The Relevance of Windows 301
Josh Fink writes "ZDNet has up an article exploring whether of not Windows is still relevant. In the age of 'Web 2.0' both older folks who remember the days before Windows and younger folks who have never known anything else are beginning to see Microsoft's offering as old news. From the article: 'Before closing the books on the Age of Windows, however, let's not get too caught up in the fashion of the moment. The water-cooler crowd may take a dim view of "Win-doze" for all the right reasons. Still, Microsoft's archrivals continue to view it as a product with a potentially make-or-break impact on their businesses. In fact, two of them--Adobe Systems and Symantec--are lobbying European regulators to get tough on Microsoft. The European Union already has an unresolved antitrust dispute with Microsoft, and Adobe and Symantec would be silly not to play that card for all it's worth. So this is what they're doing.'"
Re:Office (Score:3, Informative)
So now that you're out of reasons [microsoft.com], when can we expect that you throw out your Windows boxes, and buy Macs for your family and friends?
Re:Office (Score:3, Informative)
Now go buy
The headline (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Words and words. (Score:3, Informative)
funny, I have installed hundreds of apps under ubuntu and never EVER seen the CLI. have you even touched ubuntu?
Second, most people outside games dont have a "favorite" software. they use what does the task and what they are used to.. Microsoft Works is the #1 request from people because that is what comes free with a PC, show them Open Office, and they like it after a 20 minute grumble because it looks slightly different.
people resist change because human nature equates change with bad because it takes effort. after a few minutes, people get used to the change and get on with it.
outside of games, which most people use a console for nowdays anyhoo... your argument for a home user is pretty much without merit.
Business on the otherhand is different, but can easily be overcome with crossover office and a competent IT staff.
Re:Is the Operating System Dead? (Score:4, Informative)
The days of that happening may be limited. MS has just announced the pricing of Vista in Australia ITWire [itwire.com.au]. Vista Ultimate will cost us AUD$751, while Office 2007's equivalent looks like retailing at about AUD$1,100.
That means a fully-loaded home/office machine could attract a Microsoft tax of close to AUD$2,000.
It's possible to build the hardware component of a midrange machine for AUD$6-700, so the monopoly rent for Win/Office is starting to look pretty scary. Obviously most people will be getting their software OEM, but seeing those sticker prices on the retail packs is going to make your average shopper think twice about what that beige box might cost them without the predatory pricing.
Re:Is the Operating System Dead? (Score:3, Informative)
Your ACPI probably is broken. Many laptop vendors compile their ACPI information using the Microsoft ACPI tools, which are not standards compliant. You do not have an ACPI laptop - you have a MSFT-ACPI laptop. You can try checking the DSDT [sourceforge.net] list to see if someone has provided a "corrected" ACPI. Ubuntu probably has instructions for using this.
Guess you have 1GB or less of RAM, otherwise Win XP has problems hibernating reliably.
Windows has drivers, and OSX has drivers because either Microsoft or Apple or the manufacturer of the hardware has written them. Windows & OSX are licensed differently from Linux (or BSD or ...) and the Driver Development Kits or OSKIT (iirc) is licensed in a way that allows binary driver distribution by the manufacturer.
Linux (the kernel) is licensed mostly under the GPL v2. It is not the sole copyright of Linus Torvalds, but of hundreds of developers around the world who own the copyright for various pieces of it. They have chosen a license that is very permissive in many ways, but restrictive in others; it has the goal of ensuring all users of the software can make changes, study how it works and have access to the source code. Hardware providers are free to write drivers, and companies such as Redhat or SUSE or Academics all contribute drivers themselves also, and fix bugs in drivers that they use. Linux already plays nice with many hardware providers, for instance Intel releases various drivers for Linux themselves. In fact, often drivers are written by the 'community' following the release of specifications only, or by reverse engineering. Windows is ahead in driver support because the hardware companies write the drivers for Windows first, as their largest target market; it is in their best economic interest.
Re:Operating system far from dead (Score:3, Informative)
What makes you think this is simple? That interface between apps and hardware has to be sufficiently documented that programmers can use it, sufficiently well-designed so that it doesn't break in weird ways, sufficiently abstracted so that application developers can safely deal with differences between hardware.
Maybe you're making the argument that it's easier to program certain tasks in a particular OS, but it's certainly possible to program a task to run on any OS.
"Possible" can mean "in entirely different ways" which means you need to study both OS's and possibly program your application in a completely different way. Not to mention that different OSs may have totally different and incompatible UI standards.
Re:The obsolete businesses complain the most. (Score:3, Informative)
PDF is a simulation of printed documents on Screen. The idea is that it will look the same on screen as when it's printed... on any computer that supports the format.
Why would you want to see page breaks that are irrelevant to the content? Because you want to see if those page breaks are going to cause your content to annoy the reader on paper when printed.
Metro on the other hand is going to be another proprietary format that will work on Windows... maybe on macs, and won't get adopted by the industry because PostScript and PDF are an Open Standard that companies can build in to things (like printing presses) easily.
Maybe Metro is how MS plans to extend DRM to the print industry?
Clippy: I see you are trying to print copyrighted works... please provide your license for this document.
Designer: hmm... time to install Acrobat.
Re:Is the Operating System Dead? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Words and words. (Score:3, Informative)
That's funny, I just select a rectangle, go to Select -> Rounded Rectangle..., choose my radius and click OK, go to Edit -> Stroke Selection, choose my stroke options, and click OK.
Rounded Rectangle is a Script-Fu, it's true, but it came in my standard install and is integrated directly into the UI. Where are you getting this strange copy of Gimp without standard Script-Fu scripts?
The Gimp is every bit as powerful as Photoshop, it's just DIFFERENT. And not just in the "commands have moved to different menus" sense of different; the entire paradigm of how to do things is different in The Gimp, with the exception of layers. And IMHO, it's worth the learning curve, because it's both free and Free. Photoshop apologists can get off their soapbox and actually spend some quality time with The Gimp before making their judgements (and that two weeks in 2002 you spent "messing about" with The Gimp don't count; the program has matured by leaps and bounds in the last few years).