+1

This time Mark is picking on the operating system with the most jarring experience ever found in operating systems. Well, maybe not, the Windows 3.x days are long behind me, but I do remember how bad that could get....

Do we really need more powerful GPUs? What we need is a better way of displaying graphics and a better toolkit to do it.

Whatever happened to the Unlimited Detail guys?

I scoured my brain and just couldn't come up with Print Shop. We (kind of) need another program like that today. I know of none.

Deluxe Paint was awesome on my a1000 back in 1987. ;)

Sorry if this duplicates.

Test Drive - the first really somewhat sort of kind of accurate driving game.

Beachhead - the first game that anyone I know thinks was really good for a PC

Corel Draw - how the mighty have fallen. This was the first vector drawing program with real chutzpa and it came with scads of free-ish clip art.

Wordperfect - another fallen giant, this was the first word processor that had real formatting and usefulness. Today it's still better than Word. ;)

Pagestream - launched the Atari ST as a business platform and sold probably a half million machines. Still available and still powerful today! It blows software like Scribus out of the water but it's not open source. :(

EMACS - the text editor that is its own operating system.

Solitaire - c'mon, this program has been around for two decades and is STILL the most popular Windows program.

TCP/IP - do I really need to say it?

QNX - still possibly the most popular real-time operating system. I first used it on the Bionic Beavers in Ontario back in (IIRC) 1984.

Eye of the Beholder - the game that made both FPS and adventuring cool.

I know there are lot more. My memory is getting pretty old like the rest of me... there were some games on the C=64 that are still not being reproduced today, one of which I remember as being a game in which you built a robotic factory rig that would deliver a payload through a processing system and then produce an end product, and had hundreds of level variations - one of my favourites, cannot remember the name but nothing like it exists today that I have seen.

I came here to say this.

This. Wish I could upvote, despite the inflammatory nature of it.

....they are using Microsoft products and vertical applications with no source code. How long has the open source community been saying that this was insanity?

True.

....anyone wanting Windows 8. Terrible.

Uh.................. only if they support 4x4. And that range will be very limited. 5.x does not penetrate obstacles well.

Show me a single 802.11n router today that fully support beamforming. Even the Ruckus and Wavion gear are only using part of the 802.11n spatial multiplexing capabilities.

I have no idea why you were downvoted. What you've said is entirely accurate.

It's got more application in a server room than it does in the home. Range will be no better (and probably worse) than 5Ghz on your 802.11n routers and the amount of 5Ghz frequency it requires is simply put: ALL OF IT. So you won't be able to place multiple routers in an area, because they'll stomp on each other either at the AP or the endpoints.

This is a standard for (at best) a home audio/video system where all the components are nearby and for a server rack where you use wireless as a second network to communicate between servers. For home device use, most of us will be better off with 802.11n

And BTW, 802.11n is *still* not being fully utilized. You can get 600Mbps (air speed) per frequency out of a single 802.11n router if you take full advantage of its spatial abilities. The best I know of is 450Mbps per frequency. Ruckus probably makes the best APs out there right now.

Uhm, since deployed Windows systems largely don't support SMB 2.x much less SMB 3.x I fail to see how this is a major failing on the part of Linux. Although I am of course entirely for supporting the current protocols.

Much like Windows Defender. Or in the case of Window 8, Window Defender.