Hackintosh (and other) questions

Zython

Hello! So I'm considering building my own PC, and am possibly considering a hackintosh. However, I've been doing some reading, and it sounds like that hackintoshes aren't well-known for their stability. Does anyone have any experience with these, and know how well they function?

If I'm looking at something that's more trouble than it's worth, I would like to know what the best way to mass transfer files from my Macbook to a Windows machine. I know both support FAT32, but I get the feeling it's going to be a little more complicated than "plug in an ethernet cable and watch a movie" like moving stuff from my iMac to my Macbook was.

Tofystedeth

I've never hacked a tosh myself, but given that it's a completely unsupported setup (and if Apple had their way, illegal) I'd avoid it.
The easiest options for transferring your files, depending on quantity, would be to either throw them all on a USB flashdrive/external harddrive, or create a writeable share on the new Windows box and just move everything you want to keep from the macbook over.

wunderbar

yea, I would recommend against it. There is a list of "this hardware works" but Apple is known to break stuff with OS updates on a non-rare basis, which means that every time they issue an OS patch you either have to ignore it forever or pray it doesn't break your entire system.

Mostly Harmless

I've been running two Hacks for about three years now, including one at work, and they're rock solid and fully up to date. The only thing that ever causes me grief is the Nvidia web drivers, and that's my own fault for running a GTX 970 & 750Ti, instead of sticking with Apple supported cards.

However, tread very carefully. You need to learn a lot, and be prepared for odd breakages on occasion with updates and so on. If you want a stable, carefree, easy to use computer with minimal effort, build a (Windows|Linux|whatever) box of your choice or buy a Mac. There's a big community around it, but you'll need to be prepared to put a lot of effort into learning about Hackintoshing/EFI/drivers/OS X/yada yada. It's worth it for me, but I'd strongly warn even very competent users to think very carefully before jumping on this path.

Synthesis

You've probably already figured this out, but keep in mind the bulk of the advice you'll get on PC building on this forum is going to be fairly useless, since a lot of it recommends or otherwise deals with specifically non-Apple supported hardware, and the remainder is focused on squeezing out better performance for games that are often absent in Mac OS X.

Zython

Just as an update, I decided not to bother with a Hackintosh and just build a Windows PC. Thank you all for your advice.