The best OS ever without a doubt

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.

You HAVE to be kidding!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

Col ]:)

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 ]:)

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

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 :D

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ]:)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Naw, the best that ever lived, Died, and it was
called OS/2 !

Anyone else remember these? A stable working platform and ahead of MS for years. I hated to go to MS - Crash city.

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.

Thanks for your input.

Ford doesn't make the best car? what are you saying. :P

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

https://www.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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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 ]:)

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

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".......

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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...

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.

I draw your attention to the following TR discussion,

https://www.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. :D

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 ]:)

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 ... :)

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.

missing subject last post.

edit 'busted'.

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. :D

Col ]:)

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 ]:)

Quote

"quote: And what the hell does any of this have to do with
Windows been the best OS ever? :P
/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?