I believe that people who are enamored of XP really haven't had an opportunity to do much actual work on different platforms. Once they have, they'll realize quickly that XP is mediocre at best.
For example, compared to OS X:
Microsoft products cost more at each new release. This is contrary to other tech stuff (i.e. You get more for less over time). This is the hallmark of a monopoly. OS X has always been 9 (Linux is free).
For the most part, the repair and recovery tools that Microsoft provides are inadequate, poorly documented, or don't do anything useful (like fix a busted install, with rare exceptions).
When you buy Microsoft OS you'll also need to buy Norton or M cAfee, plus anti spyware, plus pop-up blockers, etc. I don't get pop-ups or harmful viruses with OS X. This is a huge difference, in initial cost and user experience.
Need to transfer or back up applications to another drive (with the intention of actually using the app)? Can't do it with Microsoft. Simple with Mac. Huge drawback!
System crashes typically take about 3-4X as long to resolve on Windows. The registry concept is a kluge and a mousetrap.
XP's paranoia is really annoying. I was fixing a bad XP install and after every time I changed the System registry keys the OS forced me to re-register. It's a lot of fun calling some Indian fella and putting in 40 digits or whatever . . ..
XP Home reatails at $99 and XP Pro is $149 ***when purchased with hardware***. I do agree that the "not purchased with hardware" prices are pretty absurd. Still, it's probably a safe assumption that well over 90% of all copies of XP sold either come with hardware.
Well, my usage of recovery tools with Microsoft has been use of the recovery console and the "last known good profile." They've worked for me. I do agree documentation on them is pretty sketchy, although there's a certain catch-22 here in that, if you system won't boot, you probably won't be able to access the documentation anyway. :-)
The tools could be better, I grant you -- I've seen people saved by the likes of Symantec's "GoBack," for instance, which is a lot easier for the average user to apply.
I don't know what recovery tools OS X has, although I doubt it's anything comparable to GoBack.
XP with service pack 2 comes with pop-up blocking, firewalls, etc. all built-in, and free pop-up blockers have been around for years.
Does OS X come with anti-virus protection? That would be a tangible benefit.
Nice feature. Realistically not something that people commonly want to do. (I'd bet you that >90% of all PC installations only have a single partition, and while we'd probably both agree multiple partitions are useful, your typical user just doesn't want to wrap their mind around it.)
I take it OS X is like traditional UNIX where all the physical drives end up as one monolithic directory structure, so by using a soft link you can easily re-point an application to a different physical drive? I think the reason that Windows uses the somewhat lame "shortcut" approach is that FAT and FAT32 don't HAVE directory links (NTFS does, though), and Windows had to work on older systems.
I wouldn't know, the XP/Win2K machines I use crash, I dunno, maybe a couple times a year when I've been installing new software?
I sort of used to think so and well, but I've read the design philosophy behind it and these days think it's actually not so bad. The idea is to have one central repository where applications can keep their settings for both global program install options as well as individual user settings. The alternative is something nasty like a bunch of .ini or .rc files in some system directory or individual user directories -- what a mess. With Windows, .ini files never had more than a "two tier" hierarchy (sections and fields), so anyone wishing more depth than this had to role their own parser -- something always true in the case of UNIX-style .rc configuration files.
You could convince me that Windows ought to add the ability to import and export registry contents as XML files, though.
If you're troubleshooting a system and break the activation, you've still got
15 days of troubleshooting before you're forced to re-activate the product. I agree it is slightly annoying (it really does suck!), but whether or not software should be copy protected is some huge debate that's never going to be settled.
Oh, and as all the pirates immediately figured out, if you use the "corporate install" versions of XP, it doesn't have any of the activation nonsense anyway. :-(
While we can agree about how crappy XP is especially it vulnerability to attack, spy ware and the like, most of the software I use is not available on the MAC or under Linux either for that matter. Apple missed the boat in not coding a version of the MAC OS for Intel and AMD machines. At one time they were talking of doing that and had they done so, they could have been a contender. That would have given us all multiple choices and may have spurred Gates toward better software. Furthermore, it could have given developers reason to develop for the MAC OS. As it is Apple's decision to stay away from 95% of the hardware has relegated them to less than 5% of the business, a real dumb move IMO. If their operating system is really superior, they could have ruled the roost but that is not to be. I've been hoping Linux would assume that position since Apple has abrogated the throne but I don't see much activity there either. Few of the programs I deal with are available in Linux. So, what the hell are we supposed to do? Like it or not we are stuck with Bill Gates. Bob
Yes, but in addition to all the very good, and totally valid points you raised, let's be stuck with it, but never forget the illegal and unethical business practices that he employed, the companies that he trampled and either bought and destroyed, or that he absconded with in order to build his illegal monopoly.
Apple has 5% of the market because bill gates stole his way to the top, and walked away with impunity. Could Apple has gotten a bigger share? No one knows, but we did learn from the trial that they really didn't get a fair shot at it.
The arguments for and against, are old and tired, and heck, even I have to use win2000 to make a $, but that doesn't mean we should ever forget how this all came to be. I don't loose sleep over it, and I don't obsess about it, but I cannot forget it.
Its one thing to have it forced upon us, but its another to ignore all the facts. This is not life and death, of course, but as they say in High Schools, "those who don't remember their history are going to have to repeat it" It would be way cool if we never forget all that bill gates did to the industry in order to get us to this point in time. For those who would say we owe our PCs to bill gates, I will say, 'yes' and he ought to be taken out for a long afternoon of electroshock therapy to show him our gratitude.
Which applications do you want? Gimp for graphics? Koffice, OpenOffice, TclSpice? Three differend pdf viewers? A handful or more of paint programs, games, web browsers, newsreaders,
It also shows that there are numerous anti-virus programs available for the Mac, so unless these folks are defrauding their customers, there must be a few virii running around...
Wasn't it the Macintosh computer which still didn't had an MMU* when all other proper computers did? Macintosh is still way behind. OS X is just an attempt to keep up with the big boys.
An MMU allows for protected mode which makes each application run within its own memory area. If one application crashes, the OS can take it down gracefully.
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Troll, We all know that XP is crap. However a MAC is not an option. First, all our software runs on Windows. Second, our compilers are for windows. Third, additional hardware plugs into a PC.
There is always to option to stay with win2k which is pretty stable
Rene
J> I believe that people who are enamored of XP really haven't had an
No certainly not. But the mention of PC vs MAC is considered trolling. There are billions of these posts already. And none helps much. Mine neither, also posted many times. Never mind, just forget my post.
This was true of the old OS 6. In os 7 (late 80s, early 90s), they implemented a screwy form of VM, which ran the entire OS, and everything in it as a single flat process space. The paging was simply to simulate having more memory. There was no process protection, even for the system data structures. The 68k macs had an MMU since the original Mac II (1987), but didn't make use of it until then.
However, those were the dark ages. These days, OS X runs on mach, which is a microkernel. Thus, it's far more likely to be secure than linux or other unix macrokernels. It uses the BSD os utilities and programmer API, and also supports an object oriented shell which one can add code to dynamically (it's using messaging, like object pascal or smalltalk, rather than static binding like C++. It is programmed in objective C).
Thus, a macintosh is probably the best commercial unix desktop you can buy. Not that I'll ever buy another Mac. I'm still pissed off at Steve Jobs for screwing the clone makers. What an asshole.
The one thing that is in favor of OS X in that regard is that they do the right thing with respect to root privs. It is often a bit painful to install software, as a consequence, but you usually don't have to run the software as root.
However, the protection afforded by that only prevents a virus from infecting system files. It is still possible to wreak havoc on a user without root access by manipulating his bin directory and path.
in article snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com, Joel Kolstad at snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote on 4/19/05 6:02 PM:
I haven't personally seen any examples of OS X viruses. Nonetheless, Macs can be infected by viruses that are attached to documents and the like. As a previous poster pointed out, they don't propagate. But you can forward a (Windows) infected document or virus to others from a Mac.
For OS 9 and earlier it is a different matter. Viruses exist and they are harmful and can disable an OS 9 install.
Yes, there are anti-virus programs for OS X, such as Norton AntiVirus. Except for finding stuff that can infect Windows PCs and OS 9 viruses, they seem pretty useless to me. . . .
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