Windows Forum·65,836 discussions

The best OS ever without a doubt

Locked

Nobody would use a PC if Microsoft hadn’t invented windows. How can it not be the greatest OS ever. sure bugs, but those bugs get fixed. sure frustration but what isn’t frustrating in IT. Linux you can be learning that for life, then die and still have accomplished nothing. Mac, it’s not windows, there functionality is sub standard because they don’t want to be sued by MS. A lot of the web would be missing if there was no windows. Just about every application out there that is worth using is made for windows. There is no good alternative. Linux gurus are now working for microsoft. Open source has no direction every step forward is a step backward. Windows OS is the wheel, we use to drive our pc’s. Only the US MOD does anything good with other technology, and no average user currently has access to that shit. sure Microsoft are a big evil bloodsucking entity but so is coca cola and I love coke (the drink). So yep Windows is the best OS ever, nothing will ever beat it.

Topic

If I remember correctly

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

There where a lot of computers in use in domestic environments in the DOS days and not many of them even used MS DOS.

Also If I’m correct Xerox actually invented the GUI and had it running on several k of PC’s running Unix and when the [b]Powers That Be at Xerox[/b] decided that there was no future in PC’s and decided to concentrate on their [b]Core Business[/b] photocopiers they brought in all the current competition of the day Steve Jobs [from Apple} and Bill Gates and showed them what they had accomplished before trashing the entire system and sending it to the scrap heap.

Now if I remember correctly Apple got their GUI to the market first and where the PC to own for the illiterate computer user and where there long before Windows hit the market with Windows.

But I’m open to correction. 😀

Of course I see that you want to start off a massive argument where you need Fire Proof gloves on before you can touch your keyboard but I’m not buying into it. 😀

Col ]:)

All your points are valid

In reply to If I remember correctly

But I’m a bit slow (got droped on my head when I was a baby(they should explain heaps)). But how does any of what you said mean that Windows is not the greatest OS. sorry your not buying into, well thanks for the info. Did you know that the the number one selling motor bike was the honda cub. And the show top ten greatest every rated this bike as number 1 ever. So thanks for putting me stright with the those facts, but whats the relavince. My main point is ( not that I didn’t produce straight facts at the start of the thread) but windows is the graetest OS ever, so what if xerox created the first ever GUI, micrsoft stole it. So what if apple got their gui on the market first, mirosoft still out sold them. How do you become the worlds most hated and used software in the world if your OS is not the best ever?

The answer to that one is easy!

In reply to All your points are valid

Join up with IBM to smash Apple that’s exactly what Billy Boy did and since IBM used Open Architecture so any company could make an IBM clone it had to have MS product on it to compete. So that is how MS got 95% of the PC market not because it was the best but because it was sold by IBM on their own machines so everyone else who wanted to compete with IBM had to use MS OS & Software this was again back in the DOS days.

Incidentally that project by Xerox didn’t just allow the networking of any number of PC’s but allowed the sharing of resources between different units so if one unit was low on CPU resources this was farmed out to other units that had an excess of resources available the same goes for Memory and storage space. I’ve yet to see anything similar to come out of MS Windows yet but at least you can network the OS easily even if there is an upper limit to the number of concurrent connections that it supports.

By the way the best car of all time as voted by the AU motorist was a 1965 VW Beetle it was more reliable ad fuel efficient than anything else on the road as of 1995. Pity my stock standard one straight from the factory only gets 8 miles per gallon but goes like the clappers and throws out about 4 foot of flame from the exhaust pipes on the over run. It’s just like my Ducati I should have Flame Guards on the exhaust outlets but at least I do enjoy driving it even if the petrol has all been changed and I need to pull the motor apart to change the valves and seats so they don’t fail. 😀

By straight from the factory don’t make the mistake like many do that I was referring to the VW factory either. :p

Col ]:)

fair enough

In reply to The answer to that one is easy!

But now in the year 2006 when there are so many good alternatives to windows, it still has a large chunk of the market(peopel have a choice now and they are still choosing windows). And MS still steel good ideas. Look a novel netware. far superior to any thing windows could offer, at the time of carpy NT 4 or below, and what did MS steal? AD, and now with Windows XP pro (soon to be over taken by vista) and win2k3 Server you got a pretty solid setup. So if Microsoft steal the best from the rest they can’t go wrong. They don’t need quality contorl they just have to wait for some one else to do it then bamb MS have it.

Then there is firefox, firefoxes tabs kick ass(apparently you can download third party software to have tabs in IE (but I can’t be bothered)), you get tabs and not so many vunrabilites (because it’s not microsoft). Whats MS doing? They are releasing IE 7. Now seprate from the OS (something to do with them being an evil market hog and the law saying they can’t provide to many apps with there OS or something, because it is unfair to competing alternative products i.e media player vs quick time vs real etc…), at least thats the excuse)and will probably have tabs functionality.

All this jsut keeps making windows OS get better and better, the alternatives can’t come up with a better one because MS will just steal it.

cool you have a Ducati. I want an indian, the movie the worlds fastest indian has inspired me to want to have one. I can’t top your Ducati or VW story, I only had that honda cub one.

Feel good and have fun 🙂

Actually MS can only steal uncopyrighted stuff

In reply to fair enough

For example Word Perfect since about version 10 I think has had a “Make it Fit” option when the lines go over a page or several and you can reduce it down to fit onto the most convenient page number or increase the page count so that the entire page is filled with no blanks. Word doesn’t have that yet and Corel has had it for ages. 🙂

I only have a small Ducati a 1982 900 SS Darmah 1 of 23 that was imported into AU that year and I’ve been in control of it since new so I never allowed any of the racers who used the 4 bikes that we had in the team actually use it even though occasionally a few parts where stolen off it at race meetings when there where no spares.

The one that I really loved was a 1959 250 cc Factory GP racer it was lovely to ride and I used it in Classic Racing one rear tire a day several chains and one front tire worn out every week end now that was a fun bike to ride. 😀

But unfortunately when I moved north I sold it as there when no race tracks up there and it was useless for anything else still regretting that sale all of 25 years latter and it only did 140 MPH. 🙁 The 900 will pull 130 KPH in first without a second thought but is very heavy on fuel if you are silly enough to ride it at the posted speeds. 🙁

If you actually shake it into top and keep it around the 5K RPM it will run along on piratically no petrol at all but in that gear and engine speed you are slightly over the speed limit only by a factor of about 3. 😀 OH life is good when you have something like that as a play toy. :p

The VW on the other hand is a [b]PIG[/b] but I do like the way that it leaves all the supposedly high powered V8’s in its wake. A friend of my son who insisted on trying to beat it on a drag strip after loosing every time for half a day even when I muffed the starts insisted that it is a [b]Freak of Nature[/b] and he wouldn’t believe that the speedio was actually a speedio he insisted that it must be a Tacho until I showed him the cable running to the left hand front wheel. He just thought that I had altered its internals so I had a Tacho right in my face. 😀

Col ]:)

re make it fit

In reply to Actually MS can only steal uncopyrighted stuff

version 6 of wordperfect “wordperfect for windows” in 1995 had it.

and as far as MS stealing non copyrighted stuff only, one person I know was telling me yesterday that ms didn’t even remove the copyright when they stole some code from aix to create dos with, it still had his name in it, right up to the death of dos itself, windows xp.

That makes it even worse Jaqui

In reply to re make it fit

I’ve been using WP since the DOS days and unlike all the lemmings who have gone to Orifice I stick with what works. I know that the Make it Fit option has been there for a long time but I didn’t realize that it was that long makes Word look as backward and nasty as it actually is doesn’t it? Well I suppose 11 years is nothing in the long term view of MS is it. 😀

Funnily enough when I set this place up all those years ago I had Corel WP Office on every computer and all the staff complained bitterly and insisted that I was way behind the time living in a long dead world and since then they now all use WP Office and hate it when they have to switch to the MS option I’ve even seen them using WP 12 in MS mode just to get something done so others can read it when required. 😀

Now they look forward to a new version of WP and I haven’t got any office product newer than XP and I only got that as a throw in for a volume license kit that I bought, seems that the people at the marketing side of MS got their noses out of joint when I refused to buy a volume license copy of Orifice and said that I would stick with what I know works properly WP when the Volume License copy of XP Pro arrived there was also the same number of Office Licenses included. 😀

While I’ve installed it just so there is a spell checker in Outlook I would have been as happy to use Office 97 and never open the package. 🙂

Col

Not AIX, but story is true in multiple cases

In reply to re make it fit

The fact is they bought the program loader which became DOS from Seatle Software.

They brought other pieces from other companies. I worked on a C compiler and they left variables with TJS (my initials)in a modules that they claimed to have had to rewrite. (They tried to globally change variable names, but that didn’t work when functions had embeded TJS globals that were in linked objects…)So they didn’t like my initials, and they broke the code trying to eliminate variables with my initials, and functions using my initials…

Not so, Aussie…

In reply to Actually MS can only steal uncopyrighted stuff

MS is like any other thief. They steal when they want to. They stole logic for Windows Media Player from Real and didn’t stop denying it until they settled a lawsuit in an out-of-court agreement resulting in MS purchasing 15% of Real and making a technology exchange agreement. This btw, is MS’s modus operande. To them, stealing code is just a business tactic and so is compensating the victim only when they get close to losing a court judgement.

They would have “stolen” patented stuff here if they hadn’t made the deal (by definition, un-copyrighted material is legally unprotected).

Perhaps it remains plagurism and therefor morally and literarily equivalent to stealing. But our friend seems to value everything exclusively on commercial bases. Don’t you think?

Defiantly on that one

In reply to Not so, Aussie…

Actually Java came to mind after I put in the above as well. 😀

Col ]:)

Can’t we all just agree on a few things…

In reply to Not so, Aussie…

Ok Microsoft is a big evil bloodsucking entity and a necessary evil at the same time. I will give old Bill this what other company in the world can get away with selling a product that is still clearly in BETA phases and people buy it up figure out the problems and then let MS fix it in a service pack. I actually like it when people find the problems in the OS. It boils down to Microsoft is letting people DEBUG their problems and then comes up with a solution to fix it. (MOST OF THE TIME) At the end of the day Microsoft still has some of the best offerings for Home User, Business Users, and sometimes debatable when it comes to Graphic Arts.

Personally I like the fact that MS listens to what people would like to see and tries to give it to them free within the OS. Shows that they have some compassion about not charging us out the but for things like media player or browsers. Now there are grumblings about them even adding a Anti-Virus Lite in the OS. Who knows. I use MAC’s, I use Linux, and I Use Mocrosoft to do my daily job at an Engineering firm and I will have to say all of them have their good points and all of them SUCK at the same time. It is all a matter of personal preference.

If you are a coder and do not care for eyecandy and like to live in the command line world use Linux. If you want to do graphics or open up a digital recording studio use a Mac. You want Games, pretty decent productivity products (Office, Money, ETC..), easy networking use Microsoft.

Microsoft got here by what every successful company and business model show you to do. Create a product that people want, if someone does it better figure out how to one up them, listen to what your public wants, and try to make it as cost effective for society while still making a profit for your self. Which I can cleary say they have done all of the above.

Not to mention MS gives countless ammounts of money back to charities, education organizations, and other areas of society.

They are not all bad. The OS has flaws but hell we are human we make mistakes. Computers are only as smart as we make them.

As a side not Word Perfect has sucked since it left the DOS days. Corel Trashed them as well as most of the things it touches.

Then on a final point if it was not for Microsoft most IT people in the world would not have a job. My bets are with Microsoft. Wether we like it or not the are the best choice and the best OS for 90% of the people on this planet.

You poor misguided soul…

In reply to fair enough

Winblows is not the best OS ever… but Microsoft’s antitrust practices make it the best known and best marketed. You do recall that little suit against MS, do you not? The one where they were found GUILTY of breaking the antitrust laws, a.k.a. predatory business practices? Their predatory business practices are the reason they’re the best known software in the world, certainly NOT because their software is the most stable or best featured. Now that people have a choice, well… people are lemmings… they’ll walk right over the edge of a cliff if the guy in front of them did it.

:p Thanks for that little trip down memory lane. I’m not sure how many times this thread or one just like it has been posted, but I so dearly love beating people over the head with logic knowing that they will discredit or completely ignore all the facts anyway.

Hey Jessie Long Time No See

In reply to You poor misguided soul…

I hope things are going well for you and the little Miss.

I’m still dirty about you not setting up a web can and broadcasting the birth but I’ll eventually recover. 🙁 If I can continue to afford the therapy anyway. :p

Hows the job hunting going anyway? Maybe you’ll get lucky and your sisters will allow you out of IT into a [b]Real Job[/b] with reasonable hours and paid overtime instead of the rubbish that we all have to put up with working IT.

Lets know if I can help in any way.

Cheers

Col ]:)

point taken.

In reply to You poor misguided soul…

But those aren’t the only MS business pratacies. They do Human Computer Interaction reasearch and they out-source parts to independant companies to build them. It’s not good company practice to ignore the competition. Despite the law suite they just seem to work harder at doing the same thing under a diffrent name. And best dos not have to be definied as stable or best featured. MS products are feature ritch (and that casues lots of problems). Winblows can be the best OS ever, just because all the lemmings use it and it makes them happy.

You have a weird…

In reply to point taken.

concept of being “great”…

Therein lies the rub

In reply to point taken.

Commercially only a complete idiot would call it a failure, technically it’s a wall to wall f’up though. I’ve lost count of the times it’s internal inconsistencies, failures and plain design errors have forced me to produce sub-standard code or to exceed the amount of effort that should have been required to make something worthwhile that runs over it. Everyday at work when I’ve been using windows I’ve had to cope with the fact that MS’s commercial success could be my employers commercial failure. Any all things to all men technology will never meet anyones requirements, by definition it tries to get some of everyones.

P.S. in software engineering a feature is a bug it would cost too much to get rid of.

Have you used any other OS’s ?

Many of you forget

In reply to point taken.

Not all people are techies. Most users out there are non-technical AND live on a budget. MS offers a median solution. It’s cheaper and easier for the majority of people to buy a Windows box and use it than it is to buy a Mac (easier but more expensive) or to use Linux (cheaper but more difficult to learn how to use). Most of you need to step outside and get some air, then realize that not everyone has their head burried in the computer culture. They want to buy something, take it home, set it up, and know how to use it without a lifetime of study. Without Windows 95, computers would not be nearly so widespread as they are, and the information driven world as we know it would not exist except to the ‘nerds’.

Really?

In reply to point taken.

I walked into a newsagent today and had a look at their computer magazines. One XP Mag,1 Mac Mag, 3 General Computer Mags and 6 Pure Linux Mags and that is what sells in that place.

Maybe I’m missing something but I doubt it very much that there are [b]Computer Nerds[/b] hanging out at this newsagent buying all the Linux mags.

Yes I do agree with you that 95 did make PC’s more palatable way back then but now I see far too many people complaining about the shortcomings of Windows and wanting something else to use.

They are sick and tied of software that doesn’t perform as it should and is riddled with [b]Undocumented Features[/b], has no security to speak of at all and even worse they don’t actually own what they have paid for.

Can you tell me of one other product that after you pay for you don’t actually own it and can have the makers come in at any time demand its return without compensation and demand that you remove their software from your system?

From most of the MS Certified Partners meetings that I’ve gone to I’ve seen lots of pimply faced youngsters in suits telling each other just how much money they have made and how they have ripped off their customers. This type of practice [b]can not last![/b]

They are unconcerned that they have a very bad business reputation and I’ve seen plenty of them shut up shop over night and remove all the customers products that they are holding and just disappear of the face of the planet. Then open a shop 3 weeks latter under a different name and proceed to do it all again.

You may be happy to work like this but I for one am sick and tied of cleaning up the mess that they fools create and then what makes it even worse is that everyone in Commercial IT are considered as [b]Rip Offs who are out to get everything possible and are unconcerned for their customers.[/b]

I like repeat business and I treat my customers as a valuable asset not a disposable trash heap once I’ve got as much money as possible out of them.

Col ]:)

Yes Really

In reply to point taken.

Why is it then that people that still have a computer that is old, and can run a free distro of Linux CHOOSE to go and buy a new computer with the latest version of Windows on it? As more and more younger people get educated on PC’s and the various operating systems earlier in life, there may be a push towards using more Linux in the future, however, it was still Windows that brought the computer home for an overwhelming majority of the users that we have today. Without the evil Bill Gates, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Was the Model T the greatest car of all time? No, but with out it and what it brought to the table, the automobile would have remained a toy strictly for the wealthy for a much longer period.

No Really

In reply to point taken.

Marketing and distribution obviously.

As for your earlier point I was in IT before windows and none of it was home computing. You might have to thank Bill, for your career, neither I nor HAL9000, nor many many others have to. So you seem to be promoting windows out of self interest, I don’t have a problem with that at all. Just don’t expect my self interest to coincide with yours. I’ve probaly forgotten a lot over time, certainly I’ve forgotten which version of windows wasn’t chock full of faults.

Games?

In reply to You poor misguided soul…

Windows heralded in the 3D games generation on home computers. The games industry now being one of the largest in the world.

You don’t get many games for Linix or Mac. So a general PC / OS buyer who wants downtime options would go for the MS offering.

Don’t think I would be using XP (at home) otherwise….

Ok you can buy consoles – but they are in on that now as well….

Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

In reply to Games?

Windows had nothing to do with the introduction of 3D games (in fact it got in the way more than anything) and the reason most games are written to run on PCs is down to simple numbers… more hardware = more potential sales.
The 3D games explosion is down to the fact that hardware can now do the maths involved and blit the required images… and other than MS pushing new tech in DirectX for vertex and pixel shading etc.. is still nothing to do with windows.
If (and this is a big if) more developers used something like sdl to develop games (open and cross platform) then there would be more games available (hardware permitting of course) on other platforms. Loki did a brave job of porting several games to Linux.. but with so many games moving from using OpenGL to DirectX it made it considerably more difficult to do (many earlier PC games using the quake engine, for example, and using OpenGL could be realtively simply ported).. add to that lack of support for OpenGL hardware on Linux and you have a large problem (I could also mention that X is a client server windowing system so to get decent performance you need to bypass X and talk directly to the hardware via an abstracted layer…. that OpenGL now lags behind some of the DirectX technologies because everything has to be agreed by committee.. blah blah!)
Earliest 3D game I played… Driller.. on an Amstrad CPC.. using Incentives Freescape(TM) system in the late 80s

Yeah Windows drives the games industry

In reply to Games?

by making so many obsolete as they will not run on their latest version of Windows. i have dozens of games that I like but only the last 5 I have bought can be used as they are Win XP compatible and the games for the earlier M$ Windows versions will not run properly in XP regardless of how I try to tweak the compatibility mode.

Funnily I can load almost any recent version of Linux, instal Cedega and they all run perfectly. According to Bill Gates what i am seeing is some sort of illusion. Illusion or not they play great, even the latest games play better in Cedega than on XP.

Cedega

In reply to Games?

http://www.transgaming.com

Lol, posted this before I read the above reply by DE. Oh well. Here’s the site none-the-less. 🙂

BTW, DE, what distro do you use?

3D games?

In reply to Games?

Actually, Grant, you err in your statement about heralding 3D
games. One of the first 3D games available on the home
computing market was “Arctic Fox” for the Apple ][ desktop
computer before Windows was even a dream.

I won’t deny that the Windows platform still supports the
majority of desktop games, but I will also say that each new
version of Windows tended to orphan whatever games the user
already owned either until updates were made available, or, in
most cases, a new version was released, forcing you to purchase
the replacement.

Granted, this is true for most platforms, but at least one game
console and at least one computer OS have at least attempted to
maintain some form of backwards compatiblity to their
predecessors. Whether that continues or not is to be seen, but
until then, I will stick with what I use. Yes, I use Windows… for
gaming; because the games I want aren’t, yet, ported to the Mac.
But then, I don’t necessarily play the same games you do.

Port to mac!

In reply to Games?

Oi! Cedega will port games to both Linux AND Mac. Lol. I’ve not tested the Mac version, but I know of at least 2 people here that use Cedega to port games to Linux. They are also working on porting games to the PS2 and Xbox.

Linux versions I use

In reply to Games?

Currently I have Fedora Core 4 and Mandrake 10 on different machines and am waiting to get a hold of Mandrake Core 5 as neither of the above work well on my new 64 bit system, mind you the 64 bit windows does not work well on it either. When I get FC 5 I will probably put it on them all.

Re: versions

In reply to Games?

Hmm.. I’m not married to kUbuntu yet, but I found it funny that it’s touted as a newbie distro… Obviously those guys never tried to install anything to watch DVDs!! Holy kittens! Broken dependancies, Ubuntu not offering the dependancies…. In a way, I don’t really want an OS that “just works”, but come on! LOL. (I’ll be documenting Linux woes here: http://www.geeknoob.com as well as anything else (read: Novell)… If anyone has encountered an issue that has come up on there, please drop a comment!)

I still haven’t gotten sound to work, but that’s an issue for this weekend. (onboard sound… (I know, it was an x-mas present, I don’t buy mobo’s with onboard ANYthing!))

It’s also a 64-bit system… I’ll probably wind up dualbooting distros. I can look up when FC 5 is due to come out… but how are they with actually making the due date?

No really correct about gaming

In reply to Games?

Actually the Amiga brought us the first 3d games (Elite and Core something or other).

Also, it is a myth that Mac and Linux don’t have games. Mac has games ported to it and Linux either has a port so that the game will run native, or you can use Cedega (www.transgaming.com).

I play WoW just fine on my Fedora Core 4 box at home…and I have a Gentoo box that sometimes I fire up Tux racer or NWN on.

tearsong

In reply to Games?

You need xine and libdvd_css. Try:
http://xinehq.de/

Xine

In reply to Games?

Yeah, eventually I got the DVD to play last night… Not sure how to actually install drivers for sound tho… that’s a project for tonight…

Also, I had bought a MadDog Dominator (i think) FX5500 (based off ATI) – said dual monitor & Linux supported. (It also touted LCD monitor support… *scratches head over that one*) However, no Linux drivers on the CD, and there’s only 1 physical monitor port on the card. I know in XP, theres something with a setting (never actually tried this though) where it looks like you can run 2 monitors with 1 vid card having 1 port… However I don’t see that in Linux… Any ideas?

ALSA or OSS?

In reply to Games?

Are you using ALSA or OSS? That makes a difference.

Have you checked to make sure that your distro doesn’t auto mute on install? This seems to be a problem with some distros (Fedora comes to mind).

Other than that, you might need to install ALSA or OSS (depending on a few things)

apt-get alsa should get you working.

This Just Proves my point.

In reply to Games?

Microsoft listens and the other OS’s could care less. If more of the other OS makers would pay attention on to what people want. GAMES in this particualar topic. Microsoft would not be a giant. But, they are because they listen and make what consumers want. The rest of them MAC nad Linux are too busy to trying to conquest the business world when they should be focusing on little Johnny and Susie eating twinkies and playing DOOM……This is why Microsoft will always Win…….If the competitors would take the time to focus on who uses a PC and for what reasons and then attack those realms in the order of importance….starting at the home front not the business then some day we might have more offerings. But, all this bitching and moaning from most of you in here is not going to change a dang thing unless Red Hat, Novel, Mandrake, APPLE, and others figure this out….Just be glad we are not back in the day with paper and pencil…..

and I thank you

In reply to You poor misguided soul…

that’s the alpha and the omega of this discussion. I am outta here.

Windows is just a STEP

In reply to You poor misguided soul…

in the progression of OS’s. From CP/M to DOS to Windows to ???

As soon as somebody comes up with a better solution that’s “friendly” to the masses of users AND programmers, everybody will shift. Until then, many people will complain, moan, groan and try to push something, anything on us for various reasons.

If IBM would open-source OS/2 and give it away like Linux, that would be an improvement. If SUN would modify their OS to run efficiently on PCs that would rock! But SUN makes their money selling their hardware at high prices. They can’t do that and stay in business using their current business model. If they modified their business model to be a software only product, they could own the OS business in 10 years. But lose money the first five. They can’t do it.

So, until another better option becomes available, we’re stuck with windows.

Paul

In the Long Run It won’t matter

In reply to You poor misguided soul…

Yes, MS was found guilty of unfair biz practices by Justice Jackson, but the litigation was so long, so convuluted, and so many of the complaints were thrown out, that in the end MS was allowed to remain intact. There was no AT&T solution (no baby Gates).

In the long run, the desktop will become less and less important. MSs profits on its cash cow (Windows Desktop Lic) will continue to decline. As more and more consumer apps are ported in internet appliances like the iPod, Play Station, Xbox, smart phones, etc… consumers will less and less reason to fire up thier Dells,IBMs, and HPs.

Most of the future growth in the electronics world will come from the consumer side. The biz world will come later, but already devices like hand held data collection terminals are finding a bigger and bigger market.

Fiveteen years from now, everyone will wonder what the big fuss was about. Competitors like Red Hat and Suse should take note. If they put all of thier eggs into a shrinking market (the Desktop OS Market), they will go the way of Digital, Wang, Wordstar, and Zenith.

Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

In reply to You poor misguided soul…

thank god! someone actually speaking some common sense.

Help, can’t get along with CIO

In reply to Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

well, I hate to admit it, But I have had sucess just inviting them kinda’ micro-manager types out IN THE STREET, for a little Attitude adjustment session. the problem; although it works, I’m Not…think about it , is the pressure worth the $$$, well, sirs, that is for you to decide.

Microsoft suceeded….

In reply to You poor misguided soul…

You are right.Windows cannot be the best OS ever. The success of Windows lies in the hands of Bill Gates who introduced Windows and started bundling software and created a monopoly of sorts. No body could stop him.

At the right time he licensed it to every tom dick and harry companies and that started the Windows Mania among customers.

GEMS was a hot system

In reply to fair enough

I did love GEMS it was the window’s manager on the old 16 bit Atari systems running on top of TOS. I loved being able to tack together multiple systems. Or just being able to draw a circle without resorting to turtle graphics.

You are right about one thing

In reply to fair enough

You are correct about one thing, there are many good alternatives to Microsoft. It is just a pity that these companies don’t have the capital to push their marketing through. Therefore Linux & Apple will always be a niche player. Don’t mistake quality and innovation for cheap crap that has populated the marketplace on every clone PC. You must have an effigy of Bill around your house. You truly are a Windows fanboy. Do you bow down and pray to Bill waiting anxiously for the day he delivers Vista? Which is still going to be a pile of crap like every other version of windows. You are correct on the fact that Microsoft ‘steals’ everything, packages it up with their own brand label and sells it on the marketplace to make a squillion. Who cares what Microsoft sells? Bill could crap in a bag and people would buy it and think it is wonderful.

Bill could crap in a bag and people would buy it

In reply to You are right about one thing

I *thought* that was where Windows came from !!!

🙂

One more thing…

In reply to fair enough

Reading your excuse for a post makes me sick, spell check your sentences you moron.

where have you been?

In reply to fair enough

IE7 has been out for like a year now and it does have tabs, which are one-click accessible, making it far superior to Firefox. Firefox also updates itself like every two weeks and that, my friend, is a bit of a pain in the butt. It’s not germaine to this thread, but so does Adobe Flash. They should all be killed. Because their software completely stops working every few days, making it impossible to watch youtube.

Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

In reply to The answer to that one is easy!

Why is that when I see the Apple and that little leftover half bitten apple is when I’m watching a movie….
Apple is still doing the same mistake she is been doing for the last 25 years, over pricing their product and if you manage to afford one you don;t know what to do with it since 90 percent of the software/hardware out there run on windows.
Sure I hate Windows and it’s father, Father Bill but I get what I want form it and say I “I hate you” before I turn the darn thing off.
Father Bill is my dope dealer I’m hooked on his products and I don’t want see him go away.

There I said it.

Oh For Crying Out Loud

In reply to Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

What ever your smoking, ya better keep right on with it.

Any software package worth its salt is avaible for the Mac. And I
am not talking about the millions of cheezy games that have
been running around since the dark ages.

Anything that is productive is avaible for the Mac. If you want to
do serious graphics, sound and video you will see it on a Mac.
Sheez you even see windows XP running in a window on the
Mac.

So go get yourself another Bud, Start up your flying tosters and
live in your little dream world.

All of my productivity is done on a Mac G4 with 2 gig of ram.
The Athlon sits over there waiting for a customer to call me with
a million questions and I use it to verify the settings and
windows as I talk him through his problems.

My Mac customers call me every now and then to order
something.

Lee

Maybe you are on drugs

In reply to Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

I can’t name a single piece of crappy software that runs on windows that I can’t get for Mac. Even a lot of software which isn’t made for windows at all. A lot of software I can name is made superior for Mac. Tell me what software you are using which you think I can’t get for mac is superior or otherwise. Go on have a think about it, I know it is hard for you. Flying off useless comments when you don’t know jack shit, is not doing anyone any good.

You sir are an idiot

In reply to Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

What a biased statement. If you actually used a Mac, which I
doubt you ever have, you would know there are thousands of
titles for the Mac in terms of software and for total cost of
ownership, Mac’s are cheaper in the short term.

Precisely!

In reply to The answer to that one is easy!

Oh and I also always liked Ducatis! Trouble is I made the mistake of investing in a Harley and now I will never be able to afford a real bike!

what points have you presented?

In reply to All your points are valid

your arguments is based on a sales model: more people
theoretically voted for GW Bush in ought four, so he MUST BE THE
GREATEST US PRESIDENT EVER. This is 100% analogous to your
‘argument’.
What straight facts? have you ever even audited a course in basic
logic?

“Nobody would use a PC if microsoft hadn’t invented windows.”

In reply to All your points are valid

This is the statement he was debunking. Windows/microsoft in no way made the PC market. They just managed to get a competitive edge over several other competitors which eventually turned into a monopoly.

Bill

Microsoft didn’t sell anything.

In reply to All your points are valid

Actually in the beginning, microsoft made a deal with IBM to supply MSDOS for the IBM-PC for free. Because of this, microsoft got a large market share. Then when people had written for the interupts in MSDOS, they came out with windows which was NOT free. Since the old programs would not run on anything but MSDOS and because windows 3.1 at its core is an interface running MSDOS, windows became popular. Microsoft didn’t even write MSDOS, Gates bought it from another company for $50,000 dollars. Microsoft didn’t thrive because it is a great OS, it was because of timing. If someone else had gotten their OS into the IBM-PC, it would be the major O/S today.

Roger that…

In reply to Microsoft didn’t sell anything.

The someone else who would have been there if he hadn’t screwed up his appointment book was Gary Kildall, owner of Digitial Research and the inventor of CP/M (the very first OS developed for a ‘micro-cpu’ (i4004) and which he created with Intel’s blessing while he was a contractor for them.

I know that ‘Cringley’ said the price paid Seattle Micro for CP/M-86 was $50k. But I seem to recall $25k.

What I’d never heard before was that Gates/Allen shrink-wrapped it for free! Where’d that come from?

Well it wasn’t actually Free

In reply to Roger that…

But it was included in the cost of the IBM PC’s with all the other MS$ Software so the people only saw the price of the complete package and not the price of the software component of the IBM PC’s.

Many thought that they where getting something for nothing and this was pushed along by the sales people who pushed the idea that you where buying a complete package with no more to pay so quite a few people thought that the M$ software was a give away when actually IBM was paying M$ directly for it the MS DOS cost $80.00 a pop but the buyer never actually saw any price for software only the complete computer so they where under the mistaken impression that the Software was Free when it wasn’t.

Well that applied to MS DOS and Word at least there was some software that was an optional extra.

Col ]:)

You mean ‘bundled.’

In reply to Well it wasn’t actually Free

understood.

Not quite right but fairly correct

In reply to Microsoft didn’t sell anything.

When IBM was working on their PC they went to Billy Boy asked him to sign a document that he wouldn’t discuss anything he heard in the meeting and then arranged to buy or have M$ supply software for their PC’s. At the time M$ didn’t make an OS of any kind so Bill Gates sent the IBM guys to Garry Killane [I’m not sure if the spelling is correct and I can’t be bothered looking it up as it is now Old News} at DR DOS and because IBM where so used to having their own way they got a shock when Garry’s wife refused to sign the waiver without knowing first even the most basic things about what the meeting was going to be about and the IBM Legal Eagles refused to even give the briefest of outlines until the waiver was signed they wouldn’t even tell her where they where from so she threw them out.

M$ then in an attempt to save the deal that they had stitched together with IBM brought the Dirty Operating System from Sun Systems for $50,000 [though some others have mentioned a figure of $25.000 I’m not exactly sure as this was not in the companies Newsletters to their staff at the time} and bundled it with their other software at $80.00 a pop on every new IBM PC.

The Dirty OS was actually written by someone who’s name I can no longer remember and the way that it was put together was he brought a manual of [i]DR DOS or PC DOS or whatever it was called at the time but it eventually ended its life as DR DOS or to give it it’s full name Inter Galactic Digital Research DOS[/i] and then proceeded to write the code for the commands in the manual and assembled his cheap version of DOS which he called [b]The Dirty Operating System[/b] as it lacked most of the functionality of its mother but it was much cheaper so it had a good following until people could afford the real thing DR DOS or whatever it was called at the time.

Now I wasn’t at any of the meetings but as I was working for IBM at the time it was the joke of the entire Main Frame side of the business the way that the PC side was being stuck together with bailing wire and glue.

Actually Windows 3X would run on any DOS platform and actually worked better on DR DOS than it did on MS DOS as there where far more switches available to make it much more functional. Little things like using XCOPY to copy to different size Media was possible which was something that wasn’t considered as important enough by M$ to bother rewriting the code to allow. There where so many difference in the command line that it wasn’t funny as MS DOS was so limited compared to other DOS applications then available all of which ran Windows 3 X better than MS DOS.

It was M$ blind headlong development of Windows that caused the Divorce between IBM and M$. The main reason for this was that Windows was going to place such a load on the then current crop of PC’s that IBM considered it as a backward step which would cause their PC to perform much slower and cost more to produce as they would require much more memory and faster CPU’s to run as fast in Windows as they did in DOS and at the time IBM was facing some very stiff competition from the Clone side of the market which had jumped on the bandwagon and was using IBM type parts to make and sell PC’s at a much cheaper rate than IBM could afford to do. So when M$ wanted to make the cost of Hardware far more expensive the Head of the PC Division at IBM dug in his heals and refused to play. That was the first case that M$ lost but by no means the last. 😀

Col ]:)

The selling of Windows

In reply to Microsoft didn’t sell anything.

The genius of Windows is not so much the code, though you have to admit that the goal of building an OS that will allow 95% of users to add any hardware or software they want to a system is pretty audacious, no the genius was realzing that software was a commodity. Prior to Bill software was created to support hardware (the IBM example). BG has reversed that and made the reason you (a general consumer, not the highly opinionated technical people who post here) buy a computer is for the software that you use. Once you get the hardware your primary insterest is in the apps you use on it, not necessarily how many hertz it runs per second. The MS genius continues to be that they are selling their OS rather than giving it away.

To be the big, hated, evil empire, you have live like one.

In reply to All your points are valid

I remember in my former career as a computer sales person, I ounce asked some of our product reps for AST, NEC and Compaq why they were not using OS/2 when it was so much better than MS windows?? Their response was in a nutshell.. it will not sit well with Microsoft if they started to offer other OS and will loose all licensing rights. Its one thing to be the greatest because people chose you over all others and another thing to threaten your way into a monopoly. There is nothing great about being a bully or public enemy #1. Just ask the Americans. By the way.. I have a friend working for Microsoft in Seattle and she told me they work on Macs.

What licensing rights?

In reply to To be the big, hated, evil empire, you have live like one.

It is good business practice to protect your company’s intellectual property and assets. M$ obviously offered a good deal to the company you worked for, and they probably would of lost money if they pissed of M$. All about contracts. If your company you worked for had a contract with OS/2 people, then they would of probably sold PC’s with OS/2 on it.

No business should have to feel obligated to promote another business’s product for free, so it’s not really bulling or being public enemy #1, It’s about business.

Knowing your competition is also a good business practise, It’s probably to M$ benefit that the workers are using Macs.

If your goal isn’t to make your business successful, you could go out of business. All the evil stuff M$ do, keeps their business alive and successful, and every competing business has the same capacity to do evil stuff, just the same a M$.

DO this or else is not a contract.. atleast not in the free world.

In reply to What licensing rights?

DO this or else is not a contract or a deal.. atleast not in the free world. when M$ says you will not use any other OS except for our OS or you will not not be allowed to use any of our products, its an ultimatum. its an act of blackmail. Its about having the freedom to decide what you want to do with your business. its about the freedom to decide the product you want or provide the service you want. if you are an American, that term freedom should mean a lot more to you than this because your government has thousands of your people dying every year in an attempt to bring this same freedom to others all over the world. Quite ironic to see that the biggest mordern day corporate terrorists like Microsoft and Walmart are all home grown and made in America.

Close, but no cigar…

In reply to If I remember correctly

Alan Kay, Research Fellow at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) lead the development of a new concept in man-to-machine interface, which then spawned the acronym – GUI. Until then, all computers used a video interface confined to the ASCII character set.

Kay theorized that if the paradigm for user interaction could be shifted from “process” orientation (command line step-wise instructions) to that of an “object” orientation (generalized graphical icon representing the objective), then it would enable untrained users to “discover” their way to using the machine productively and more powerfully than yet imagined. In the early 80’s that was other-worldly, especially because the compute horsepower necessary to support a GUI was mini-computer class. He did it anyway on the Xerox Alto and Star workstations.

Xerox did invite the leading PC manufacturers (not software vendors like Microsoft) in to see their invention, ostensibly to effect manufacturing economies of scale to the hardware so that the concept could proliferate in the market. Xerox was rather altruistic in those days.

Among companies invited were DEC, HP and Apple. DEC said they’d already done this with their software product known as All-In-One, an early office automation/groupware suite but had difficulty getting their mini-computer users to step up to the very expensive graphical terminals that were required. HP glibly pronounced the stuff irrelavent to business because they felt that real business computers were transaction oriented and a CUI (character user interface) was optimal for constraining creative adventurism by users. That may have been the very first stupid decision HP ever made.

Steve Jobs, however, kept his own counsel and took the concept back to the hive. He was still ruminating over the failed Apple III and was looking for the next big thing. Xerox’s GUI was a paradigm shift completely consistent with his philosophy in personal computers. Sure, computers were proven transaction systems, but he was more interested in changing the world. He secretly opened his own skunk works off the Apple campus, hoisted the skull and crossed bones and eventually delivered the Lisa. The machine freaked the PC world but was too slow penetrating becuase it was just too expensive at $12,500/ea.

In the meantime, IBM finally figured out why the Apple II was encroaching on their installed base of glass houses at the Big 5 accounting firms and announced the IBM 5150 aka IBM PC (Personal Computer) in December 1981. That day instantly legitimized all PCs, but especially wintel spec machines, as legitimate business tools. THAT was the birth of mindlessness in PC platform choices.

Then in January 1984, Jobs finally got the unit price of the Lisa below $800. He called it Macintosh and the GUI got traction. And Jobs later got Kay to become his Research Fellow living on some mountain top in Santa Cruz. Wherefor art thou now, Alan Kay?

Gates&Balmer stole the GUI technology from Apple during their technology exchange on the original MS-Word project (which first shipped with the new Lisa) and cut their engineering teeth on it while they were under contract with IBM to co-develop OS/2. What they didn’t get tuned for years was the same problem that Kay had already worked out at PARC but that AT&T comletely missed in their own version (7300 PC) and Linux is stumbling around with now – orthoginality.

But that’s another story…

awesome reply

In reply to Close, but no cigar…

Thanks.

So when can you tell the other story? whats orthoginality? I have goggled it, dictionary.com-ed it, wikipidia-ed it and got nothing. Got leeks of information about quantum mechanics and logic structure and testing and this and that, but nothing on what it actually is. maybe you could post a link?

Thanks

NZ_Justice

Orthoginality

In reply to awesome reply

This is one property describing the machine<>human interface. This property refers to the degree to which humans can intuit or “guess” the flow of command sequence needed to drive the machine productively, thereby mitigating training/help.

It is a subset of Ergonomics – that universe of properties governing the human<>machine interface.

Alan Kay and his team at PARC mapped out the ergonomics of vision-capable humans<>video-capable computers. They innovated the desktop metaphor, the graphical icon as the representation for a process/tool and the mouse as a pointing device. Logitech, then a Swiss manufacturer, protyped the mouse.

Most students of computer ergonomics (me included) consider the Mac OS X GUI to be the most orthoginal, ergonomic implementation of Kay’s priciples for a personal computer to-date.

We engineer geeks called the Logitec …

In reply to Orthoginality

device a digitizer but of course it works similar to the mouse except it had field coils in it with a crosshair pointer and a magnetic or other wise reactive plotter board that went with it.

Didn’t Bell Labs give the mouse to Jobs and Co. because they couldn’t figure out what to do with it? Or am I thinking of another corporation?

At that same time in 1984…..

In reply to Close, but no cigar…

IBM introduced their first “laptop” called the convertable. It was a dinosaur at the start compared with what Zenith and Toshiba were introducing but you could not get your hands on one of those because the government and the IRS were snapping up every one the factory was putting out.

The Convertable used a weird motherboard architecture that reminded me of some of Motorola’s work on other designs. But it used a special version of DOS that was co-developed with Gates and like you said it had a GUI application that was really an overlay not an OS. But it did almost everything the MAC GUI did but very crude and simple – I wrote a batch file that would enter the current time and select the application which was called APPSEL.exe and what looked a lot like a pre-Windows GUI would boot up.

It automated my office so well that I resigned my position and told the staff that they didn’t need me anymore because any moron could run the office using the computer. And I did! But a caveman fear of microcomputers gripped the ARNG community because the Adjutant General didn’t understand computers and tried to have them banned from the system!!! Talk about Neandertals – (with two stars on their shoulders too)!

Microsoft actually wrote Apple OS

In reply to If I remember correctly

Hal 9000,

You’re correct that Xerox invented and first made use of the desktop GUI and also the mouse.

However, in the early days Steve Jobs farmed out much of the code-writing for the early Apple OS to Microsoft. Later, Microsoft and Apple split ways when Gates suggested improvements to the Apple GUI (according to his vision) which Steve Jobs would not accept.

If you can find a copy of Triumph of the Nerds (a three-part video series about the early days of personal computing by Robert X. Cringely, the 12th employee at Apple Computer, < http://www.pbs.org/cringely/ >) it will help fill in some of the details.

revisionist fantasy

In reply to Microsoft actually wrote Apple OS

wow. a fiction created by a disgrunteled drone, but, it’s the gospel
truth! You have also confused the terms WRITTEN and CONSULTED.
There is a discipline available to even a nerd, it’s called logic.

Don’t You Wish

In reply to Microsoft actually wrote Apple OS

Apple had Windows programmers over helping to code works for
the mac. And suddenly gates was doing windows. Yea!

Read up on Apple’s history.

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/

Lee

See “Close, but no cigar…” above

In reply to Microsoft actually wrote Apple OS

I saw the series on PBS and don’t remember the claim that MS coded any part of the OS. BTW, Cringley is a pen name.

I do remember the actual events in the early 80s and recall that they split because Gates used the technology (needed by MS to code the original MS-Word that Jobs wanted for the Lisa or Mac(?) launch) to co-develop OS/2.

It had to be the Mac Launch

In reply to See “Close, but no cigar…” above

Lisa was the Xerox Prototype project with the GUI and resource sharing over a 1000 networked PC with a GUI interface running on a Unix Background.

Col ]:)

Maybe…

In reply to It had to be the Mac Launch

Lisa was the progenitor of Macintosh. Both were designed and manufactured by Apple.

The Xerox machines were the Alto and the Star. I remember because, at the time, I had exclusive distribution rights to the Corvus Concept – a Motorola 32-bit processor based diskless workstation with a 15″ pivoting screen that was hardware implemented for graphics and was promised to soon look like the PARC machines. Jobs blew our plans, God love him.

Yes and No

In reply to Maybe…

Lisa was not completed before Mac was started. And Lisa was started before the infamous visit to Xerox.

Lisa was more focused on the business market. It was absurdly expensive ($10K US in 1982 dollars – whats that now?), had terminal emulators, bigger screen.

The Mac was the computer for “the rest of us”. It learned from the Lisa, but was more focussed on individual users and small offices.

James

Wes and No?

In reply to Yes and No

Howdy, James.

I wasn’t in Cupertino when Kay invited Jobs, Olsen and the HP guys. But my version was the scuttlebutt in the trades at the time. Wosniak did come to Fairbanks to share some insights with us northern geeks around that time and it jived with my story. He was the first one I ever heard say “the network is the computer.”

You seem to distinguish the two machines by their market targets. Actually, I think this segmentation was just a normal rollout plan that spanned 2 generations, i.e. Jobs would intro the product concept (a consumer priced Xerox Alto) first to the business community because his first try would necessarily involve less integrated, and therefor more expensive, components. During the next 2 years, he’d learn about what real people don’t like and correct these things in his Mark II highly integrated version – the Macinosh. Remember, Lisa went away after the Mac arrived. Lisa=$12,500; Macintosh=$800.

So, one might think they were distinct markets, but in my experience, they were always the same market – everybody who liked object orientation (Kay’s GUI interface) rather than the process orientation of the traditional command line (CUI interface).

The new Intel architecture extends these integration economies of scale into the next generation of Macs. I think this is going to be just awesome – manufacturing economies of scale comparable to Wintel, power and stability of UNIX, the Mach kernel, the worlds most powerful GUI and a business leader that is as visionary in anticipated market behavior as well as technology innovations. Lets not forget that Wintel didn’t adopt GUI, DVD, CD-ROM or 3.5″ floppies until Jobs made them standard on Apple machines.

The question is whether Microsoft hasn’t already so thoroughly exhausted the consumer market with its reputation for self-destructive software that Vista will lose it’s lemming advantage at your local Best Buy – or for that matter, can Jobs successfully adopt the Dell direct marketing model before HP does?

This ought to be real interesting, no?

cheers,
jat

thank you

In reply to If I remember correctly

*Now if I remember correctly Apple got their GUI to the market
first and were the PC to own for the illiterate computer user and
were there long before Windows hit the market with Windows.*

and beyond the history lesson: I have to tweak Windows down to
a nub at 50% higher clock rate and equal memory to get to
around 80% of the performance of my Mac OUT OF THE BOX. I
have ne’er had to dick around with OSX; 9 was somewhat like
Windowz in this regard, but most of those issues are resolved.
What actual operational arguments for ‘the best OS ever’ have
been presented here?
Comic Book Man sez, “Worst Operating system EVER”

What would be the point?

In reply to thank you

Microsoft have a massive hard to navigate web site, with a lot of information. I can leave the operational benefits of there OS to them because they know it best.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/evaluation/default.mspx

This link can tell you some benefits of the OS with out negative impacting on other OS’s but it is extremely biased towards Microsoft.

When you get into hardware performance to OS, you move away from OS, and you are looking at Intel, AMD and what ever chip-set MAC uses etc.. Then people chuck in arguments like, I run a linux OS on a p100 32 MB ram faster than an windows xp OS running on a celeron 1ghrz PC with 64 mb ram doing what I have no idea, maybe just loading up.

If you buy a game then the minimum requirement hardware jumps, then you can go into graphics cards and the amount of tweaking you have to do in any OS to get the game performing at maximum.

I run a celeron with the cpu thrashed at %100 all the time, If I move to Linux this could solve my problem, but then I have the choice to download a million Linux apps to perform task I would perform in windows and then they have to be configured, then etc… it can go on and on.

If I put Linux on my Ipod I would get more performance out of it then with the current MAC Operating System. Windows because it is not open source can not be currently be rewritten or configured to run on my Ipod but if M$ released an Ipod operating system it would probably run shit. But I just use the standard operating interface because that’s what it came with.

To go down the hardware, performance and specs path, I recommend starting a new thread and post the link in this thread so it can be found by people surfing through this thread.

NZ_Justice 😀

Oh Boy, here we go :)

In reply to If I remember correctly

Microsoft is a HUGE MEGA CORPORATION – without Windows we would be back in the stone ages in regards to worldwide connectivity. Sure, they stole code, they muscled out competition. Was it right? NO.. But, here we are. 6 out of 10 households have computers (or something like that). The internet has changed life as we know it, just as old Henry Ford did back at the turn of the century. Ford pulled shenanagins just like Microsoft in its days.

I started back in with the good ole “Trash 80″… i’ve seen it all just like many of you. Some of you have never seen a DOS machine (Native) other than the remnants with the CMD.EXE in windows. I doubt many remember the HUGE 8 inch floppy disks or when you had to boot with a floppy and insert programs the same way….back when 64 was a WHOPPING amount of RAM.

All you Unix, MAC guys out there will fight to the death saying your OS is better. Maybe it is… but thats not the point of the original post. Windows HAS become the core of the industry – right or wrong, good or bad…there is absolutely NO DENYING it. What could have been or SHOULD have been is now a footnote in history.

The question is – where are we going from here…good or bad, right or wrong?

Sure?

In reply to Oh Boy, here we go :)

Dear friend,

Some may be back “in the stone ages”, and some may be not… although some remember all these one foot disquettes and “DOS-machines” (BTW, there were never DOS- machines but various kinds and models of machines capable to execute DOS-Code, and not only Control Data Corporation – DOS code…).
What is undoubtly clear is just the opposite to what you state – the OS “Windows” is out of any industry, as it is an office tools’ OS, and is not the core of anything but just of itself. It is not MS to blame – MS made it for office use and not for any industry…
No need for “Unix and MAC gyus”… “to fight to the death” – enough is enough – and clear.

Best regards,
alx

Parc Place was a great place for me to work

In reply to If I remember correctly

I was one of the early guys at Parc Place and at AT&T – Bell Labs and eventually to AT&T services. I am a UNIX Admin today. You quite a bit of it right. Woz & Jobs were around quite a few times.

Woz was particularly welcome. I will not comment on Gates.

they left variables with TJS (my initials)…

In reply to Parc Place was a great place for me to work

hahahaha! great stories, TJS ….

Thank you for sharing… 🙂

Woz was a nice, brillant Bloke.. Jobs was Brilliant.
Billy made a lot of money.
(I never met him personally – but then, I *was* given the option
*grin*)

HAL is correct on this one

In reply to If I remember correctly

…not meaning this is the only one you are correct on (lol)…
I do believe this is where/when all of the Bill Gates bashing started? many felt/feel that he “stole” the whole concept of Windows from Apple(?). I’m not stating that I think he stole anything, I’m just remembering back when I first got into computers, how much of a hell-raising their was about Gates.

I am a fan and user of windows and prefer it over anything else (at the moment), but if the truth be known, Windows did not come first.

This has turned out to be which came first, the chicken or the egg!! I suppose this will always be an argument for some strange reason. Some just can’t accept the facts and want to put the gloves oon..or in this case, the fire proof gloves! 🙂

Anyway HAL, great reply.

Yes but…

In reply to If I remember correctly

Hal,

Your time line seems in the ballpark but…and you mentioned them, the poor decisions by Xerox and Apple is what enable Microsoft to become the power that it is. It was the pre-cursor to what everyone considers open source today, not that it shared its code with everyone, but that it allowed 3rd parties to write software for Windows. Apple waited way way too long to do that with software and of course hardware (they still haven’t done that yet have they?) So…to encapsulate – When IBM allowed clones to be made…and Microsoft allowed third party apps…Apple was sunk…. well they were slowed tremendously

And next…

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

He will tell us that Gates invented the internet.

Oh, and what do the tags of sex, girls, bondage, etc. have to do with this post?

RE and next..

In reply to And next…

Gates is not realvent to the greatness of the windows OS. And he didn’t create the internet.

Oh, and nothing they are just tags.

Well in that case

In reply to RE and next..

Why are the Tags Retracted?

Col ]:)

Cause he likes…

In reply to Well in that case

to confuse people.

I can put them back if you want.

In reply to Well in that case

and if I can remember what they were. I removed them off the thread after I posted that reply.

Why? It’s a long/short story.

Lol,

In reply to RE and next..

How can Gates not be relevant, when he’s the one that did the “dirty work” in making it (in your opinion) “great”?

Gates is nothing

In reply to Lol,

just a name. I don’t use bill gates as an OS, I don’t buy Bill Gates applications. He’s a guy who made a lot of money. good for him. The OS is far evoled since Gates was around.

Sorry you’ve lost me there

In reply to Gates is nothing

Are we actually talking about Bill Gated The person in Charge of Product Development at Micro Soft? Or is there some other Bill Gates around who has made heaps of money off the backs of others and run them all into the ground?

When MS lost its Anti Trust Case Billy boy had to resign as CEO of MS and that job ended up with Steve Balmer and Billy Boy was put back in charge of Product Development so who exactly do you think gets all the kudos for 2003 in all its forms and will no doubt be held responsible for Vista or is that Visa when it eventually gets released in a [b]Beta Form for sale to the General Population?[/b]

You may not use a OS named Bill Gates but here you are pushing that Windows is so great and it is Bill Gates who is in charge of developing it so what’s in a name Windows could just as easily be called Bill Gates version 10 or Vista after all a Rose by any other name would still smell like a Rose and Windows by any other name would still be a second rate OS full of bugs that constantly need to be plugged.

I vividly remember the 2003 ES launch and being told that this was the best strongest OS that MS had ever built and was so secure that it was then impossible to break. Of course 2 weeks latter the first Hot Patch was released for it but they obviously didn’t know about this problem when they where attempting to brain wash us all as to just how secure it was did they? 😀 😀 😀

Col ]:)

My Bad! Sorry

In reply to Sorry you’ve lost me there

They are the same person. I’m just tired I guess.

I got nothing.

And next…

In reply to And next…

He will tell us theat Bil Gates PERSONALLY invented the PC, and – well computing in general. He will most likely also state that networking would be impossible without MS, and that MS is a great thing for the internet. He already stated that there would be no PC’s unless MS had come to our rescue.
As far as I know, BG personally invented 4 bit FAT, which immediately went into obsolescence because it was too small. He completely missed the net, because he’d much better like if we used the MS Network which was part of the DOS-shell W/95.

In the W/95 welcome pages MS use the wording “upgrade from OS/2 to W/95”, which made me first roll on the floor laughing, and on and second though made me feel very sorry for the millions of people beliving such stuff.

I usually don’t pick on spellings, grammar and such things in forums. But it is noteworthy, that these MS fanatics always write everything in one long sentence without any punctuation, and every second word is misspelt.

rgds
Peter

I have nothing against Linux.

In reply to And next…

Yes my spelling and grammar are crap.

I just recently discovered the spelling function of the Google toolbar.

They don’t have a grammar option yet.

The post isn’t about Bill Gates and what he did or didn’t do.

AS far as I have been made aware of, there is no linux\unix application that aren’t also made avalible for windows OS.

My skill is not gramma, if yours is, just point out my mistakes and I will correct them.

Who mentioned Linux ?

In reply to I have nothing against Linux.

I didn’t.
It is impossible to unlink Bill Gates and Windows, ‘everybody’ knows who he is. Who knows who’s the boss of IBM, or Oracle? Ask anybody in the street if they can mention the boss of MS and Google, and they’ll mention Gates.
He’s ‘Chief Software Architect’, he designs the stuff, the rest are just servants.

The Best OS Is……

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

….the one that works for you.

I’ll buy that for a dollar!

In reply to The Best OS Is……

🙂

Then you probably won’t be using windows

In reply to I’ll buy that for a dollar!

I doubt you can buy it for a dollar (not legally anyhow).

I have to concede this point in your argument. I do keep coming back to windows. I play with Linux alot, use it for a few things, andreallylike some of the community philosophy behind it. But when it comes down to it, when I need to just get things done, and quickly. I always wind up back on my Windows Box.So you may have a bit of a point there.

What do you mean by ‘best’?

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Best as in what? Greatest as in what?

Maybe you should have said “Nobody would use a PC if Microsoft wouldn’t have ‘invented’ MSDOS”. The IBM PC and compatibles got the big share of the market not with Windows in it, but DOS. So maybe DOS should be named the greatest OS ever.

Maybe because of your ‘childhood accident’ are you uncapable of accomplishing a thing in Linux. I’m only 34 and have done quite a lot with it, being the only OS my job computer (this was a personal choice of mine).

Mac is not Windows. Gnu’s Not Unix.

What did the internet run on? Ever get to see the Unix-like login when connecting to the internet, when you used to use Trumpet and Winsock? Guess you don’t remember that. Anyways, Winsock came about in 1993, ten years after the Internet came into the civilian domain.

Whether an application is worth using is pretty subjective. How many applications in Linux do you know that are not ‘worth’ using? Oh, I forgot, you’re still not done yet with your lifetime to know…

I agree that you are trying to start something here. I know that you can’t be as superficial and empty as your post seems to show. You should know better that that. But I also could not resist a reply. That Windows is the most used right now, that it has been stuffed down our throats for better or worse, it’s true.

You may call it the greatest, or the best, but please specify. The best selling? Or great as in the Roman Empire?

It’s my blind ignorance and limited wizdom

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

In my finte wizdom, I thought that, becuase this was a windows forum, I would have evrey one agreeing with me (of course that is never the case). I like linux and am keen to give it a try, I’ve actualy been trying to pay for linux (how about that), but the linux I want is not for sale anymore in my country (NZ) (ten software releases only, how slack is that). It’s avalible in other countries but they wont ship here (bastards). I know how secure and stable and fast unix\linux can be, but it is not windows (there is some big doc on “linux is not windows” you can find a link too it here in the TR, it’s in another thread). I work with windows and there products every day, so windows is virtualy sholved done my throat, and in my older years I have learned the art of acceptance. and there for, I can blindly say that windows is the best OS every, but I can’t clarify what best is.
I say it’s the best OS ever cuz I use it every day along with millions of other people in the world, check out http://www.microsoft.com for a plug on why windows is so great.

Better use of neurons

In reply to It’s my blind ignorance and limited wizdom

Now that I read the “bullying and discrimination and harassment in forums” thread, I know I can’t expect more than mindless comments from you (although your post alone does a good job at it, too). Thanks for saving me the effort… I have better uses for my neurons.

First time I’ve agreed with you

In reply to It’s my blind ignorance and limited wizdom

Blind and limited. Do you also admit you are limiting yourself, that you are donning your blinkers each morning ?
Why ?
Do you like being ignorant ?

You could get several distributions of linux, without even trying too hard.
Go buy the book Linux for dummies and you get one with it! I did. Got me a job along with my other experience then I got two solid years on the platform, doing something real with it. Not hard all you have to so is get off your arse.

And I thought I could be harsh on me.

In reply to First time I’ve agreed with you

ouch. this might interest you.

https://www.auldhouse.co.nz/content/default.aspx?id=c3716cbe-05c4-481d-b6ea-71f890d986be

I admit I’m just to darn lazy and I like easy. Windows is easy. being easy can make windows the greatest OS ever.

But Windows isn’t easy

In reply to And I thought I could be harsh on me.

It’s a lot of work in constantly patching locking down and whatever else you have to do to keep it even part way secure and working in some semblance like it’s supposed to. 🙁

At every MS [b]Certified Partners[/b] meeting that I attend I’m always told that I’m expecting way too much from Windows as I started on a Unix platform and I keep comparing Windows to Unix even the MS Techs tell me this so at the very least they accept that Windows doesn’t suit everything and really is only for the Desktop where you have a safe environment behind a [b]safety blanket[/b] not of MS making. :p

Anyway what version of Linux do you want I’ll get you a copy sent to NZ without raising a sweat and if you like you can pay for the postage and blank Cd’s. 😀

Col ]:)

How is windows easy ?

In reply to And I thought I could be harsh on me.

Have you ever written an application and watched memory dribble out of the air vents as it runs and tried to find the leak. Have you upgraded and watched your code break because ms thought it would be a good idea to revamp something that had nothing to do with the application you are writing. Have you ever sat down and tried to find out why every now and then for some reason best known to itself your wonderfully coded beautifully designed super duper app falls on it’s arse with an access violation. I don’t find it easy at all. Things that shouldn’t be easy such as picking up and running foreign code on the fly are, things that should be such as displaying the content of a table in a grid are extraordinarily painful.
Have you used MS flex grid component, it auto justifies text by CELL based on whether the first character is a digit so you get crap like this

Location
My House……
…..51 MyRoad

Now who f’ing designed that, who QA’d it. I’d be upstairs with management for tea and biscuits and if made that dumb a mistake and the customer saw it.

It might be easy to use, it’s certainly familiar, but making something useful out of it is way harder than it should be. This means everything that you like about it gets harder and harder to do, costs more and more and performs worse and worse.

Just think of this Tony

In reply to How is windows easy ?

[b]VISA[/b] is coming and you’ll have a whole new series of problems and lots of code to rewrite because the so called [b]”Software Engineers at M$”[/b] have messed the entire thing up again. 🙂

Doesn’t the job security that M$ gives you make you happy? You just know that you’ll be producing sloppy code to work on a sloppy OS that really never had a place on the desktop in the first place. IBM had it right when they went through that messy divorce with M$ all because of Windblows. 😀

Col ]:)

Can’t wait. I’ve a total

In reply to Just think of this Tony

rewrite to .NET achitecture and C# coming up as well, though to be honest that will probably make the task of coping wth any impact from Vista, 2003 Server and MSSQL 2005 a bit easier, in that it will all be new and I won’t have a lot of compatibility issues to deal with.
Expecting to go a tad greyer in the next six months or so though.

Tony you might get a laugh out of this one

In reply to Can’t wait. I’ve a total

On the Friday Yuk I posted a link to a MS article where MS is pushing the .Net into Financial institutions.

I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry when I read it. 😀

Col ]:)

They MS are going into direct competition

In reply to Can’t wait. I’ve a total

with my firms american division now. We do tax software for accountants. They aren’t the most computer literate bunch I’ve ever met, but they are tax literate and waiting for service pack one so the can file their clients returns is something they aren’t having.
Not to mention it bundling up all their client’s financial details and posting it to ms so they can figure out what when wrong.

and someone has to mention…

In reply to How is windows easy ?

MFC? arrgh.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve read, re-read, and read again an MSDN article that’s telling me that this object should do what I’m expecting it to do and its not doing it becuase you need to init another objects member var to some other CASTED object you didn’t think you needed becuase it has absolutely nothing to do with you trying to get done.

If you understood what I just said then you’re a natural for MFC. Go for it.

For the arguement that Windows is the best OS. No. Not even close. Having supported all three in my time OS9.4 was probably the best OS (though only a little less buggy then MS ME/98/98se[it’s direct competition]).

Being a fan forever of the command line I’m far more prone to toss my hat in the Linux circle for best OS(Mandrake for install and ease of use, RH for compatibility). Yes, there is a very steep learning curve to it but, should you get into trouble, you can always ‘man -k whatever’ and look it up.

I’ve gone farther down two roads I guess I shouldn’t have.

Windows OS best? No. Greatest? Only with one qualifier – Distribution. Greatest distro. That’s it.

MFC

In reply to and someone has to mention…

Mother F***ing Crap
Have you read the .NET CLR spec
Upcasting, Sidecasting and Downcasting are the terms they use, all under the common umbrella of Access Violation,I should think. Learn from their mistakes don’t they.

Side casting very useful, the farmyard animals explanation of polymorphism.
For our next trick
A barking sheep !

Suppose upcasting is useful for a mute swan though.
LOL

BUY Linux??

In reply to It’s my blind ignorance and limited wizdom

Wait. Why would you want to BUY something you can download for FREE? The only distro’s I’ve had trouble getting are the Enterprise versions. And those are ment for businesses, not personal use.

Yes buy linux

In reply to BUY Linux??

If you can provide me with a link to where I can download the linux kit, I wanted to buy, see http://playstation2-linux.com/. then I’ll go ther and download it.

OH now I see

In reply to Yes buy linux

You don’t actually want a copy of Linux but a games version of Windows to run on a Play Station which is what Windows really excels at being a games platform.

Yes I do agree that in that case Windows is the Ultimate as it will play games all day long and only run into a little bit of trouble when you load something new that corrupts the various drivers and requires a reload. 😀

But that is the game makers fault not Windows per say.

The reason that you can not get that particular version imported into NZ is to do with copyright issues not anything else as Sony has launched Legal Action against this particular Distro and things are being held up until that action is settled.

Col ]:)

http://wwwnew.mandriva.com/en

In reply to OH now I see

I don’t think windows or MS are involved in the Sony PS2 Linux Dev kit. And I don’t think I would be interested in a windows dev kit for Sony ps2. bloodshed dev c++ is a decent enough tool to explore game development in Windows. And if I had the hardware I would run a Linux OS. I can get a copy of Linux no problem (have a peer who is heavily into Linux).

Have you heard of mandriva? from their site you can buy Linux for 44,90 euros. but because it’s open source, it looks like you can get it free if you download the latest fedora.

Mandriva is the old Mandrake Linux

In reply to http://wwwnew.mandriva.com/en

They have reorganized and gathered another Open Source company into the fold and changed their name.

The good thing with them however is that they have a massive Data Base of available programs that you can access if you wish to join up with them. Last time I looked it was about $45.00 US per month to be a short term member and while it is possible to get most of the applications elsewhere at the old Mandrake Club it was all organized and laid out so you could easily find things.

I think that their latest is something like 10.1 or 10.3 but essentially it’s the same as the Mandrake version but just with a new name on the Cd’s. The desktop version is free to download but the Enterprise Version you’ll have to buy it’s capable of running a 2K CPU Blade Server which is something that Windows can not support.

As a Product Partner I have access to all their software and it’s incredible although mostly used in Europe.

Turbo Linux on the other hand is being developed in the Asian Countries and is their attempt to answer MS Windows currently it’s not available for download but from the trial version that I’ve got it looks interesting.

Col ]:)

A little off topic

In reply to Mandriva is the old Mandrake Linux

I know this might be a lttle off topic but while you guys are here. I would like a copy of mandriva linux cause i use to use mandrake and really like it, but I am unable to find a copy I can download that is for my 64 bit processor. Can you guys help me out?

Currently it’s not on any of the US Linux Sites

In reply to Mandriva is the old Mandrake Linux

The latest that I’ve found is 10.1 on Planet Mirror.

But if you are willing to splash out and pay the grand total of 5.00 Euros you can download the 32 & 64 Bit versions direct from Mandriva Store at

http://store.mandriva.com/product_info.php?cPath=117&products_id=285&osCsid=caa50b00585572a166765093ed5fa190

A more through search of the European sites may reveal a download site but honestly for 5 Euros I wouldn’t bother.

Col

Mandriva download sites..

In reply to Mandriva is the old Mandrake Linux

http://wwwnew.mandriva.com/en/downloads/mirrors/2006iso

the mirror list for the latest version free download, in both x86 [ ia32 ] and 64 bit

If it is based on Linux…

In reply to Yes buy linux

it MUST be available for download. Period. That’s what open-sourced means. Any derivative works MUST be available for free.

This doesn’t mean they have to make it easy.

Try calling them, saying you want to dl it. See what they say. If they won’t let you, you have grounds to go back to the open-source community, Linus Torvald included, and raise holy hell.

RE: If it is based on Linux…

In reply to If it is based on Linux…

“…That’s what open-sourced means. Any derivative works MUST be available for free….”
This is not exactly a true statement. I checked the link posted and the kit contains hardware and software. The software pack contains two discs; Disc 1 includes the Sony proprietary works and Disc 2 contains all of the 3rd Party programs, including the Linux distro, with various license structures. The Sony software is designed to run in a Linux Environment, but is not Open Source and is not released under any Open Source license. The Sony SDK is not a derivative work; it is designed to run on the Linux kernel, big difference. Here?s a quote from http://www.linux.org/dist/index.html, ?With time, individuals, university students and companies began distributing Linux with their own choice of packages bound around Linus’ kernel. This is where the concept of the “distribution” was born. Today, creating and selling Linux distributions is a multi-million dollar business??

One can also purchase commercial licenses from many Open Source programs, MySQL for one, and then sell any software created using the MySQL distro for a profit and not release the source. Open Source does not automatically equal free depending on the license structure used for distribution of the created software.

Hope this clears this up a bit for you as far as distributions are concerned.

That’s what I get for not reading…

In reply to RE: If it is based on Linux…

I hadn’t really read the site (too much to do!), and had assumed that it was JUST the Linux OS, but on a PS. Meaning just the Linux code he wanted. Not the proprietary stuff built to run on it.

Also, you aren’t really buying the software per say, when purchasing Open Source. You are buying licenses for support, etc. They make their bread and butter on providing a service. Not the software. Sure you can pay for support for Linux, but if you wanted just the OS, you can just download it or just pay shipping costs to have a CD sent to you.

It was my understanding, that if you take code under the GPL (GNU?) license, any derivative code had to be published under the same license… Meaning that, if you took Ubuntu, opened it up, created Ubuntava (or something), then proceeded to share it with others, sure you can charge whatever you like. But the code HAD to be made available to the public without cost.

If you created a picture using Gimp, the pic itself does not have to be Open Sourced, but if you made “Pimp” editing Gimp source code, it would. (Hence the bone of contention with Sony DRM being based off another Open Sourced package. Has that been to court yet?)

Why pay for Linux

In reply to BUY Linux??

I use the 7 CD Mandriva 2006.0 Powerpack version, not the free 3 CD version. But if I tell you why I pay for it, I’ll have to kill you.

Reasons why I have paid in the past

In reply to Why pay for Linux

I want a copy and my slow dial up connection is such that I do not want to wait 4 months to download the ISO files; and none of the local shops carry the Linux mags with the discs that have the free copies – some of the very few disadvantages of rural living

One of the biggest advantages or rural living is that the locals think a drive by shooting is hunting rabbits from the back of a ute; they don’t understand why someone would buy a rock as the paddocks are full of them; the only coke they know is a drink that comes in a red can; and the closest thing to police brutality is the local copper refusing to buy YOUR choccies for school fund raiser because he has already bought from half of your mates.

Quote:

In reply to Reasons why I have paid in the past

> “I do not want to wait …”

Well, that’s more of a personal issue. I just waited a week and a half to download a game. 😛

Windows is King

In reply to It’s my blind ignorance and limited wizdom

No matter what anyone says, I am pretty sure they have used windows one way or the other; heck entire economic sectors depend on it. Not counting the millions of people that have jobs today and can support their habits, families or whatever cause of Windows – Billy may not be the best programmer or IT guy out there but he sure is one heck of a business man – careful here he just might buy out your neighborhood

Not for sale

In reply to Windows is King

Besides I doubt he’d want it. SOme of the guys who live in my street are not the sort of people he normally assiciates with!
LOL

Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

In reply to Windows is King

Actually Bill Gates is a convicted criminal, as he was majority owner, CEO and more of Microsoft when they were found guilty of misuse of a monopoly.

Microsoft were better marketeers than f.inst. IBM. Their marketing genius were that the bullied OEM’s into deals requesting them not to install competiting OS’s, if they wantet to install Windows at all.
Later it was changed so OEM’s were not allowed to sell a PC without an OS, if they wanted to install windows. This happened about the time market penetration passed 80%. When IE passed the same percentage development of IE died, only to be restarted when Firefox became a noted and better alternative.

Monopolies NEVER were any good. Read about the timber and railroad barons, Standard Oil, IBM, Ma’Bell and the rest.

Actually Bill Gates is a convicted criminal

In reply to Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

He was also busted for possesion of weed.

Here is anti dope commercial you’ll never see:

Bill Gates being a poster boy for how if you use dope,you’ll never get anywhere.

Most likely

In reply to Actually Bill Gates is a convicted criminal

He didn’t inhale. 😀

If I remember correctly I heard that somewhere else previously. :p

Col ]:)

Trust Me! I would never lie to you.

In reply to It’s my blind ignorance and limited wizdom

Common dude! Like Windows has never told anybody a flat out
lie.

What do you think they are going to say on their site. Buy us and
get a screaming ulcer from trying to deal with it.

Lee

Yes, it is…

In reply to It’s my blind ignorance and limited wizdom

Dear friend,

You do a bad favour to your favourites. I quote:
-“…I know how secure and stable and fast unix\linux can be, but it is not windows”. Oh, X is worse than Y becase Y is not X! Good Gracious!
– “…I can blindly say that windows is the best OS…”. If it is “blindly” then it is probably not true..
– “…I can’t clarify what best is”. You can’t clarify but you classify! Oh, Lord!…

Are all Windows fans STARTing to TURN OFF their minds? I hope not!

Best regards,
alx

The major problems with your contentions

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

First you state that nobody would use a PC. Lots of people did using DOS and there were also UNIX workstations. I used to teach in DOS and there were plenty of people using it. The thing that changed was the price of PC’s. A PC costing 10K was NOT going to end up in someone’s home. In 1998, my work bought me a PII400 for $1700. Now you can get a P4 for $400.

What do you think put them in homes, being affordable or being easy? This completely invalidates your first assumption.

Second, just because something is popular does not make it the best. OS2/warp was faster and more stable, but MS was better at MARKETING so they got the market share.

When you get out in the job market, you will realize that this is just FUD.

Look at specialized systems. High end graphics are done on linux. Ever hear of a movie called “Shrek?”

High end graphics have been on MACs for well over a decade.

High end CAD stations have been on Unix workstations for decades.

AOL users that are looking to buy a clue, are on windows systems because they can click on a pretty picture and it will USUALLY work for about a year and then needs to be formatted because it is so corrupted by viruses and malware.

Also remember, there would BE no web if wasn’t for Unix and unix protocols for communications. Can you imagine a web run on netbuoy?

If a MAC is just as easy, how do you claim Windows is better?
If you have never sat at a linux desktop, how can you claim Windows is better?

Logic, what a fleeting thing….. ;\

Yeah my contentions are pretty lacking.

In reply to The major problems with your contentions

I can’t afford a high end graphics MAC and I can’t afford the equipment used to make the movie shrek and I can’t afford a UNIX setup or CAD software and I don’t no any one who can afford it (I don’t get out much, I spend all my time in the TR site).

The US guv agency’s run Linux\UNIX based servers and apps, as far as I know(and i don’t), they are a big UNIX\Linux power house.

I can’t even afford a better PC (If I could I would and I would also buy windows pro OEM edition). So If I had lots of money (if I was bill gates) I would have all the cool stuff you mentioned and I would love it. I would start a thread in the mac section, the greatest OS ever without a doubt.

Maybe I think windows is best OS ever, because I can relate it to being a common mans OS. Common meaning not very Linux-wise. Maybe even call it the people’s OS. 😉

Love that word “contentions”, its a very cleaver word. nice. I’ll have to start a speech with it one of these days, something like This “Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, It is my contentions that… ” or “Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen I will be presenting to you my contentions… ” but I’ll have to work on the grammer heaps to get it to sound right maybe….
🙂

Actually that’s the funny thing

In reply to Yeah my contentions are pretty lacking.

Every Distro can run on less hardware than XP Pro as it has a much smaller footprint and far lower overheads in system resources.

My NB has a dual Boot setup one with XP Pro and it’s a P4 3.2 GIG with 1 GIG of RAM and an 80 GIG HDD. XP Pro works OK on it but Debian flys on the same hardware and the added advantage is that when you buy XP you only get an OS with some things like IE and Media Player thrown in but with the Linux installation you get just about all you’ll ever need there is always a WP, D Base, Spread Sheet, Graphics Program of some description and depending on what you chose to install you can have just about anything that you want from CAD to CAM.

The only applications that are special loads are things like the CI programs used by Industrial Light & Magic and places like that. There are also specialized programs compiled for different specialized business like banking and they generally are something that you have to shell out for but again they are very specialized software and not required by 99% of the users.

But once you’ve loaded XP Pro you then need to start loading all your other software and that can be time consuming if you use a high end workstation but at the same time when you install just about any version of Linux you get all of that included and it generally takes less time to install than XP requires by itself.

I have an old AMD 450 here that was running XP Pro and the owner traded it in because it was way too slow I’ve loaded Debian onto it and it’s as fast as his new 2800 AMD unit with 2 GIG of RAM and this is only a K 6 2 450 with 128 MEG of RAM and a 12 GIG HDD. 😀

The look on his face when he first saw me boot it after the Linux install up was priceless. :p

Col ]:)

re specialised systems

In reply to Actually that’s the funny thing

used by Production companies are in reality nothing more than server boxes, with the rendering engine they are using for the movie.

with 20 low end consumer boxes as workstations and 100 servers for rendering, you can make a 2 hour movie video sequence in about a year..the audio and synch will take another 4 months, on one server box.

the slowest thing is the rendering of the video sequences, most good raytrace rendering engines will take about a day per frame per cpu.
raytrace giving the best quality output.

a preview can be done at lower settings, in about 1/16th the time, so you can verify that the look is right.

No logic

In reply to Yeah my contentions are pretty lacking.

IF you are short of money, and that’s no shame, why then don’t you stop shelling out hundreds of dollars to Bill Gates, when you can get the same stuff for free or at very low prices in the Linux/OpenSource world ?
Then you could spend your money on fast hardware, vacations or a wild night out, instead of giving them to Bill Gates.

rgds
Peter

and don’t forget

In reply to No logic

your mountain dew, your pizza, and red bull!

Now be nice JD

In reply to and don’t forget

this guy comes from New Zealand where men are men and sheep are scared. If he actually went with Linux he would have more money available to paint the legs of the sheep that kick red so he wouldn’t get kicked as often. Maybe he could even afford those Welles so he could first stick those red painted legs into them. 😀

Col ]:)

Be nice?

In reply to Now be nice JD

why start now? :O

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Be Nice

In reply to Be nice?

It would be a change. :p :O

Col ]:)

Try it, you’ll like it

In reply to Yeah my contentions are pretty lacking.

First Mr. Justice, which is more enjoyable. Making noise in search of “fun” like underage was, or posting something that you put thought into and having people around the WORLD read what you put and put their posts either correcting you or agreeing with you.

Second, your post should have said “I love Windows, and here is why”. Never confuse YOU LIKING something with it being even remotely good. The two don’t always go together, so it gives you more credibility if it is your “contention” that you like this and then spout what you like about it.

If this is about what you like, then the only place that leaves your readers is to agree OR offer alternatives that you may like more, in which case you will accidentally LEARN something! 😀 Of course you will always get someone come in and just tell you your and Id10t and attack you without any foundation, but these people are easily torn down and discarded.

Take public speaking classes. When/If you get a job, never turn down ANY free training that your employer offers you. EVER. I don’t.

And yes, a word like Contention sounds better than “I think”. People don’t CARE what you think, but a contention is a challenge to someone and it gets them listening.

Try a linux install, select the “workstation” install and in an hour you will be on-line AND have a nice gui to run your computer with.

As it is in most cases a FREE download, AND runs with less system requirements, which option is REALLY the “common mans” OS? Which is better for people just starting out, one that runs nicely on a five year old system or one that will run like a DOG on a five year old system?

I am going to try it.

In reply to Try it, you’ll like it

I would have to say it is more enjoyable “posting something that you put thought into and having people around the WORLD read what you put and put their posts either correcting you or agreeing with you”. But I am upside down on the bottom of the world in a country full of sheep (which can be very distracting), that at least should let me off lapses in thought. 😀

I learnt my lesson there, but check this out

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6239-0.html?forumID=79&threadID=188279

statykserver gave a good answer.

I will be downloading Debian, But I can’t download Debian at work, it’s like massive, and I all ready got into trouble for costing my org a lot of money by exceeding their bandwidth limit. Their limit is five gigs, I exceed the limit by 19 gigs (9 gigs uploaded, 12 gigs downloaded the other four gigs was org wide internet usage.) and we have corporate ADSL so it cost heaps. I also didn’t see any of what I downloaded, the machine got confiscated for an investigation which I was later cleared off. But I will download it on home ADSL, which is not as fast as work and after a gig they limit me to dial up speed, but I don’t get charged for excess downloading.

I am already a proficient public speaker, what lets me down is the not thinking part, I always seem to be ready to put my foot in it and dig myself a nice big hole.

Well a couple of things here

In reply to I am going to try it.

First you don’t need to download all 15 ISO files for Debian the first 5 should be enough.

Secondly and much more importantly while Debian is my first choice in a Nix it’s isn’t the ideal Beginners Linux as it is mainly geared for the user who knows Linux inside out. Part of the reason for this is that it is written by Linux users for Linux users and lacks quite a lot of the bells and whistles that come with other distros. It’s also harder initially to use but once you can use it you’ll never want to work with any form of Windows again.

As a beginning tool I would try one of the Live Linux’s like Knoppix all you need do is drop it in a CD ROM drive and have the computer boot from the CD/DVD drive it will give you the ability to read the HDD/s in the computer and work with Linux without damaging your Windows installation and also give you the ability to save anything that you produce on the Linux Platform to any form of Media Storage that you wish to use. The only down side is that using something like this you are limited to what is on the CD but even that isn’t much of an issue as the applications will cover 99.9% of most peoples needs.

Col ]:)

expensive?…

In reply to Yeah my contentions are pretty lacking.

[quote] I can’t afford a high end graphics MAC and I can’t afford
the equipment used to make the movie shrek and I can’t afford a
UNIX setup or CAD software and I don’t no any one who can
afford it… [/quote]

Let’s see here…
1) You can now buy a Mac Mini for about $499… maybe not the
strongest Mac, but capable of running more than 95% of all Mac
software.
2) See above. Mac OS X runs on Unix underpinnings.
3) Granted, Shrek and others were created using massive banks
of Linux machines, but a movie entitled “Sky Captain and the
World of Tomorrow was created on a desktop Mac before being
reborn on a bank of Linux machines.
4) I know of several CAD and 3D design applications that are
freeware.

So what’s this about being too expensive?

expensive for me.

In reply to expensive?…

1) I can’t afford a mini mac. I can’t afford mac software. I have MS Office 10 for MAC but no mac to use it on and it cost me the price of shipping which was $20 US, got it through a work deal.
2) but if I could I would. I think I mentioned that.
3)Still can’t afford the mac that built “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”
4)I was thinking “Auto CAD”, but hey there are free ones.

NOW YOU COME CLEAN

In reply to Yeah my contentions are pretty lacking.

See, I told you as it was – in the previous post i wrote. Now, stop going on about not having enough money to buy a mac. You don’t have to buy the best and most powerfull – iBooks are great too. There are choices. The worst scenario is saying that something is best (knowing it is not true) simply because that is what I have. understandable, yet sad.
I know, we all do it and that is why we should be reminded of it

I get it

In reply to Yeah my contentions are pretty lacking.

I suspected from the top of the thread that you were here merely
to stir it up; your ‘contentions’ are too stupid and ill-conceived
not for this to be the case. Here’s another, donno if it’s a
‘cleaver’, or even a beaver cleaver word or not: your arguments
fail to argue; they are but instigatorial, in a childish mein.
Does that cleav yer beaver?
You’d have to work on your grammar, your spelling and your
punctuation, and then some: Noto Bene, Exemplo Gratio: ‘it is’,
singular, does not match the plural ‘contentions’. We learn that
in about the second grade of grammar school.
Windows is absolutely for the common man if you are the
exemplar of ‘common man’, this must be true.

I don’t think you do.

In reply to I get it

but that’s my opinion. my thread isn’t about grammar or spelling or going to grammar school. They didn’t have grammar schools when I was In primary. If they did I would currently be a grease monkey. I am not arguing that Windows is the best OS ever, Microsoft can take that argument, it’s their OS. I am just saying it is. I’m not saying the other operating systems are bad or crap, just saying that windows is the best. Your spelling is too hot either, while trying to use cleaver words (instigatorial) it would help if you spelt them right (that way I can look them up in dictionary.com to see what they mean). So it doesn’t cleave my beaver. And in your reply, are you putting in an argument against windows being the best or against me. Your ‘contentions’ are not very clear.

JD I don’t know if you where around at the time

In reply to The major problems with your contentions

But back in the early days we used to have one big Main Frame and [b]Dumb Terminals[/b] on the desktop. Of course that was all run on Unix back then.

Now the new technology is allowing the [b]Dumb Terminal[/b] to make a comeback in the form of [b]Thin Clients[/b] new name for the same thing but I’m betting we will not be seeing too many Windows 2003 Enterprise Servers driving Thin Client technology. Mainly because that OS just isn’t scalable enough for the purpose.

But even a desktop version of Linux will run those big servers easily and it only gets better when you apply an Enterprise version of Linux as it’s leaner and meaner than the desktop version.

And from my limited observations the code is better put together as well requiring less clock cycles to do the same thing. That is something that I’ve noticed with people who program for Windows the code is sloppy in comparison to the code produced by people who are more at home in the Unix/Linux platform than what the MS only programmers are capable of producing. Actually it was MS that made me walk away from punching in code as I found it way too frustrating trying to get applications to run on Windows 3X way back then and that was essentially DOS I feel sorry for those who have to write code for things to run on XP and it’s ilk.

Could be part of the reason why programmer’s are those locked away and never allowed out in polite company as they are always the people who look as if they have just escaped from jail and the [b]Nice People[/b] never feel safe around them. 😀

Col ]:)

hey!!!!!

In reply to JD I don’t know if you where around at the time

I resemble that remark!!

😀

That is what I walked into at my job

In reply to JD I don’t know if you where around at the time

One SCO box running on a PentiumPro 200, feeding out to a bunch of dumb terminals over an all serial “network”.

Big concentrators at each location, with one line for each terminal going in one concentrator at the remote location and coming out another concentrator in the central location.

Imagine if you will, the wiring mess I walked into, as we had six locations, each with a minimum of 10 terminals and 5 printers, EACH with their own line. fun fun fun.

No email, not ethernet, and only about 10 PC’s, all on sneaker net. (Remember the old Acer 486’s in the ugly gray cases? That and Packard He11’s. brrrrrr)

Now the terminals are gone and we use terminal emulators on the PC’s to access the same legacy systems AND internet AND email and many other things that just weren’t available at the time.

come a long way, baby! B-)

Remember it? I lived it!

Me too, and I changed it….

In reply to That is what I walked into at my job

We had Novell, TokenRing and an AS/400, mixed dumb terminals and pc’s running OS/2. Nice thing to manmage, few errors and rock stable.
Due to corporate descision this was ‘upgraded’ to NT, ethernet, and lots of PC’s. Support staff was doubled in 5 months, number of servers quadrupled, network changed from 4Mbit to 10Mbit to 100Mbit, and costs skyrocketed.

3 years later we dumped all PC’s for ad thin client Citrix based solution, and I woul NEVER even dream of doing a PC based installation again.

I too make a living off Windows, but we don’t have it at home. Here the solution is Mac and Linux in a network, it runs by itself with very little effort.

Funny you should mention that

In reply to That is what I walked into at my job

I have a brand new Stallion Network System here only been out of the box a couple of times when I handed it to some wet behind the ears newbie and told them to setup a network. 😀

It plugs into a ISA Slot and has a 15 terminal com port interface lovely thing that it is. 🙁

But I did the right I did copy the 5.25 to 3.5 Floppies. 🙂

One day I just might find someone who can find a use for it. Its Microprocessor chugs along at all of 1 KHZ and was the fastest thing available in its day. Other than opening the books to copy the floppies I don’t think that they have ever been opened. Would you like it just to remind you of all the joys involved? :p

Col ]:)

Still have all my old toys

In reply to Funny you should mention that

sitting in the basement collecting dust.

I even have a WORKING 286 down there and a 386 laptop with win3.11! 😀

Actually about a year ago

In reply to Still have all my old toys

In a fit of stupidity I set up a Windows 3 X box as I thought it might be nice to have one around as I still had one customer using it.

Well I got 3.11 on it networked up OK and then I tied installing a modem which went well enough and then I started looking for the Win sock Floppies and gave up and dropped in a 95 Upgrade CD. I wasn’t going looking through all the stored floppies here just for a Internet connection for a 3.11 Box. I know when to call it quits. 😀

When one of my staff does something really bad I’ll get then to do it for [b]Punishment[/b] I still have several old Pentium 1 boxes lying around which could be used for that purpose. I’ve even got a Quad 200 MMX box here that’s running XP Pro very slowly admittedly but it works on it. 🙂

Col ]:)

win3.11

In reply to Actually about a year ago

Anyone remember when the NEW 386 33mhz systems came out? MAN, did those things SCREEM! Drop 8 Megs of RAM and you were off and flying and for the CAD systems you would bump it all the way up to 16 MEGS! :O

Of course, you had to determine if it was going to be earmarked for Expanded or Extended memory, and often had to be SPLIT as some apps would only work in one or the other, and SOME would work in BOTH, but would grab one first if it was available.

Do cad stations of today on a P4 3ghrz running WinXPproSp2 with a GIG of RAM actually perform similar cad operations any faster? Or did you have to go to a MUCH faster set of hardware just to keep at the same pace using the latest bloatware available? I can bet you know what MY answer is. B-)

I’ve got a fair idea

In reply to Actually about a year ago

The new stuff is just so much better so it’s faster right? 😀

Sorry I couldn’t resist that one I’ve been to a few too many MS meetings last year. 🙁

Actually that 3.11 Box is driving a computer controlled lathe and will most likely still be there is 50 years time although it most likely will have had the computer side of it rebuilt a few times. Currently I have a 1200 Duron in it but it started life as a Pentium 90. All that oil and metal shavings play havoc with the electronics. 🙁

But remember the good old days I had a 486 with 8 X 16 MEG RAM sticks in it and once you got past the price of the ram about $1,600.00 AU per Stick it could do everything that this Dual Xeon is capable of doing and faster as well even if I was silly enough to put Windows 3 on it. :O

Col ]:)

The first BIG price break

In reply to Actually about a year ago

I remember when memory dropped to ONLY $50 per meg! Hot spit on a gridle!

Now THAT takes me back! HUGE card, and you put as many chips on it as you had money for?

Anyone else have to trouble shoot memory? This error code says row and column and you replace THAT one chip off the board! Servers running off 2 MEGS! LOL!

damn, at least my experiences with punch card machines was only from my mom working with them when I was a kid! I just got the old cards to draw on! 😀

I was lucky as well

In reply to Actually about a year ago

I missed the punch cards they where still around when I started but dieing out quite fast at the time and I never had to work on one of those as the techs at the time where very protective of their computers.

Last year I went to Melbourne for a day and I’m still kicking myself for not going to the Power House Museum where they have Citrix on display the fist computer built here in AU some time around 1945 although the actual date is still up in the air apparently it was designed in 1940 and went into service in 1945 and was used to do all the calculations for the Sydney Harbor Bridge and Snowy Mountain Dam Project and just about everything else till it was eventually taken out of service in the mid 70’s.

It’s just a static display and even for that they had to drag a couple of techs out of retirement to tell them how to put it back together. All punch cards chugs along at 1 KHZ and something I’d just love to get my grooty little hands on and play with. Far more fun than anything new. 😀

Col ]:)

Memory lane

In reply to Still have all my old toys

I have a working IBM PC-G from 1981. It is a luxury thing as it has a color display, and every slot is filled with extra RAM – a whooping 512kb of it. It runs DOS 1.6 as it has no internal disk, only 2 360k floppies. It probably cost in the region of 20.000$ including the 132chr wide matrix printer.
I have a 386 running OS/2 and Microsoft Excel in an OS/2 version. MS Excel installs from 2 1.44 floppies, as OS/2 provides all fonts, printerdrivers etc – just as any decent OS should.

This PC, which can do anything a current-day PC can do, except DVD and most videoformats, is operative in less than a minute. If you uninstall the DOS and Windows part of OS/2 and only run OS/2 pgms on it, I think you’re quite safe on the net too. Can’t be many OS/2 viruses around.

Unix?

In reply to JD I don’t know if you where around at the time

Unix is for kids. OS/390, VSE/ESA, CICS…

Heh, sorry I couldn’t resist. You mentioned dumb terminals, I just set one up this morning. We have Windows servers for the office area to share files and stuff, but the warehouse, shipping and anything else of any importance is run off a S/390. Dumb terminals and bar code scanners in the warehouse all connect to two 3270 controllers. Even the PCs run 3270 emulators. Every single thing coded in COBOL (with exception of a few Basic and Fortran tools here and there). Pretty much my job over the next 5-10 years is to pull everything off the mainframe and pull it over to SQL Server and build apps for it. Tell me I won’t be an alcoholic by the end of it…

Oh yeah, and enough coax under the floors to give CNN to a small 3rd world country.

MS helps pay my bills so I can’t bad rap it much. Besides if they made the perfect software there would be no need for people to repair it. 60% of IT would be out of work. Pandemonium would ensue. Riots in the streets. People hacking banks just to be hacked themselves by the hacker next door. MS is just doing its part in keeping society and the economy stable. 🙂

Heh…

Here’s one for you, I have a DELL running XP HOME. Runs perfectly. Never a virus, spyware, etc. Of course all it’s for is WoW and checking weather…but hey, it’s a Dell w/ XP Home, 2 years and never a hitch, I must be doing something right…

Okay jd, I’m away on business but I’ve kept an eye on TR. Where did……..

In reply to The major problems with your contentions

this arsewipe crawl out from. WTF he talks about gaming, playstations and other assinine trivialities [b]and you guys respond to him, seriously???[/b] This is some snotnosed little punk, trying to play with the adults and I can’t believe any of you respond to him in a serious manner at all.[/b] He is just a juvenile version of IT_Lobo(timized)and the best part of him drizzled down his daddy’s leg.[/b] If you keep treating him and his inane posts with any degree of politeness or rationality, you will only encourage him. I’m gone for only 3 weeks and it’s like TR has acquired its own peculiar virus. Ignore this anal retentive dick head as you would any other mindless twit like we did to MrMIAMI or IT_Lobo and hopefully he’ll crawl back to where he came from and TR can get back to normal; a place for professionals. Sheesh!!! The nerve of some peoples children. If you only knew the connectivity hassles that I have here you would understand why I haven’t spoken up before but Windoze being the greatest OS ever was just too much. Where are Max and Oz when they’re so obviously needed??? Somebody tear this punk a new one before he lives a day longer. BTW if you are wondering where I am, eating here requires the use of chop sticks. How do you spell arsewipe; give me an “N” give me a “Z” give me a …….. well you’ve got the basic premise.:O X-(

[b]Dawg[/b] ]:)

NZ_Justice; This one is just for you.

In reply to Okay jd, I’m away on business but I’ve kept an eye on TR. Where did……..

http://tinyurl.com/6wbv

Now go run to your mommy and tell her the big boys are picking on you; [b]again!!![/b]

[b]Dawg[/b] ]:)

Dawg

In reply to NZ_Justice; This one is just for you.

Always great to see you and glad your back.

How was your trip?

Welcome back! 😀

I’m still away but I’ve been keeping tabs

In reply to Dawg

Will be here for at least another month yet but I just couldn’t let something like this Justice a$$wipe slide. He is a real cretin.

[b]Dawg[/b] ]:)

get over it.

In reply to NZ_Justice; This one is just for you.

I have.

I think they

In reply to Okay jd, I’m away on business but I’ve kept an eye on TR. Where did……..

are sitting on the fence watching to see where Justice goes from here. (from my other post about ignoring some new users)

I had given this one the benifit of the doubt, actually more times than I ususally would. Underage on the other hand is useless.

Here is where what I was saying before to him about being judged by how you post. I am as off-topic as just about ANYONE here on TR, but I never come off as a loud kid looking for attention. You can be off topic, have fun and STILL fit in. Although we may have to make him show his ID before coming into half of Jaquis posts or when we get going with GG! ]:)

Chopsticks! Man, I bet that is a far cry from the crap they serve at the “China Buffet” up the road!

Operating systems should operate.

In reply to The major problems with your contentions

I will say that some of the ideas Gates & Co. ‘borrowed’ from the Mac and Xerox were good ones. The PC Dos OS that he bought for $50,000 shortly after promising IBM that he already had one was not terrible, but not as good as other OSs in the day.
He was a shrewd marketer, but a poor visionary. Otherwise, 90% of the world’s computers wouldn’t be running a hacked up, unreliable insecure OS.
I owe my living to Windows machines. Fixing them puts bread on my table, so, please, everybody, keep buying it and use it.
I won’t use it at home unless I have to, but I encourage everyone else to do so.

Bread and butter

In reply to Operating systems should operate.

Would you not agree that competition is GOOD for Windows?

If MS HAS to put out a better product, the USERS benifit, allowing MS to retain many of the big users that are more concerned with just “getting it done” than saving a buck.

*lix isn’t going to put MS out of business, but it WILL make them START to maintain some standards of quality that they never worried about before because the dumb users where held captive. Now they will have to keep their users by competing. Good for everyone.

Yep, everyone keeping using MS…

In reply to Operating systems should operate.

Keeps me in business, too!

Netware was a better NOS far earlier

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Can’t really write about Linux as I don’t know anything about it yet, but I was trained on Netware and that had an “Active Directory” many years before MS. I suspect that MS ‘borrowed’ it from Novell. It was also more stable than MS.

Also going back down memory lane, the Amiga was a far superior machine than the PC’s it competed with. It had integrated video and audio ten years before Wintel came up with the idea. Unfortunately, poor marketing by its manufacturer (Commodore, which was formerly a typewriter manufacturer), did the Amiga in.

Another case in point, VHS vs. BEtamax. Beta was of better quality, but VHS had better marketing.

“Borrowed” directory services

In reply to Netware was a better NOS far earlier

Alas, Microsoft didn’t borrow, beg or steal AD from NDS. If they had, do you think we would have the mess that we’ve got at the moment? No, they developed – if that is the word – the whole sorry mess in house from their Exchange 5.5 directory.

Actually Neil

In reply to “Borrowed” directory services

MS used their best software developers to create AD need I say any more? :O

I used to get invited to the MS programing meetings but that all ended when I went to the Ink meeting and rewrote the entire code in C++ instead of VB. I don’t think that they liked the fact that it took up less headroom and worked better. 😀

Then there was the security Lab that I attended where a 2003 ES was protecting a [b]Virtual[/b] power station and we had to attempt to break in and play with the settings. After 10 minutes I sat back and had a smoke and was asked had I given up I just replied have a look at the simulated traffic lights. They where all showing green. 🙂

I’ve never got another invite after that. 🙁

I even allowed them to have the code for Ink in C++ and didn’t ask for payment. :O

Col ]:)

Security

In reply to Actually Neil

At my last job we had a guy who broke windows encryption in 10 minutes flat. We bought a 3rd party program to secure laptops used outside premises, and later inforced that to all laptops – people forget them in the weirdest places.
In a recent case of fraud, police spent 6 months breaking this encryption, having access to whatever ressources needed, and they only got into it because someone leaked the password.
XP firewall ?? Forget about it. Installing another firewall revelas that f.inst MS Word calls home all the time, XP firewall telles you nothing about it.
I have always wondered how it was possible in 48 hours to nail the guy who wrote the Melissa virus/worm/trojan whatever badware it was, out of millions of MS users.

Yes that is a good question

In reply to Security

It was fast finding that guy wasn’t it? and that Love Bug Virus as well the author was found very quickly well according to the [b]Official Lies[/b] anyway maybe they just got a patsy to take the wrap.

I recently went to a persons home originally to buy a car part and he said that I couldn’t e-mail him because his e-mail wasn’t working so I offered to fix his computer for him while I was there as I just may have needed something else latter and e-mailing was so much cheaper than the long distance mobile phone calls involved.

But after fixing the e-mail server accounts I was handed a telco bill with 485 outgoing calls and every one was the internal modem ringing the ISP for a net connection no doubt that was mostly word as well. Anyway I locked it down a bit and offered to supply him an external modem at cost and set it up but he declined apparently he’s happy to pay the phone bill and not cure the problem.

But at least I’ve cut down the number of outgoing calls. 🙂

Col ]:)

Amiga?

In reply to Netware was a better NOS far earlier

….hmmmm
Graphics that blew away anything out at the time. I had my set until a few years ago when I sold it to a collector for some quick cash. I still have the monitor with it’s 15 million ways to feed it video information. Keep looking at it and thinking ‘I’m going to make a oscilloscope!’

Best OS ever…

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

You know, I’ve read about half of the posts in this series so far,
and all I can do is laugh.

Fact: Bill Gates purchased (supposedly) a Disk Operating System
for something like $500.
Fact: Bill Gates licensed the OS to IBM with the provision that he
held the rights to licens it to anyone else he chose.
Fact: Bill Gates licensed the OS to anyone who wanted to build
an IBM ‘compatible’ desktop computer.
Fact: Bill Gates got rich.

Talking about Windows…
Fact (as was previously mentioned) Zerox created a GUI, first as
a controller for a microprocessor-controlled copier.
Fact: Zerox decided the GUI was a stupid invention and sold the
rights to the ‘highest bidder’: one Steve Jobs.
Fact: Microsoft learned about the purchase and scrambled to
release their first version of Windows (3.0, I believe) mere weeks
(I think two or three) before Apple released the first Macintosh
computer with its GUI.
Fact: Windows did not compare to the Mac OS in features or
simplicity until Windows 95.

Biggest point here: I had been using the Mac OS for one year
before Windows 95 was released, and I had to teach nearly all
the computer users in the company I worked for how to find and
manipulate their files in 95… which, to me, was roughly equal to
the first MacOS with the exception of being full-color.

Since that time, Windows has managed to catch up somewhat…
Windows is now roughly equivalent to Mac OS 9.5. It is said (I’ve
seen no proof) that Vista has been made to look much like Mac
OS X’s Aqua interface. That makes Windows still FIVE years
behind Apple.

Now, I’ll grant that Apple only has approximately a 5% market
share in the US. Taking that into account, I’m sure security
issues to exist in the Mac OS. However, because the lion’s share
of the software market operates through Windows, it’s no
wonder Crackers are writing their Trojans, Worms and Viruses
against Windows. Even so, the Mac OS gets far less than 5% of
the malware floating in the wild…. so far less that it is
statistically unmeasureable.

So while Windows might be the Most Popular OS on the market,
it’s definitely NOT the best.
I’m not claiming that the MacOS is, but it’s a d–n sight better
than Windows!

You forgot one fact

In reply to Best OS ever…

When Bill Gates started developing a GUI it caused the Industrial Divorce between IBM and MS. That was a bitter and nasty time to be working IT particularly as I was at IBM but luckily enough on the Mainframe side of things so I just got to see glimpses of the problems that where occurring on the PC side of the business.

Col ]:)

MAC OS

In reply to Best OS ever…

I’ve hardly used MAC at all. People who use it thinks it’s great. I’m not sure why a basic Macintosh PC’s is so expensive compared to other basic PC’s.

The thing that really puzzles me about MAC has to do with the fact that they put so many in the schools. I thought that that was a brilliant move by Macintosh. Get the young kids using them and they would be future users. I really don’t know why it never quite turned out that way.

Maybe Bill Gates was just a super salesman. That seems to be the most likely possibility for Windows success in dominating the market for so long.

The best OS is no OS

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

… for the embedded applications that run from ROM/FLASH, and have no mentionable UI, at least.

Everything else is more trouble than it’s worth.

Windows is bad OS but lots of applications sell it

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Windows is a bad operating system.
It is getting better with each major release. Of course each major release results in lots of more money for Microsoft. An incentive to not get it right. Maybe the next major relase will finally get it right but the focus seems to be on GUI/graphics not OS excellence.
Unfortunately for all us computer users success in the market required only a barely adequate OS and lots of applications. People bought Windows PCs to run an application; not to run the OS!
Microsoft’s support for developers and easy bootlegging of Visual BASIC is what made windows. IBM charged too much for their dev tools and did not market them much.
The first barely adequate version of Windows was 3.x. Given the hardware limitations at the time, a solid OS would run too slow (OS/2). Also it would have to give up backward compatibility with DOS apps at the time; which was not an option. The Win 3.x support for multiple DOS VMs on 386 CPU made it possible to upgrade and still use your DOS apps until windows versions came out.

Very Successful Troll

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Look at all the bites you got! I salute you (lol)

Oh good, I thought it was just me again.

In reply to Very Successful Troll

I’m usually not very good at troll detection, but this one smells fishier than a cat food cannery. I’m surprised at some of the members that swam up to feed on this chum.

“You’re gonna need a bigger boat…”

Now be fair

In reply to Oh good, I thought it was just me again.

When this was originally posted things at TR where slow with hardly anyone about very few new questions being asked so I at least need time to unwind after a day of work. 🙁

The original posting just got up my nose and I couldn’t let it slip by but then again if everyone had not have been recovering from their Christmas/New Years time maybe it would have just slid into obscurity. 😀

Col ]:)

Depends

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

It all depends. For home users I will give Windows the nod. For business use I still believe Solaris is better. But I have to admit that we have taken the end users over to Windows since it is easier and more familiar. However we still keep the mission critical backend stuff running on Solaris. And if it wasn’t for the OS being tied so closly to the hardware, VMS was the most stable, dependable OS I have ever used.

Hooray VMS

In reply to Depends

proper operating system that.

Back In time, again

In reply to Hooray VMS

Yes, it was… Imagine, Real/True Clustering over 15 years ago, virtualization, timesharing… bulletproof… Lets bring it back for the PC !!!!

Hmmm.

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

NZ_Justice should change thier alias to FlameBait.

but will anyone get it?

In reply to Hmmm.

people have a hard time taking a joke.

Flamebait.

Now how about windows as an OS. Best ever without a doubt.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.aspx

Typical of MS they spelled it wrong

In reply to but will anyone get it?

It should have been spelled Visa the credit card you need to use our Software. 🙂

Vista must be incorrect as that was the name given to a Creative Web Cam and a cheap rubbish one at that so I can hardly see MS ripping off that name to use for themselves. 😀

But far more importantly did you notice that the Marketing people at MS have put so much spin on what VISA can do but not a single mention of anything security related just ease of use. Maybe MS are making this OS so easy to use that they are working out a way to get all the personal info off their customers computers and rip them all off by sending then broke after they max out their Credit Cards, empty their bank Accounts and sell their houses and not paying off the mortgage do you think that some people just might start to wonder why they are using M$ software as an OS?

M$ already have it in their EULA that

1 You don’t actually own the software that you have paid for.

2 MS can demand its return and deletion from your computer at any time that they like

3 M$ takes no responsibility for faulty coding that may result in bankrupting the user and leaving them homeless [b]After that point in time they are no longer important to MS as they have lost all their money and their Credit Rating has been shot to Hell. :p[/b]

Do you see a pattern forming here?

Col ]:)

In golden days of yore

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

there was a device called a microcomputer of which many were made and they used many operating systems, each hardware manufacture had their own software and only their software would run on their computer. Then the giant of the day, the mighty IBM developed a microcomputer of their own and called it the Personal Computer and it used the architecture ISA, which they made available for anyone to use for a royalty of US$1 per unit made.

They then sought a wise sage to develop an operating system for it. being unable to find such a sage they listened to salesman Bill who said I can do that, Bill then went and paid some people a pittance for their operating system, he filed off the seriel numbers, cleaned it up a bit and added a few things and licenced it to the giant IBM as PC-DOS. Bill then also sold copies to others as MS-DOS.

Meanwhile cottage workers availled themselves of the IBM royalty and started making microcomputers using the ISA architecture – these were called IBM clones – and sold for about a fifth of the price of all the other microcomputers. After a few years everyone called both the genuine and cloned IBM microcomputers PCs, and this eventually became the industry term for all microcomputers.

With the advent of the cheap IBM clones and the only software available to run on it being the IBM software or that from Bill, whose prices were cheapest by far, everyone started bying IBM clones with Bill’s software – thus the birth of the great serpent Microsoft was due to the efforts of the giant IBM creating the environment by which the serpent could grow and flourish.

Like the fairy tale – sadly that is the whole truth of the matter, the home computer owes its existence to IBM allowing everyone to use their mutli-million dollar research at US$1 per unit thus cutting the cost of hardware manufacture for others to a fraction of the cost. MS grew simplt because they had the first IBM software and were quicker to sell it generally than anyone else.

You’re So Right

In reply to In golden days of yore

That’s the story in a nut shell. Bill Gates is not the innovator he
pretends to be. He is merely a follower. A very rich and
business-smart fellow but still just a follower. He invents
nothing and predicts the future based on what other people are
doing.

Thank God there are at least two viable alternatives. I’m not
suggesting that everyone should get rid of their PCs, I’m
certainly not. But I have a Mac also and will never give that up
either. The only thing that I find disagreeable about this
situation is that there is no real choice for the average PC user.

When there is an industry that is basically run by a monopoly,
everybody suffers. You may say “but I’m not suffering”. You are,
you just don’t know it.

can’t take you seriously

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

… and you know why? Firstly, your writing leaves room for improvement. Maybe you’re tired, a bit restless and just want to steer the waters and get some attention (girls do often that – no harm intended). Secondly, line of reasoning and facts are obviously not important for you. It the process of making a point look credible that seem to be the carrot for you. in fact, you are not making a point, you are simply generally discussing back and forth, going back to a complacent “Windows is best because they are the biggest and I am used with them.”
You are not adding any value to the discussion, because that is not your intention – you just want some good ol’ chatting.
I use both Windows and OSX. I see good things with both. But OSX will probably gain ground due to the phase it is in: growth and expansion.
Remember this: your core competencies are your core weaknesses too. MS is too big and not creative enough to hold the barricades in the long run. It is slower to reacting and does not have the option to rehash from the bottom up the OS. That is why it steals from the best. MS is still very strong, but they have climbed the hill, and the slope is now downwards, albeit at a low angle.
OSX will gain ground because users know more what they want now, and what they value. Stability, ease of use, security, style, appearance, trend, quality (as unquantifiable as it is)are now more important than before. And these are the areas that MS is worst at.
Vista will be OK, but in the mean time, OSX has ample time to get much better. Hype matters, and Apple is good at hype.
Maybe totally wrong, but the choice of computers and OS is not restrictive anymore, for a private user. Just a matter of time for people to jump on this band wagon. Open source is great! And almost anything is better (and healthier) that cocacola

I’m not perfect.

In reply to can’t take you seriously

And your writing leaves no room for improvement?

People who use windows are users too, believe it or not.

Microsoft are not infallible, they could crumble at any time. It is only in business (just like any one else), as long as they can keep there customer base happy and give them what they want.

That they have, should be reasoning enough, that they have business smarts and can adapt as well as pursue innovation into the future.

Are you under an illusion that MS are not into growth and expansion. If that was the case MS would have died with ms-dos a long time ago.

Windows has the same opportunities for growth and expansion that any other OS has.

If MS are under the illusion that they have reached the top of the hill, then they are indeed in big trouble. Hopefully they have employed the services of business smart people.

Yes Choice of computers is not restrictive any more. people can actually choose to use Windows as there operating system.

Windows has just as much time to get better and if you don’t believe MS is good at hype, take at look at there website.

Windows is the best, because people now have a choice and they are choosing to use windows.

I agree coca-cola is unhealthy.

Best OS Ever PFF

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

hi there, while the MS OS is the most functional and used within the computer industry I wouldn’t say it was the best nor did Mr Gates invent it, as he and two buddies of his reversed engineered source code which became windows, if I remember correctly. The best ever was the Amiga OS and commodore in general was better I even had a 386 board that ran faster than a 386 PC at the time 🙂 Also in tipical fashion the commodore was bought out by a European PC company to try and get the rights on the hardware as when you put a floppy or cd in the machine it doesn’t come to a halt while reading the data unlike what PC’s still do today (even at 4ghz cpu) put a floppy in and the whole system stops until the data has been read. Long live the Amiga in its EMU state

You miss something …

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

The fact that Windows is a pale copy of Mac is a truth that you seem to forget.

And the fact that Mac OS is a breeze to use by the end user is also a strong advantage.
Windows did not invent the usage of the mouse it is MAC that first embedded it into its OS.

Now the issues is not that Windows allows you to feel that at the end of your life you should feel you accomplish something that user of Linux did not. You forget that admin.’s activities are now at kid’s reach and depend only in the wall build for admin by M$oft to limit user to admin their own account. Past is the time where you have to type your command, so to know your business before you can undertake any action on a server. Now you can just click here and there and you look GOOD. Well you do not impress any of us whom trace the path for you.

Also do not forget that it is not the Windows itself that frustrate everyone, is the arrogance of M$ that do not reveal the code for other companies to offer product as preferment as M$ one because they do not have the same knowledge of the source code. By seeing how the succeed I understand that M$ is scared as hell to revealed it as they are forced to do so in EU.

If it was a fair world I am sure that Windows will not be so hacked. That is why I now run a server using Linux-Apache and I feel that everyday I did accomplish something because the bug on it do not affect me, I am less worry of being hack and can be closer to my clients. And at the end of my life that will be the difference.

By the way I also do not like Coke and do not dink it.

The best is what works for you

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Most prolific does not constitute best. Marketing, price, and scratching the right itch normally determine “best selling”, but rarely determine “best”. Take a look at Beta vs VHS. Beta was the best format for many reasons, but did not win the VCR wars because of poor decision-making at Sony. Wal-Mart is top dog because they sell cheap products, not because they sell the best.

Windows IS the best for some things (i.e. ease of installation, availability of software, general usability, etc.), but to say it is the “best OS ever” is like saying the hammer is the “best tool ever”. Realistically, a hammer is great for pounding nails, but sucks when it comes to cutting wood. So, the BEST depends on what you need.

MACs can’t be beat for clean, simple power and ability to handle graphics and colors properly. Now that their OS is Linux and processor Intel, I suspect the best is yet to come. (I am eyeing a powerbook as my next purchase…) Atari (remember them?) still does a great job handling digital video media, while a light version of Linux runs great on an old 486 with just 16 MB of RAM as a firewall.

Windows has some of the best-featured office productivity tools (this includes WordPerfect et al as well as MS Office) and is by far the easiest to use wrt install, upgrade, etc. Even though I find Outlook lacking wrt customer relationship management features, Linux has yet to come up with a viable competitor to Outlook for handling mail, contacts, to-do lists, and calendar. Once they do, I may never need to spend money on Windows again.

Although not always true, Linux is rarely at the forefront in the design of new products, more often Linux software is just something ported or copied from another OS. Yet in some ways, it is lightyears ahead. Linux allows unheard of customization of your system (as long as you take the time to learn how to use it), but the plethora of options and possibilities (not to mention the various distributions) is what keeps Linux out of mainstream. Many boards I have surfed about Linux have all the code monkeys saying they don’t want to dumb down Linux. That’s fine, but if that is the case, it will never be mainstream, and Windows will always be the dominant choice, since the average user can easily jump onto a Windows machine and do many things in a much more simple manner, making it appealing to them. Even for a veteran Linux guru, double-clicking an executable on a windows box is significantly easier than trying to install software on a Linux.

So, best is relative.

Amen to that

In reply to The best is what works for you

The “which OS is the best” wars always amuse me. Which is the best depends on what you want to do and how much time and $ you have to do it! I’ve been in IT for nearly 30 years, and this same argument has been going on at least that long (but really since the birth of computers!). I’d be rich if I had a nickel for everytime I’ve heard “ is the best ever”. Anybody remember DOS/VSE, VM/CMS, Exec8, VMS? They were all “the best” to someone.

Windows helped make personal computers and technology accessible to the average non-technical person…along with Intel, IBM, Apple, Compaq, Osborne (remember cp/m?, (and the list goes on) and thats a good thing.

Critical mass is what Windows has going for it now, and as long as I’m doing “personal things” like checking email, surfing the internet, playing games, and maybe even running some db apps, it’s just fine. But not necessarily better than Mac OS/X??

But I don’t see Windows as my choice for running hundreds of millions of dollars worth of daily global financial transactions 24X7. I’m not even sure if I see Linux or other Unixes in this way. Maybe it’s z/OS. It just depends.

Until the OSs become commodities, and ubiquitous and fault tolerant to the point that you can’t tell what OS your running (and I believe they will!), there will never be a best OS.

Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Strange, but IBM still sells more mainframes than anyone else. Those people must just be dumb as rocks … or maybe they’ve got a need.

One could legitimately argue that z/OS is the best OS ever.

Get some perspective, or learn to be more specific.

Call the funny farm, we got us a live one here :)

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

This fella has to be a troll, but just in case anyone is gullible enough to believe him:

Insecure, unstable, unreliable, bloated, expensive. Windows summed up in 5 words.

Insecure: I regularly have to run anti-virus and anti-spyware programs in Windows or suffer the consequences. My wife’s Windows XP PC needed a nuke and reinstall because of malware finally overcoming it (despite all attempts to save the thing). My Linux laptop hasn’t caused me any of that grief or wasted time, oddly enough.

Unstable: I have to reboot my work PC (Windows XP) every night before I leave, otherwise it loses the plot entirely after a few days uptime. My Linux laptop has seen heavy usage and uptimes measured in weeks without going soft in the head. The Linux server I administer at work currently shows 64 days uptime (that’s longer than any install of Windows 98/ME I ever owned lasted before needing a reinstall, by the way). I’ve had my home server running Linux with uptimes of > 6 months.

Unreliable: I freshly installed Linux on my laptop in February 2004, almost 2 years ago. I haven’t had to reinstall since. Even Windows 2000, which is a reasonably good product IMO, never lasted that long without forcing me to nuke and reinstall (and no, I don’t go hacking around in the registry – my linux box takes much more low-level abuse and sucks it up without fuss).

Bloated: C:\WINDOWS\ on my XP box in work takes up around 2.5GB all by itself. I have a fully functional Linux-based server at home which doesn’t even have that much total disk space. I’d love to see a Windows-based server run in that much space and still have room to spare.

Expensive: this one’s self-explanatory. Don’t believe everything MS try to tell you about TCO – do your own research tailored to your own situation. And if you really think Windows has universally low TCO, kindly don’t complain when you have to ditch your current hardware and replace it with high-end, high-cost stuff to be able to run Windows Vista in any meaningful way.

There are bugs in every system, and yes, they get fixed. The open source development model makes this a whole lot more efficient, anyone can submit a code patch to the developers, who in turn actually care about the code they work on.

You say Windows is the “wheel which we use to drive our PCs”. Sadly, the wheel on your PC is wobbly and has a flat tire. And Microsoft reserve the right to replace it with a square one without notice. Or take it away entirely and leave your PC on axle-stands, unable to operate.

funny farm called and I’m on my way

In reply to Call the funny farm, we got us a live one here :)

Secure, Windows XP can be set up just as secure as any Linux box, and it doesn’t require a lot of effort to secure a windows xp box.

stable, I only have to reboot my work PC (windows xp) when there is a patch update, and it gets patch updated so there is no problems.

Reliable, For what it gets used for, it’s pretty reliable that it will complete the task.

Bloated. With all the functionality given to you with the windows OS, it has to go somewhere.

Expensive. every thing is expensive. But I would use Linux as a sever for myself, becuase purchasing win2k3 is not as good as getting an OS server for free.

Your Linux Server. What does it do? It seems that it’s only function is that it turns on and doesnt need to be turned off. It doesn’t take up a lot of space. What does it save the space for? Is it just a file store. Is it a gateway? I have a Linux server too, I haven’t built it yet but it’s pretty reliable for what it’s doing and It hasn’t caused me any problems. Unless I wanted to play games,

How is getting a million fixes to one problem efficient. How is it efficient to sift through the millions of fixes for open source code and weed out the malicious code fix to the genuine code fix.

I more worried about some random thief stealing my PC then I am MS taking clam over it’s software. And if Microsoft do claim there software and not let me use it anymore, I’ll just switch to Linux.

Logic missing

In reply to funny farm called and I’m on my way

You state that you have a Linux server, and that a server does nothing but turns on and off. I wonder then what all our multi-cpu, Giga ram devices are busy doing, and why phone explodes if they die. You haven’t built it yet, you say. Sounds very strange…. And who else in the entire world would think of playing games on a server??? I know MS installs some by default, but it only clarifies that MS have no idea of what a server is.

What do you mean about a million fixes for the same problem?. I guess it is when an error in a component used in many *nix’es is counted as seperate errors in various statistics. If one error exists in 1 million cars, is it then one error or 1 million errors?

In linux you update the same way you do in windows. Log on to a server, hit ‘update’, and select what you want, or accept what’s suggested. Contrary to your Windows, it ONLY needs a reboot if the kernel has been changed – and that’s quite rare.only diferrence is that errors generally are fixed faster, and distributet much faster. These servers are generally located at universities around the world, and what do you think all those graduates will use when they hit the business world?

You remember MS’s decision to issue fixes on a bi-weekly bases a few years ago, when grave security holes were unearthed every day, in the OS they called the best they ever produced, and the one never needing a fixpack? Now it’s down to one a month, and as demonstrated with the WMF disaster they value user security lower than anything else.

You’re not concerned by the fact that you have accepted that MS *owns* your PC, and can install or uninstall anything they want – including non-MS software. You state that if they go too far, you’ll change to something else, Linux is mentioned.

This is only possible if there is an alternative, a situation you don’t support by repeatedly praising Window to be the be-all end-all. So not only do you call those who want choice various bad names, and question their knowledge and professionality, but you also expect us to pull you out of trouble when time comes.

English is not my native language, but I think the word to use is ‘freeriding’.

sense missing

In reply to Logic missing

The linux thing. I can understand why you didn’t understand that.

I said a million fixes for one error not a million errors. So your car analogy is way of the mark, It’s more like an open source designed car with I design flaw. The flaw can have million fixes from a million people but only one is needed. You get a million fixes from open source developers for open source errors but you only get one fix from M$.

Linux update versus Windows update, that’s a whole other thread. I graduated from uni and now work with M$

Microsoft have a team that find more of their own errors and vulnerabilities as well as suffering the attacks from outsiders or being notified by the super know-it-all techie intent on destroying M$. I must of slept through the WMF disaster cause I have no idea what you are talking about.

Microsoft are yet to contact me and tell me to uninstall software that exist on my computer from other vendors. They own the operating system not the hardware (but there operating system does require that the hardware stay the same once the OS is installed). I also have not been summoned by Microsoft to supply my computer to them (and hope that never happens). Man. you all of a sudden made me very paranoid.

I can’t remember ever calling/typing anyone a bad name\s. What where these names and who did I call them too? What trouble am I in? More with the making me paranoid. Not accepting what other people say or tell you is a good thing, accepting what other people say just cause they say it and they have evidence is a bad thing. There was this one situation, where the leader of one country which the country is pretty big and powerful, hated the leader of the other country and wanted to destroy this leader, but the rest of the world wanted to avoid violence. but apparently there has hard evidence\facts that the country was a big threat to the world because they had WMD’s, so the big country just went ahead and killed heaps of people anyway in the smaller country (and lot more people died, more than in a certain terrorist attack that killed people in the big powerful country). but thee fact was, there where no WMD’s but the big country wiped the country of the guy they hated for no other reason other then simply because they could and wanted too.

English is not my native language, so what the heck are you talking about ‘freeriding’.

If I lack logic you lack sense.

While you don’t need to be PARANOID

In reply to sense missing

It sure as HELL helps when dealing with Microsoft. Have you even bothered to read the EULA that comes with every piece of MS software. Granted most people do not bother and just click on [b]ACCEPT[/b] even the Tech boys & girls from MS skip over this one but its worth reading every once in a while just to help you remember who you are dealing with when you use MS software. 😀

Even then the EULA is vague and I had a very senior QC explain to me that the XP Pro EULA actually meant that you where buying a license to run the one OS on 2 computers as it specifically says that you can use it with 2 CPU’s. Now I take this to mean that you can use XP Pro with a Dual processor M’Board and I certainly don’t have the buckets loads of money to take this one to court nor the time to waste arguing the legalities of the XP Pro EULA but the point is that if the EULA is so badly written as to make a Senior QC think that it means something different to what is intended does it really have any legal standing on this side of the pond where the laws are different to the USA? :p

Col ]:)

Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

In reply to While you don’t need to be PARANOID

QUOTE
I certainly don’t have the buckets loads of money to take this
one to court nor the time to waste arguing the legalities of the
XP Pro EULA but
/END

I wouldn’t worry about it, Col – there’s a *very* strong body of
opinion, evidence and actual Law which suggests that, as no-
one ever reads the things and everyone knows that no-one ever
reads the things then they can be deemed ‘unread and
inapplicable’ *anyway* …

– Just watch and see 🙂

MS EULA is not worth a Brass Razoo… Legally. (IMNSHO). [NM]

In reply to Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

missing subject last post.

edit ‘busted’.

Wayne T you might get a laugh out of this one

In reply to Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

I know I did. On my companies Web Page is a Sample EULA from MS and I was shocked when I got a phone call from M$ not to remove the sample EULA but the Hyperlink to their Anti Piracy Hotline and its phone number.

Admittedly they where not overly impressed with the Linux/Unix part of the page but they just had to live with it but I couldn’t believe the marketing people wanting the Anti Piracy side of things removed particularly after I had got permission to use it from the same section of M$. 🙂

Actually I don’t worry overly about the EULA as most of what I use is all Volume License stuff so I really don’t have an issue with the EULA but I do think it funny that even the MS Techs brush over this at the partner meetings. 😀

Col ]:)

“and now work with M$”

In reply to sense missing

It says a lot doesn’t it?. How much did they pay you to start this thread?

/Peter

It would appear

In reply to “and now work with M$”

That M$ are in the habit of giving away money when there are goobers like me promoting them for free.

😉

Sign me up for the farm too, Windows is driving me crazy! ;-)

In reply to funny farm called and I’m on my way

Your refrigerator. What does it do? It seems that it’s only function is that it turns on and doesn’t need to be turned off. Why are you staring at me like I’m some kind of scary freak?

I have a 20-bedroom mansion with awesome views, lakefront access, a HUGE covered dock (with a bar) and a climate-controlled 10-car garage. I haven’t built it yet, but it’s a GREAT place to live! Hey, quit laughing…respect my opinion dammit! I KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!

😉

Really now, how is anyone supposed to take you seriously when you assert that I might have a server for no reason other than to consume electricity, or that you own something but haven’t built it yet.

A heartfelt THANK YOU, however, for giving me the biggest belly laugh I’ve had in ages! 😀

For the record and in all seriousness, since you asked, my Linux server serves multiple websites, with PHP and Coldfusion support, MySQL for the database stuff, an SSH server so I can login, do administration tasks, upload files, and open a secure tunnel from my workstation to the MySQL server. It has everything I need to write and compile my own programs and as a result it runs a couple of simple C programs I threw together which upload our current product list to Froogle every night and email me if anything went wrong (I could have achieved the same thing using a shell script, but the C program is a bit more elegant). It emails me copies of all important system logs overnight including any changes to system files so I have a better chance of detecting any intrusions or problems which may occur. Of course, it *doesn’t* switch off, because a couple of separate businesses depend on it. Disk and memory space not used up by unneccessary and non-optional OS functionality is saved for database tables, the websites which use them and the server applications which serve it all up to Joe User.

Sadly, it doesn’t make fresh coffee. It is, despite that, what you might call “mission critical”.

Our mission may not be as high-profile as Google, or Amazon, or the official website of the White House, or NASA, or any of the other high-profile organizations which use Linux (including this very site you’re reading right now 😉 ), but it matters to us, and we trust Linux to not let us down.

Linux

In reply to Sign me up for the farm too, Windows is driving me crazy! ;-)

Form reading what you say, It seems to me, that it is a person (you) keeping the “mission critical” network server setup alive and running. Using those same skills, I’m pretty sure you would be equally qualified (if not more) to run the same set up with windows 2k3, IIS and .aspx/.net framework support, and M$ SQL Server 2k for the database stuff, and just use windows terminal server to log-in and do admin stuff. You can also install “free” apps that can do every thing you need to write your own programmes.

Where I work using the Windows alternative is actually far cheaper than going UNIX or Linux. The org I work for does not have the budget of NASA. I don’t think the country I work in has that kind of money.

Don’t give up on your server not making coffee just yet, with all the money you save using “free” apps, you could try this

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/06/13/extreme_modding/index.html

You can put the same trust in “Windows”, you just have to give it a try. 😉

Well I’ve run both types of systems

In reply to Linux

On identical hardware in a place where [b]MISSION CRITICAL[/B] means millions of $ per hour and I’ve seen first hand that the Windows boxes just don’t cut the mustard over a 6 month trial.

The Windows Boxes have a 4 to 1 difference in downtime. That is reboots required for patches, Memory Leaks that do occur with every Windows Box and other simple things that should not require a reboot from a High Tech OS.

And none of the above even takes into account intrusion prevention and other threats that adversely affect any Windows Box.

Sorry Been There Done That and the customer wants Nix not Windows as it’s way too expensive for them to put Mission Critical applications on a Windows Box. Not even the discount offered by MS made it anywhere close to economical to switch to the MS OS.

Nix of any kind only requires a reboot when major Kernel changes have been made not every tine some minor piece of software is installed. Even something as simple as a reboot costs this company a considerable sum of money even in the off peak periods and it only gets worse from there on in the terms of money lost when a reboot is required.

Col ]:)

the challenge

In reply to Well I’ve run both types of systems

I see a lot of posts where people talk about migrating to ‘nix but we sometimes don’t have that option. For instance the best software (features-wise)for my industry is only on Windows. And in fact, our entire infrastructure except for network monitoring (LINUX), is AD on Win 2003. We don’t have the frequent outages others mention. We usually only have to reboot for security patches otherwise no issues. But my point is sometimes you have to choose windows or settle for something sub-standard or immature.

While true partially

In reply to the challenge

On the server side of things I’ve always found the Nix option the better of the two.

However I’ve seen different versions of various Nixes where IE6 and other specific Windows only programs are running on NB’S and unless you know the difference most end users would think that they where actually working on an XP box.

Actually one thing that I should mention here is those so called [b]Security Patches[/b] isn’t normal unless you only use MS products.Monthly reboots are not normally required by a decent OS it is the limited ones that cause the real problems. Currently Novell is pushing SUSE for corporate wide use and really it looks quite good at least the [i]Trial Version[/i] that I got.

Col

the challenge

In reply to Well I’ve run both types of systems

duplicate entry

Windows the best OS? The best OS for wasting my time

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Don’t get me wrong, there’s some things that windows does quite well, like Plug & Play hardware (thanks to hardware manufacturers for drivers and not to windows). Even then, not all. Try installing an Iomega parallel port zip drive without manually downloading a driver. Linux recognizes it right away. Networking in windows, however, is excellent and easier than Windows.

I have used Microsoft’s OSes since early versions of DOS through Windows 3.1, 3.11, Win95, 98, 98SE, 2000, XP Home and XP Pro SP2. I can’t count the amount of frustating hours trying to get stuff working right, from CD Writers in Win98, Zip drives and anti-virus programs. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on Windows software. If Linux, as it has developed in the past couple of years, was available when Win95 came out, I would have gladly paid twice the amount just to avoid the frustrations of Windows.

With the exception of a few problems, Linux is fantastic. I compile my own kernels to get the functionality I need. I have 10 kernels to choose from on boot-up. I compile programs from source when necessary. I can’t remember the last time I had to reboot after installing a program or changing a configuration. There are only a couple of programs that I require that do not have a Linux version. Some will run quite well using Wine and only two require Win4Lin, which allows me to run Win98 in an X-Window. Guess what, Win98SE runs like a scalded cat in a Linux window, boots in 15 seconds and never BSDs. Vulnerability to viruses is there but will never affect the Linux OS underneath. A tarred backup of the windows OS restores things to pristine conditions in a few seconds if something goes wrong. And, I can run several Linux programs while Windows is running.

DVD and CD burning is built-in and virtually fool-proof. 500 CD-Rs without a single dud. Media players, like MPlayer leave WMP in the dust. Rip CDs? Built-in. Word processing, spreadsheets, image viewers are at least as good as anything available for windows. I can create pdf files without Adobe Acrobat. Wget is probably the best downloader and web-site replicator available. Period. Command line (bash) is fantastic, nothing like it built-in in Windows. Writing bash scripts is fun (and Im not a geek). Far easier to run a program from the command line than from the GUI. I’ve got 2910 programs / utilities available, not including built-in bash commands. I can see the last 100,000 commands used. Web browsers: Konquerer, Opera, Firefox and two text-based web-browsers (Links and Lynx) which are lightning-fast to load pages. Many choices of mail clients but Evolution knocks the socks off Outlook. Gimp is at least as good as Photoshop. I have opened a 80 Mb image file in Gimp without problems. Try that in Photoshop. Or ACDSee if you want to reboot your PC.

Don’t like the GUI interface? I have a choice of 4 to boot into.

Yes, there are frustrations, like setting-up printers or winmodems (what a ripoff). But, if you stick to HP LaserJet and external modems, works just fine.

Re-install the OS once a year like you have to do for Windows when it slows to a crawl? I’ve got a notebook running Mandrake 9 for 3 years now and it boots just as fast as when it was installed and also a PC with Redhat 7.2 for 5 years now with no problems. It’s been running continuously, with shutdowns once every 3 or 4 months.

BTW, the Internet has nothing to do with Windows OS. Try Unix for the backbone of the Internet. Even Microsoft uses Unix and Linux for servers. Apache web servers running under Linux are used by far more web sites than Microsoft servers. Our company used to use a Win2000/Novell server as a proxy server. Switched to Linux/Apache and got rid of the problems.

But, for people who can’t or won’t utilize a bit of the gray matter between their ears and are willing to waste time, Window is really their only choice. Both are terrible things to waste.

Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

In reply to Windows the best OS? The best OS for wasting my time

You wrote “Our company used to use a Win2000/Novell server as a proxy server. Switched to Linux/Apache and got rid of the problems.”

Was that a Win2K box running Microsoft’s Proxy or ISA or a Novell Netware box running Bordermanager? Two very different products.

Also any reason for using the Apache proxy module rather than Squid or other dedicated proxy service?

Good question

In reply to Reply To: The best OS ever without a doubt

Don’t really know. I was told that it was Win2K box but error messages would pop-up with a Novell Bordermanager signature. In any case, the server was often down. Later, I was told that the server is now using RedHat, which meant that out of say 1000 PCs in 6 very remote locations all linked by VSAT, only 3 are running Linux (2 of mine and the proxy server). The other servers for Oracle and Lotus Notes are running Win2K. The company is implementing Windows Active Directory (Win2003), which will pose a new challenge as the sole non-WinXP user but there are Linux distros such as Xandros 2.5 that will authenticate to AD.

You are right, not Apache but Squid as I recall now.

This is laughable

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

I’ll bet you’ve faithfully paid M$ every few
years to keep your MCP current and bought every
version of Windows starting with Win95. Heck,
I’ll bet you even were one of the people who
waited in line for it when it first showed up in
stores.

I was sort of like you once, too. Then, in 2003,
I bought a copy of SuSE 8.2 and installed it. My
first reaction was “Wow!” Basically, I put the
disk in, watched the installation work, rebooted
the system when it was done, and then had a
complete system with an office program
(OpenOffice), several e-mail clients (both
graphical and shell-based), three web browsers,
and just about anything else I would need — all
done in a little over two hours. So, for $90
U.S., I got a complete system that would have
cost up to $1,000 had I stuck with Microsoft
products. SuSE has been my primary OS ever
since.

Have you tried buying SuSE 10.0 online? If not,
the installation via FTP isn’t that hard.
Download the boot ISO image from SuSE, boot from
the CD, and follow the installation “wizard”
along. The only difference is that you’ll have
to change your software source installation
location in YaST (the set-up tool) to their FTP
locations instead of the CD-ROM drive. Other
than that, it works the same.

Recently I had a chance to visit a company that’s
involved in e-commerce transaction processing.
This company is ALL LINUX & UNIX except for the
desktop. Why? It’s because they can’t afford
downtime, high costs, security holes, and having
bloat (needless GUIs mainly) sucking up valuable
system resources. If Windows truly was the best
OS, you would think it would be used universally,
but it isn’t.

And as for the Mac having sub-standard
functionality, take a look at the Aqua interface
and the Mach kernel. Oh, and did I mention that
you can pretty much run most all Unix programs on
it? This includes running it as a mail server
using Sendmail and a database server using MySQL.
You may now explain to us how your copy of WinXP
can do those things — including serving over two
concurrent users.

I must say, the level of ignorance demonstrated
by your post is profound. I would hope that, if
you work in IT and hope to advance in your
career, that you develop some knowledge of other
operating systems because sooner or later you
will encounter them — either at your employer or
by way of an organization that does business with
your employer. Obviously it would not help if
you dumbfounded at the sight of one of these
other OS’s.

Nitwit.

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Son, you are confused…or ignorant. What constitutes “best” to you is obviously the product of a constipated analysis. Perhaps it would be helpful to learn something about other operating systems before dismissing them.

Our industry is littered with superlitive products taht are dead and gone because somebody made bad marketing decisions. Just because MS-Windows controls most of the oxygen we all breath, doesn’t mean it’s good to live that way. Duh.

insanity

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

wasn’t it Einstein who said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

these Windows vs Linux “discussions” are insane (on this site anyway). it’s the same sh** over and over again. unless there is something positively helpful to those who want to learn something from either platform, improve their business, etc..SHUUUUTT UUUUUPP!!!!

certain experienced post-ers offer very good insight on both sides which I can appreciate, the others need to relax and get back to work.

Best or most popular

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Perhaps you could clarify what you mean by best? Most popular? Most technologically advanced? Easiest to use? Most features “borrowed” from other operating systems? Easiest target for script kiddie hackers?

As for Apple being sued by Microsoft? That shoe seems to have been on the other foot.

As for Linux and learning for life. Are you saying that there have been no new features in Windows since 1.0? You havent’ had to learn anything new? Linux does have a steeper learning curve than Windows. OTOH, if you stop learning, they may as well put you to bed with a shovel.

What Winux wants to be when it grows up!

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Answer – Sun Solaris 10 /Staroffice –
Solaris – Running Virus free for 20+ years!

Many questions about Solaris 10…

In reply to What Winux wants to be when it grows up!

Some time in 2005, I downloaded a complete set of Solaris 10 CDs. I’ve got a new notebook with a large enough hard drive so that I can multi-boot WinXP, a couple of flavours of Linux and possibly Solaris. Questions:

Is it possible to boot Solaris using Grub/Lilo or Windows bootloader? Or does Solaris hog the first active primary partition like Windows likes to do?

Can Linux programs (source) be compiled for installation under Solaris? Alternatively, does Solaris provide a full suite of software equivalents.

Are Windows emulators, like Wine in Linux available?

Can Solaris read / write to ext3/ReiserFS/vfat/NTFS formatted partitions (to be able to share data among the various OSes)?

What about hardware support (drivers) for printers, etherner cards, etc?

If WHAT????

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Oh, you are just so young! Microsoft did not “invent” Windows. A very much younger Bill Gates and his buddy, Steve Jobs, together developed the first commercial version of DOS upon which (and forever after apparently) all future MS ‘operating systems’ would depend in one form or another. Mr. Gates made this the foundation of the company he named “MicroSoft”. Eventually, he and Mr. Jobs parted business ways, and Jobs developed the Apple OS, based on an entirely different CPU architecture and intended from day 1 to be accessed and used via a Graphical User Interface (no command line, like DOS, ever). The Apple OS always was a more stable, efficient, and solid graphics-based OS than DOS, and as such drew the attention of a large number of neophyte PC users (which describes pretty much ALL PC users at that time). The Apple market share posed a serious threat to the DOS PC market share then, so Mr. Gates did what it seems all serious business people do when threatened by products superior to their own: make a cheap knock-off rather than a better product. Thus Mr. Gates’ programmers were tasked to design and code a GUI to run on top of DOS (which it still does to this day) AND make it look like the Apple GUI. He called it “Windows”. Thus the war began.
Microsoft did not ‘invent’ Windows any more than a photographer invents the scenery in a landscape photograph.

Billy Gates greatest Invention :

In reply to If WHAT????

is the Story his massively-budgeted PR dept. has been selling
the world… – as RMJ says, the only thing Billy ever ‘Invented’
was the story – the rest is bought, plaigerised, blatently copied,
reverse engineered or simply ‘Inspired by’ (=stolen from…).

He didn’t even ‘write’ or conceive or design ‘DOS’ – that was
Seattle micro. – Billy just optioned it when he heard some IBM
innocents were ‘looking for an OS for a “personal Computer” …
and Gerry K of Digital Research had gone fishing and wasn’t
taking their Calls…”

🙂

He *did* write a BASIC Interpreter once…. but it wasn’t an
outstanding feat, nor a world first – it had all been done before
(Dartmouth etc…) and was something *any* reasonable
programmer/hacker of the time would’ve been able to ‘whip up’
over a day or two … [I recall writing one whilst making a batch of
‘cookies’ *grin*]

Billy has *never* been a clever TechHead, let alone a computer
Guru … – he’s a geek in a suit : a Businessman – And, in the
tradition of the great US Model of the rapacious Robber-Baron,
in the right place, right time, grabs an advantage over the
Hicks…he’s been a very successful one. he’s been playing the
Public, Govt and Industry Newbies for fools ever since.
Only IMNSHO, of course … 🙂

Big sigh….

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Heh…heres what all you “professionals” are forgetting…overlooking, whatever you want to call it.
Wether you like it or not, Windows IS the number 1 OS. Its very simple as to why. The average user, can sit down with and do WHATEVER it is they want to do with it. With very little book time. Surf the internet, read/write emails, play games, etc.

The average user CANNOT do this with linux….at least not yet. If you want linux to be the LEADING OS on the market, why dont all you high and mighty gurus, stop whining and slamming Gates, and make linux as user friendly as windows.
Hell, you can even charge people money for it!!!’
Ill buy it and install it myself.
Oh wait, thats against the whole Linux open source philosophy isnt it? Or maybe not, they do have some for sale….not exactly for your average user though is it.

Then of course you run the risk of all the leet hackers focusing on hacking Linux now instead of Windows. Whats yer excuse gonna be then?

Anyway, come out of your geek towers, and remember the actual majority of users, dont want to and arent going to spend the time to learn to use Linux. Wanna change the world? Step up and do it, quit whining that no one else has done it yet.

As a side note…during that anti-trust crap, which was BS by the way….cause lets face it, there were PLENTY of alternative browsers to use.
But hey, MS got to big and wasnt tossin any to the politicians, yet another big ol evil mean corporation that needed to be brought to its knees.
Gates shoulda took his cash and flipped a bird to everyone, as he closed the doors to MS. Just think, then you all coulda been in Linux heaven where everything is perfect. RIIIIIGHT.

Anywho…want a Linux world? Make it happen.
But for now, its the Windows world that Bill created. Like it or not.

I don’t know about you…

In reply to Big sigh….

Sounding so smug and all like you know the answers and everyone else is a dummy.
Straight answer… yes or no: have you ever installed and used Linux?

There is a point in time when I never had either. Then I went out and bought a commercial release of Mandrake 7 Linux. Took it home, put the installation CD into the drive, clicked on install, then sat back and swapped CDs as required. LESS than 15 minutes later, and with no training in Linux of any kind, I’m on the system using the default GUI that installs (one of 6 equally easy-to-use GUI’s that came with the package), doing everything you can do with a mouse, and wondering why the heck everyone (like you, I guess) seems to think there is some nightmare associated with running a Linux system.
Oh, and did I mention that the office suite that came with it could do all sorts of stuff that you need high-priced Windows programs to do otherwise?
Granted, there are some things that it couldn’t do without the help of an actual wizard, like run games designed for Windows right out of the box. And there are some things that it doesn’t have, but who needs dancing paperclips anyway? All the extra code required for that sort of crap just makes the program bigger anyway. So why have it at all?
By the way, how much is Big Bill kicking back to you for defending his products?

Have to Agree — Microsoft works better!

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

I have a small business with 15 employees. I have tried setting up a linux server with a RedHAT subscription and that was a time consuming disaster. I don’t have an IT Dept. All I wanted to do is set up a File server, web server, and an intranet. First, setting up Samba to work correctly with different groups, users and shares took part of my life away that I will never get back. Sticky Bit. What the heck is a sticky bit and why the heck do I even want to know what that is; I don’t! I am not even going to get into setting up Apache and MYSQL. That was even worse. Needless to say, Linux humbled me and brought me to my knees. I Gave up and was saved by Microsoft Windows 2003 server. I am not exagerating when tell you I was able to set up the whole system the way I needed it in a few short hours. Microsoft is very intuitive and the books available are written well enough to get the job done easily. I never had to make a phone call. I have a domain controller, File server and an internal intranet. The Server has been up for almost a year now without rebooting. Great OS. Can’t be beat. If you are a larger company you can use MS instead of Linux and probably get rid of half you IT staff becuase MS is so easy to administer.

Go Microsoft !!

Microsoft works better than Linux?

In reply to Have to Agree — Microsoft works better!

Sorry for your bad experience. Next time try a Mac and save
yourself a ton of trouble. Macs come with Samba and Apache.
MySQL takes 5 minutes to download and install. Achieving
Windows file sharing is a ONE CHECKBOX affair.

How do I know? Well, that’s what I run here. I back up my
Windows machines over the network to the Mac servers – no
problem. There is also PHP, Python, and Xtools (including
WebObjects) that come standard on the Mac.

Look, I’ve got to get back to work doing something productive
(and on a Mac) so good luck and go drive one of these things
sometime.

and your IP address is?

In reply to Have to Agree — Microsoft works better!

Just for fun… tell us your domain name or IP address and we’ll see just how “easy” it is. 30 minutes of hacking and your wonderful “few hours” will be brought to a standstill. Would you like some p0rn on all your users’ desktops?
Whether you use m$, linux or some other brand of *nix there is NOTHING that will replace a network admin. No amount of “click to install” will remove the fact that a computer network needs expertise, not only to install but also to maintain.
Chrs
A
ps. I read somewhere that the average linux admin manages 4x the number of servers the average winders admin manages. So even with the exorbidant fees redhat are charging…

Dude, you can’t be serious

In reply to Have to Agree — Microsoft works better!

So typing service httpd start and service mysql start was too hard? After that you just have to create and index.html for Apache (looking at the default Apache page tells you EXACTLY what to do) and setup your mysql database permissions.

Samba can be a pain, but there is a metric ton of documentation out there and O’Reilly puts out a GREAT book on setting it up.

OS and the KISS principle

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

There is only one reason I use Windows: the programs I need to run are written for Windows. A graphic interface may be more pleasing to idiot users, but truth is: you’ve got a digital mind trying to follow analog instructions–and that causes problems. Give a user a text-menu and they click “A” or “B.” Give a user a graphic display and a mouse and they click “A 1/2” then the computer has to figure out if it should execute “A” or “B.” It might decide the user said “B” when the user thought she said “A,” or it might make a “thung-I-heard-you” noise and not do anything because it’s so busy chewing the proverbial bubble gum it forgot to keep walking.

Engineers are taught the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid! Logic being, the fewer parts, the fewer things to break. What is every new version of Windows? More parts, more things to break/clash/crash. It’s common knowledge that the more Windows get used the more unstable it gets. To me that’s an inexcuseable fault. To MicroSoft’s marketing department, that’s the excuse to sell them Windows: Next.

Y’know, back in college we had to get our own copies of MatLab. Most of the class got the Windows version: a couple of us bought the DOS version. Certain files had to be saved to a particular directory on the network (I don’t remenber which or why). The DOS versions figured out where to put it automatically. The teacher’s “save” instructions for the Windows students?: Ask a DOS user to tell you the directory number their program is saving to.

MORE HERE THEN THERE

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

I think windows get the biggest hammer throwen on it because they have the biggest % of customers there for 3 to 4 times more complants I bet if you account for all the sales of Microsoft compared to each of all the other os
you would see windows has the lions share & sure it’s fare from perfect but it’s a lot easyer then most of the others if not all it’s just that when you get the lions share of the customers you get the lions share of the complants all the others ar’nt complant free & more food for thoght I don’t see all the complaners going to the other os do you I think it’s just a way of blowing off steam when your upset when it’s over all is well but when it’s fresh it’s a bugger & hard to blow out ha ha ha take care stay healthy & be happy I did’nt buy my computer to be a grumbler all though I have my moments to thank’s for the oppertunity
P.S.
may the lord overwhelm you with ample blessing to spreed around. & be happy

People bash windows

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

People bash windows because,

10:it is bloated,
9:it is slopy code
8:Microsoft has preditory busninss practices
7:everytime they are forced to upgrade their computer gets slower and harder to use.
6:they are forced to upgrade when their may be nothing more they need.
5:Windows does not play well with others
4:Features are removed to later become add on products for add on price. (
3:security was an afterthought, by design
2:networking was an afterthought
1:
and the number one reason people like Windows is
they don’t know anything else

TROLL

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

…

Opinion are like rear end every one has one

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Well windows is out there but not the greatest it can stand to be totaly overhauled.
Bill Gates never wrote any of its software they stole it change it up and called it their own. Example windows 3.X was stolen from apple computer. Apple then re wrote their software where it is more user friendy with gui and drag n drop feature where as windows wasn’t you gad to reload the cdrom drive every time you turn on windows, which force Bill Gate to write or steal another software and call it Windows 95.
What a fiasco it crashes every time you use it, second you had to buy a tune up disk to fix it and third it wasn’t usb compatable till the second version came out. I ask the room take a look at norton or macaffe website and look at the virus warning and see which operation system it infected the most 9 times out of ten it is windows coincident I think not. If bill Gates hadn’t gotten message by now he will never get it.

You Have Got to Be Crazy

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Are you out of your everloving mind. Microsoft was still farting
around with dos hell when Apple was given the GUI by Zerox.
Quote” Nothing will ever come of that” UnQuote.

EVERY FEATURE THAT IS IN WINDOWS WAS STOLEN FROM
MACINTOSH.

That dude is flat out fact.

Microsoft had weathered lawsuits out the wazoo to steal and
keep the inovations that were stolen from Mac.

Oh yea! If Mac is so crude, why did Bill Gates invest $150 million
in Apple several years back.

I have used Dos since the ’60’s and bought my first Mac in the
late ’80’s.

I service Mac and Windows customers in my business. If it wasn’t
for Windows I would starve. I get a Mac related call about once
every 2 months. I usually can handle that over the phone.

No the bugs don’t get fixed. They get reborn. Every patch that
microsoft does will cripple or damage some application or part
of their own system. Have you ever read the post that are
included with every patch.

Sub standard. Sheeze, Windows is as close to a carbon copy of
the Mac GUI as windows can get it without bring down the wrath
of the all mighty attorneys.

Every hosting isp offers windows, linux, and Macintosh based
servers.

There are programmers that code windows software using
Macintosh computers because they can stand the crashing that
goes on with Dos based machines.

Yea thats right, Dos based. Think it’s not still there. Go to start
run and type cmd and see what comes up. I still have to drop to
dos to fix some of the crazy things that happen is windows.

Go in to almost any Elementary or Jr High School and see what is
in their computer labs.

If windows died right now Apple would pick up the slack and the
web would keep rignt on trucking, only just a little more stable.

You want to play a lot of games get windows. You want to do
some heavy graphics work without rebooting or waiting forever,
get a Macintosh. What do you think is in Industrial Light &
Magics workstations. It Dang shure ain’t Windows.

Macintosh is porting to the Intel platform not because their
hardware is getting tired. But because the windows users can’t
even begain to understand why a 2.5gig RISC processor will tear
up a 4gig Pentium.

Windows is a pox on mankind. If it is a wheel it has a flat spot.
The only reason I want it to stay around is it puts food on my
table from fixing all of the “undocumented features” that they
keep putting in their software. NOTE: that’s technician slang for
BUGS!

Good luck in life. Ya gonna need it.

Lee
Micro Support Technologies
Computer Engineer since 1974

This Again

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Come on, people. This discussion has already happened like about a million times now. MS vs. the Rest of the World.

Personally I’m tired of the propaganda from either camp. Seems like the fanatics on either side deem it necessary to try to force their opinions on everyone else.

If your OS does what you need it to do, great. If not, use a different OS. Move on and let it go.

I have an opinion about which OS I prefer, but sharing it here and then having ten fanatics argue with me about it is just a waste of time.

A bit of advice to both camps: correct grammar and spelling would greatly help your credibility.

BEOS

In reply to This Again

was probably the best os in the making until MS had it quashed

Heard good things about it

In reply to BEOS

A buddy of mine really liked it, but I never checked it out.

At my job I support approx 200 users using mainly Windows 2k / XP in an AD environment. By locking down the user accounts via group policy, keping a tight reign on the firewall config, and setting up SPAM filters and antivirus on the mail server we’ve managed to keep the PCs functional yet still protect the users from themselves.

Windows does what our users need, the few problems I encounter that I can’t immediately solved myself are well-documented and easy to research (most of the time), and all other software my users need is written for Windows.

In my case, my fav OS is what I know works best for my users & organization. Notice I said “fav OS”, not “best OS”. And I assume like most people, my favorite is the one I know the best.

At least

In reply to Heard good things about it

at least you have an good answer.
everyone must use what solves their busninss problems.
If the windows monopoly is broken you will have more options

Well in that case

In reply to This Again

Which version of English do you want used?

British English, US English, Australian English, Canadian English or what?

First you’ll have to tell us all which version of English to use so we don’t type in colour instead of color. 😀

Col ]:)

Good Point There

In reply to Well in that case

Each “version” of English has its own flavor (or “flavour”, if you prefer). No need to split hairs here…I realize there’s different cultures contributing and every one has their own wacky way of doing and saying things (including me). The point I was trying to make is that when someone replies and it sounds as if a nine-year-old wrote it after running out of Ritalin then the person who wrote it probably loses a bit of credibility. It always seems like it’s the same idiots who contribute to soap opera and professional wrestling forums must be behind the keyboards.

I think it’s silly when people get so impassioned about this issue (MS vs. Anything / Everything Else). Every point and counter-point about it has already been made countless times before, and I won’t get pulled in to it.

Not a big fan of inappropriate emoticons either, but I’ll let that slide 🙂 😉

Well I try to keep it humorous

In reply to Good Point There

As I find it hard to get too involved in this entire argument. MS vs Nix, AMD vs Intel and any number of other different things that are used in the IT field. They are all the same and constantly creep up.

So I just try to laugh it off and throw in a bit of comedy. 😀

Col ]:)

and which USA English do you recommend

In reply to Well in that case

In the USA they have two versions of English –

Media Reporter English and

General Usage English

With MRE to hear the wrong words would leave me ‘Decimated’.

Whilst with GUE the situation would leave me ‘Devastated’.

DUHH

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Who dropped this guy on his head? Microsoft didn’t invent windows. I believe it was Apple. Maybe somebody before that. Oh, yes, a carpenter!
He doesn’t go back far enough with Microsoft! I remember every Microsoft OS starting with MS DOS 3.1, Maybe before that, but I am old enought to not remember stuff an am entitled to do so.
Anyway, Microsoft has NEVER come out with an O/S that didn’t have a LOT of bugs and that took a lot of skill to patch and / or workaround same.
Go talk to someone who knows something besides a mouse.
[email protected]

The worst forum ever without a doubt

In reply to DUHH

I can’t believe that a group of highly educated IT specialists can get
so emotional and act like a bunch of school children about their
OS.

“Can’t we all just get along?”……..

well said

In reply to The worst forum ever without a doubt

😉

You HAVE to be kidding!

In reply to The worst forum ever without a doubt

You HAVE to be kidding!

Windows can never be the best OS from a programmers’ perspective

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Windows can never be the best OS from a programmers’ perspective. By programmer I mean the ones who programs the UI for himself, be it a shell script or whatever.
Just think the way the GUI works and how does it help a programmer when its shell (cmd or command) shell is so badly capable of scripting.
Also, as compared to Linux (bash or other xyz-sh shell) Windows is no where in picture. A programmer will always want more flexibility, more power onto control his/her UI.
Now, talking abt the GUI, KDE and gnome are doing far better and are improving very much for user-friendliness (for which generally “Microsoft” is known for) also the more easy error/info “sugar-coated” messages. So, Microsoft just has one-up w.r.t GUI but that won’t last for long since better development in Linux GUI can rather beat or be at par-with-Microsoft.

So, I wud say that the so-called “BEST” depends on for who/whom it?s targeted for, and not overall.

What about the perspective of the programmers who programme Windows

In reply to Windows can never be the best OS from a programmers’ perspective

When M$ was fonded they did not program DOS, a programmer did. And his perspective he thought it was crap, so he dubbed it QDOS or Quick and Dirty Operating System, and form then on we were doomed.

Anyway, programing is just algorithms formed in some language to do something to something. A lot of algorithms are made into windows applications a lot are made into Linux and windows programmer’s. So from programmers’ perspective if it’s good for one it’s good for the other.

Do end users have less input into Linux GUI then a Windows GUI, probably yes. are end users programmers. yes.

Linux is chaotic. if you think there is a million way to do this in Microsoft, then there is a million more ways to do stuff with open source.

If MS have a good idea, programmers’ from Linux rip it off( reverse engineer it) and vise verse.

For every good tool/app created by programmers’ for Linux they also create a version for Windows.

As there are many different categories of OS there are so programmers’. And their perspective’s are only sometimes limited to there preferred choice of OS.

not so

In reply to What about the perspective of the programmers who programme Windows

there is not a version of every good tool / program for windows.
windows is slopy and poorly written, the compay is a bad company

You mean like needing to type in your

In reply to What about the perspective of the programmers who programme Windows

Admin Password to install a new program like in Linux. Sorry I missed that one at my MS training and it’s one of the things that I’ve constantly suggested to MS to incorporate into their Windows System so that when running as Admin which most Home Computers are things like Viruses can not install themselves unless you are silly enough to allow them to and give them the ability to install themselves. :p

Incidentally where in Windows are those 4 little boxes which give you a different desktop? I can not see them on this XP Pro Box but I must have missed installing something right? 😀

This a a sore point right at the moment after spending 3 hours on the phone trying to tell someone how to shut down a Program I ended up just telling them to turn it off. This was all brought about because the brand new Vacuum Cleaner that they bought came with a round disc like thing that had a video on how the new play toy worked and it didn’t auto run into the video player when inserted into the computer it asked which Media Player the person wanted to use. They didn’t even know if it was a DVD or CD. It took about 45 minutes to eventually get it to run and then 30 minutes latter he was on the phone again asking how to shut it down. If he didn’t live so far away I would have driven down there just to see what was happening as he had me totally lost with what he was describing on the screen, and insisting that pressing the CTRL/ALT/Delete did nothing at all. I could have also gone down there and gone a little further and had a look at one of his fiends computers that I recently supplied apparently after 8 days they have managed to get just one Web Page to appear incorrectly and what to know what they have done to have this happen as it used to display correctly now you need to scroll all about just to get to the parts that you want. 🙂

My answer was to download Firefox and that cured their problem but how just one web page displays with writing and pictures 22 MM high when they should appear as normal text and images is way beyond me. But at least in Firefox that banks web page appeared the correct size so he could do his banking. :p

Col ]:)

Best OS Ever???

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Hope you didn’t get hurt when you fell off the soapbox! Do us all a favor: 1. Do some research before you spout off – some of your comments are just not accurate, 2. Find a good spell-checker before you publish, and 3. Good grammar and punctuation are not dead – try using both for any chance of credibility. Nuff said!

Which ones?

In reply to Best OS Ever???

which comments are just not accurate? What spelling mistakes are there? Grammar and punctuation are not things I have worked hard at perfecting, but I am open to being told what I got wrong (grammatically) and how it should be corrected (whit punctuation).

Consider this

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

IF you have scrolled down this far anyway.

Microsoft are a large corporate entity with many partners. Now, if Microsoft with all there money and power want to say that they created their product, Who am I to argue. That argument could bankrupt a company, so I stand no chance of telling them that they did not create Windows and that some-else did and look I have proof.

A few people seem to be complaining about the quality of my thread. Yes, it isn’t up to a full glad high paid lawyers argument, sorry about that.

A few people seem to get picky and argue semantics of my thread.

A few have even called it a troll.

A few complained about logic.

I would like to think that if I was surfing the TR and I went into the Linux discussion area I would find a tread there called the Best OS ever without a doubt, because there seems to be a lot of support for Linux in the Windows Discussion area.

So how about this,
IF you like windows, then it has to be “the greatest OS ever without a doubt”. IF you like something else then you don’t like windows.

or how about this?

In reply to Consider this

Windows is the most common OS for PCs(not ‘de facto’ the greatest, because believe it or not the world runs on good old UNIX and the becoming-ever-more-popular UNIX-like OSs that have lead us up to Linux). So if you think that makes Windows ‘the greatest OS ever’, that’s your definition.
No matter what OS you are running, however, it runs the same hardware as any other OS has to run. Personally, I’d like to see computing systems develop into something like this: you have a basic hardware set (monitor, keyboard, mouse, memory drives, RAM, and other peripherals) but no embedded OS. Instead, the hardware platform has a plug-in for an OS module. Want to run Windows? Plug in the Windows module (any version). Want to run Linux? Same deal. Take out the Windows OS module and plug in the Linux OS module (any version). Want to run a different OS? No problem. Take out the module that’s there and plug in the module you want, even if it is your very own custom OS. It’s still all the same hardware! Or how about having multiple plug-ins that play nice together, and you could run any combination of OSs that you wish. It begs the question of why do we insist on accepting the same “one machine – one OS” concept we’ve had to accept as users since the Altair?

livecd

In reply to or how about this?

Knoppix and others allow you to do this with a cd or dvd. DSL, and I believe Puppy linux allow you to do this off of a usb key.

The OS plug ins is old hat

In reply to or how about this?

Many moons ago a company I worked for made printers for main frame computers – when you ordered the printer you specified what brand of system you were connecting it to, the OS being used, and the connection type you wanted to use. When the printer went in for pre-delivery testing the tech would look at the order and go to the cupboard to get out a circuit board with the right type of connector on it and then the relevant little plug in ‘daughter’ boards to configure it with. He then placed this in the machine, ran diagnostics and it was ready to ship.

One board for the cable connector and then plug in modules to translate sugnals for each OS and system.

capable doesn’t mean available…

In reply to The OS plug ins is old hat

No argument, the ability to do this has been with us since “day 1”. The commercial availability, however, has not, as the evolutionary path of the PC has been shackled securely to the ‘one system, one OS’ concept. At the risk of opening a huge can of worms, I comment that this has only recently been kicked into the spotlight (or at least the less shadowy edge of the spotlight) by the rise of Linux and the discussion around ‘dual boot’ systems. Certainly people have been able to run more than one OS on a single machine for some time, but their profile has been pretty low, and it is still only barely possible to run two types of software in the same system. Personally, I don’t think that software should be OS-specific, but that’s an entire discussion in itself.

Actually it has been done

In reply to capable doesn’t mean available…

You may not remember but back in the early days of ISA etc there were some plug in cards that were totally software independent, everything you needed was on the card. they were mainly used for running extra hardware and peripherals but the worked.

Some of the types I cards that I had used in those days were for

SCSI devices
comms port cards
various video cards
sound cards
some early CD roms

In those days everything got pushed through the cpu – everything had to speak in a common set of codes. The OS translated your apps instructions and your keyboard input to that code the system fed those codes to the cards and the cards changed them to what was wanted by the device attached to them. Did not matter what OS you had and you did not need drivers for them, if the card fitted it worked.

Then they came up with the idea of common action codes sets and putting a lot of this stuff on the device itself, and of design changes to feed stuff around the cpu etc. This mean a whole new set of codes etc and the powers that be decided to go the route of the device driver loaded into the software – at one point they tried to have all software using common codes etc to get around this sort of stuff but many big players refused to play ball and that movement died.

Thanks

In reply to Actually it has been done

I did not know this. Thanks for the info. Do you think that this kind of OS-platform independence has a future, or are we doomed to playing the “proprietary devices” game forever after?

Sadly it is proprietary devices

In reply to Thanks

This was decided by the manufactures of hardware and software when we went from ISA to PCI. Those biggest names pushing this shift were MS, Intel, AMD, HP, Compaq, Dell, IBM and Apple. The tech driven move to go the other way go squashed badly.

The intended end result of all this is the MS/Intel aim of Secured Computing – where the hardware and software will check for legitimate copies of software before doing anything or allowing you to talk on the network.

If we had gone the other way then we would not have so many problem with compatibility between OSs.

Those involved in the development of the Linux Kernels nearly all follow the other paradiem, and this shows in the Linux hardware driver backward compatibility.

SCO and dual boot systems long before Linux

In reply to capable doesn’t mean available…

SCO had a dual boot system many years ago. You could boot DOS 3.3 – whatever. and SCO Xenix-Unixware. There were size limitations, but they were not really an issue in the old days.

Back when you could actually have 16 people working productively on a 386/25 MZ with 8 MB of RAM and a 200 MB HD. Yes, that is right 16 people doing work – email, Word Processing, everything in 8MB RAM. Oh, and you could have color with a VT420, as well as at the console, if you wanted it.

Today, Software is bloatware. at the OS level and the application level… Does anybody else remember writing overlays to fit in an 8k window?

how about this

In reply to Consider this

come back in 10years, when you know enough to have an opinion

Bad logic …

In reply to Consider this

Just because someone likes *nix doesn’t always mean that they don’t like Windoze. I like using Windoze. I like using any OS actually.
Your statement is like saying I like my kids, but I don’t like anyone else’s kid(s). Bad logic and not true.

Windoze best OS ever? C’mon….

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Just because it’s mass-produced (Budweiser, Miller, Windoze) doesn’t mean it’s the best. A lot of microbrews and imports have a much better taste than those two beers; in parallel, certain *nix flavors can run rings around Windoze regarding security and performance. Let’s not forget most *nix can run on more than one platform.
I would also like to add that you should seriously go back to school and retake some grammar and spelling classes.

End of Disscussion.

In reply to Windoze best OS ever? C’mon….

No matter which one you like or what you think your wasting your time trying to change others opinions. I used to chase technology, Always trying to learn all I could. Guess what? In the end your all gonna die and none of this will matter. Stop wasting your time chasing technology. Take care of what is important. Enjoy life for the simple pleasures and spend time with friends and family. Do you what them to say “He really knew UNIX/Windows?” or do you what them to say “Man that guy really knew how to live and what was important.”?

Not the end

In reply to End of Disscussion.

It was just too convenient that your trust fund sponsored post came last snow-rider. Some of us have to work, and while doing that enjoy working on something challenging and interesting like IT.

Since I have to work and I like IT, I’ll stick with it while you snowboard. As long as I am doing IT, I might as well care about what I am doing. As long as I care about what I am doing, I might as well try to convince others to embrace a method of computing that allows computers to interoperate on a network. As long as I am trying to convince others of this neccessity, I have to try educate them about how anathema this approach to computing is to MS.

Go back to the mountains and let us geeks have our fun.

ohhh boy….

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

I was dragged kicking and screaming into the clone world. When I finally crashed my Amiga 2000 (with a GVP-3001 in it) in 1995, I had clones and Macs to pick from. Macs were still fairly expensive so I got into the clone world. I could not fathom how people could use clones and their OSs and think they were great systems. I look at Windows as the survival of the mediocre, because its the best that ‘people’ can aspire to.

Thanks, I needed a good laugh. You do need to get out more often though.

Windows is the best WHAT? Ok back to reality…

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Put the crack pipe away and listen to reality:

HP-UX is the best operating system ever developed.

Why?

1. You hardly need to ever reboot the system.
2. The system is incredibly stable. There are HP-UX servers that have been up for over 10 years without a power down.
3. You can scale it almost indefinitely by adding hardware.
4. It does what a computer is supposed to do. It runs without unexpected results day in, day out.

If you speak against it, you probably haven’t seen it.

This is why big companies that run 24×7 operations use it. NOT Windows. This OS properly built has more staying power than the energizer rabbit on viagra.

If you’re talking about DESKTOPS, I think the best is still yet to come. I won’t endorse an OS that you have to reboot whenever you change anything on the system or cannot control it’s own processes.

“reboot”

In reply to Windows is the best WHAT? Ok back to reality…

Would you endorse an OS that performs it primary function, with out error, with out hassle, without any problems?

If the answer is yes then you must support Windows.

“reboot” the primary function of windows since it’s inception.

Really!

In reply to “reboot”

[i]Would you endorse an OS that performs it primary function, with out error, with out hassle, without any problems?[/i]

I would but I’ve yet to see any version of Windows that works this way. After all what is the BSOD called and why is it so well known?

There are very few systems that run this way and none of them have any form of Windows installed and best of all they do not allow an exe file to run and trash to OS without first asking to be installed unlike Windows whatever. 😀

Col ]:)

Windows is the best at rebooting- Hal

In reply to Really!

There is no other system as good at rebooting as windows. It only happens 2-3 times/week with servers and 1-4 times a day on a desktop.

Of course Windows is the best at rebooting…
45.5% uptime. Yea! MS!!!

(Now that I am done puking…)HA!

“reboot”

In reply to Really!

It what windows was built for. Install an application, “reboot”, update the OS, “reboot”, secure windows, “reboot”, first solution to try if nothing works “reboot”. No matter what stage of the cycle the OS is operation is in, it can still perform it’s primary function. If it freezes at start up “reboot”. It’s even on the OS shutdown menu.

If there us a hardware failure, it might not “reboot”, but windows can’t be blamed for that.

😀 :p 😉

I agree

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Although I would love a cheaper OS and one that wasnt as resource hungry as windows has been and is now inreasing. Your right windows drives the market, the userbility, application support and overall ability makes it king. There is nothing we can do to change that fact, so why try to buck the system?

Getting the facts right

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Please note:

– The PC was invented by IBM
– Microsoft started with MS-DOS on IBM PCs
– Apple had MacOS and it ran only on windows
– Apple created windows and the mouse
– Have you heard of Appletalk? Best n/w ever!
– Word processing was started by Wordperfect
– Spreadsheets by Lotus 1-2-3
– Presentation s/w by Harvard business graphics
and, yes, Power point (not a microsoft company)
– Desktop publishing by Pagemaker

Microsoft bought some of them, copied some of them and, by virtue of their DOS being shipped out with *every* PC, managed to corner the marketshare.

Now, please go do some research before posting such atrocious topics!

I believe Xerox invented the mouse as well as the GUI…

In reply to Getting the facts right

I believe Xerox invented the mouse as well as the GUI…

Where do I begin

In reply to Getting the facts right

Lets take them one at a time:

– The PC was invented by IBM
Well technically IBM did come out with a PC called a PC. But there was a computer called the Apple II that was out there before the IBM PC. It too was very capable. Many people credit the Apple II and VisiCalc(the first spreadsheet) as being the killer app that started the personal computer revolution.

-Microsoft started with MS Dos on IBM PCs
No, MS started with a basic compiler, before IBM PCs were even available. They found out that IBM was having trouble sourcing a third party OS for their new computer so they went to a company they knew that had an OS that would work, and they bought the rights to it.

-Apple created windows and the mouse.
Both existed before the Macintosh or the Lisa, though they were not widespread before the Mac (Lisa didn’t sell well).

– Appletalk best n/w ever.
The Appletalk protocol ran over a couple of different wiring types including Local Talk (built into all Macs) and Ethertalk. The protocol made networking easy for amateurs, but it was fairly chatty and didn’t play nicely with other protocols on the same router. Network engineers hate it.

-Word Processing was started by Wordperfect
Again wrong. There were wordprocessors from AES Data and Wang Labs in mid 70s before PCs. I have personally used both.

– Spreadsheet by Lotus 1-2-3
VisiCalc was selling like hot cakes before 1-2-3 was written.

-Presentation s/w by Harvard business graphics
Just Harvard Graphics actually. Well it may be the first I recall but it had competition.

– Desktop Publishing by Pagemaker
Aldus was the company who created Pagemaker, the first DTP system. Ventura Publisher was one year later.

So if you want to harrangue people about getting the facts right, please look in the mirror.

James

Microsoft might not have won – Apple lost

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

The automobile analogy is a very good one. Ford did not make the “best” car in many respects but it was affordable.

Apple lost because Jobs wanted to keep the whole pie. His system was proprietary. That made his product too expensive. (It still is!)

Bill Gates thankfully created a mass market for PC’s by saying, “Hey, if it is PC based I don’t care who makes the hardware” and proceded to drive the price of home computing down for the people who either did not have the money to buy an Apple or did not want to spend “that much money” to own a word processor. Don’t forget, PC’s did not really do that much when this struggle for dominance began.

If it were not for the marketing genius and “do what ever it takes” drive of Bill Gates to bring to the common man a personal computer we would not be enjoying the fruits of the highest growth in productivity in the history of mankind.

Remember, this opportunity was there for the other guys to take but they were hogs and wanted the whole pie, or they just did not have the vision, so they lost.

The reason so many people complain about Microsoft is because they strive to be all things to all people and that is a tough row to hoe.

It would be good to know how many of the whiners out there have any kind of certification in Microsoft products. I can do phenominal things in little time with Windows operating systems which give my clients stable, secure and valuable products for their investments. Perhaps some of the complainers should learn how to properly utilize the tools available to them with Windows.

Hey, it may not be perfect, but it is really good.

best ever with out a doubt.

In reply to Microsoft might not have won – Apple lost

Thanks for your input.

Ford doesn’t make the best car? what are you saying. 😛

Relatively NO and YES

In reply to best ever with out a doubt.

Dear friend,

Ford doesn’t make the best car for some people and does make the best one for the rest.

Did God create the best Earth’s Moon and did not the create best Pluto’s?

Best regards,
alx

Why people bash windows, and you like it

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

By the way, did you hear that WOOOOSH!
It was an intelligent thoutht, see if you can catch up to it. 🙂
People bash windows because,

10:it is bloated,
9:it is slopy code
8:Microsoft has preditory busninss practices
7:everytime they are forced to upgrade their computer gets slower and harder to use.
6:they are forced to upgrade when their may be nothing more they need.
5:Windows does not play well with others
4:Features are removed to later become add on products for add on price. (
3:security was an afterthought, by design
2:networking was an afterthought
1:
and the number one reason people like Windows is
they don’t know anything else

You may be right, you may be wrong

In reply to Why people bash windows, and you like it

10:it is bloated
9: it is slopy code

It is bloated by nature because it is all things to all people. The world is waiting for someone, maybe you, to build a better mouse trap. When that lean and mean code writer steps up and provides the intuitive broad usability available to them through Windows for less money, we will all line up with our money in hand.

8: Microsoft has preditory busninss practices
Please name one giant corporation that has not had this charge laid against it by it’s competitors.

7:everytime they are forced to upgrade their computer gets slower and harder to use.

I know people who are still using ’95. No one makes people upgrade. Perhaps the people whose systems keep getting slower and harder to use should invest in some new hardware.
Personally, my systems keep running faster and are much easier to use.

6:they are forced to upgrade when their may be nothing more they need.

Again, I am not sure I follow. If they don’t need to upgrade, why do they? Microsoft has never “forced” me to upgrade in the last 15 years.

5:Windows does not play well with others
Such is life for those who chose to play with the losers.

4:Features are removed to later become add on products for add on price.

You lost me again on this one. Can you give an example?

3:security was an afterthought, by design

Yeah, who knew there would be so many ______k’s out there who have nothing better to do than be _______’s (use favorite invective here) Maybe you should vent your frustration at them instead of a company which is just trying to deliver an affordable easy to use product to the common man.

2:networking was an afterthought

When’s the last time you set up 25 users on a network using Mac’s or Linux boxes?

1: The number one reason people like Windows is
they don’t know anything else

Wrong again. back in the old days (around the turn of the century) I used to support a group of creative users for a dot com. They were advanced Mac users and were by far way more computer operating system literate than the average advanced Windows user. They had to be. Their apps, Dreamweaver, Photoshop etc. had to be tweaked for memory utilization, their Mac’s crashed every time they tried to open multiple apps and they were just all around miserable. I am sure OS X has improved the lives of users just as XP has, but all in all, Windows is still the winner.

BTW… Could you point me to a Mac based small business server to study. What’s that? There isn’t one? Well, where is Steve Jobs when you need him.

When is the last time you cracked open your Mac and upgraded the video card that you bought down at the local electronics store or added more RAM?

As far as Linux goes… I can go out on the street and grab someone of average intelligence and have them administering Windows way before they can handel Linux.

It’s not that we don’t know anything else… we just know better.

Sore losers?

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Bill came, Bill kicked ass, Bill dominates. Tough crap, welcome to America, come up with something better, convince the masses that it is better, knock Bill off his throne, until then keep whining and crying.

If it wan’t for….

In reply to Sore losers?

lets face it guys if it were not for microsoft most of us IT pros would not be. We would be working in some menial factory job miserable and griping about that rather than Bill Gates who is a genius. So you may not like his platform and that is your right but give credit where credit is due that is all i ask.

Based on three decades of experience…

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Over the last thirty years that I’ve been a software developer, network and system admin, I’ve proably used twenty OS’s and their derivitives in my professional role.

In the 1970’s, I started out writing software on CDC and IBM mainframes and on “bare metal”. Later I began using a real-time OS called RSX-11M when I worked for NASA. I used VMS, Unix, Domain and other OS’s while I wrote CAD software.

In the early 1980’s I lived and worked near Apple’s ‘skunk works’ and had to listen to the Mac developer’s go on and on about their little toy system. Apple was smart to switch over to NextStep (based on CMU’s Mach kernel).

The last ten years I’ve been making a living off the internet I’ve used Unix, Linux and Windows.

OK, based on that large sample of systems, the single most elegant operating system was the Apollo Domain (Aegis) operating system. Tandem Computers Guardian would be my second choice.

The best operating system developer on the planet is probably Dave Cutler. He was responsible for RSX-11, VMS and VAXELN systems while at Digital Equipment Corporation. Goes to show you that even the best can do a half assed job — i.e. he lead the Windows NT effort at MS.

buck

Ditto…

In reply to Based on three decades of experience…

So, where do you think Kernigan and Ritchie fall in here?

Ditto??

In reply to Ditto…

Hey iceman, I’m not sure what “ditto” means in this instance but I guess you agree with me.

> So, where do you think Kernigan and Ritchie
> fall in here?

K&R are academic type reseachers at Bell Labs. Those folks can live with 99.9% solutions. They writing research papers and stuff. Now those guys did put together two operating system (unix and plan9). But if you were gonna bet the farm on an OS, where you could not afford to have the system go tits up on ya. Would you pick their stuff or would go with Dave Cutler’s RSX or VMS?

I used RSX when I wrote command and control software for the Pioneer project. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if I had to unix for something like that. I mean unix could not even do real-time apps until MassComp came along. Nuff said?

Now I do think that pipes were a brillant idea even if they got from notion some other OS.

I dunno, I guess those guys do qualify as “Real Programmers” (as in the letter to the editor in Datamation, volume 29 number 7, July 1983). I’m sure they eat Twinkies. And Szechwan food. And they do come from the same hacker culture as guys like Tom Van Vleck, Brian Reed, Smokey Wallace, Jim Clark, etc.

best regards,

buck

Yes, ditto.

In reply to Ditto??

Buck,

“ditto” means I would say exactly the same as you said.

Re: your comments on K&R; the Academy doesn’t have an errelavent mission, one that is of no practical consequence. It has at least 2 missions that are vital to the world: basic exploration of the fundamental principles under current world order assumptions for any particular discipline, and 2) applied exercise of the findings (proof of concept) from the former.

While K&R are researchers, they are among the most effective explorers in our discipline – computer science. They participated in the Multics project which pre-saged UNIX. Before they conceived ‘pipes,’ they conceeived the first OS intended to run on ANY cpu, rather than just the cpu manufactured by the OS developer.

This is a watershed market innovation. It is exactly the reverse of every other business incentive – to deliberately design half the platform (iron+OS) in a way that allows your customer to painlessly leave you for another vendor. K&R’s UNIX in 1984 was the second time a computer scientist liberated the technology from proprietary control by the vendors. Of course, the marketing guys at AT&T could’t find their way to a competitively earned dollar to save their lives. I know because I worked for them and later consulted to them.

Plan9 is real interesting but I don’t yet understand it’s commercial relavence. As to Cutler’s work at DEC, I concur. But I can’t believe that NT – or any OS requiring a registry to organize itself – could possibly have been preferred by Cutler. For a scientist who developed one of the 2 best loved programmers’ OS’s ever, I gotta suspect he just decided to retire to the easy life on an MS stipend. After all, he seemed to have just disappeared within a year after joining MS – at least 2 years before NT finally shipped. For normal multi-user OSs, I prefer either UNIX or VMS in that order. For real time OSs, RSX is great, but I’d probably prefer some UNIX derived system like Qnix or RTlinux – only becaue I’m familiar with the SVID/SVVS. But then I haven’t been a programmer for 25 years. I’m just a very ‘senior’ sales engineer. By the way, what was MassComp? It seems to me that that was a machine manufacturer.

I envy your experience on Pioneer. Of course, UNIX was unknown in those days and DEC certainly was the dominant science platform, so RSX was only natural. If you consider the Mars Rovers analigous, they are powered by Linux and seem to be satisfying today’s interstellar pioneers. Besides, the real work is in the programming. I don’t see anybody doing serious work in anything called [Visual] Basic. How about Modula, C, or Ada? Ask McDonnell Douglas. They build cruise missiles.

Of course K&R are ‘real programmers.’ Just like the guys who created MS-Basic, CP/M, CP/m-86, DR-DOS, Windows 386, MacOS, Linux and OS X, they are all real programmers. Their association with market also-rans doesn’t make them any less real. For that matter, whether they are ‘real programmers’ is silly. They are essential contributors to the current world order in computer science, out from which springs all things Microsoft as well as Novell, Red Hat, IBM, Sun Micro, McDonnell Douglas and us.

cheers,
jat

Yes. But!

In reply to Based on three decades of experience…

Where are those operating systems now? While they may have been good, or even great, it lacked the mass appeal to keep the platform going.

What makes an operating system great? My definition would be a secure, reliable operating system that does what you need it to do. Windows accomplishes 1 out of the 3.

IBM’s mainframe operating system z/OS has almost 40 years of development behind it. When MVS was announced in the late 70s, IBM made the commitment that any security bugs that allowed an unauthorized program to get into supervisor state, or affect the running of another job in the system was guaranteed to be fixed.

We don’t hear much about security breaches on mainframes, and the longevity of the OS has to count for something.

Neal

HP still supports them I believe..

In reply to Yes. But!

> Where are those operating systems now? While
> they may have been good, or even great, it
> lacked the mass appeal to keep the platform
> going.

HP by way of the Compac merger ended up owning the legacy of DEC and Tandem, VMS and Guardian.
HP bought Apollo in 1989 as I recall and I think they still support Domain.

Whenever mass appeal becomes the “goodness criteria” we get substandard goods – boy bands, Brittney Spears, Eminem – all are perfect examples…

Well, too many not true’s

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Dear Friend,

There is no evil you are MS fan, but some of your statements need a touch…So:
– The best OS is rarely popular…
– PC’s (personal computers) are in use starting from 1976 – thanks to Apple Computer.
– Mac is not an OS…but a family of (may be the best) popular PC’s (may be still to be worsen by Intel mP’s)…
– Functionality is never standard nor substandard…
– The WEB has too little to do with MS…MS has…
– There are very many applications made not “for Windows”…but for industry, astronomy, defense, aeronautics, chip built-in,etc. and Windows is not “out there” but out of there…
BTW, have you any facts showing you are right?
Sincerely,
alx

not not trues, but maybe not applies.

In reply to Well, too many not true’s

If I made my own OS it would not be popular but I would think it was the greatest OS in the world. And then I’ll have an even harder time telling people so. But If I made an OS and every one started using and then every one kept using, even when there are enough good competitive alternative’s, then I would think that my OS was one of the best, if not he best, especially if it is been paid for.

I agree the best OS is rarely popular. Whats more popular than a free OS? One you pay for? I’d say that free OS is pretty popular.

commodore 64 was the first PC I had experience with a home PC. I don’t think apple came up with the commodore 64.

MAC OSX is an OS used by MAC, and it’s not being able to maximise windows or have a task-bar, that is missing witch would make MAC really great. I think they should steel it of Windows.

IF Functionality wasn’t standard you could not write applications that worked on OS’s, you could not write web pages to be displayed over the web. One such standard is “http”, you use it every time your on the web.

Internet Explorer has always been ahead of the competition’s alternative browsers, FireFox comes close to competing(if only the could iron out all the bugs and holes). IE 7 is being released soon, and the competition will have to find a new way to catch up. and have you heard of windows update, major internet based functionality.

There are many applications made full stop, and you can’t stop anyone making an alternative application that will run in windows. You can get all these types of application for windows industry, astronomy, defense, aeronautics, chip built-in, etc… but not been made by microsoft. GIMP built for Linux works on windows etc…

You want facts on why Windows is the OS for you

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/evaluation/default.mspx

There are also other interesting facts on that site.

Now who is the ruling body\authority on the Internet that decides what is marketing propaganda and what is fact.

Not true’s again – incoherency

In reply to not not trues, but maybe not applies.

Dear friend,

Thank you very much indeed for your kind letter.
I have never intended to point out the best OS ever as to my opinion there is no and there can never be a best OS.
The real reason to react to this author’s “writing” is that most statements submitted are incoherent.
Pointing out that The Web is due to Windows, that people use PC’s to use Windows, comparing a PC to an OS, etc – is not just not true, it is an example of incoherent thinking.
If it is not clear enough, here is a resembling statement – “pencils are best as cows are heavy”.
Pencils can be best and, cows can be heavy but the statement lacks coherency.
Now let us think over the term “best” – pencils can not be “best” as well, they are not the best tools to sharpen pencils; cows can be heavier compared to pencils just as noone has had the need to produce a pencil heavier than a cow… So pencils are better to carry, but are they “best”?
An ancient scientist diagnosed his oponents’ incoherency that way – Non Compos Mentis!
Let us not follow them.

Best regards,
alx

AMEN Brother

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

I’ve had customers approach me about switching over to Linux because of ‘what they’ve heard’ about it. I tell them that if Linux was the only OS they had ever used and XP came out at $600 a copy they would break their arms getting their wallets out.

Intriquing

In reply to AMEN Brother

And what do you back that assumption on ?

Assumption?

In reply to Intriquing

Having worked with both systems for many many years, (I was writing assembler when the dinosaurs roamed the earth) I know what works and what is easy to maintain. I try to advise on the most cost effective solution to a problem. Linux in whatever flavor you choose has documentation that is slightly worse than abysmal, drivers and networking are a headache, and development tools are poor. This means changes, updates and development time are costly. I’ll let the geeks decide what is the ‘better’ OS and let the market place decide what is the most cost effective. Given the fact that Linux is almost free and Win XP is a few hunded a pop I rest my case.

Maybe for the desktop

In reply to Assumption?

But a very poor and costly alternative for Mid – High End Servers.

MS Windows on a 500 CPU Blade is horrendously expensive for the licenses that are required and not overly stable, Novel’s SUSE on the other hand is Rock Solid cheap at only a few hundred $ and scalable which is something that Windows whatever currently [b]Is Not.[/b]

Even on a low end Residential Gateway which I have put into one small business running Debian it’s the only computer that can run 24/7 without a single problem and because the owners do not have direct access to it but constantly are asking me why the Gateway is so reliable when their XP Pro Workstations require so much work.

Col ]:)

win2k3 doesn’t work for you?

In reply to Maybe for the desktop

So what do you think you are doing wrong with your set up of high end server with Windows Server 2003? Tell me what the problems you have with Win Server 2k3 and maybe I can help you out. I can’t make it cheaper, but I might be able to offer you advise on how to make it scalable and reliable. Are you using enterprise or standard edition? Are you unsure of how to lock down a win2k3 server so owners don’t have direct access to it? etc…

Let me know and I’ll see if I can help you out.

😀

Quite smart I admit

In reply to win2k3 doesn’t work for you?

Now we’re back to the excuse we always hear: it’s the users/admins fault that windows – any flavour

a. notoriously and historically is proven buggy.
b has uptimes not in any way near any competitor
c has a TCO that is way above any competitor.
c. is hit by security disasters every few days
c. has the supplier (MS) always spending weeks on fixing even dangerous errors.
d. often is fixed in a way that introduces a few new errors.
e. has a proven history of avoiding any public standards.
f. hides specifications due to what can only be MS own commercial interests.
g. is shipped with thousands (W2K more than 60.000) known bugs.
h.
continue the list.

As an amateur desktop OS, Windows is not that bad. Most people install from a preload with all relevant drivers and settings already made, and it takes an hour or so. It you install connected to the net, you will be hit by myriads of worms, spyware, badware before install finishes.
Linux and Mac OS installs in about the same time but from a CD. When Microsoft _allows_ OEM’s to sell PC’s with non-MS OS installed, install time would drop on Linux to faster than Windows. Anyway on any decent OS installation is a one-time affair, and time used on this is irrelevant.

In the server range Windows is lacking in every respect compared to REAL server OS’s like, UNIX, IBM z-OS, OS/400 and a few others. The much acclaimed MS ActiveDirectory is about where Novell were 10 years ago.

rgds
Peter

The truth hurts

In reply to Quite smart I admit

Most if not 95% of IT pros are employed today because Microsoft made the OS easy enough for everyone. If Linux and Unix are the talk and hype of what most techie think and say then why then are companies still buying MS servers and desktop. I think some of you die hard core linux and unix users should begin to realise that each OS has it’s place it terms of usage and functions. Oh! yes I love Linux and Freebsd so am not an amateur either just need to make this point clear.

Well for a start

In reply to win2k3 doesn’t work for you?

2003 ES will support 4 CPU’s acceptably but not 500. Unless of course you buy the additional licenses which make it very expensive and not overly reliable when it comes to CPU utilization.

If you would like to do the sums you’ll find that SUSE is far cheaper, more reliable and just plain & simple works better.

This is where you are going wrong insisting on using Windows for every application it fails miserably and can not but help to fail as no single product can be all things to all people. Then you can step up to a 2000 CPU Blade and see what the costs are with the different OS’s involved IBM’s own listings is 80% Linux 20% Windows 2003 for these machines and even then the 20% are mostly to MS only shops so they get a tremendous discount for using MS through the entire enterprise, even if the TCO is greater in the long run. Even MS Technical admit this and at every Partners Meeting of MS it is the technical boys that gloss over the TCO ramblings of MS and they just tell you to make up your own mind.

Even at the 2003 Product launch did you attend it? They had a quad HP that could only run it’s CPU’s at 20% Capacity as a Maximum I not only asked but had a play with the thing can you say the same?

If Windows is so great why do the big ISP’s use something different?

What you are missing here is that you need to use the right tool for the job and on the server side that generally speaking isn’t a MS product. While they do make a decent Desktop OS their Server OS’s are no where near as reliable once you get above 2 CPU’s. If you want to use an out of the box Dell Celeron 2003 will work fine on the limited hardware that you have but a real server doesn’t come with those restraints unless of course you listen to the marketing Sales People who sell the rubbish and then it’s left to a real tech to try to make it work properly in an application that it was never designed for in the first place. But the Sales Person is always right [b]YES?[/b] :p

Col ]:)

not a fan of celeron.

In reply to Well for a start

I guess it all comes down to your license\contract agreement with M$ or whoever.

Nope not that lucky to attend the product launch of 2003.

Does that mean it could preform the task faster if it was running at %100 Capacity across all cpu’s or does it complete the task with in a fast time but only use 20% Capacity? (I have no idea of what you are saying, need an analogy or something)

No I can not say the same.

I would guess big ISP’s would use something different because you have been their consultant.

I can concede that the right tool for the job isn’t always a MS product, 2003 ES may not be what is required for 500 cpu blade array, but “they do make excellent Domain Controllers.”

I also concede that I am nowhere near as learned as you.

quote taken from

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11183-0.html?forumID=89&threadID=176449&messageID=1819835

Will M$ new and coming “longhorn” server be able to handle a 500 cpu blade array?

The HP Box in Question

In reply to Well for a start

Could not allow the CPU’s to perform higher than 20% capacity no matter what you did to the system. But maybe that was just a Beta Version of 2003ES as the ones that I’ve used do allow the Quad boards to run at greater CPU usage capacity. But for a product launch it didn’t look all that good on the big screen even if very few people actually noticed it as most where MS owned Body & Soul and where willing to accept the limitations. It’s good knowing the Senior Tech People as you get to have a play with the new software when it’s shown and you also get to avoid some of the brain washing marketing BS that they are trying to make you believe.

Actually my biggest complaint with MS at the moment is with their Volume License XP Pro as when SP1 came along I had to change product keys over so I could install SP1 and then exactly the same thing occurred when SP2 came along but the second time you could install SP2 but it would not be accepted when you tried to perform an update.

You might say well that’s no big deal so poor you, you had to change the product keys on a couple of computers with KeyFinder it only takes a couple of seconds somewhere around 30 to load the program find the old key and change it to the new one and then reboot the program and make sure that the new key has taken. Well on 5 computers it’s really no big deal but at one place where they had 2,500 it is a big deal and something that MS didn’t pay me to do twice so far. The first time we had to go in over Easter and change the product keys it only took 11 Techs 3.5 days to complete and then when SP2 hit the streets we had to do it all over again on the same machines from a Key Provided by MS.

As I mainly use Volume License stuff from MS this is a big problem as I’m constantly running around changing Product Keys and it does get frustrating when you have to spend so much time doing this. Not to mention the money you are not making.

As for Vista Server it will come out eventually but at the moment it’s not being worked on too hard as all of MS effort is going into getting Vista on the shelves in the third quarter this year. But eventually there will be 7 versions of Vista available and then there will be the volume license stuff which is separate and on the good side they are doing away with the Home & Pro designations as well as far too many people think that the Pro version of XP is for high end users and the Home version suits small business when this is not the case.

If I set up a network I don’t have any problems but all too often I get called in after the event and have to fix up the mess. One place comes to mind only XP Home and no software at all supplied [they where told that Note Pad was a Word processor by the salesperson} one computer supplied with CD Recovery disc’s but no CD player and better still they wanted 2 monitors attached so that the salesman could sit one side of the desk and the customer the other side and they could both be looking at the same thing but no way of connecting the second monitor and when I rang the suppliers they just claimed that they didn’t realize that they wanted both monitors working at the same time. Then the network cables hanging out of the walls and the network setup with a ADSL modem [Not even a router] connected directly to a hub and then feeding every computer in the building. I suppose it got around the 5 concurrent Home connections but it certainly was not a secure setup. Better still to get a file from one workstation to another 4 feet away they where e-mailing it as that was how they where told to transfer files across a network. Great for the ISP with all the over usage fees but not so good for the business.

That job started out as just fitting a DVD reader to the above mentioned Computer and I spent 4 weeks there. The one that really got me was I was asked to get the spell checker working on their WP which happened to be Notepad. 🙂

The only other software in the entire place was MYOB which they already had a copy of and that was only loaded on 1 computer otherwise everyone just had XP Home and nothing else.

But 4 weeks latter when I finished the job I had a working network the proper software installed on all computers the network cables properly fixed to the walls and they where bouncing files between workstations like they had been doing it forever and their ISP usage had dropped by 80%.

I also had a Software Assurance Agreement setup and Volume License copies of Office on every computer as well as having that second monitor setup and working properly.

But I couldn’t supply another computer to act as a gateway to the Internet even if it did cost far more to secure the individual workstations down they had just plain and simply run out of money for their IT side of the business. I could have installed the proper hardware and software at about 60% of what they ended up paying for the entire network and had high end workstations in place as well instead of the all in one M’Boards with minimal RAM and small CPU’s installed.

While I know this isn’t strictly directly connected to MS every computer in the place had a MS Certified Logo on them and they only bought them because of this as they thought that they where getting genuine MS approved Hardware to work on their system and MS professionals to supply and install the system.

Col ]:)

I was once excited about Microsoft too.

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Mr Justice, when I read your message I couldn’t help but follow through and read some of the other replies. The response you got is all very interesting. It is also obvious that you are a devoted MS supporter. Good on you I say. But just take a moment and listen to this true story.
I am neither a computer expert or very technical, but I have been using a home desktop computer for over 20 years. One of my first compters was an Apple compatible running on dual floppy. There was no gui and it was pretty much used for word processing. I would have upgraded to another Apple but priority hardware put an end to that and the real thing cost too much. The next machine was an IBM compatible XT. Well this had a hard disk. Soon I was using a word processor, printing, spreadsheet, home accounting, games, educational software and dialing up to bulleton boards. (This was the precurser to the internet). There was still no gui but I was using a neat text based menu system to easily select my programs. This was about my third computer and I still hadn’t heard of windows yet and I was doing just fine.
Then I was introducted to windows 3.11. Whow you could use a mouse and wait for it, ‘you could run multiple programs at once’! But I am not exactly jumping up and down yet. It was a memory hog and extra RAM was expensive. The response time was slow and rebooting became a way of life. None of my other other programs worked and I wonder how much time I really saved?
Well I really got excited when I bought my next PC and this time it had come pre-installed with windows 98 and a licensed copy of MS office. Now we are really talking. I could now play music, print beautiful color pictures, scan, fax, e-mail, burn CD’s, digital photos and surf the net. In all fairness this was a lot of fun. But it wasn’t exactly easy. I experienced lots of trouble getting the printing right, my wife never worked out the scanner, fax or burn CD’s. There were plenty of times I would install a driver and the PC wouldn’t boot up. I rebuilt the computer a number of times due to virus problems and I became very afraid of how secure the internet was. Plug and play didn’t always work and installing new drivers was a nightmare. I couldn’t block popup windows and some web pages would highjack my PC. There was heaps of help on the internet but everything had a price. I was paying for winzip, fax, virus, music and firewall software just to name a few. MS office is a very advanced product but I just find it too hard to get my head around it – even with hours of training.
Well you could say I was overdue for an upgrade. I shopped around 2 years ago and I was pleasantly surprised that the hardware was now one third the cost I once paid for it. Strong competition in this area has really benefited the end user. I know XP is a good product because I use it at work (not that I need it for what I do with it). I get the blue screen sometimes and I have to unplug the usb mouse all the time because it just doesn’t get it. These are minor problems I just deal with but like I said I don’t really work this PC very hard.
Then they told me how much it cost. The microsoft package and all the extras over shadows the cost of the hardware. It just goes to show that any corporation will charge what they like if they can get away with it.
This time I didn’t fall for it. I installed Red Hat 7.1 a little while ago and I wasn’t overly impressed but I thought I would give it a go anyway. Then it happended. My next machine was installed with Red hat 8. I must say I was very impressed with the improvement from version 7. E-mail, internet and printing was all very easy. No problems with the camera and faxing either. Oh there was one thing, I did have some trouble converting outlook to a linix compatible format. Watch out windows users if you think your own data belongs to you.
With the money I saved I was able to buy a second machine. One for each member of the family. Over the next two years I have upgraded to RH9, and then Fedora core 1, 2, 3 and now FC4. I have never looked back. Installation is easy enough and there are some good sites to tweak extra functionality.
Using Fedora core 4 I can email using thunderbird and there are some great plugins such as weather and dictionary etc. I am extremely happy with the firefox web brouser – no popups by default and the tabs do help with organising your windows. I can now surf the internet safely. Not even those bank fraud messages work here. I am already a pro with openoffice 2.0 so I gave MS office 2000 away. I have a laser and color printer connected to a network and you can print from any computer in the house. I didn’t even set this up, it worked this out automatically. I can play my collection of compressed music files, watch DVD’s and my wife can scan my old photos by clicking one mouse button. (A shell script I downloaded does it all for me). I also bought a cheap palm pilot which works well.
This all happened very easily, but wait there is more. Like I said I am not very smart, but when there are help files and web sites available to help you step by step. Just by finding the correct documentation (written for dummies), I built my own web site and installed a photo gallery, a chat room, email forms and a forum. This site is password protected and I got a free domain name from no-ip. This is all setup on my home computer. I have also turned my wife’s PC into a file server using NFS. This shares all our music, photo and e-mail data across to the other computers. I can logon to my home computer from work using secure shell. If I want to capture the gui over the network I use VNC viewer. This is also great for training purposes and spying on my daughter surfing the net. Also keep in mind that I have dual layers of firwall protection and I implement filesystem, password and network security. Backups to DVD are also automated. Don’t forget the fun networking games either.
I didn’t spend hours and hours doing this. It was really easy. And it still doesn’t stop there. How about trying to make your own movies, creating a personal Video recorder with MythTV, automating home lights using X10 devices and your own internet radio station using Iceast. But that would be bragging now.
I will give you one example of simplicity with linux. The other day my wife wanted to print some buisness cards – Hmm. I stopped off at the stationary shop on the way home from work and bought some bsuiness card labels for the printer. When I got home I searched on google/linux for a program to print business cards – 10 minutes. I then downloaded and installed this program called glabals using the ‘yum’ utility – 5 minutes. I could also use a graphical installer called synaptic but often the command line is easier and quicker. I started up the program, designed and printed business cards with photo id in 30 minutes. I found out later that openoffice has the capabability to print business cards but this utility turned out simplier to use anyway. Have you ever tried to convert you photos to a managable size for web or e-mail transport. I can run a simple command to convert and copy the entire directory in one stroke. I could go on but that will be enough for now.
The bottom line here is that although I think Microsoft have reasonably good products, I think we all could agree that we all would benefit from cheaper and better software if there was more competition out there, eg Apple, Linux etc. I know in the linux world there is plenty of strong competition producting good software and it is moving from strenght to strenght. Open source software means that we don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel all the time.
Mr Justice, if you are keen on trying linux then I would be happy to send you a copy of Fedora, Suse or knoppix to try out. The reason I would do this is because the real spirit of Linux is about community support.
Not only is our house Microsoft free, but we don’t drink coke either….Jeffmate.

Sold.

In reply to I was once excited about Microsoft too.

Ok, but i will download them all, rather than you sending them to me.

I still get pop ups with firefox.

by the way, are you agreeing that windows is the best OS ever? 😀

You don’t drink coke? I bet your daughter sneeks some, when your not looking. yes it rots your guts and your teeth, but you can’t bet the real thing.;)

I have to disagree with you when you say quote “I am not very smart” in regards to yourself.

If you could get over the base cost of Windows xp pro OEM, then you can have all the same applications running in windows as you do in linux. Star office etc… have win32\64 versions.
And you spend the equal amount of time on the net finding them.

Windows is the most popular OS ever

In reply to Sold.

The option on firefox 1.0.6 is to go to edit – preferences. Select ‘Web features’ then tick ‘Block popup windows’. However I warn you about using open source. That smell of freedom could bring your favourite OS down.

I agree that XP is currently the most popular OS and it has the best selection of proprietary software which can have plenty of benefits.
However, I no longer use MS software at home and have converted to open source software whenever possible and the OS I use is FC4. This is my preference. This all works very well for me. The OS is very reliable, secure and powerfull. I trust what I am getting because it is built by the people for the people. Not sure if it is the best OS though. A very trustworthy source has informed me that the latest version of suse is more advanced than fc4 from the desktop perspective.

My daughter is intolerant to coke and I would notice a change in her behaviour if she sneeks some behind my back. She doesn’t do Mcdonalds either.

Its not the money that’s the problem. But I do believe in getting your value for money. I don’t think MS do this any more. They just keep raking in the money and their corporate behaviour will continue to devise ways on keeping it that way. Your real needs arn’t high on their agenda. However, because it isn’t opensource, I wouldn’t use MS software even if it was free.

Remember the movie Shawshank Redemption. The part where spending so long in prison can make a man institutionalised. This is the same principle with using Microsoft. After enough times passes you begin to depend on it and you forget what real freedom is like.

Ah, What About…..

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Naw, the best that ever lived, Died, and it was
called OS/2 !

OS/2 was second to none at the time.

In reply to Ah, What About…..

And it was for a very long time into the late 90’ies. With W/200 vs. OS/”Waro we can start discussing what’s best, but any earlier MS system fails ghorrendously. As IBM stated, they had a better Windows than Windows as the embedded Windows was 3.1, which MS and IBM owned in common. Windows was running on top of OS/2, and thus couldn’t crash the HW, as it had no direct access to it.
Just about the same we experience using VMWare, WINE and other solutions where you put a _REAL_ OS under Windows to remove it from HW. W/95 was a DOS GUI, using WINE it becomes a Linux GUI.

Aww – typos.

In reply to OS/2 was second to none at the time.

pls read “With Windows/2000 vs. OS/2Warp”

dr dos & Gem Desktop

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Anyone else remember these? A stable working platform and ahead of MS for years. I hated to go to MS – Crash city.

I still have a copy of DR Dos here

In reply to dr dos & Gem Desktop

I never bothered using MS DOS as it was way too limited. I loved the reaction that I got when I used the XCOPY command to copy to a different size floppy which is something that was not possible with MS DOS.

MS DOS was always a poor copy of DR DOS and every time I got a new computer I would wipe it clean and install DR DOS and then my preferred applications on a Text Menu. It was so simple that even my mother could use it without any problems. Now she has a XP Pro computer and every time that she wants something done I have to go over there and do it for her.

The one single thing that she can not get over is the need to click on [b]Start[/b] to turn it off. She constantly tells me that is stupid. 😀

Col ]:)

Yeah I miss DOS too…

In reply to I still have a copy of DR Dos here

I’ve two machines at home. A PIII-650 set up as a dual boot system with RH9 and W98SE, and a 486-33DX runnng DOS6.2/W3.11. Yeah, I know both are “horribly out of date” by today’s ‘standards’. But you know what, folks? I never yet had a minute’s trouble with that 486 (same HD since it was new in 1992!) and I have yet to max it out in any applications it was designed to run. There is very little new stuff that will even load on it (c’mon, it’s only got a 120Mb HD and 4 Mb RAM…), but the word processors, spreadsheets, etc., do all the stuff I need them to do just as well as (perhaps even better than) the modern applications that have become so overloaded with extra graphic design.
I long ago came to the conclusion that the size of applications increased according to the availability of memory size and processing speed, but all that has really been added is vapour (for instance, how much of the code size of Word in XP has nothing to do with anything except making that stupid paperclip move around?). MS, and the vast majority of other commercial applications designers have long since forgotten about the actual functionality of their products in favour of making it look fancier. The inevitable by-product of that approach is ever-costlier software applications because the design teams have to design applications that they can charge more for and justify their continued employment to design fancier applications that they can charge more for…and round and round and round it goes. We users pay for it every step of the way.
Do the vast majority of spreadsheet users do anything with the most modern version of Excel that they didn’t do just as well with VisiCalc or even Lotus 1-2-3 V2.2? I seriously doubt it. There’s nothing stopping them from using these older versions on their blazing fast new machines (backward compatibility issues aside in some cases), but nobody does. It seems to me that faster processing speed means the machine should run the same programs faster, not bigger programs slower.
Bottom line, my old DOS machine can still do more than I have ever needed it to do and there are many aspects of DOS that any of us could spend the rest of our lives investigating without ever learning it all. I don’t think things in computing have necessarily gotten better so much as they have just gotten bigger.

Roger that…

In reply to Yeah I miss DOS too…

RM,

I’ve been doing the same dual boot strategy for years. May I suggest an enhancement to your MS partition, though.

I’ve found that apps that drive Win98SE beyond 128MB RAM cause the OS to become saturated for resources and ultimately become unstable. WinME, however, has a much better memory manager (some say from the Win2k product) and we’ve found it has a sweet spot at 384MB and seems stable up to 512MB. Those are the memory ranges we like in Linux and, of course, you can’t have too much RAM.

Plus, WinME inherently understands USB plug-n-play and has a driver set to die for. Most of the PCs I’ve re-deployed using this OS have components that are correctly recognized by the device manager on initial install and don’t require separate drivers. But everybody knows that WinME is a mess. Here’s the fix that results in your ability to actually de-install IE altogether and still leave the machine running plus get a raw speed improvement of 2.5 factorial to boot!

Browse to and purchase [98lite Professional 4.7]:

http://www.litepc.com/

Believe me, the $30 is a no-brainer. I have a client running his AutoCAD stations on this config and they just smoke. He uses SuSE for his back-end file/print server and his TCO for network downtime and forced PC upgrades has plummeted.

IF you’re really obsessed for speed and don’t care about binary compatability with some newer Win9x applications and some WinME tools, you can actually install WinME using the Win95B shell set and reach factorial 3x. Who knows, you may even extend the life of that old 650MHz machine beyond Vista.

cheers,
jat

Looks great

In reply to Roger that…

Thanks for the info. Looks like an awesome upgrade, and one that I wasn’t aware of. Much appreciated.

I really Owe you

In reply to Roger that…

One of my favorite boxes was an old PII-400 mz. It had become a boat anchor (taking up space and not being used.) I have now one more box in my configuration…

Unfortunately you never saw the amiga

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Hmmmm….Ive been using comps to make money for the last 18 years..mmm ‘every app written’. You might be suprised to know that a lot of apps started life on other pforms. Major products now but eg Lightwave is one of the top contenders for 3d (just check out the M&M ads). At the time I was using it it could truly multitask in 8megs of ram, each window could have its own res, and had an os batch system called arexx that could communicate IPC no probs with an easy syntax. This was when the mighty pc would have 16 colours if you had the right adapter etc (amiga had 8bit audio and graphics onboard). WSH is still a small shadow of AREXX even to this day. I could go on but for some strange reason it was sabotaged…now I wonder why!!!
All the best and I suppose we just have to use what is left standing (or supported by the mega$)
Mark

“Nobody would use a PC”

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

huh? I can remember back when there wasn’t Windows … in fact I can remember when GUIs were nasty looking (by todays standards) things that only ran when certain programs were run … and graphical might even be a stretch on that. I still used PCs and so did quite a few of the people I knew back then … and I’m not even 30. MS DOS (that would be the precurser to windows and what the base windows os is built on) was, in fact, a user-friendly (read: dumbed down) subset of UNIX.

As to linux … X-windows if you don’t want to do anything special and are affraid of a command line. Most of the computers I’ve had to fix could easily be running Linux set to boot into X (which is how SUSE comes out of the box) and I wouldn’t have had to fix them in first place.

Openoffice, Mozilla, GIMP … you can just about anything on linux that you can on windows and even using wincentric file formats in many cases.

I think you need to do more research before making such an asinine statement. Windows has it’s uses (mainly as a video game platform, but that’s just my opinion), but it’s hard to say that it’s “the best OS ever”…….

Best OS Ever: OS/2 Warp of course

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Back in the bad old days when the OS wars were raging between MS and IBM. Win 3.1 and OS/2 Warp were introduced. I tested both OSes and Warp was killer. I run it on a 386/20 with 12 MBs of memory. I was able to format a floppy (you all remember floppy right?), download a file via modem (this was in dial-ups hey day), and edit a document all at the same time. Each application ran at full speed. I could switch between apps and each responded like it was the only one running. The UI put Win 3.1’s to shame. Too bad there was no real software for Warp. I liked it so much, I bought a copy for myself with my OWN money for home use. It came with a dialer, IP stack, and it’s own browser, none of which were included in 3.1. Win 3.1 couldn’t come close in performance or features. If he DOJ split MS back then and Office became available for Warp who knows what we would be running on our PCs today. IMHO, Warp was light years ahead of anything of it’s time.

Mabey not the best but by far the easiest

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

There is no Best OS ever without a doubt. All are made by man ‘or woman’ and have their strong points and weakness’s.

Microsoft Just happens to be the easiest for most people to use.

Apple wouldn’t be popular if it wasn’t for it’s ease of use and stability.

Linux is starting to catch up too but with so many distro’s and no “common” easy way to install software it’s holding it back.

If Linux writers would incorperate a common application installer into the kernel “like dos/windows .exe” so you can go to any site and download any file for linux, click it and let the kernel ask you what you choose to install then it would give them both a run for the money so to speak.

Now if your talking best windows OS i’d have to say out of all my computing years I have had the least ammount of problems with XP.

Is easy a good thing

In reply to Mabey not the best but by far the easiest

Mr Dude, have you ever heard of ‘yum’, ‘up2date’, ‘apt’ or ‘synaptic’. These are just some Linux utilites that download software from a central repository. You can’t get any easier than that. There are also some other options which arn’t so easy to ensure more flexibility and freedom.
I used windows for years and the best advise I think I could give my family was not to open any file unless you were sure what program it used eg word, excel, photoshop etc. And you were sure it came from a reliable source. Especially don’t open .exe or .bat files unless they come with a purchased product and even then I recommend reading the documentation and plan the installation first. This way I was able to maintain a relatively stable system.
The fastest way to install a virus, corrupt a driver or registry was to just double click those .exe files without proper planning. I have known a lot of people who’s computer didn’t work for months and I blame that easy to use .exe installation process.
I think that the installation of software should firstly be planned, read the documentation, download any relevant updates and then test the installation on another computer or partition.
The installation of Linux software can be made just as easy as with windows, but you can be sure that the basic principles of maintaining security and stability will be adhered to. But something that will never change is that some basic knowledge and education will always be the best way to ensure this.

Assume you are joking

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

This guy is either completely joking or needs a serious lesson in history. The dialogue reminds me of a Microsoft version of Mr Chekov on Star Trek who claimed that everything good ever done in the history of mankind was done by a Russian.

Well it was

In reply to Assume you are joking

Wasn’t it? 😀

Col ]:)

Windows

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

I agree with u bro. i think Bill has just that little bit of right to suck lil bit of our blood for giving us Windows.

Another confused child…

In reply to Windows

Bill didn’t give you anything. He GETS from you $8B after-tax profit each quarter.

That’s net profit of $8,000,000,000,000 per quarter! That’s $95,238,094 per day. So if we assume you work 12 hours per day, Bill’s gift to you is worth $7,936,507.80 per hour.

Are you making that kind of money?

AMEM Brother

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

This says it all: “Linux you can be learning that for life, then die and still of accomplished nothing”. we all support users and family with Windows, could you image supporting Linux……..

It is easy to learn and use. (period)

Apparently it is…

In reply to AMEM Brother

easier to learn than correct English. The argument is as full of holes as the grammar!

easy to learn and use?

In reply to AMEM Brother

so is eating M&Ms, but it won’t give you any muscle.

jat

my 80 year old Mother uses Linux with no problem.

In reply to AMEM Brother

Who are you kidding. She get her e-mail from a pop3 server, (high speed access), The Star Office interface is about as nice as MS office. The poerformance that a 2.4 GZ gives her in comparison is 20% faster than (XP PRO)multiple drives in her system. the boot manager allows her to choose.

She learned from scratch at age 78 how to boot a computer. She had never even powered one on. Now she has used Lindows, KDE, gnome, Star office, and other “UNIX like” software. MS she uses for games, especially Hoyle card games, BRIDGE!!!

Here, here…

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Precisely. We all benefit when there’s room for more than one innovator in any market. Or, perhaps the kids on this blog think we should prefer the Taliban model…

Mr NZ_Justice

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

I draw your attention to the following TR discussion,

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11183-0.html?forumID=9&threadID=188458&messageID=1933670

While you may still consider Windows the [b]Best OS Ever[/b] it’s still related to its producer Microsoft who have a longterm history of not doing the correct thing when it comes to anything related to their business. Be it preventing System Builders from loading Netscape as a Web Browser, or it’s predatory corporate practices you are accepting.

The Abuse that MS is willing to hand out to their customers and not only liking it but applauding it. While they may make a reasonable product which is well used you do not have to accept their business practices like the above.

Anyway I hope you didn’t mention anything about your pet sheep on Messenger or you’ll soon know that everyone knows about what you are doing with sheep. 😀

While it is unlikely to adversely affect you in New Zealand I think you’ll find it difficult to get a Vista to visit the US and even if you do manage the Vista you’ll be denied access once you arrive in the US as an undesirable alien with an animal fetish. You have to remember that even if a lot of US Citizens don’t really give a DAM they have to look as if they are cleaner than clean or the [b]Bible Belt[/b] may descend upon them to teach them all the error of their ways. :p

Col ]:)

No Vista for the Ewe Ess, eh ?/ M$ $heep- Bah!

In reply to Mr NZ_Justice

Kiwi sheep are notorious liars … – anyway, wasn’t it some bloke
from the US South who wrote the famous Ballad “Only Ewe …” ?

You can debate the best OS thing until the cows come home,
hell freezes over, your tongues hang out or you run out of silly
clich?s (which is unlikely because they’re a dime a dozen as any
Fool can tell you – Blind Freddy Knows That…)

I WAS gonna stay out of this, BUT…. *sigh*:-

Here’s the short version: If you like Windows & Microsoft, that’s
fine. I don’t mind.

Most widely-experienced knowledgeable ‘Pros’ take different
views – they differ with you but then they differ with each other
on many of the finer points : like, which *other* OS actually
*is*… and so on…

What no-one can credibly deny is that M$oft are accused
Corporate Criminals accepted to have deliberately and almost
universally used unethical immoral, improper and often illegal
tactics, strategies and practices as a matter of Corporate policy
to damage competitors, dominate markets and entire areas of
Technology and ultimately, to make money. William Gates III
Esquire is merely a modern-day ‘Robber Baron’. He is certainly
no genius nor is he a Computer or Computer Industry Guru. He’s
a Businessman. IMNSHO their existence and dominance is a very
bad thing for the Industry and for the larger world. Far from
being innovators they severely inhibit innovation – or any kind of
change other than those *they* plan for their own purposes.
They can’t help it – it is the very nature of Monopoly power. [If a
small to medium-size player screams ‘we’re gonna kill the
competition and dominate this market’ then viciously cuts prices
below cost, that’s fine, healthy Capitalist ‘survival of the fittest’
competition. IF M$oft gives away millions of Copies of free
browser, mail, multimedia and messaging software or releases
millions of bits of hardware at a huge loss per unit, companies
die, competition disappears, entire industries fall, and Markets
are changed forever.]

It is a screaming shame that the US legal system is all about who
has the deepest pockets rather than anything remotely
approaching justice.

I have no objection to Billy G & M$oft making money merely to
their dominance and its extremely damaging side-effects. If the
US possessed a workable legal system I could prove the
statements I’ve made here in about an hour and submit a fair &
workable plan for the breakup of the Company into a good
number of competitive entities (a la Bell & its Baby Bells 🙂 in
about another hour – it’s not like the work hasn’t been done a
hundred times. [We’ve had a very similar problem here in Oz,
with a Telco – formerly Govt; owned, built the Networks &
exchanges etc. Privatised, it’s had huge monopoly power with
dreadful side-effects and setback Oz Broadband etc. by
decades…).

Even US state & Federal Govts. lack the money to take
meaningful/effective legal action – M$ just stalls until, in 2003
they agree that they’ll stop doing whatever it was they were
doing with Win 3.1 – pay an undisclosed ‘settlement’ and move
to the next Court where the Win 95 cases are starting to get into
the meat of matters…:). The Politicians are *way* too frightened
of all that ‘spare money’ to pass any laws that might be seen to
be ‘anti-Microsoft’ – and millions of people who work for
companies/in jobs & roles dependent on or committed to the M$
path stay silent, of course (altho’ quite a few are quietly
preparing ‘escape tunnels’, just in case).

The rest of the world watches in amazement – and is then
staggered at the pressure that comes from M$oft (followed by
various ‘independent’ pressure groups & ‘unassociated’ pressure
from US govt arms & representatives) whenever a Govt or semi-
Govt. organ acts to reduce the self-perpetuating M$ monopoly
through some Law or regulation that gives alternatives a fighting
chance.

They then get up – and with astoundingly obvious hypocrisy –
claim a win for ‘free trade’, ‘Free markets’, ‘Innovation’ and ‘fair
competition’ when, of course, the antithesis is true: another win
for the monopolists.

I’m not ‘religious’ about Os’s Apps, paradigms, models,
environments etc. – I’ve been around too long and seen too
many – If Volkswagen made a better Computer & OS I’d be
‘Driving a Beetle’ – but, gee I’m glad there are a *lot* of
excellent, compatible but utterly different Car companies out
there – all fighting for Marketshare, all innovating like crazy,
fight for your business and mine – and Qui Bono ? – as the legal
saying goes, “Who Benefits?”. WE all do, of course: Fleet buyers,
Govts, you and I, the smaller car companies eventually benefit
from the R&D of the larger companies, the family sedan from the
F1 car – and the hundreds of thousands of ‘middlemen’ – the
OEMers- the Parts makers, add-on designers, the mechanics
with specialist knowledge, tyre companies.. an almost endless
list. GM may make great cars but I don’t want a world without
Ferrari, the Gogomobile, the Bug, the corvette, e-type Jag,
LandCruiser long wheelbase, Those ‘people movers’, (& what’s
that ridiculous ‘home on wheels’ thing with the funny name…I
Like it!),The Pinzgauer, The Holden Ute (see ‘Australia’ – we
invented ’em :P) and the Hummer 🙂

Fortunately, despite the Pollies’ cowardice and the ineffable
impotence of the Govts involved, the era of M$ dominance is
slowly drawing to a close – at least in mainstream OSs.. It’s
happening slowly and gradually but the process has already
begun and is slowly gaining pace – Something I’m *very* happy
to see. When the Desktop and Server OS dominance is gone, the
rest will matter less with each passing year.

[Some of us were around during the days of IBM Dominance in
Computing. It wasn’t good – but it was nothing like as bad as
the M$ era… *they* thought it’d last forever too – the Pundits all
agreed- they were truly unassailable. And what happened ? A
skinny young kid conned a couple of mid-level IBM engineer-
types into OK’ing a contact that gave him the right to sell his
own version of a(n insignificant) product against mighty IBM and
in doing so assured the downfall of a great company , the end of
an era and guaranteed himself a ‘free ride’ to $Billions and key
Market Dominance. He then carefully set about using that power
& money to ‘mop up’ any potential threats and maintain Market
dominance – which is a pretty reasonable course from his point
of view…]

Anyone who questions or wonders *why* I assert the above will
have to seek their own answers – there’d be a 100 page website
just in that one alone *grin*
**********
FOR TR & Legal:
The above statements represent my personal opinion. I take full
and direct personal responsibility for the words I’ve written and
completely absolve this site, its owners, operators, and any
other person or entity associated with it – or with me – from any
responsibility for my comments whatsoever. My opinions are my
own. I speak only for myself.
Any M$-owned lawyers are welcome to contact me through the
details freely available on this site.
[But it’d be a lot smarter to go poke a hibernating Kodiak …:) ]

You had to do it didn’t you?

In reply to No Vista for the Ewe Ess, eh ?/ M$ $heep- Bah!

There I was hoping that no one was going to mention the X Box that M$ is selling at less than cost to get the market share of the PS2 but you had to add fuel to the fire didn’t you. 🙁

NAW M$ doesn’t practice predatory policies the Courts got it all wrong after all look at what happened after the last case where the Justice Department wanted M$ broken up they waited for an election paid out bucket fulls of money to a friendly administration who totally ignored the Courts ruling and overthrew the decision.

Now M$ is doing exactly the same thing on the games platforms as they did with the PC the only good thing that may come out of the mess though is it will relegate M$ to where it really belongs the Home Games PC where security isn’t an issue and more than not likely they will all be propriety systems that are M$ only to supply the bits and pieces that are designed to break so that they have a fighting chance to recover the money they are currently loosing. 🙂

Col ]:)

well

In reply to You had to do it didn’t you?

concidering Bill gates did state, at Comdex, when introducing windows 1.0 to the world:

Designed to make it easier and more entertaining for people to play games on their home computer

for MS to get themselves locked into the original market plan would be poetic justice.
It’s also why I say any company running any version of windows is telling their staff:

Go ahead, we have a video gaming operating system so you can play your video games at work

If they wanted serious work, they would not put microsoft’s products on the company computers.

But Jaqui

In reply to well

It does support the original posting in this thread that [b]Windows is the Best OS Ever[/b] even if it didn’t say it was limited to the gaming market. :p

Even then I would have to disagree as the number of times that I’ve had to go over to my sons place and repair/reload Windows because some game broke it is way beyond a joke. When you install a new game you are taking the life of the OS in your hands and anything at all can happen sometimes the computer & game even work but mostly on the unnecessary reboot the computer doesn’t. 😀

Col ]:)

Have I Ever told you *** ***

In reply to well

Thanks! From the Senior UNIX admin…

I’m Safe

In reply to Mr NZ_Justice

I only mentioned stuff about your pet sheep on messenger.;) 😀

I think the only undesirable alien that could not get into the US is an Arab. Not even Cat Steven’s (Yusuf Islam) can go to the US. He’s on the FBI terrorist alert list and he’s not an Arab.

Things aren’t to sweet in the USA. Flooding, earth quakes, draught, fire and poverty, much like OZ. It does seem that the bible belt is descending upon them for the error of there ways.

I think the last thing M$ want to do right now is piss off the DoJ. And it is the DoJ asking for the information. Why shouldn’t Microsoft supply information to the DoJ to help them bring Justice.

And what the hell does any of this have to do with Windows beeen the best OS ever? 😛

And WTH does any of this have to do with Weenerdoze beeen the best OS

In reply to I’m Safe

WARNING: MILDly offensive ‘language’ within ***

quote: And what the hell does any of this have to do with
Windows beeen the best OS ever? 😛
/END

there are two answers to that one:

1. As much as any of your other posts did – i.e. Nothing…

and

2. Windows IS arguably the ‘Al Qaida of Operating Systems’ …
and Billy Goates (OSPapa Pocket Liner) IS arguably quite a bit like
OSmama Bin Liner – on occasion…

[Do you *have* ‘Bin Liners’ in the Ewe Ess ? – Those plastic bags
that line yr kitchen, bathroom/Various ‘rubbish bins’ ? IN the
Great Land of Oz- wherein I dwell as a Known Wizard – many
refer to the latter, – not ‘Late’, unfortunately – ‘Gent’ as O-sarma
Bin Liner … a bit like calling him ‘O Great length of Toilet
Paper’ … and thereby associating him with ‘taking out the
Trash’…And, just to depart farther(!) from the point of this whole
thing – which was of course for you to trawl for as many Brownie
points as possible instead of actually *working* (:P) – we
pronounce the zo-ological (beast of burden) term ‘?ss’ as if it
were spelled ‘?rse’, So the Dee-vout Muscle-in is often reffered
to as ARSE-Sarma Bin Liner’ and imaginative variants)]

***PS***
[Why did I style it ‘Zo-ological’ ? Because if I didn’t, all yew ig-
norant Ewe Ess Eye Tee experts would pronounce it Zoo-ological
like most of the rest of the world and the LEAST I can do is to
educate my own Perfession! – and you can be sure of ONE thing,
fellas n Grrls – I CAN be relied upon to do ‘the LEAST I can do’…
*grin*]

(Darn this SpielChecker! And me with Lysdexia, too !) *sniffles
off stage*

What?

In reply to And WTH does any of this have to do with Weenerdoze beeen the best OS

Quote

“quote: And what the hell does any of this have to do with
Windows been the best OS ever? 😛
/END

there are two answers to that one:

1. As much as any of your other posts did – i.e. Nothing…”

End Quote.

What would qualify as a post promoting Windows as the best OS ever as having something to do with windows being the best OS ever?

What are you looking for?

Do you want me to spout of facts about windows as an OS and how all those things make it great then accompany those things with evidence supporting all my claims?

Are you looking for “Windows Vs Other OS’s”? There is a thread somewhere else in the TR about that.

Is your thinking that “Windows”, no matter what evidence or praise there is, is still nothing that would support it as the best OS ever?

Are you talking about other threads non-related\related to this one?

If you could, what would you say if, you where saying that “windows is the best OS ever with out a doubt”?

What would anyone say?

Windows: the world’s 1st 4million Bit OS

In reply to What?

QUOTE:
Do you want me to spout of facts about windows as an OS and
how all those things make it great then accompany those things
with evidence supporting all my claims?
RESPONSE:
Yes.

QUOTE:
Is your thinking that “Windows”, no matter what evidence or
praise there is, is still nothing that would support it as the best
OS ever?
RESPONSE:
Yes.

QUOTE:
If you could, what would you say if, you where saying that
“windows is the best OS ever with out a doubt”?

RESPONSE:
see response #1.

There are – and have been a *lot* of OSs around.

Windows wasn’t even an *adequate* Desktop environment OS
(IMHO) until somewhere around the ’98-XP-NT Overlap.
– Just as the early IBM PCs were just about the poorest,
shoddiest computers ever foisted upon an uneducated,
unsuspecting Market (even Billy G knew that).

‘Popular’ is never a valid synonym for ‘good’ let alone ‘best’ or
‘right’. Most just ‘follow the herd’.

It’s a simple statistic: In terms of simple Intelligence & general
knowledge, Most people are in the ‘slightly above to well below
average’ range – and ‘average’ is *not* an impressive level.
[Check the Studies on what the ‘average American’ (or valid
equiv.) thinks, knows, reads(if anything)….].

So, when you say ‘most popular’ what you are really saying is
“was chosen by a large number of ‘slow’ to ‘not very Bright’
people…”

🙂

MS OS

In reply to Windows: the world’s 1st 4million Bit OS

RE RESPONSE:
Yes.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11183-0.html?
forumID=89&threadID=188078&messageID=1937435

RE RESPONSE:
Yes.

Don’t bother looking at the first link then.

RE RESPONSE:
see response #1.

???? Link? Title? Refrence? Response one in the thread? The response before the response before this one?

So now that windows is an *adequate* Desktop environment OS, what’s wrong with it?

Are smart\Intelligence people poor and unemployed?

If smart\Intelligence people are poor and unemployed then it is probably because they make intelligent smart decisions all the time.

When I say ‘most poplar’ or anything for that matter, you are welcome to interpret it anyway you want.

🙂

Sorry to Disappoint you but

In reply to I’m Safe

The last time I was around sheep I was caring a .22 and a 303 the .22 was to shoot the sheep because we didn’t have enough food or water for them and the 303 was for feral pigs which where also so hungry that they where attacking and eating the sheep. :p

Anyway I’m not allowed to visit the US by a greater power than the US Government [b]My Wife[/b] knows me way too well and prevents me from ever going anywhere near the US as they have all the go faster bits that I constantly buy for my Ducati and VW Beetle. She finds it far cheaper just to allow me to buy over the Internet rather than attend any of the shops in CA where I’ll just spend till I drop and stop her having as much money of mine to spend. 🙂

You see I don’t act like a Kiwi and chase sheep around for Sexual Gratification I shoot them. I still think that the Merinos that we have here are the [b]Most Stupid Animal[/b] that was ever put on this planet I’ve seen dead pigs with more brains than the sheep that we have here and I only seem them fit for target practice. :p

Col ]:)

I should also add that you haven’t been using the

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

64 Bit versions of any M$ product as you certainly would never consider saying anything as blanket as Windows is the Best OS without a doubt. Hardly anything at all works on it and M$ is giving it away. Well at least I was given a 64 Bit version of XP Pro and not one of the M$[b]Time Bombs[/b] 120 Day Trail as they call them the copy of 2003 ES is a time bomb but the XP copy is the real thing.

As there have only been 64 Bit CPU’s around for about 3 years now and the Open Source Community hasn’t ironed out all the bugs yet I don’t expect M$ to have a decent OS, Driver Set or Application Set available because they are currently unable to steal these from the Open Source Community. :p

Col ]:)

Open source is free.

In reply to I should also add that you haven’t been using the

so it’s not stealing :P.

No I haven’t used 64bit xp pro, can it play games?

The majority of applications that are available today are still 32bit applications.

So what is the difference between running 64 bit Linux with a win emulator so you can play games and running 64 bit xp pro and playing games?

Wouldn’t you use more resources on 64bit Linux with a windows emulator than just using 64bit xp pro?

Why would you 64bit OS anyway? You said the OS is still full of bugs.

Since the majority of apps are still 32bit why would you upgrade at this stage in time?

Win XP Pro 32bit runs just fine on a 64bit processor.

No it can not play games

In reply to Open source is free.

It also [b]CAN NOT[/b] drive things like sound cards, printers, Video Cards unless they are the very basic ones.

In short it’s good for nothing until the [b]Open Source Guru’s[/b] write the code for things so M$ can [i]borrow[/i] it to make their product sort of work and then claim that they did it all themselves because you can’t legally look at the source code. 😀

Basically M$ are not leading Technology but following it a very bad second but then again AMD has only had 64 Bit CPU’s available for at least 3 years now so you can not expect M$ to have things sorted out yet even if when you bought a 64 Bit AMD way back when they first hit the streets they came with a Beta Copy of XP Pro. :p

From what I’ve seen the 64 Bit version doesn’t work and looks a lot like that Beta Version that was handed out with the first of the AMD 64 Bit CPU’s. Even if 64 Bit is the way to go as 32 Bit was a vast improvement on the older 16 Bit which again was another vast improvement on the older 8 Bit computing the OEM copies of Windows XP Pro 64 Bit are about as useful as [b]T I T S on a Bull.[/b]

Col ]:)

Open source is NOT Free – so it IS stealing.

In reply to Open source is free.

The ‘Copyright’/ownership concept exists.

It simply operates under (one of) a particular set of conditional
licences which have legal force. These licenses are both
asserted and enforced. “Open Source” is simply a generic name
for software supplied and maintained under one of these
licensing schemes (which include GPL – The Gnu Public License
and ‘Copyleft’, my personal favourite… 🙂

Break the terms of the license and you’re in trouble – as a
certain large company discovered the last couple of times they
tried to ‘pinch bits’ to prop up the creaking, bloated & leaky
vessel that is their Titanic-like Flagship.

‘Open source’ is no more ‘free’ than Windows – just much better
value … 🙂

*sigh* Yet another “free” software misnomer

In reply to Open source is free.

Ok…Free means free intellectually, not always free beer.

This is why it is called open source now, because people didn’t get that is isn’t always free beer…

Just for the record

In reply to I should also add that you haven’t been using the

quote
As there have only been 64 Bit CPU’s around for about 3 years now
unquote

This is only true in the PC or Intel world or whatever you like to call it. 64bit systems have been around for at least 10 years – I think to recall that the IBM AS/400 changed to 64 bits around 1995.

I think you know. From reading other posts from you, I guess you know the the PC is just a small corner of a very big room, but a very noisy corner.

rgds
Peter

Yes Peter I know

In reply to Just for the record

But I was confining my comments to the Windows Platform so I beg [b]your indulgence here.[/b] 🙂

Actually I’m not even sure when I went to the AMD release of their new beaut 64 Bit CPU it was quite a while ago now the 3 years bit was just a guesstimate as they where supplying Beta Copies of XP Pro 64 Bit with it so it had to be sometime after 2001 – 2002.

But really the PC side of the market while large is no where near the Technology Leader that many seem to think it is, all we are just seeing more of the same thing with Bus Speeds being pushed up a bit Clock Cycles marginally moved up slightly and all in the name of progress. What makes it even worse is that now on a Windows platform you have more choice that you can ever hope to use much faster Processors and much more RAM and they are still working slower than a 386/486 running 4 MEG of RAM or less and DOS.

So Word Perfect 5 had something like 6 Fonts to chose from and you could do all you needed with that limited number now with over 15,000 it takes longer to decide which font you want to use than to write the report, but that’s [b]Progress for you.[/b]

Back then it was accepted that most people where flat out using 10% of the available program resources but now days that figure would be down to less than 5% and I’m being overly generous there. 😀

Give me one off those old 9300 IBM Mainframes and I would be more than happy to work away and I’ll guarantee that as much work would get done if not more than what is pushed out by these supposedly [b]Easy to Use Programs that no one actually understands anymore.[/b] 🙂

It’s the crowds who argue loudly AMD vs Intel, Windows vs Unix/Linux/BSD and the like that I get a good laugh out of as they can not see outside of their very little box and think that what they are dealing with is everything. But you have to remember that M$ leads the world in Computer technology what ever that means. :p

Col ]:)

Progress?

In reply to Yes Peter I know

I remember when we used OS/2 it booted in about a minute on a 75MHz box with 12MB of RAM. 12MB being the amount needed to keep the entire OS in RAM. I used a swapfile of 2MB, allowing to extend a lot, but I never saw it above 4MB. People thought it was too slow, and they wanted Windows 3.1 – which MS told the audience was an upgrade.
Now windows XP Pro boots in about 2 minutes on a 3.1 Ghz box with 512 MB of RAM, and that’s not enough for running without a swapfile.

I once did a survey on 150 users, asking them to fill out a questionnaire about the MS office package. What is absolutely needed, needed, nice to have, useless, and then tick off last use on a list of functions. The result was interesting, some asked for functions that already existed, and for the big majority MS office – and StarOffice for that matter – is major overkill. Shooting ducks with a missile. Many people could do away with something like IBM text from 1990, that would run on a 286. Or a thing with functionality like WordPad with all the horrors removed.
The PC side is not business driven, software is not acquired and updated based on business needs, like you do in any other corner of your business. A new lathe is bought when the new model will make more money to the company – not the supplier, or the old one is beyond repair. Software is bought when the supplier wants to make another few billion bucks, and people update with closed eyes. I can understand ‘Joe User’ does, but educated people calling themselves IT managers, or CIO’s and should know better….

a Hearty Hear! Hear! to pkr’s post ‘Progress? ‘

In reply to Progress?

I agree with every word (and it’s not just M$oft this time) our
Computer/IT/HW/SW usage is incredibly inefficient.

Any cost benefit analysis would reveal that despite >30 years
experience with “PCs” our effective IT efficiency was 50 times
higher back in the late 70s/early-mid 80s..

As Billy G famously said (misquoting:) 640K should be enough
for anyone.

🙂

My pet hate – of instead of have

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Quote “Linux you can be learning that for life, then die and still of accomplished nothing.” Unquote

I have a pet hate. I find my hackles rise when I come across people using the word “of” when correctly it should be “have”. I get this hate because I know it is a result of slovenly speech when the word “have” is habitually mispronounced “uv” and this in turn is resurrected in writing as “of”. Unfortunately such misuse, as in the quote above, renders the complete sentence gramatically meaningless. When I read that someone “is fed up of something” I cringe. It is impossible to be fed up “of” something, fed up “with” something, yes, but “of” something, no. Just ain’t English.

amended to appease your pet hate.

In reply to My pet hate – of instead of have

Should I change it then to “still uv accomplished”? :p

English ain’t my forte.

😉

Windows has the most inertia

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

The title of your discussion does not match the verbiage you provide. A good/better/best operating system is graded or defined by its kernel, the nucleus or soul of the OS. Windows started dirty and still has a great and heavy load of baggage which does nothing except require more and more hardware to make any advance in performance.

In 1992/3 OS/2 was on my 40mhz, 128meg, 30gig machine which built on my bench because no factory could assemble systems with that cpu since it was the latest, fastest cpu for an IBM PC and had not passed FCC validation. I was dismayed by the time-to-boot; it went from 46 seconds then later to 1.5 minutes and beyond.

My currrent 3.1+ghz PC takes 25 to 40 seconds to boot-up under WinXP, S/R 2. It has nearly no use of virtual storage while the 1993 configuration was quite heavily thrashing hd during boot. It ran a real-time data acquisition from a 3/4 meter satellite dish which gathered information from the futures pits in several cities, plus all of the SPX movements, NYSE and Nasdaq markets. Several several programs were actively building, auditing, and reporting from three major and two minor files. At the end of the trading day for each of the markets, hands off, several things happened; creation of market reports, validation and archiving of history, elimination of invalid data, and compression of history files to minute-to-minute level, and weekly files to five-minute granularity then backup all to tape. These programs were self-written and were very austere by today’s standards. Gui does cost a lot, but to extrapolate to today’s configuration on a machine which is just about 100 times the core speed I remain totally unimpressed with Win.

There is a concept of “the model” having truth when matched to the actual kernel. In this area, MS fought with IBM to do things the expedient way; this gets out today’s project, but builds baggage and invariably creates gaps in security and the ability to scale upward. Windows has a terrific load of baggage, even after the upgrade to 32 bit processing, now 64.

Furthermore, most of the gloss of the O/S which is the supporting reports, file services, drivers, and the like, have been created by companies that were subsequently bought out by M/S. Their coding was also expedient… more baggage.

Enough for now. I could have addressed the early op-sys which were better technically than Windows; CPM certainly comes to mind, Dr DOS was also well regarded, and either could have cleaned M/S’s clock when compared on technical merit. Currently, take a close look at the Linnux systems, any, and take a very close look at Apple’s fine O/S.

Case closed, Win is in fourth, fifth, or sixth place. Financially, strategically, and promotionally, however, M/S exceeds the sum-total of all of its contenders, in the past and now.

Thanks for your consideration, in advance,

Warren Hall

Your welcome

In reply to Windows has the most inertia

😉

A superb post by: Warren62 Date: 02/07/06

In reply to Windows has the most inertia

‘Interia’ was an excellent choice of words.

My congratulations on a well thought-out, well-written
professional contribution. – I must admit that what you refer to
as ‘baggage’ is one of my biggest ‘beefs’ with modern OSs, Apps,
programming models & environments …. ‘Rampant inefficieny’
and ‘huge & unnecessary waste of resources’ are alternative
phrases that come to mind: I’ve got a Microsoft *mouse* driver (
fer goshsakes!) which the OS reports is using 1.13 MB of Real
memory and even more in Virtual!! What on Earth For ??

*grumble*

Thanks for a great contribution (even tho the whole thread is a
trawl, at least a few folks made some sensible points).
Personnaly, I think a big chunk of the World is furiously looking
around for an alternative to the MS DeathGrip and will *leap* at
the chance to move as a genuine Contender is recognized – and
I think we’d agree that there’re already one or two out there – for
servers, and for desktops. Developments continue to change the
picture – There’s just that Inertia to overcome 🙂

How incredibly delusional!

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

My ioperating system doesn’t require a reboot to install everything. It’s completely safe from viruses. The only intrusions can come from within, not only thanks to the firewall, but because its security architecture won’t permit external, unsecured access. It supports tens of thousands of users and runs online and batch apps without a hiccup 24×7. No memory leaks, no storage architecture issues.

And, oh yeah, IT’S NOT WINDOZE.

It’s not Linux either.

It’s MVS.

The reason it’s not going anywhere(and the reason the Chinese are now learning it) is because it does everything it says it can do right off the tapes and then it just runs. Maintenance is straightforward, support is consistent and the support website(s) is(are) phenomenal!

It has served all clients for about 40 years in it’s various iterations.

I rest my case.

Oh, paleeeze…

In reply to How incredibly delusional!

Come on now, Cinnester,

You know that everyone here has been discussing PC operating systems. PC is short for personal computer. IBM didn’t refer to their System 3x, let alone a 4100 or Sierra, as a personal computer. Are you suggesting that MVS is running on your very own personal mainframe?

I tried that once

In reply to Oh, paleeeze…

But [b]She Who Must Be Obeyed[/b] wouldn’t have any of it, I couldn’t bring home an old Mainframe that we where replacing with a new unit and have it at home as a play toy. 🙁

Mainly because it would have filled the entire house and left no room to live in but it would have been a lovely play toy. 🙂

It got really bad when I got a 500 CPU Blade dropped off here to do the preinstall setup but then again maybe because I told her that [b]It’s Mine[/b] was the reason that she raised Holly Hell and that fitted in just one room. 😀

Col ]:)

Oh great One,

In reply to I tried that once

Ye, who obeys She Who Must Be Obeyed, are to be admired and venerated. Many a time, have I been cornered by those who pretend to be She Who Must Be Obeyed and it doth strike the greatest fear into my soul.

Now I live like a mushroom in the bean field to avoid them. Long live mainframes.

jat

I have to agree with that one

In reply to Oh great One,

I just do as I’m told it’s far less painful that way. 😀

Col ]:)

but then

In reply to I have to agree with that one

you miss out on the fun part that way.

oh, hold it, it’s She Who Must be Obeyed that gets the fun part.

You are depriving She Who Must be Obeyed of the fun of inflicting pain!!

Defiantly YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In reply to but then

I like a very quite life and don’t go out of my way to provoke [b]She Who Must Be Obeyed[/b] if at all possible.

I can sneak in some small things like a Quad Processor M’Board and the components to make the computer up but a mainframe is pushing my [b]Luck[/b] just a tad more than I’m willing to try. 🙂

Anyway I saw that White Paper that you alluded to titled [b] Why Windows is so Great and how Linux can never make an impact upon it.[/b] Typical M$ BS if you ask me poorly written, badly constructed, incorrect facts and most importantly reads like it comes straight from the M$ Marketing Department where you work. :p

Anyway at the moment I’m being very good until at least I get her current favorite car back after bending it. Well it was going in to be painted properly back to bare metal and then painted inside and out so a bit of front end damage didn’t hurt too much well in the [b]Hip Pocket anyway[/b] it was only an extra 1K to repair the damage as I had all the parts and everything had to come off anyway so a bit of bending the inner guards about a little didn’t hurt too much, from my prospective anyway. But I still have the bruises for bending it and it wasn’t even my fault the traffic lights where faulty but it didn’t stop her beating the living daylight out of me for damaging her car. 🙁

Actually it’s a good thing that she didn’t see it last week as the so called professionals who repaired it previously with a Life Time Guarantee on their workmanship made a real mess of the thing so all of the affected panels had to be cut out and replaced hardly any of the outer shell left after their work. 😀

Col ]:)

…and so, the truth has outed.

In reply to but then

But this compulsion to inflict pain seems a pandemic, no?

Well Women are all Masochists at heart anyway

In reply to but then

I can remember quite clearly just after the birth of our first child [b]She Who Must Be Obeyed[/b] attempting to strangle me and saying quite firmly [b]Never Again![/b] Then about 18 months latter she starts off by saying isn’t it about time we think about having another one? She had nailed the windows shut locked the door of the bedroom and kidded the key then woke me up and hit me with that one. When I realized that Escape was impossible I started constructing an emergency exit through the floor. :p

Col ]:)

MainFrame being a metaphor for ..

In reply to Oh great One,

Main female ??

I mean, being Earnest – and speaking Frankly … my interest in
the Female frame, in the main, has yet to Wayne …

(sorry )

🙂

Yes I love my Wife Dearly

In reply to MainFrame being a metaphor for ..

When she’s happy but when I get on the wrong side of her she comes on all like [b]Auntie Jack[/b] 🙁

No I don’t even want to think about that any more as it’s way to scary. 😀

Col ]:)

Indeed. Unless, of course…

In reply to MainFrame being a metaphor for ..

one is of androginous persuasion, in which case, ‘it’ produces rogue loop, no?

Yes it’s true, z/OS (aka MVS) is the best operating system ever

In reply to How incredibly delusional!

I know I’m entering this discussion a little late :-).

Cinnester is completely correct in this post.

If you know how z/OS is built inside, you know why it is the best and most secure operating system ever. The reasons are as obvious as the reasons Windows and Microsoft applications are NOT secure.

A few quick examples will drive this home:

– Programs fall into two categories: Authorized and unauthorized. The operating system runs authorized. Applications run unauthorized and can NEVER crash the system. Ever.

– Anything executable cannot be downloaded and run from a network (programs and JCL). They must be installed by the system programmer from a distribution media like a magnetic tape. So, no e-mail macro viruses for example.

– It is IMPOSSIBLE to have a “buffer overflow” vulnerability because HARDWARE ensures it cannot occur.

– Users CANNOT login as “administrator”. They cannot crash the system or harm other users.

– All file and disk access is controlled by foolproof security mechanisms.

Horse Manure

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Wake up and smell the coffee! There are GUIs for Linux. There are 10,625 active Linux projects. Linux open source can and will deliver a “patch” in days if not hours! Can MS do the same? Linux is about choices, MS is not. It is their way or the highway. As an IT professional I prefer choices.

But Is that Manure MS-FarmGates/Windows Compatible ??

In reply to Horse Manure

Like: can I get the same sorta sh*t I’m *used* to paying big paying for, ‘Free’ ?

Is that legal ?

*grin*

There are 10,625 active projects.

In reply to Horse Manure

WOW, that is a lot of projects. So do I spend 10 or twenty years getting familiar with the in’s and outs of the 10,625 projects? or just 50 of them or maybe ten? How do I know or find out which project is the best one? Who are the sales reps for all these projects. Are any of the projects accomplishing anything? Do you have links to articles or sites that will give me information on these projects? are the project info and documentation all written in tech speak so only linux/unix wise people will understand them, how people friendly are theses projects or do you have to be an IT mega guru to want to be a part of these projects. are all of these projects still open? Is there any eventual direction or goal for these projects?

M$ has not taken away your choice, you can chose to use it or not, if there was no M$ you would be out of a choice.

I prefer choice too, which is why I’m glad that Windows is not the only operating system.

No, it is still only the most used…

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

I’m sorry, NZ_Justice, but having started on Unix, I felt I accomplished far more than ever on any Windows server. I administer Linux, NetWare, Unix and Windows now. I thought Windows was going a step-backwards with all the overhead devoted to making the system look pretty. I still type faster than mousing thru nested menus; often able to edit files using a DOS version of “vi” faster than any co-worker using “wordpad” or “notepad”. I’m guessing you’ve not been in the IT industry since 1987 like myself, and really have no idea what you’re talking about due to your limited experience.

The only thing MS does actually well is advertising, and buying out competitors.

Interesting.

In reply to No, it is still only the most used…

The IT industry today is far different from what it was in 1987. And it is always evolving and adapting, if it is viable for a business to use an alternative to M$ than they should.

The end user is the important user.

If you can’t use Linux and UNIX and net-ware to achieve your business goals then why would you use them?

Believe it or not UNIX servers and OS operating systems are not cheap, they are expensive, and one way M$ competes is to offer (what could appear to be a substandard service) a similar service at a cheaper price.

You probably could use low cost unix/linux solution but the company will be the one to suffer. It can add extra infrastructure cost, increased help desk costs, the employment of high paid unix/linux guru etc….

Because of all your experience I would imagine that any organisation you work-for/own/are-with, you would make a 6 figure salary at least. And there probably is an equivalent M$ guy like yourself that feels the same way about M$ as you do about Linux\Unix\Novel. It’s just not me. It sounds like you have limited experience with Windows, maybe you should give it a try.

You can’t use Linux for every thing and you can’t use Windows for every thing and you can’t use Mac for every thing etc..

You started on UNIX maybe you would have a different opinion if you started on commodore 64.

Each to his own.

Says who ?? I gotta Mac I can use for everything –

In reply to Interesting.

>You can’t use Linux for every thing and you can’t >use Windows for every thing and you can’t use Mac >for every thing etc..

Says who ?? I gotta Mac I can use for everything – including UNIX, LINUX and WINDOWS…

really

In reply to Says who ?? I gotta Mac I can use for everything –

you think your mac can do everything that can be done with an OS? Even run every computer app available, like apps purpose built for specific hardware that is not mac. You must have a super mac.

Wine a little (for you illiterates it is a joke you won’t get)

In reply to really

Have you ever heard of emulators, or Endean rules?

So thats how you spell wine.

In reply to Wine a little (for you illiterates it is a joke you won’t get)

I thought it was like wyne.

Every thing isn’t emulated.

Emulators, Byte order and other stuff

In reply to really

Many newbies (less than 15 years professional experience) to the IT environment really don’t seem to understand the underpinings of an OS, or of the major subsystems and how they work.

Explaining byte order to people is beyond their comprehension.

What blows their minds is when you pull out a tape to be restored in 9600 bpi on a reel to reel…

What do you mean about byte order in words? What’s a word? These are the resopnses given by many of newer IT people. It is sad, but many of these people have cozied up to management and are considered the most knowledgeable employees.

Unfortunately, IT types use too many big words and when asked to explain, confuse senior upper management, then they can get accused of trying to BS the management. Some of these rennaisance men can boot and use a PC, hence their unwavering belief only PC / Windows is critical to the company’s success…

The same for Linux

In reply to Emulators, Byte order and other stuff

“Unfortunately, IT types use too many big words and when asked to explain, confuse senior upper management, then they can get accused of trying to BS the management.”

or they are doing a crap job promoting their knowledge and skill in IT, or have really shit communication and people skills.

“Some of these renaissance men can boot and use a PC, hence their unwavering belief only PC /” Linux “is critical to the company’s success… ”

And same for anything. There are dumb managers and there are smart managers. There are good business’s running Linux solutions and there are good business’s running windows solutions. And there are business that fail running Linux and there are business that fail running windows. And there are dumb IT people and there are smart IT people and then there are TR people. and there are more than three OS solutions to choose from that are not NIX Linux or Windows.

What about

In reply to The same for Linux

BSD? 🙂

It’s not Windows or Linux/Unix it’s a totally different can of worms. :p

But it is what Apples OSX is based on.

Col ]:)

BSD

In reply to The same for Linux

I have only used a BSD server for latency testing and as a router.

But yeah BSD 😉

um… What about it? ?:|

Berkley and system three Unixes

In reply to The same for Linux

All Were stable. That includes the old SunOS back to 2.X. They still can be used as DNS servers much more reliably than our AD servers…

The old SunOS4.2 boxes on 33 MZ machines responded faster on 10 mb lan than Windows 2k3 with copper Gig -E. Berkley was a nice implementation. I like System V better, but that is a personal preference…

Each his/her own, true…

In reply to Interesting.

But I do fail to see any reason to your point about why there is something I can’t do on linux. It can and does handle everything major we’ve thrown at it. There is some M$-propritary SQL stuff, which is why we keep some Windows boxes about. They are not are key systems by any means, however. It takes more hardware “power” to run the same applications on Windows then linux. It takes more time to maintain Windows webservers then it does on linux (this is not true when I use Apache on Windows, but typically prefer to run it on linux or NetWare).

I dispute your claims of higher support costs for linux. Linux has not in *any* case increased our costs on help desk, support or maintenance. In fact, after the “break-in” period from migration over from NetWare (NW kernel), expenses have dropped. Where you get this wild cost-concept is beyond me. Oh wait, no, I do know. You are one that actually believes M$’s hype and advertising.

My Windows experience is not lacking; I’m certified with M$ and deploy it where I’m required. In each case at least here, it is always more expensive to maintain. But, you are right/it is true, you can’t use a single OS for everything.

I suggest you actually get serious about learning the full abilities of non-M$ products before you make claims about them. There are many linux distributions that make them look Windows-like you might try to learn on first. I prefer not to use them myself as I don’t like any additional overhead on a server, and always run minimum services, including disabling any GUI. If Windows allowed that, I might have a different opinion about it.

Hype

In reply to Each his/her own, true…

Actually the org I work for gets tenders from different companies before buying products. 1 NIX server which would have meet the business requirements, the license cost, 300k (heavily discounted), just to license the hardware, the cost of the M$ license, 10k (also heavily discounted, M$ where probably very scared of losing the business to NIX), but included apps and support as well, when you get presented figures like that, no hype is needed to make 10k more appealing than 300k.

If my org was to switch to Linux, despite the many happy end users, it would cost way more than 300k now and the return on investment could take years and the benefit to users and business requirements would not show for ages. Maybe in an industry just specializing in IT can get the true benefits of open source, say like an internet hosting organisation.

Believe it or not tech people actual work for Microsoft (yes they are rear).

I know you can run a network on the cheap with Linux, every one says so.

I wasn’t trying to point out what you can’t do with Linux, I was pointing out It can’t do everything and if you believe it can, who is buying into hype?

People make windows and apps work not the other way around, if you have the right peoples with the right skill sets, whether it’s Linux or windows it doesn’t mater, you can get it to work and run efficiently or inefficiently as you want to.

Windows can be hacked to suit your purposes, may third party fixes exist today, that can also help you customise your windows, You just need to learn it like you learn Linux.

If you go into Windows with the mindset it just isn’t as good as Linux, windows will always lose no matter what it does, and once you got the Linux bug and like it more the windows, Linux people will just turn a blind eye to windows no matter what.

Ands that?s one way of how it is in the e-society we e-live in.

😉

I couldn’t agree more

In reply to Hype

Just look at the following Link to explain why. :p

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11184-0.html?forumID=49&threadID=190228

There is only one certainty we never stop learning. But MS support is Woeful to say the lest. On every occasion where I’ve had to ring then 3 times in the last 10 years I’ve either got rubbish responses or been asked to ring back with a solution when I work out what’s going wrong and I pay for this level of service. 🙂

Col ]:)

re. I couldn’t agree more

In reply to I couldn’t agree more

Great link :^O , It was for a problem I was having at home, I got this problem because I am a bit cavalier with my own OS security, every now and the I get Trojans, male\spy-ware, a virus and after cleaning the PC somethings aren’t the same.

I wouldn’t know how woeful MS support is, I have never contacted M$ for support for problems I have at home.

My M$ support is all in house or Online in the www, so it seems very similar to Linux support.

If I was working for M$ support, I would solve your 3 problems.

😉

Well in that case

In reply to re. I couldn’t agree more

Here they are

[b]Problem 1[/b] Device 6 Missing. That had me all confused no end as MS kept insisting that Device 6 is the CPU but I couldn’t understand how I could get a display telling me that I had failed to insert a CPU into a system that was otherwise working and this only started after installing 98SE. 🙁

[b]Problem 2[/b] After installing SP1 on a P4 already supplied with XP Pro the Master Boot Records disappeared from every HDD in the computer but SP1 appeared to install normally and it was only on the reboot that everything went to Hell in a Hand basket. That one happened at least 5 times at MS insistence as they just couldn’t believe that the Service Pack was the problem as all the other hardware was approved for XP 🙁

[b]Problem 3[/b] related to a Win 3.11 work-group and is now so old as to be pointless to even think about. I can’t actually remember the actual problem just that I had to work it out for myself and then ring MS back with a solution.

The first 2 computers ran perfectly with a Live Linux CD in the primary Optical drive and the Device 6 Missing message only appeared after Windows was loaded.

All the others I’ve managed to work out for myself over the years with the aid of a lot of Third Party Software to fix the inbuilt problems in Windows. 🙂

Actually I love to listen to MS Senior Tech here who constantly [i]”Says I shudder when I hear all the stories of reinstalling Windows”[/i] but from what I’ve heard reported back to me by many people over the years this seems to be MS first approach as evidenced by the SP1 issue I was cloning a HDD as the Basic Boot drive to keep the time down. Well actually It was showing a message of [b]Immanent Drive Failure[/b] that’s why it got pulled from the computer. But at least I didn’t have to go through the complete reinstall process every time. Well after the first time anyway as by then I had worked out that the problem was related to the Service Pack and not the previous install of XP Pro.

I know the answers to both of the above but I’m betting you’ll go nuts trying to figure them out. But you’re welcome to try and no cheating and ringing MS as I’ve already provided them the solutions. 😀

Actually I know exactly what you mean by your Home computers I tend to forget them as well when it comes to keeping them squeaky clean unless they are ones that I use for Remote Monitoring then it’s a different story. When a clean up introduces problems with the Windows units I just tend to live with them until I have to reload them again. Yes I know I’m [b]LAZY[/b] but my excuse is I’m not getting paid to maintain my own Windows computers so why should I? Anyway the Debian units work better. :p

Col ]:)

re. In that case

In reply to re. I couldn’t agree more

If I worked for M$ support I would also imagine that I would have the resources to replicate your problems. Well two of them anyway. Sadly I currently don’t have the resource to replicate you error. :_| And I don’t work for M$ 😀

I can only theorise solutions too what caused your problem. Once the cause is found the solution is easy.

So I will mull them over for now, and If I got your call and I was on the MS help desk I would not of told you to work it out yourself.

And some solutions are solutions that you don’t want to here. 😉

Anyway sorry I can’t work out what caused your problems of the top of my head. The cause is probably harder to find then the solution, then again in your case both could just as be equally as hard.

One solution you could implement in your situations would be to use an equivalent Linux distro instead of windows. :p A solution often posted in Tech Q & A about Questions regarding which windows operating system to choose.

😉

Well I’ll be nice

In reply to re. I couldn’t agree more

In the case of the P4 it was a Samsung DVD ROM drive that caused the problem wasn’t XP SP1 compliant even though it was XP compliant. 🙁

The device 6 missing was caused by the Video GPU causing a hardware conflict with the CPU before the drivers could be loaded for the Video Card. 🙂

Both of these got kicked up to the most senior tech in the place and where not dealt with by even the third tier support staff. Both where a real pain to deal with but eventually I got the situation sorted though there was a lot of wasted time involved. In the case of the DVD drive not even updating the Firmware cured the problem but the moment I removed that drive everything worked perfectly. Getting the Video to work though was a different problem all together. 😀

Col ]:)

Actually there is a way for their advertising to be true.

In reply to Each his/her own, true…

If you start with a multi-million dollar mainframe server and add 100 Linux nodes to it and you divide those costs to small $399.00 Dells in comparison, the total cos is lower for the MS solution.

But, if you put it on the same platforms, MS has a much higher cost of acquisition that can never be recouped if you have a large environment.

Dude. Commodore 64

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

The Commodore 64 was responsible for getting computers into more homes than the IBM PC or the Apple. It, and Nolan Bushnell’s Atari products were also responsible for the democratization of technology by instilling the idea that it should get cheaper as it matures.

So if I were going to respond to a statement like this ” Nobody would use a PC if Microsoft hadn’t invented windows.” I would say:
– Commodore 64 / Vic 20
– Apple
– Atari 400/800/ST (penetration was lower, but there was influence.)

and then I might go to Windows. Maybe. Probably not though. Bill rode the crest of a wave, not vice-versa.

VIC-20

In reply to Dude. Commodore 64

Thanks for mentioning the VIC.
I donated mine (I got it brand new)to the
Goodwill 2.5 years ago
I’m still kicking myself.
Only times it ever crashed were due to my
programming and/or typing deficiencies.
Long live cassette tape memory!

John

Yes

In reply to Dude. Commodore 64

My wording in that area could of been structured and phrased better.

I liked the commodore 64. I just forgot about it.

I liked the Amiga. I just forgot about it.

What made me forget? The Super Nintendo Entertainment System and “Dune 2” and “Wolfenstien” on Windows and arcade machine parlors.

*And* a lot of others; PCs, apple, 3270, micros IBM & MS-Lies ver 1

In reply to Dude. Commodore 64

I’m with Skot (tho I’d put Apple first) but absolutely agree on the Ataris – their ‘games consoles’ were in a lot more homes than *anything* and inspired an entire generation of kids to get interested in Computers & programming – and they went looking for ‘real computers’ to learn how to make those awesome games, figure out HOW all that stuff was done …. – and the innovations that Atari and – very much – Commodore, brought to microcomputers were *outstanding*: special graphics chips and ‘animation co-processors’ – ATARI had one called ‘Antic, Commodore had some truly outstanding hardware, Apple were inventing entire fields of technology, Digital research was doing *real work*…*thousands* of companies were selling serious business systems – mostly ‘vertical Market or accounting’ systems running on micros under CPM – and along came the Rubes from IBM with a hugely-overpriced piece of rubbish and, in behaving like a bunch of hicks in ‘doing a deal for an OS’ GAVE Billy G the keys to the $Billions – and the huge ‘free’ cashcow that made it possible for him to plagiarize and Bully his way through the ensuing Personal Computer years – incidentally retarding progress in the field by about 15 years.

The IBM PC was complete rubbish with an outdated processor, appalling ‘graphics’ displays, a floppy drive and a cassette port LOL – *any* other micro was superior – Hell, the ‘Games’ machines were WAY better… 🙂

The *single* virtue of the IBM PC was that it gave completely Clueless & cowardly Mainframe/IT ‘Professionals’ the courage to say to the Board “we should NOW look at this stuff – It could be *serious*, now that I*B*M have released a ‘General Purpose Personal Computer’ (It’s not from some ‘Games’ company or some little company with a funny name – it’s I*B*M, Boss… ). – The old saying ‘No-one ever got fired for recommending IBM” was no joke – it was a sad truism: an observation of the reality of the Industry. [It’s been …recommending Microsoft’ ever since but the reasons are much the same]. Companies were paying IBM 10, 20 30 times what the stuff was worth (much like now) for huge Networks of massively expensive Terminals & other proprietary Boxes & software etc.

A couple of clever blokes at a company I had the privilege of working with built the World’s first ‘full on’ 3270 Terminal emulation kit which not only worked but ran in dirt cheap Apple IIs [Luke Conte & Chris Howells, Ray Roderick & friends at NetComm, Australia 1981,2 and bought by Apple in 83 against 19 other ‘Tenderers’- immediate Apple management crises brought it all undone but the company went on to huge success in related fields with a string of ‘world firsts’- the kind of thing conspicuously and entirely missing from the MS-History – (pronounced ‘MisHistory’, as in misPronounced, misInformation etc…)]

A couple of years later I was travelling the Continent showing the Fortune 500 types 3270 emulation (Networking & other) in inferior, overpriced, underpowered IBM Peecees and ‘selling the hell out of them’ by bullying them with the IBM badge, the $$$ and making them feel inadequate [Mostly – to be fair, there *were* a few brave Visionaries – rather than Billy Gates’ ‘Versionaries’ and ‘Revisionaries’. You know who you are – and may God Bless you]. And we ‘progressed’ from there.

A half-trained Billygoat could have maintained market dominance with the $Billion stranglehold IBM donated to Microsoft – a monopoly maintained at immense cost to this industry, innovation in Computing and to Business, home and Industry/Society generally.

The fact that we’ve progressed SO little – in Personal Computing – in ca. 30 years makes me more than a little ashamed of my Industry and Profession. Most of the world still uses expensive, hugely complex, ‘unfriendly’, difficult to use, unsafe/insecure barely-comprehensible and demonstrably unreliable Computer Systems and expensive, bloated, hugely resource-wasteful and mutually-incompatible Applications & systems’ software.

The very best thing the Industry – and the US Govt. – could do for the benefit of us all would be to ‘do a Bell’ on Microsoft: break it up into at least 20 competing entities. It wouldn’t do Billy & his shareholders any harm, they’d all be appropriately and fairly compensated but it would put an end to this stifling unjust and indisputably harmful monopoly power – a power that is exercised at every possible opportunity and which harms this industry and every Computer user. If the MS teams are such outstanding Innovators – as Billy & co regularly (and with blatant hypocrisy) claim, they should have no trouble at all competing with the rest of the Industry.

And THAT is the reality of the History of the Mainframe-micro-PC-Microsoft transition whatever spin anyone else tries to put on it (and the M$ Lobby ‘Spin’ furiously…:)

I’m (semi-)retired now, run my own projects, answer to no-one and can speak freely. I still ( & always will) have a lot to learn but there’s nothing Microsoft or Billy G can teach me.
(and I’m afraid I’d be ‘unavailable’ to teach *them* 😉

To the MS-apologists and revisionists: Please don’t make a fool of yourselves by telling me about the ‘History’ of it all.

I was there, actually *doing* these things. I was a gen-u-ine pioneer and innovator in many of these fields. I have been – more or less – for 35 years. Where were you ?

Hats off !!

In reply to *And* a lot of others; PCs, apple, 3270, micros IBM & MS-Lies ver 1

Thanks from another of those stahlwarts who actually were there at the time.

Thanks PKR (BilgeGates’ mum wears Army Boots to Bed!!)

In reply to Hats off !!

I expected Flames – maybe no-one *read* it *grin*

And my best wishes to you too, Sir – for having the courage to stand up for the truth – and for being one of the ‘real Pros’ who helped to build this whole field.

I get very annoyed when the press/general public fall for the Stories of the ‘wet behind the ears’ MS_Newbies and MirkySoft’s constant attempts to rewrite History.

I have nothing against Billy G – good luck to him – but to hear him feted as a ‘Computer Genius’ who ‘invented the whole field’ etc makes me want to throw up.

‘Struth – he didn’t even notice the Internet until someone sent him an ‘Internet for Dummies’ subscription… after the rest of the world had been using it for a few years…*and* his next ‘Innovation’ will be his First!

As someone else around here pointed out, he’s been using Apple (and, to a lesser but important extent, Open Source) as his free “R&D Divisions’ for decades!

I mean, *really* 😉

Pardon me while I choke on laughter

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

I was using computers before Bill Gates dropped out of law school. Mainframes are wonderful in their place and lots of fun to fiddle with and program. The Amiga is the best computer ever invented. Gates forced the release of Windows eight months early, very full of bugs and unfinished, to beat the initial release of the Amiga by a month because the Amiga scared the **** out of him. Had Windows been months behind the Amiga, and Commodore continued to have been run by Jack Tramiel, we would all be using Amigas today. History is won by mediocrity because it is more easily understood by the masses. Windows is, if nothing else, mediocre.

Let’s hear it for gjenkins: intelligent prognosticator…

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Most (or perhaps just ‘many’) of the PPLs here just “don’t get it yet”.

The peecee world just changed forever .. and GJ has it very close to *precisely right*… – better start brushing up on your *NIX and (less so,) OS X folks … because there are going to be a LOT of ‘switchers’, ‘tryers’ AND “Switchers who also Stay”.

It’ll take 6 months to *really* ‘Bite’ – because it’ll take 6 months for the dust to settle, the ‘Rev A’s to get out of the way, the initial bugs to be found and fixed and for the Universal Binaries of various Apps to appear, ‘bed down’ etc … But it IS going to happen (see my other Pellucid posts and limpid language – directly adjacent to my Cogent Calls…ANd those of a few other smart people… in this very thread… *grin*)

Dual/triple/quad boot systems, Windoze ON Mac UNDER OS X, *with* UNIX – with a side order of Boot Windoze, Boot Linux and WhateverTheHellElseYouWant – all on some of the most desirable beautiful and superbly-designed computer products ever slavishly-but-inadequately-copied.

As I’ve detailed elsewhere in this post: it won’t be immediate and it won’t be ‘everyone’ but it WILL be a very large mass of individuals.

The Future IS UNIX and a big serve of Open Source.

The MacIntels offer the most attractive, effective and easiest, most painless route TO that future.

Anyone PC/IT ‘Pro’ who can’t see that… can’t see at all (G’day Billy, Hi Devourak…)

[I think I may start Open ‘a Book’ on it … how many takers ?? *grin*]

Don’t hold back now, WayneT…

In reply to Let’s hear it for gjenkins: intelligent prognosticator…

Right on; Iceman’s rules:

1) Personal computers are ‘Man amplifiers.’ They can’t do anything their man can’t do. But what he can do, the PC makes makes happen quicker and at higher volume. If the PC’s Man is a nitwit, his PC will enable him to do nitwit things quicker and at higher volume. It will rarely do smart things instead. If it’s Man does smart things, his PC will enable him to do so quicker and at higher volume.
2) It is Application software that determines how much money the Man makes doing smart things with his PC.
3) It is OS software that determines how much money the Man loses doing smart things with his PC.

All application software can only do it’s work as long as the OS that it runs on is running properly. When the OS fails, the Man amplifier is stopped until it is made sane again. The frequency of OS failure, therefor, inversely determines the availability of the Man amplifier as well as it’s contribution to revenue (not to mention recovery cost, aka TCO).

Ultimately, your comfort with one OS or another is unrelated to the ‘best’ness of either. What’s the ‘best OS’ must first look to stability. How does anything MS compare to anything Mac or ‘nix?

In other words, how many times have you seen the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ and how many times has anyone seen a ‘kernel panic?’ Go figure.

windows is a good OS no dout

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

linux does not do well i have tried but no use ,it not for the user i thnk it is for the programmers
some programme like ACAD is not in linux also i am blind if i dont know the partation where i am working back things also linux is not ment user friendly i think they must use a disk partation as windows use also it a open source so it has self weaken

Incoherent statements…

In reply to windows is a good OS no dout

Dear “colleague”,
Your statement “ACAD is not in Linux” – to prove that “Linux does not do well” is an example of obviously incoherent thinking. Why don’t you derive just the reverse (but the same way absurd!) conclusion – ACAD “does not do well” as it is “not in Linux”?
I am nor Windows’ nor Linux fan (and I am not a fan at all) but you make me think that incoherent thinking is what using Windows finally leads to… You may convince anyone think so! You are “in Windows”!

Everyone has good points lets just agree on this..

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Ok Microsoft is a big evil bloodsucking entity and a necessary evil at the same time. I will give old Bill this, what other company in the world can get away with selling a product that is still clearly in BETA phases and people buy it up figure out the problems and then let MS fix it in a service pack. THE MAN IS A MARKETING GENIUS.

I actually like it when people find the problems in the OS. It boils down to Microsoft is letting people DEBUG their problems and then comes up with a solution to fix it. (MOST OF THE TIME) At the end of the day Microsoft still has some of the best offerings for Home User, Business Users, and sometimes debatable when it comes to Graphic Arts (THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE IS IN CONSIDERATION HERE).

Personally, I like the fact that MS listens to what people would like to see and tries to give it to them free within the OS. It shows that they have some compassion about not charging us out the butt for things like media player or browsers. However, what happens to them when they do this the get NAILED for trying to create a monopoly. Now there are grumblings about them even adding a Anti-Virus Light in the OS. Who knows? (LET US SEE WHAT THIS WILL STIR UP)

I use Mac?s, Linux, and Microsoft to do my daily job at an Engineering firm and I will have to say all of them have their good points and all of them SUCK at the same time. It is all a matter of personal preference.

If you are a coder and do not care for eye candy and like to live in the command line world then use Linux. If you want to do graphics or open up a digital recording studio, use a Mac. You want Games, decent productivity products (Office, Money, ETC…), easy networking use Microsoft.

Microsoft got here by what every successful company and business model shows you to do. Create a product that people want, if someone does it better figure out how to one up them, listen to what your public wants, and try to make it as cost effective for society while still making a profit for your self. Which I can clearly say they have done all of the above.

Not to mention MS gives countless amounts of money back to charities, education organizations, and other areas of society.

They are not all bad. The OS has flaws but hell we are human we make mistakes. Computers are only as smart as we make them.

As a side, note Word Perfect has sucked since it left the DOS days. Corel trashed them as well as most of the things it touches.

Then on a final point if it was not for Microsoft most IT people in the world would not have a job. My bets are with Microsoft. Whether we like it or not the are the best choice and the best OS for 90% of the people on this planet

I don’t like Coke

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

And my first PC had DOS 3.3. As a mainframe programmer this seemed very natural, if crude. Then I found an easy to use menu system and everyone was happy, especially the children. Windows was something I had to have to run the programs I wanted to use.
Best OS? VME
Best PC OS? Linux. Windows is not an OS, it is a marketing tool.
I’m using Fedora Core 4 and it works well. I look after my wife’s recently upgraded-to XP and by comparison it sucks. My son bought a PC with XP on it and he has shifted to Ubuntu. My daughter’s 98SE croaked so I loaded Ubuntu for her.
Open Source may not be perfect, but like democracy it beats any other way of getting a result. The age of empires is over, Open Source is the way of the forseeable future, like it or not. If Microsoft does not adapt it will decline into irrelevance. Who will miss it? The Web will look much the same, desktops will still be desktops. Pan Am went bust but we fly more than ever.
Party’s over, Bill.

Not Liking Coke is probably a good thing

In reply to I don’t like Coke

I here that the “white powder” can be pretty bad for you. And I have only seen the benefits in movies or TV shows produced by the US and UK or doco’s on US actors who have fallen prey to the magic “white powder”. Not to mention all the trouble you would be in if you where caught with\using “white powder”. And it’s definitely not something you want your kids to get into.

Microsoft are adapting

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1813672,00.asp

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39261694,00.htm

There is also might be an article on it somewhere in the TR.

Age of empires is… still a great game (developed by Big Games and M$).

I think Bill’s party will last till the day he dies, even if M$ dies before he does.

I don’t play games, either

In reply to Not Liking Coke is probably a good thing

How can anyone be so dull and live? I don’t know, but I do. And I can spell.
Yes, Microsoft are doing some very strange things these days, but I suspect on the basis of “If you won’t join them, you have to beat them”. Expect a new definition of “open source” to emerge from Redmond sometime soon. It will be just like the ordinary open source but with a few enhancements to make sure it only works on Windows and IE, and is only open at one end – the end you put the money in.
They say that power corrupts, and absolute power is even nicer. I don’t think that having seen the throne of the Galactic Emperor Mr Gates will ever be content unless he is sitting in it.
And the party? The words of the Melanie song “Leftover Wine” say it better than I can.

THe Best one ever Made?

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

The best one ever made has been the PC-BASIC that the PC booted up to.

Why? Resistant to Viruses, and you can in a short amount of time you were running again – on floppies!

Are you new to this planet; or, do you just not get out much?

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

You seem to be oblivious to the number of people using PCs before MS even stepped onto the stage.

And, to imply that no other could and would have played their role is shear speculation.

Do you also believe that Henry Ford developed the best automobile, or that no one would be driving them had he not existed?

That?s how you interpreted what i wrote.

In reply to Are you new to this planet; or, do you just not get out much?

I can not stop you from “assuming” or “reading between the lines” even when there is nothing to read between the lines and nothing to assume. I did not state any where that people did not use PC’s before MS even stepped onto the stage. And I implied nothing.

Of course no one would be driving Fords if Henry hadn’t developed them, we?d all be driving Holden?s.

Or are you implying that a have a belief system structured around the worship of Henry Ford and his development of the best automobile and that I skull a can of oil every full moon in recognition of his grate achievement.

You seem to be oblivious to the number of people using motor bikes instead of cars before I even read what you posted.

Money! Thats what I want.!

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Who is the richest man in the world? And what did he do to get there? Which operating system has had a market monopoly and an anti trust action against them?

All these questions and more answered above.

If I had the opportunity to make money of a dirty operating system and become the richest man in the world, I would do it.

NZ_Justice indoctrinated?

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

for sure windows is good,note:good but not the best.bugs are fixed so you do not believe in some thing perfect,something that will not nag you all the time?anyway if you love windows you really got something out of it but consider something new and embrace CHANGE.no pun intended.

Change embraced.

In reply to NZ_Justice indoctrinated?

😉

F%^$IN ID10T

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Dude You Are Whats Wrong With The World

no you are.

In reply to F%^$IN ID10T

:p

NZ_Justice – This is how you do it

In reply to F%^$IN ID10T

NZ_Justice: This is how you reply to this guy (for future reference)
http://tinyurl.com/6wbv

Cool

In reply to NZ_Justice – This is how you do it

Thankx 😉 But If I am not careful I will get the compulsion to go around and post it as my reply to many of the links throughout discussion in the TR.

A suggestion

In reply to Cool

Like any other vice that is SO GOOD, overusing this would be bad. So, I reserve it for the most justifiable cases. But, when the time is right, it’s right!

Enjoy!

It’s time for a Hitler reference…

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Nothing gets Linux people more fired up than singing the praises of Windows.

Stupidest Discussion Ever

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

I don’t even know why I was dumb enough to check this one out.

Dear NZ_Justice, I think you meant “beat it” not “bet it”. If Windows
is so great why can’t it catch your misspellings?

Proudly stupid by design

In reply to Stupidest Discussion Ever

Lighten up, friend. This discussion is only half serious and proudly stupid by design.

Click here:
http://tinyurl.com/6wbv

I was using firefox and not IE

In reply to Stupidest Discussion Ever

but curse my mistake :p, Anyway I have corrected now, it was probably spelt right in the first place but the Tech and Cnet admins randomly edit discussions just for fun to see if anyone does read them. 😛

Number 1

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

http://tinyurl.com/gjhul

http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/2671

MS suing mac?

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Mac made the first GUI, and mac has sued MS for coping it
before. That would be why the MS/HP colab of windows
never came out. Have you ever used OS X? I have and i
know that if anything the functinality is way better the
anything that windows has every tried.

Yes, I can’t run all of the windows programs. I never did
like acounting software anyways.

Further more Vista looks like a cheap rip off of OS X. The
highlighted features have already exsisted in OS X for
years.

Thats ok though, I know that some people get off to
rebooting every half an hour and crashing twice a week. I
guess it gives you somthing to do other than actual work.

Many of you had not gone to the bathroom by yourself

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Many of you had not gone to the bathroom by yourselves when the Personal Computer was first created by IBM, and WINDOWS was not around in those days. There were many other computers around back then, but the term PC or Personal Computer is credited to the IBM model 5150. There was a predecessor to the 5150 it only ran BOS or Basic Operating System, based on a very popular language of the day called Basic. IBM tried to get DOS from Digital Research or DR-DOS which was better than Bill’s MS-DOS at the time. But the DR guy would not keep his appointments so IBM dealt with Bill Gates instead. So the original PC ran both the BOS or DOS. If you didn’t put in the DOS floppy, the machine would bring up Basic automatically.
Prior to the PC there were several crude games, a couple of Word Processing applications that were derived from Scientific Data’s CP5 Operating system of the 1950’s. The greatest piece of software back then was a spreadsheet app called CALC, which then became VISICALC which then grew to be SUPERCALC.

When Apple came out, they had a really good operating system (Which became the basis of Windows) that was adapted from something that was originally written by XEROX. They also had some really neat software apps that IBM eventually bought the rights to. Word Processing, Spreadsheets, database and report generator. Originally they were called PFS this or that, and IBM renamed them to IBM Writing Assistant, etc.

Intel was not the only one making chips back then either, but that is another story.

WTF!!!!

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

You Dink every1 was useing pcs and it was unix to start with,And it would have allways been that way if it was not for greed so get a life and read more.

no!!

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

windoze is shite i mean it crashes and makes pepole hate computers and microsoft are an nasty bunch of comunists who like nothing more than to piss other oses to the core and have got worse over the years

fuck m$

You say your point is that MS is the best

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

SO what! Expand you mind and learn new things. There are a millions applications for a million different platforms for a million different environments.

You said it yourself that MS stole everything they have. So you limit yourself in that you wait for MS to put out a new product before you learn about new technology!

I am a MS fan too..what choice do we have when I have to live in the “mainstream”. Billy is behind the times and has no one to steal from lately. This is why he is retiring.

Google has cornered the market on seraching and has entered into the office apps business as well. When was the last time you Google’d? You probably have a IE7 tap opened to Google right now and if you don’t, you have the toolbar.

Best OS?..Best BS?…we are all forced to conform to society!

HAHAHA

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

This guy reminds me of the jock that would ask me for help when I was a kid running around dos. Point and click your life away. It is nice to be a grown adult and still live in your parents house with their rules? Some day you will grow up to be a man and build your own life without your “Parents” restrictions. Windows gave you losers false hope that some day you would be someone in the tech world. What a sad loser. Oh yeah if Linux distros are crashing then I wonder why dell is pushing UBUNTU over xp? I wonder why? The days of theft by microsoft is over. The reason also that linux gurus are working for microsoft is to make sure the world does not come to an end from bills mistakes, let me think……… Oh yeah like 2k? Good thing for them the Linux gurus kept hush hush about how they fixed the issue since microsoft locked their own people out of fixing the problem. Nothing like a linux guru to bypass microsoft permissions, but what else do you expect from a VIRTUAL OS?

LOL

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Just keep being a super user for microsoft
if your mind couldn’t regognize the other operating systems that’s not mean microsoft is the best,so keep being there with microsoft

What a noob

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

You have obviously not used anything else apart from Winblows. I used Windows for years, then started to play with Linux (which won’t take you years to master, unless your a complete noob) and I use Macs in my business now. I can honestly say just because Windoze is more prolific it doesn’t mean it is the best. A porshe is clearly a better vehicle than a ford, yet there are fords everywhere, that still doesn’t make the ford the best because more people own one. It simply means that more people can afford what gets them by. Windows is plagued with problems and takes an army of IT staff just to keep it going. Stick to your PC (Pile of Crap) and the world will be a better place without idiots like yourself giving your two cents worth.

Fantastic troll

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

dude, you hooked them.
It was a swell troll, if nothing else.

Down with Microsuck

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

You’re starting to sound like Steve Ballmer. After all, Linux is the biggest threat to Windows… it’s FREEE!

“Live Free or DIE”

Why pay a high cost for such an insecure OS full of outrageous number of patches and fixes… oh yes, can’t forget those lovely blue screens and oh so enchanting freezing sessions when I point and click on my favorite application. Oh yes! Did I forget the Registry? .. Windows can’t live without it!

Just the other day, my CD-RW drive was disabled because of some stupid registry entry that sneaked it’s way in, deleted it… my CD-RW suddenly resurrected.

I run Windows Server 2003, but it’s not the best OS, sorry. And Unix came before Windows, and the Internet was born using it… so Microsoft can go .. #(*$@@ themselves!

there functionality is sub standard because they don’t want to be sued by M

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

What a steaming pile that comment is! Nice trolling, but still not a winning thread.

You can install a boxed, licenced copy of Office 2007 on a Mac. MAC’s now dual boot, because of the dual processor being used. The only reason MS and MAC were not directly compatible was processing issues. Now you have a choice of running he old Windoze emulator on Mac or havign a dual boot, but why would anyone dual boot a secure system into Windoze?

Open source is not a step forward = a step backward, look at Open Office, it is rapidly becoming an office program of choice as it is practically identaical to MSOffice now, saves in all formats INCLUDING PDF, is cross platform compatible and FREE.

When you look at Linux, better still, when you turn your nose up at Linux, you are ignoring the fact that Novell with Linux desktop is being used by governments, massive banking institutions in Europe, large corporate environments and a zillion other installs. The general, homogonized user will not jump on it, because they are brainwashed into thinking MS is the only solution.

Linux guru’s working for MS, hmmm, perhape MS has something to learn from them?

The MACBOOK is the more popular notebook for students now, it offers a lot more than MS does, is more robust, more secure and is completely compatible with MS software.

“So yep Windows is the best OS ever, nothing will ever beat it.”

Wihle you state a case of mass marketing and popularity, this hardly makes MS the best OS ever, in fact it is proven to be one of the worst, if not THE worst.

Nice broad brush you MS junkies like ot paint with, did you just get your MCSE or something and haven’t yet shaken off the tinfoil hat MS trains with?

Do not confuse extended functions with proper functions

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

We must not confuse effort with result, nor must we confuse extended function with proper function. CP/M did it’s job well, and it did little else. Personally, though, I prefer AmigaDOS and it’s GUI Intuition.

Boy, was this one heck of a thread!

Loved the Amiga

In reply to Do not confuse extended functions with proper functions

But one of the early eye openers (at least cheaply done) in a GUI was the GEOS for the C64. Both the PC port and a C64 port are now public domain.

OS2 Warp Is still far better

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

Back before Windows 95 IBM had OS2 Warp V3 out for the public and it was the first true 32 bit OS with a GUI and I still consider it far better then Windows has yet to be. But just like Windows 95 and on it had a fix pack out shortly after release and did the media make a big deal out of that which as we all know killed it because the average user was under the belief that it was a bad OS. Its not that the fixes were all that important at the time unlike Windows 95 and I’m sure you all remember “well that’s Windows it does blue screen from time to time and yes they will have a fix out next month for that” with it’s 200 meg of patches you need to install after re-installing the OS because the registry file or the virus / spyware counts get so bad it won’t boot anymore but hey that’s Windows and it’s not Microsoft’s fault it left all those holes in the OS. So now after having to get use to Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4.0 2000 XP the greatest safest securest OS’s ever made we now have Vista. Here we have an OS that in stead of fixing the problems with the holes they put in the wonderful UAC a security system that oh by the way had to be patched right out of the gate because of holes in it and the OS requires to date at least 40 downloads to fix the problems with it oh and don’t shut off that little annoying helper either because now if anything goes wrong it’s not because the OS has a flaw but because you had the warning system turned off.

Thanks a million.

In reply to The best OS ever without a doubt

This post will come in useful the next time someone complains about we Linux users being zealots.

Nothing All white or all black

In reply to Thanks a million.

Yeap You all right actually.
I was Linux teacher for many years and had all the Crappy MCP from MS… Because… You do not have choices.

I think the reality of it is:

Microsft XP is a nice achievement, this is the more realiable windows MS produce with 2000 Same NT Kernel base… NT kernel does not remember you of Linux? hehe

Linux is still a very good and well used OS for Server, nothing more stable, reliable and do not need a P4 Xeon to run a basic email server or a Web server (Simply because you do not have the install a Gui. Basically, a PII 350 Mhz can do the same service as a P4 nowaday with windows 2003.

The problem? To have an IT manager who is Actualy good with linux and can solve your server problem, you will have to pay a lot more than a basic Windows technician/Admin.
I think this is the main point.

Linux is also very good now for Desktop but why do you think there is not too much virus for Mac and Linux (Mac based on Linux right?)

Because if I was a Hacker/Virus Maker, I would do a Virus for the most common used system. Thats about it.

BTW, the most secure system at this actual time is still Linux… Do not forget all real System needed security (Like a plane, use Linux…. No wonder why they are not using MS… A blue screen during a flight is not good…)

About Mac, It is a great OS for now, Im just wondering if now they will not start to be like Microsoft and Mac sale are rite now the best ever…. Stay tune.

Regarding Microsoft, Yeahhhh very cool they are coming with a new system… Vista… Actually you buy a new windows and Surprise, on the same computer it is slower…. Guess what, this is called marketing, Upgrdaing your windows also make you upgrade your hardware… I do not likee that, a new OS for kind of same feature, should not be heavier… I do not see the point of the improvement… but Intel/ MS.. they well know each other.

To get back on Linux, I think this is very promissing, I do not know if you have consultant on this ewbsite, but, take a look at the licensing price… it start to be ridiculous… The problem is still the same, Linux has a great futur is the person who develop it think about user experience instead of How IM GONNA COMPILE this…
Nobody will use linux instead of MS if this is too complicated. for instamce install any linux distro and you will see, Which Media player I will install… Which Email client will I install… I think linux will not come out of the closet (for desktop solution… Servers are already being proven IT S WORKING and sTable) until develloper start working on the same project, instead of 10000 different email software for linux, why do not focus on one… including all feature and giving a major asset regarding Microsoft product.

For instance, if the project ReactOS will be done someday, it will be great, you have a WINXP=OS like compatible with MS and you just install all open source App Firefox thunderbird, XP burner, MSN (more or less Free)…

I guess what Im trying to say,there is a lot of good idea out there butMarketing is stronger…
Anyway, Im so bored to look at Windiws and the same GUI for so long, it kinda make me regret dos… that was a real computer experience… Probabl I will go for a mac, even if expensive, Linux App are working and it is QUITE compatible on MS network. You still have Parrale Desktop solutoin to run xP or Vista on your MAC if needed… I know it can seems pointless but for your work workstation, with volume shadow it is awesome and avoid MS update error and system crash for example….

Anyway, if you find a real strong and easy OS I ll take it.

Just a hint, Linux tend to be Decent for basic user, for instance, My wife took my laptop during a trip, windows didnt want to connect the the wireless. I told here she can reboot and use Linux… My wife is far to be the computer geek, she is basic word/internet user… As it didnt work with windows, she reboot the PC and select Linux. The desktop KDE boots up, the saw the wireless Icon on the bottom right corner … Like windows… She connect to a wifi AP and start MSN and Skype… it is that easy.

So I guess, Linux for dekstop is not dead Yet, but it will take some time to tweak the distro to the right one… (That one my wife used was Suse, I found it very easy to use with all patched and stuff you basically hae to install on other distro. Other good point is the easy way to install most of the software witout having to compile something…) I do not want to start a debate on Which linux do you prefer, it is just a Hint on a Good distro (At least not the worse :))

Have a good day anyway 🙂

Pierre

[Author]

Replies