In a time of chimpanzees, I was a penguin.
The religious right is motivated by the suspicion that someone, somewhere,
is having fun -- and that this must be stopped.
Spent some time evaluating it this week. It's purty, and it's better than Windows Vista (how's that for damning with faint praise? Talk about a low bar to exceed!), but it's still a friggin mess, just frosting and sugar on top of the same old Windows 95 user interface that was introduced over 14 years ago. My conclusion:
You can polish a turd until it's nice and shiny and spiffy looking. But in the end, it's still a turd.
'Nuff said.
-- Badtux the Technology Penguin
Ground rules: Comments that consist solely of insults, fact-free talking points, are off-topic, or simply spam the same argument over and over will be deleted. The penguin is the only one allowed to be an ass here. All viewpoints, however, are welcomed, even if I disagree vehemently with you.
WARNING: You are entitled to create your own arguments, but you are NOT entitled to create your own facts. If you spew scientific denialism, or insist that the sky is purple, or otherwise insist that your made-up universe of pink unicorns and cotton candy trees is "real", well -- expect the banhammer.
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I, for one, have no intention of ever going back to Windows. MAC OS X suits me just fine. (Thanks again, by the way...)
ReplyDeleteI've been running a pre-release version of Win 7 on my Sony lap top since something went KaBlooie, and my registry file blew up a few months ago. I was running XP, not Vista.
ReplyDeleteSince then, it's ability to recognize peripherals has deteriorated. I can't print through my wireless network, and the slot for the memory stick from my Sony camera is DOA.
Now I find that this version is non-upgradable, so I'm basically screwed.
I'm pretty sure things like that don't happen with Macs. We bought an iMac desktop about a year ago.
In some ways, it still seems rather foreign to me
I'm about ready to get a Mac Book. What do you recommend?
Cheers!
JzB the Microsoft hating trombonist
Windows was never anything more than a cheap Mac knock-off, Microsoft's attempt at appearing to be keeping up with the far better Mac OS. Way down at the core of that shiny veneer remains an ancient MS-DOS.
ReplyDeleteThe genius of Microsoft has always been its marketing, which isn't all that dissimilar to certain elements of the right wing -- convincing the people to buy (vote) against their interests.
Someday, soon, I hope, computer users will realize they've been duped all these years. PC's cheaper than Macs? Yes, but in this case, you really do get what you pay for.
News Writer, there is no MS-DOS at the core of Windows 7, it is OS/2 instead (Windows NT was originally called OS/3, as in, the 32-bit version of OS/2, but when IBM and Microsoft had their falling-out Microsoft re-named it). You're thinking WIndows 95/98/ME, which had DOS at their core.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing wrong with the fundamental OS core of Windows 7. I even like their new security model, which might look a lot like KDE's security model (where you have to type in a password to do any modification to system files) but imitation is the best flattery, right? The problem is the GUI on top of it still has the same fundamental design and limitations as the GUI that was placed on top of DOS for Windows 95, yet Microsoft has hacked on it so much adding all this glossy crap to it that it's like Netscape Navigator version 4.5 -- such an irretrievable mess that there really isn't much that can be done about it other than to throw your hands up and re-write it from scratch.
To tell you the truth, I liked the original Windows 95 GUI. It was simple, clean, and more functional than the Mac GUI at the time. And Windows 95 was better than Mac OS 9, faster, did multi-tasking, and so forth. But when Apple ran into fundamental technological limitations with their OS approach they went to something entirely new (OSx). Microsoft, on the other hand, just keeps hacking on that same Windows 95 UI and application interfaces. You hack on something for 15 years, what you get is a mess... especially when it's geeks doing the hacking, geeks have a bad tendency of adding useless bells and whistles rather than focusing on usability. Trying to hack the Windows 95 GUI to beat modern MacOS is like trying to hack the Model T to beat a Ford Mustang. *if* you can do it, the result is a Frankenstein monster that's ugly, bloated, and still won't carry two people and their luggage with any sort of comfort.
Oh, come on, help out a computer idiot here. I am temporarily on a PC and just had Windows 7 loaded because of issues with what I had before....XP instead of Vista had slowed to the point of frozen petrified whale shit.
ReplyDeleteTell me how to temporize until I can replace my defunct Mac....what specific problems can I (un)reasonably expect?
::::::lines up with cute woozles, pleading eyes and all:::::::::
Hi 'Tux, Earning my living repairing broken DOS/Windows Os's since 1986. In the beginning Windows was been built on a shaky foundation of the original 640K memory address configuration. Then with the advent of Windows 95,98, ME it was like building a shiny new 100 story skyscraper on top of a shaky, 200 year old log cabin with no cellar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_memory .
ReplyDeleteSo, after trying to address the total disaster that was Vista, I am waiting with bated breath (worms on my tounge) to see if Windows 7 is actually any better. I usually wait for SP1 before judging. My fav Win OS was 2K. Then after that, XP sp2-3. I am still building workstations for my customers with XP sp2-3 until I see or hear that 7 is any improvement. We are in the Model T age of computers still...
I'm gonna pontificate a mite here about MS. I was an application programmer in the early 80s. There was almost no portablity and no connectivity in those days. If you were a business with a Wang mini - the desktops emmulated terminals and could ONLY talk to or connect to Wang - Likewise printers. You shared date by sending magnetic tapes in the mail or maybe 1200 baud modems that cost more than a PS does today. EVERYTHING was propriatary and expensive and all the manufacturers including Apple were determined to keep it that way.
ReplyDeleteWhen IBM decided to enter the PC market, no programmer on staff for IBM would accept the task of writing the O/S for a 'game' computer. Such was the contempt that IBM had for the first PC. Read up about the chicklets keyboard.
So the O/S was farmed out to a young geek named Bill Gates, who not only has computer savy - he saw that the open & shared specs of the IBM-PC could introduce competition, lower prices and a larger market for programmers.
Clones flourished - and IBM tried to put the genie back in the bottle. They wanted M/S to sell out and produce a propriatary system that IBM would control (OS/2) This was in the day that 'Big Blue, IBM was the bluest of the blue-chip stocks and Bill Gates told them to shove it.
Connectivity - Portability - the dominance of the Internet would not have happened except for one man. I am not suggesting that Microsoft has done no wrong - or that Apple isn't a better box.
So when I hear that windows was never more than a cheap knock-off of Apple, I feel obliged to set the history straight.
A friend of mine has said, "Once you go Mac, you never go back." I started on a Mac in 1995 but was forced by my employer around 1999 to make the switch (they bought 'em, I didn't.) My wife has Windows 7, and I'm just waiting for it to eff up. Am I right in wanting to go back to Mac and getting off the MS merry-go-'round?
ReplyDeleteTampaDoug, that's the biggest buncha historical hornswaggle I've heard in a long time. There was a standard business OS for microcomputers long before Bill Gates had any desire to be in the OS business or IBM had any desire to build a microcomputer. It was called CP/M and was put out by Gary Kildall's company, Digital Research. It ran all the standard business microcomputers of the day -- the Compupros and Kaypros, Osbornes and Cromemcos, you name it, if it was a business microcomputer, it was running CP/M.
ReplyDeleteWhen IBM wanted an OS for their new microcomputer, what they wanted was CP/M, because IT WAS THE STANDARD for small business microcomputers. So they went to Bill Gates to license CP/M from Bill Gates. Oops, Bill wasn't the guy who made CP/M, so Bill sent them onward to Digital Research. They negotiated with DR for several weeks but there was a huge hangup: Gary refused to allow IBM to make IBM-proprietary modifications to CP/M. After a while, IBM went back to Bill Gates and said, "here's what we want. We want to make a proprietary version of CP/M so that software written for CP/M will run on our computers but software written for our computer won't run on other people's computers. And we want it for a flat fee." So Bill said "Okay, I can do that," and went and bought the rights to a CP/M clone called SWDOS and licensed it source code and all to IBM, but *WITH* the proviso that IBM had to kick all their changes back to him and he retained the copyright to the modified versions of the newly-coined PCDOS.
Bill tricked IBM, of course. He rolled IBM's PCDOS modifications into the "real" MSDOS that he sold everybody else, and there wasn't anything that IBM could do about it under the terms of their licensing agreement. But the point, the point... well. The point is, EVEN AT THE BEGINNING Microsoft didn't have a single original idea. All they did was clone someone else's idea. And so it goes.
- Badtux the was-there Penguin
And your all missing the obvious. Both windows and Mac have to improve their systems, make pictures prettier and figures correct. After all didnt both just upgrade shortly after their release?
ReplyDeleteDon't feed bs, Just say "I prefer".
Apple just isn't apple, but a baby of the windows system, who kept them afloat when they were going bankrupt in the early 90'sor late 80's. Did it for competion. Otherwise they would be the only main operating system out there and all the regulations would be a killer.
Who the fuck cares? I like all of them : Win7, MacOSX, and Linux. And I use them all almost everyday for all different reasons. Windows is great with my games, MacOSX is what I record music with and Linux is awesome for surfin the web fast as hell (don't listen to the whole "Mac has no viruses" crap. They are out there. Just not as many because no one wants to write a virus that only affects a small percentage of computer users. Same with Linux.)
ReplyDelete