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The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

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Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#201

Post by huhtenberg »

lukeschlather wrote: post #173
eps wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft provides official (clean) ISO of W7 flavours - http://www.mydigitallife.info/download-windows-7-iso-officia... So, basically, burn respective .iso to a USB key, boot from it, install, enter the key from the sticker on the bottom of the laptop - done. Caveats are (a) limited choice of languages (b) lack of some brand-specific drivers, but if you run English version on a common laptop, it's very straight forw…

(b) is the big catch that will kick anyone. You want the hardware to work as designed, you have to start with the manufacturer install and work your way down.

Never had any problems with Lenovo, Sony, Acer or HP laptops. I'm sure there are some non-mainstream laptop manufacturers that don't maintain their support sites well, but that's be more of an exception than a rule.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#202

Post by rcthompson »

The argument I've heard in the past is that in exchange for the inconvenience of crapware etc., the purchase price of hardware running Windows is subsidized, and that without all the crapware, customers would pay more for their computers. Are there any hard figures on this, or is it just a platitude used by the people who put the crapware on PCs?

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#203

Post by zemanel »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #147
unimpressive wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter how hard I try I can't understand this comment. Are you implying that Linux is a Mac OS X clone?

I think what he's trying to say is that on Mac you get a fresh OS every time. It's never preloaded with crap. If you don't like the !ac you'll find a way to tell me I'm wrong but there really isn't any third party crapware on the Mac. You don't get security alerts every 2 seconds, and uninstalls really do just uninstall apps. You know exactly what to expect when you buy a Mac and the experience stays roughly the same…

Yep pretty much that and some. I find not only the install and out of the box experience very good on both systems, but also usage.

As a long time Linux and Gnome user i got accustomed with an arguably better experience in managing software and user experience :-)

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#204

Post by microtonal »

what_ever wrote: post #145
antidoh wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"doing a clean Windows install is difficult if the only means of reinstallation you have is the bundled "recovery DVD" which puts all of the shit right back on there." That's not a clean install. A clean install is buying a retail version of Windows and blasting it down on your HD. Recovery DVDs recover what the hardware vendor put there in the first place.

I think you can't buy a retail version on Windows anymore. Plus, when it was available previously, you had to pay for that.

Actually, you can buy an update to Windows 7 right now for $39.99:

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbpage.Wind...

You can wipe a Windows 7 install and do a completely clean Windows 8 install.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#205

Post by Jach »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #13

I enjoyed this rant. The bottom line is that this 'experience' isn't about you, its about who you can be sold too. That is because "you" are too cheap to pay what "we" think should be paid for them. It is like a hotel which sells you room for $100 a night if you agree to let them leave a web cam on 24/7 and sell any useful 'snippets' it catches while you are there. The bulk of the market doesn't buy "computers" they…

> Time to start a 'developers' company that works very much on the same model that Sun Microsystems started on, hardware designed from the ground up to be developed on, open systems so that folks can easily work with it, and a team dedicated to making sure integration and support is there so that folks like you and I can say "Hey this audio doesn't work when you set the sampling rate to 40Khz" and they can fix it and release that fix.

Um. Any company that does that is probably going to go out of business, just like Sun. You know who's a "developer's" company? Microsoft. And if you drink their kool-aid, your Visual Studio-developed desktop apps will run smoothly across all sorts of hardware with a single compiled exe. Microsoft convincingly showed that hardware doesn't matter many years ago, in fact their focus on software over hardware is arguably why they won, and they treat their licensed software devs well regardless of what company they work for. There are many instances of "Hey Microsoft, this doesn't work" and Microsoft responding with a custom piece of software to fix the problem. Some developers are angry about Windows 8 because they perceive that Microsoft is caring about them less, and that's probably true, but Microsoft will learn again that it shouldn't upset its developers if it wants to retain its supremacy.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#206

Post by eldavido »

Interesting case study here of revealed preferences (vs. "stated preferences"). Forget what people say they want, consumers vote with their dollars and have told OEMs that they prefer a "cheap" computer that has the crap on it vs. a more expensive one.

A lot of Americans -- myself included -- automatically buy things because they're "cheap". I wonder whether people in other places (countries? regions?) behave this way, or if some cultures emphasize "less but better" over "more but crappy"?

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#207

Post by sbuk »

mistercow wrote: post #197
comex wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never tried to sell apps, but I don't understand your complaint. Are you saying that people were no longer interested in buying your apps because they weren't in the Mac App Store? I'd think that it would improve discoverability in general, not hurt it, not to mention make the purchase process a lot easier.

The main problem was that at around the same time that VT became useless, Apple removed the OS X downloads section from their website (in preparation for the Mac App Store). So within a very short time span, most of the resources that small developers had for promoting their work disappeared. More recent abominations like Gatekeeper are just icing on the cake. >I'd think that it would improve discoverability in gener…

>>More recent abominations like Gatekeeper are just icing on the cake.

I'm sorry, but I just don't understand this line of reasoning. How can security measures like this harm most users, especially given it's something that can easily be turned off.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#208

Post by eldavido »

jamesjporter wrote: post #195
nitrogen wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From ChuckMcM's original post: But for that company to exist, you have to pay for the products you use, and to get to that point you have to not be able to get something 'good enough' by hacking and slashing something else into shape. Based on this and other things he said, I think Macs count as the "something else" that can be hacked into shape, since Apple is not specifically targeting all of your listed use cases.…

I agree — if an when Apple locks down OSX so that the only source for software is the App Store, that's when ChuckMcM's company can take off. I think there are enough people who are technically minded (no even necessarily developers) and currently use OSX because its a UNIX system that "just works" and can also run popular commerical software (MS Office and Adobe CS mostly). The day Apple does this I and others will…

This is exactly why I use OS X; thanks for stating it so succinctly.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#209

Post by eldavido »

beloch wrote: post #67

First of all, this guy's biggest mistake was failing to format his drive and start with a clean Windows install. Installing windows requires far less effort than cleansing a vendor's install of crapware. Users should not have to do this. I must fully agree that MS needs to start restricting what Vendors like HP can install on the PC's they sell. Second, I'm very curious to see how the Windows App store plays out. The…

Pretty sure this is exactly what MS is going for. The RT versions of the OS only run on ARM and are more locked down, because a lot of Windows software isn't compiled for ARM and/or hasn't been adapted to the RT ("Metro") API set.

But for the standard "Pro" versions of Windows available at Best Buy for $65, you can run anything you want, including a lot of legacy apps all the way back to Windows XP.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#210

Post by undergroundhero »

Jach wrote: post #205
ChuckMcM wrote: post #13

I enjoyed this rant. The bottom line is that this 'experience' isn't about you, its about who you can be sold too. That is because "you" are too cheap to pay what "we" think should be paid for them. It is like a hotel which sells you room for $100 a night if you agree to let them leave a web cam on 24/7 and sell any useful 'snippets' it catches while you are there. The bulk of the market doesn't buy "computers" they…

> Time to start a 'developers' company that works very much on the same model that Sun Microsystems started on, hardware designed from the ground up to be developed on, open systems so that folks can easily work with it, and a team dedicated to making sure integration and support is there so that folks like you and I can say "Hey this audio doesn't work when you set the sampling rate to 40Khz" and they can fix it and…

I've had a soft spot for Microsoft ever since C# became my primary programming language. The .NET documentation is incredible, and Visual Studio works flawlessly with their languages. I'm loving their Kool-aid.
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