I went online shopping this weekend for a laptop for Mrs. expralitemonk. With an open heart we considered Windows or Mac. On the Macbook web page I found: specs for each model, estimated battery life, and the price. On one page! For all models! http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macboo... Every Windows site I went to required multiple clicks just to get rudimentary information. If you want my money, please make buying your product easy.
The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
251–260 of 331 posts
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK sure, but change the statement to "...any major Linux distro on any major hardware system" and it seems on the money to me. The only place I think Linux is lagging is graphics cards.
In my experience (and I use Linux at home (Ubuntu 12.x) and at work CenTos) Linux is lagging on Graphics cards, wireless support, USB peripherals, file system stability, disk i/o scheduling, user interface tools, network printing, and document preparation. But other than that, its right up there with MacOS and Windows. Hmm, that sounds a bit snarky. I wasn't going for snark, that is a list of things that I run into a…
It's a chicken and egg problem. Hardware manufacturers won't provide documentation or drivers for Linux because there's not that big user base, and there's no big user base, because most hardware won't work with Linux... although, I have to find the first piece of hardware that didn't work with Ubuntu on bootup, but maybe it is just me because I buy hardware that after some investigation (googling for 10 minutes) I know will work with Linux. It's really easy.
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
The singular man acting as CEO did all this, and more! He is smarter than everyone else ever . Or he just used smart and predatory business practices, and somehow was the only major player to realize eyecandy will win over configuration for everyone that wants just a "tv" into the internet.
Well, just 20 minutes ago I was using my "TV" and it's nice unix shell to develop a cross-platform multiplayer game. And you could say it's usability and experience over configuration, not eye-candy (remember Aero Glass? KDE Plasma?), althought nice-looking interfaces can help with both. No, he didn't do all this himself, but he was captaining the ship. Has Sergey Brin changed the way people use the internet?
"Has Sergey Brin changed the way people use the internet?"
Let me Google that for you.
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#254I 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…
> The bottom line is that this 'experience' isn't about you, its about who you can be sold to To be honest, I didn't jump from Windows to Linux because of this. I jumped because Windows ME was just that bad. However, this makes me increasingly happy I jumped with each new version of both Windows and MacOS. > Time to start a 'developers' company that works very much on the same model that Sun Microsystems started on,…
> Bits and pieces of this are already here. We need a Wozniak to find the best way to put them together and create the new pieces we need.
No Wozniak required. Aren't there already companies that sell Linux laptops that "just work?" Really, the big challenges are in organization, distribution, and marketing.
How about this? http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/zareason-ultralap-430...
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#255When he said "SmartFilter", I think he was referring to smartscreen, which is kinda annoying, but can easily bypassed. IIRC, you have to click "Learn more" and then "install anyway", which is a tad counter-intuitive, but one can still run things without disabling smartscreen pretty easily.
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#256Earlier 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…
These won't work with OEM keys supplied by the manufacturer. You would need to acquire your own key (enterprise, retail, etc.).
They worked with three different OEM keys I had just fine, all from different manufacturers.
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is incorrect, at least for most retail OEM keys anyway. I noticed that starting with Vista, the distinction between OEM vs Non-OEM key seems to have been reduced. This makes life easier when there is no recovery partition or the hard-drive is hosed. Whereas with XP, you did have to use an OEM version for the key to work. I have not had any issue validating windows using the above versions of Win 7, as well as a…
>Every so often I have to call in and do the automated telephone activation reason number 1001 why I hate windows
It takes exactly 30 seconds and it is fully automated. Punch in a string of numbers, hear back the activation code. No personal information, no humans involved. I too was dreading doing over the phone activation, but it was remarkably nice experience.
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#258First 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…
I consider myself a power-user, one which has grown extremely tired of doing the same re-install routine.
ninite seems just like what the doctor ordered and I cannot believe I haven't heard of it until now.
I know what I'll be trying out when we get new dev-machines at work and need to go through yet another reinstall. Thanks a bunch :)
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was thinking more as a way for installing stuff for more casual users. Now I think about it these just seems like such an obvious idea that I'm surprised nobody ever did it.
Ninite does a lot of what you are talking about.
It allows you to install some software.
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Too bad that of The Two Steves, Jobs gets the accolades and Wozniak gets ignored. Oh please, not this again. But OK, I'll bite: Wozniak was given plenty of recognition for his work at Apple. But he quit in 87, which was 25 years ago. What has he done since? Not that much, really. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, has brought tremendous contributions to a number of industries. In the light of this, it makes complete sen…
Exactly what contributions did Steve Jobs do beyond opening up markets by design and marketing powers? It had a large impact on a number of industries, but your statement implied a multiple of contributions.
He brought design sense to the company, making -- in my opinion -- the first computers ever made that did not look like shit.