10 Jan
2012
10 Jan
'12
8:45 p.m.
I'm speaking specifically of Windows "The Desktop OS", not server stuff.
The OS decides when I will install patches - never mind that I need to
pick up my daughter at school, and my (former, replaced by a Mac) laptop
insists that *now* is the time it wants to take fifteen minutes to install
a patch (or, more likely, twenty or thirty of them) I didn't know about
when I booted up that day (i.e. I'm not blowing off patching requests).
Then when I restart the machine, it's another fifteen minutes while
meaningless messages scroll across my screen. (And if I don't restart
within some undefined period of time, the install seems to 'time out' and
must start all over again. None of this is explained.)
Then there are the meaningless error messages (that are sometimes
explained on *non-Microsoft* websites, i.e. victim support groups). By
way of comparison, one of my favorite error messages of all time said in
essence, "Your system resources are not appropriate to what you want to
do. Run this command line [displayed] and your machine will reset [list
of parameters] and reboot, and everything will work." (It did.) This was
VMS, a ~35-year-old OS. Windows? Not so helpful.
On boot, "please wait for the <unexplained service>". I have no idea how
this is supposedly 'serving' me, as I'm trying to get work done.
Sometimes the work I'm trying to do takes less time than the boot process
- and sometimes, less than the shutdown process. I guess I should be
grateful it says "please." It's so much more polite than the implied
"I,
the computer, am far more important than you, the user who paid for all of
this [stuff]."
(Note about the obscurity of system messages: I worked for Microsoft for
several years. They were no more meaningful then, unless you were the one
who wrote the code. And even that wasn't a guarantee.)
To do the same things I did ten years ago (or five years, or less), I must
purchase a new computer. I could understand if I was restricted in using
new and "exciting" things because of insufficient or absent hardware
resources, but Windows keeps sucking up more and more and MORE CPU cycles,
RAM and persistent store to do the same things I wanted to do ten years
ago - and often, more slowly. (See: Vista.) (Of course, Ubuntu seems
hellbent on the same path to perdition, but it's behind the MS curve.)
And don't get me started on MS-Office?. -- Ian
On 1/10/12 3:19 AM, "Liam Proven" <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
On Jan 10, 2012 6:55 AM, "Mouse" <mouse at
rodents-montreal.org> wrote:
If you are unable to distinguish between not reflexively bashing
Windows based on out-of-date perceptions of it and being a Windows
fanboy...well, then, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but in
that case you deserve at least some of the epithets thrown your way.
Not that I like Windows. I don't. It's a horrible, horrible OS in
multiple respects for almost every purpose I care about.
What he said!
I dislike Windows myself these days & try to avoid it. I can use it,
support it & work with it if I have to, but I won't if I don't have too
our
are not being paid to.
Even so, for all its faults, modern versions are highly reliable. Anyone
flaming about how unreliable it is immediately *shows themselves to be an
irrational non,MS fanboy* because such opinions are not based upon current
facts; they are bigotry, based only on prejudice & badly out-of-date
hearsay.
If I am paying someone for technical advice and skills, I expect a current
skill set of all major platforms. For some things, the right tool may be
one that somebody does not personally like. They should be able to suggest
this without their emotion and preferences getting in the way.
If they can't, then they are unfit for the job.
That means current knowledge and no bigotry and hatred.
Then
perhaps Dave you should keep out of the conversation - your
above comment shows you are still stuck in the 90's and have no
comprehension of current technology whatsoever. As a manager of
various Solaris, Linux and Windows servers for one of Australia's
largest banks, I find very, very little difference in the
reliability, performance and uptime of any of them.
I'm "stuck in the
90s" because I'm not a Windows fanboy??