| ??? 02/01/08 01:04 Read: times |
#150134 - Hmmm Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Jeff Post said:
To me it means better quality and stability. The applications I use on Windows are far more complete and easy-to-use than equivalent applications on Linux. There was a time when I had no Windows machine but had a Windows VM (Win4Lin) and I'd open it usually just to use a 1996-era version of Paint Shop Pro instead of cringing through Gimp (or THE Gimp or whatever it's called). I never got the GnuCash to make any sense. QuickBooks sucks, but GnuCash was so insane that I tolerated opening the Windows VM and running an application I hated. GnuCash was that bad and, at the time, it didn't look like there was any active development so it wasn't going to get any better. I consistently continued to open the Windows VM to run Goldwave to do audio editing. My development tools only worked in Windows (EPROM programmer at that time, Keil). So when that computer started chugging, I bought a new machine. I was going to wipe it but after a couple of days I was just thrilled without always having to open the Windows VM to run everything. I didn't have any stability problems. So I just loaded Firefox and got myself a decent editor for Windows and I was good to go (Since that's about the only two native Linux applications I was using: Browser and text editor (Kate)). Even so, MS is losing market share--the only significant "sales" of Vista are due to preinstallation on new computers (the majority of which get wiped and the users install XP). I seriously doubt that. Sure, it happens. But I got a new laptop last May when my previous laptop surprisingly died. At the same time I bought an extra hard drive and the first thing I did was put that hard drive in there, formatted it, and installed XP. It didn't recognize anything and searching for drivers on the Internet quickly became frustrating. I couldn't make it work and I'm not exactly an idiot. I eventually gave up and just fine-tuned Vista, turned off that Aero nonsense, disabled that "ask before I do anything" mode, (and upgraded from 1GB to 2GB) and, you know what, I haven't had a single problem. It just works and it certainly keeps up with me. So while I'm sure there are people that wipe their newly purchased Vista machine I'm pretty darned sure it's significantly less than 50%. Heck, people got upset because Microsoft was bundling IE with Windows and there was no way very any people would go through the process of downloading a new browser. But you think they'll just scrape their OS and install a new one? Unlikely. Most people buy their computer, take it home, and start using it. Regards, Craig Steiner |
