I typically gravitate towards Google services for all my needs so I can easily access them from any device. My primary computer is a desktop so it doesn't go anywhere. I'm looking forward to the day when everything I need comes from Google and I could just as easily pick up a Chromebook and get to work but I'm not there yet. I have a few Windows-specific applications that I'll go into later.

What I meant by interact is that if I have Inbox open in one desktop and click on a link it will open a new tab in a Chrome window on another desktop. Most of the time I can avoid that with a shift-click but not all Chrome Apps pay attention to that so I end up popping the new tab out of the window and moving it to another desktop. If my virtual desktops didn't know about each other than not having a Chrome window open on the desktop where Inbox is open would cause a new Chrome window to open.

This may be a weak argument but I have found Windows to be more reliable for my needs since Windows 7. I typically stick with HP hardware which typically comes with Windows. I have been lucky in that nothing goes so terribly wrong that my systems don't boot. But that seems much easier to do with Linux. My primary applications (Google Chrome and Sublime Text) seem more polished in Windows. It seems like in Linux I'll get things setup pretty much how I like them but then an update will come down the line or I go tweaking something else and now I've got a boot issue to deal with. I have not problem fixing the issue but it seems like a waste of my time to have to deal with that. Most of the clients I deal with are also on Windows so it helps that if they need me to accommodate a program or technology I don't normally use that I don't also have to cross the OS boundary.

Sublime Text, at least on Windows, doesn't seem to let me open up a new instance just by firing it off again from the Start menu. It will always switch to the running instance and then I have to open a new window from there. Not a big deal but just another straw on the camel's back.

Until recently our 8, 11 and 12 year old did not have unsupervised internet access. My wife and I tested several options for content filtering but even NetNanny on the lowest level didn't work well. A search for cats brought up a news headline of a man who was arrested for hanging 25 dead ones from trees. There's no reason our kids would need to see that even if the full article was blocked. In the end we opted for Microsoft Family Safety (it's a Windows computer for homeschooling reasons) and only allowed some hand-picked websites. With limited free time on the internet they should never run out of things to do. Of course if a true web search is needed then mom or dad will be there to temporarily allow it through.