 and Ubuntu have had exactly the same percentage of fixless bugs for me so far (and oddly, it seems the exact same percentage of fixed bug as well).

Notable comments about the OS versions compared to previous versions…

OSX 10.6 Pros:

• Faster than 10.5, at least for me.
• Right clicking actually feels fully integrated! (except in Garageband, where you can only click with it in like two places)
• The Finder is more intuitive and has better options

OSX 10.6 Cons:

• iTunes is even more locked up and does a bunch of background stuff. Hooray for you if you have an iPod, so does everyone else. Free software is widely available to transfer files to and from. I would recommend that versus letting iTunes’ remarkable fragile and bloated structure control your entertainment. (I lost a couple hundred megs of files because of a corruption, very un-mac-like).
• iPhoto stuffs all your pictures into a database, not folders. It organized based on dates regardless of what groupings or albums you create. And if you edit a file and save it? It saves the new file as well as the original, with no option to delete it. BLOAT.
• They still haven’t figured out that people hate taking the time to manually move and resize every damn window.
• They’ve started (in a very Windows fashion) to push products you don’t have from within the OS’s functions. The most obvious are iDisk, MobileMe, and Time Machine.

Windows 7 Pros:

• It’s so pretty! I mean seriously, it actually makes doing things more fun! They finally figured out that if they make superficial aspects of operation more pleasant, it increases productivity for core functions! Congratulations MS, you actually out-did Apple on Apple’s 2nd most famous feature.
• New buttons on stuff. They’ve done some re-thinking about the standard names of menus and functions which is generally not bad.
• Improved UAC. I’ve been bugged a few times by it, but their version of sudo works pretty slick.

Windows 7 Cons:

• Microsoft just bought the rights to your mother. They own everything you do and say and think while Windows is running, probably. I’m not saying they could easily get into your files, but I’m definitely not saying they’re above doing so.
• They still have a registry. It makes me nervous. Despite the fact that they’ve been aware of it’s inconsistency, unreliability, corruptibility, and obsolescence, they refuse to switch from it like Mac refuses to maximize windows properly.
• It’s hideously expensive. I would never be running it if Jacci didn’t have a college email required to get this educational discount. Ended up being $30 and the cost of a burnable dvd.

Ubuntu 9.10 Pros:

• FREE
• Insanely easy to install. You burn a cd, start up from the cd, walk through a few options. It identifies your hardware and gets your drivers for you.
• New software store program in which nearly everything you shop for is FREE.
• Ubuntu is not interested in owning your mother.
• Once you install the FREE Compiz settings manager, the visual effects are almost as pretty as Windows 7, and way more customizable and fun to mess with.
• Once you install the FREE translation tool called Wine, you can run plenty of Windows XP software natively, as in, no emulation or restarting required.

Ubuntu 9.10 Cons:

• You can break it. I mean you could break Mac and Windows too, but it’s not easy to do so accidentally. In Linux, you still have make an attempt to know about what you’re doing if you’re in system settings and uninstalling things. That said, I’m no genius and I’ve never busted it.
• If you’re a gamer, you’re probably not going to find what you want.
• If you need highly professional level software, like CAD’s or high quality sound/video editing, you’ll still need to pay for your OS.

So that’s my perspective so far, and I’m sure I’ll have plenty more stories that relate to this.