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Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

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Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#131

Post by shadowsun7 »

TeHCrAzY wrote: post #108
mcosta wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"decent" is the perfect name. Better than the crap the anterior version was is a better description. Perfect for milking the cash cow. -Windows 95? Come on, your memory fails. It was utterly usable and crashed hard everyday. Any other OS of the time was better. It was so basic... paint? notepad? a big pile of shit. And they have been budling the same crap more than 10 years until Windows 7. -IE6 was good at the time.…

Microsoft Security Essentials: Not sure what you have against this. I happily suggest it for all my friends and family when they ask for anti virus. Its free, and effective, and doesn't cause headaches (ala Norton, etc).

I'm not sure what his beef is with Microsoft Security Essentials, but I just tell my friends and family to get a Mac.

It's too tiring keeping up with antivirus offerings, and constantly needing to clean up after their messes.

I'd recommend Linux, to be honest, because it's a cheaper alternative. But because there's still no good way of using it without needing to open Terminal at some point - the Mac is, I suppose, a good compromise.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#132

Post by mryall »

chc wrote: post #86
bni wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those are "mee too products". Not breaking new ground, and certainly not the best of options.

Xbox was revolutionary. Online multiplayer on a console had been tried many times before — as far back as the Sega Genesis and as recently as the Xbox's rival, Playstation 2 — and failed miserably every time. Microsoft was the first company to make it work, and their current implementation is still probably the best. And I don't know any developer who would dismiss Visual Studio. In most regards, it's a best-of-breed…

Java IDEs like Eclipse and IntelliJ made VS look like a toy until very recent editions. No built-in refactoring support, limited configurability for keyboard shortcuts, minimal integration with external build tools and SCM systems -- it was horrible going back to C# development from Java when I was doing both in 2005-2006.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#133

Post by bmelton »

cmelbye wrote: post #64
bmelton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 7 is pretty good actually, on its own. It's especially good if you compare it to any previous version of Windows (though I confess to having had good luck out of Win2k Pro.) I see a comment elsewhere stating that it's good if you let it pigeonhole you into using IE and Bing, but that's nonsense. I'm using Chrome and Duck Duck Go and all sorts of non-Microsoftian stuff, and everything works just fine on the ra…

Our schools ran Windows 2000 Professional for years. Solid as a rock.

Upvoted -- I wanted to say something to that effect in my previous rant, except that I was a late adopter to Win2k, and all the pain I remember hearing about was pre-SP2 (which I didn't join until after).

Regardless, I fondly remember Windows 2000, though I also remember it as a MUCH more spartan system than 7 is, and 7 easily trounces it, in my humble opinion.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#134

Post by wwortiz »

shadowsun7 wrote: post #131
TeHCrAzY wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Security Essentials: Not sure what you have against this. I happily suggest it for all my friends and family when they ask for anti virus. Its free, and effective, and doesn't cause headaches (ala Norton, etc).

I'm not sure what his beef is with Microsoft Security Essentials, but I just tell my friends and family to get a Mac. It's too tiring keeping up with antivirus offerings, and constantly needing to clean up after their messes. I'd recommend Linux, to be honest, because it's a cheaper alternative. But because there's still no good way of using it without needing to open Terminal at some point - the Mac is, I suppose, a…

You can use ubuntu without opening the terminal, and have been able to for a while, the problem with linux is not the terminal it is whether or not the hardware is supported and software people need is supported.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#135

Post by megablast »

MrRage wrote: post #73
ssp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has made a bunch of very good products: - Windows 3.0 and 3.1 clearly hit exactly the sweet spot between DOS and OS/2 - Word and Excel were legitimately better than the competition (and still are, although there is not much competition left). - Internet Explorer 4 was so much better than Netscape 3 and 4 that it wasn't even funny - Windows 2000 and XP were very good operating systems

> Windows 2000 and XP were very good operating systems I by no means am some Microsoft hater, but I'm amused about this tinted rose glass nostalgia for XP. It's easy to say XP is a good system now with the maturity of three service packs and the bad taste of Vista still in our mouths, but I remember all those years ago much dislike of XP around the internet. Among other things, it was a security nightmare that wasn't…

You are remembering it backwards. 2000, and XP (because it was the consumer version of 2000) were much better than Windows 98, Windows ME and NT. This is why the poster says they were good OS, they were so much more stable, you could actually leave your machine on for a while.

Vista is and always will be a dog.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#136

Post by rbanffy »

plnewman wrote: post #114
walkon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, when you consider when products were released and compare it to similar offerings at those times, many Microsoft products are (or were) "decent". I would add these: - Windows 95: Not perfectly stable or technically very groundbreaking, but a good enough combination of usability and features to be considered decent in my mind and millions of others at the time. - IE6: great at the time. Some of the standards…

I always bring up Flight Simulator whenever there's some MS bashing going on. I miss the Microsoft of my youth,

Sublogic made Flight Simulator. Microsoft later bought Sublogic.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#137

Post by rbanffy »

White_N_Nerdy wrote: post #56
mrshoe wrote: post #8

If Gates had maintained a dictatorial death grip on his company like Steve Jobs has, MS probably could have made some decent products. It's one thing to yell at the people who made this system via email. It's quite another to never allow them to ship it in the first place .

Correction... Microsoft /has made/ some excellent products. Here are some more for the list: Xbox SharePoint Sql Server DirectX Visual Studio Expression Studio Team Foundation Team Viewer Windows Server

> SharePoint

You must be kidding...

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#138

Post by rbanffy »

thehigherlife wrote: post #77
White_N_Nerdy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction... Microsoft /has made/ some excellent products. Here are some more for the list: Xbox SharePoint Sql Server DirectX Visual Studio Expression Studio Team Foundation Team Viewer Windows Server

Have you ever had to support sharepoint? I don't know if I'd consider it an excellent product.

I think "excellent" is nowhere close to any adjective I would use to describe it.

You may consider it good, as long as you have never, ever used anything more sophisticated than a network share to manage your documents.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#139

Post by rbanffy »

narrator wrote: post #76
ssp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has made a bunch of very good products: - Windows 3.0 and 3.1 clearly hit exactly the sweet spot between DOS and OS/2 - Word and Excel were legitimately better than the competition (and still are, although there is not much competition left). - Internet Explorer 4 was so much better than Netscape 3 and 4 that it wasn't even funny - Windows 2000 and XP were very good operating systems

Win2k being released was a huge blow to Linux at the time. Redhat 9 was so awful in comparison. I remember how a lot of developers I knew who had been Linux users actually switched back.

IIRC, the Linux of the time had trouble with multiprocessors and ran on ext2. Nevertheless, I cannot imagine someone giving up a fully functional Unix environment to go back to a Windows box. Lots of mouse clicking for much less power.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#140

Post by whyenot »

mrshoe wrote: post #8

If Gates had maintained a dictatorial death grip on his company like Steve Jobs has, MS probably could have made some decent products. It's one thing to yell at the people who made this system via email. It's quite another to never allow them to ship it in the first place .

Look at what Gates has done since he loosened his grip at MS. The Gates foundation's global health and global development programs have done tremendously important work to reduce human suffering in the 3rd world. Nothing Gates could do at MS would come even close to what he is doing now to make the world a better place.

Compare to Steve Jobs who knows how to make wonderful shiny devices that cost more than what many in the third world will make in a lifetime, but who has done very little when it comes to philanthropy.

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