Windows: 17 Reasons to get off the bandwagon

Discussion in 'Windows OS's' started by Anti-Trend, Feb 5, 2005.

  1. Anti-Trend

    Anti-Trend Nonconformist Geek

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    Here's an older article with some pretty good reasons to reconsider which operating system you allow on your PC. Definately not an unbiased source, but not untrue either. Actually, it's a surprisingly fair summary of Microsoft's business tactics and why they're only good for MS, not for us. Give it a read and come to your own conclusions. Open discussion welcome; I'm interested to hear the opinions of current Windows users on these issues.

    P.S. - Just because I clearly don't care for Windows or the company which makes it, it doesn't mean I don't like you. I don't associate people with the OS they run.

    -AT
     
  2. Big B

    Big B HWF Godfather

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    That was definitely well written. Not to mention intelligent answers/arguments to back up the author's reasons. Sure, it's biased, but not blindly so. On the flip side, just because you use Linux, or some other OS, doesn't mean it's impervious, as good old user error, or holes (yes, they do happen) can be exploited. In otherwords, feel free to jump off Windows, but don't assume that you never need to do any sort of updates to, say, Linux. They may be less, but they aren't nonexistant.
     
  3. Nic

    Nic Sleepy Head

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    yep..but for all i know microsofts bad I could never use linux as my 'only use' OS because all the software i have and will have a a good flow for the next few years that are only compatible with microsoft's OS'.
     
  4. Addis

    Addis The King

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    Has anyone seen the video where Win98 crashes on Gates in a demonstration?
     
  5. Nic

    Nic Sleepy Head

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    LOL no but id like to do you have a link?
     
  6. Waffle

    Waffle Alpha Geek

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    Heheh, yeh I have...

    Gates plugs in a scanner I think to show off 98's improved driver database, and the blue screen of death pops up....
     
  7. Nic

    Nic Sleepy Head

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    Its okay i found a link

    Its here
    if anyone hu hasnt seen it wants to.
     
  8. Addis

    Addis The King

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    "Thats why we're not shipping Windows 98"
     
  9. Nic

    Nic Sleepy Head

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    lol yeh i know ....nope Bill not funny enought to cover that humongus error there mate
     
  10. Addis

    Addis The King

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    That probably didn't happen before. But as fate has it, it did it when they were on TV.
     
  11. Anti-Trend

    Anti-Trend Nonconformist Geek

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    It's true that Linux is by no means a perfect, God-like product. Anybody who tells you otherwise is suffering from fanboyism. But what does set it miles apart from Windows is that it's designed for a multi-user, networked environment. The difference is that you can lock down a Linux box, and it doesn't take too much time or effort to do so. Linux has had some vulnerabilities in the past, but nothing on the order of MS's gaping holes. Even so, in Linux you can actually disable all network services (read: open ports) without breaking your system. That means you can actually have an unpatched Linux box which can run for years without ever being hacked... not that it's hard to patch 'em. You couldn't run Apache and hope to get away with such a practice, but I hope you get my point. To the best of my ability, I can't lock down Windows even to the level of an out-of-the-box copy of Linux. Not even with tons of third-party software and days of effort. Not locally, and not network-wise. That's one of the things that attracted me to Linux from an IT/IS standpoint -- it's more manageable, customizable, secure, flexible, reliable and it was actually intended to do what I want it to do. From a user standpoint, I like it because it's stable, and I can spend more time using it than fixing it. Not only that, I've found that once you get used to, say, KDE, it's actually a much more productive and enjoyable user environment. From an ideological standpoint -- well, you know about Microsoft and their ethics.
     
  12. Big B

    Big B HWF Godfather

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    Of course, someone has to play the devil's advocate. ;) Might as well be me. I'm unwilling to accept that there is one end-all, be-all OS. I do like the line in the article that says MS (or any other company) shouldn't be punished for success. Predatory practices, however, are another matter.

    I'd actually run a Mac in all likelhood, but up until they put out the MiniMac, they were pretty dang pricey...and in general weren't for the build-your-own crowd. I keep dropping by the Darwin project every now and then, but, it's pretty limited on hardware support.
     
  13. Anti-Trend

    Anti-Trend Nonconformist Geek

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    I understand what you mean about the "build it yourself" mentality. That's one of the things that helped Linux keep me interested once I'd stuck my toe in the water. I feel like it's actually *my system*, as opposed to a shrink-wrapped, corperate, lowest common denominator product. With Linux, the system is modular enough to strip it down to almost nothing, or build it up to run on a 64-processor corperate monstrosity. With Windows, I spent inordinate amounts of time trying to disable features I didn't need and enable features I desperately needed. But the whole OS is designed to prevent you from doing much customisation to your own system. After all, that would make it much more expensive for MS to support, right? It's clearly not about us as users, but them as a money making machine. I suppose that's all good and fine for their shareholders, but it doesn't mean we have to stand for it.
     
  14. syngod

    syngod Moderator

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    It depends on the perpective whether or not customization is a good thing or not. After all I've been in a few stores where they have switched to tablets for signing for credit card purchases and quite a few times the clerk will say sign and hit done and they end up either hitting done right away or once I actually saw someone grab a marker off the desk and sign the tablet.

    With the amount of computer users that aren't technically savvy I'd say I'd rather have an OS that is as simple to use as possible and with the least amount of areas a users can hose things up.

    I'm not putting linux down it does have it's place, it's works great as a web server, storage server and for technical users but for the average person who is fairly computer illiterate I think it would make the learning curve quite a bit steeper.
     
  15. Anti-Trend

    Anti-Trend Nonconformist Geek

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    I respect your opinion. However, I disagree. Please allow me to present a few examples why:

    My wife uses Linux and far prefers it to any version of Windows. I had her multi-booting, but she asked me to remove Windows so Linux would have more room. She's certainly not stupid, but not exactly what I'd call a technophile either. It's not like she's running Apache or MySQL; it's 100% workstation for her. She edits pictures, surfs, chats, emails, watches videos, listens to music, does all the typical word processing stuff, and plays games. She loves Linux, and I never have to fix her system for her because it 'just works'.

    And my sister... Well, my sister is a very special girl who happens to have a learning disability. When she ran Windows XP, she was completely hammered by virii, spyware, trojans and worse. It took almost no time to occur, and all this always happened with working & current antivirus software, best-of-breed spyware removal tools, and behind a strict hardware firewall. After reinstalling about a half-dozen times, I decided to throw Linux on there and see how she could cope with it. Well, I haven't had any support calls from her since I set it up, and she's quite happy with it. Actually, I take that back. Once she wanted to watch a video in an exotic format, so I had to (remotely) install the video codec for her -- took all of 2 minutes, and I did it from home.

    So you see, at least in as far as my experiences have shown me, Linux (or Mac OSX) is actually a much better solution for non techno-savvy people. They do need help getting it set up in the first place, but that typically goes for Windows as well. If you can't set up Mandrake or Suse, chances are you'd also be hard-pressed to install XP. I've set up many, many Linux workstations for otherwise computer illiterate people. I always set them up with scripts for automatic updates, and remove any features they don't need to make things as simple as possible. Once a *nix system is set up, I find it's actually much more straight-forward to casual users than a Windows box.

    So, I do agree with you that Linux's place is on a server. It's really great for that! But I believe that Linux also has a place on the desktop. Even on Grandma's desktop, if she'll permit it.
     
  16. Addis

    Addis The King

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    MS's monopoly in the market means that anyone who's non-techsavvy or illiterate won't know any better than Windows. I remember when I was 9 my old school had an IT suite with lots of computers with Windows, all with Intel CPUs. It was only until I got my own coputer that I realised that there is an alternative to Intel, and from then on that there is an alternative to Windows.

    Most people who use computers, not necessarily techsavvy but who use computers in general won't have used Linux before, some won't know what it is. Since Linux has only become mainstream and developed in the past few years, not like Windows which has been used since 3.1, the majority won't know what it is, and thus won't want to move to it since they've never had any experience with it. Just like AMD, although they make better procs than Intel, they still only have around 17% market share. Thats because anyone who hasn't heard of AMD will automatically have a built in Intel bias. And anyone who's never had any experience with Linux will have a bias towards Windows.
     
  17. ninja fetus

    ninja fetus I'm a thugged out gangsta

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    C'mon guys windows is good!
     
  18. Anti-Trend

    Anti-Trend Nonconformist Geek

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    What you're saying it true, Addis. Another one of the things that's holding back Joe Sixpack from using Linux is their "techie" buddies. The self-proclaimed computer guys who've never even used Linux, yet will tell you about how much it sucks and isn't suitable for home users. Or at best they "used Red Hat 6 without a GUI in Tech School". Gee, guess that makes you an expert then. If people would be less afraid to step outside of their comfort zone, Linux's adoption would be much more widespread. But that goes for a lot of things.
     
  19. Addis

    Addis The King

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    Yea, especially things like Firefox and brown bread.
     
  20. Anti-Trend

    Anti-Trend Nonconformist Geek

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    Hahaha, how true!
     

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