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AOL: Lindows Is Misleading People
jgeelan writes "According to this breaking news item, AOL has apparently said over the weekend that it is going to ask Lindows to change its promotional material after concluding that Lindows is misleading people into thinking that it has a strategic relationship with AOL."
Um.. if you bothered reading MSNBC at all, you would see that they are not MS biased in the least.
slashdot!=valid HTML
Actually Lindows was implying a partnership with AOL by focusing on the ability for AOL software (the Windows version) to run under Lindows. The page is gone from the Lindows site now, apparently because of this legal threat but it prominent (big and flashing graphics) and on the homepage.
That MSNBC article reminds me very much of the early days of micros... when nothing worked but nobody would admit it. An attitude that has, alas, to some extent been internalized into the whole PC industry.
... doesn't work. Outlook almost works (it can't find my e-mail server at work) and Internet Explorer works sometimes. I haven't tried other Windows software titles, but I'm told some do work."
In the late seventies, an acquaintance of mine used to rave about his Northstar system. I asked about reliability and he said it had been perfect, never any problems. I asked for a demo. He said he'd love to give me one but he couldn't right then, as the power supply had burned out. I said "I thought you said you hadn't had any problems." He said, "Oh, the problem is just in the power supply. The computer itself is fine."
The MSNBC article has that flavor to me. "As for the Microtel hardware, everything works as advertised except for the CD-ROM drive, which I haven't been able to get sound from yet." Right. It's not as if sound were an important function.
He says "I mentioned that Lindows was originally touted as being able to run Microsoft Windows programs. Guess what? IT CAN." (Capitals his). That's what he says first. It's only a little later that he mentions "[in Office the] Open New Document icon;
Yeah, right. It's not as if you'd ever want to create a NEW document, editing existing ones should be good enough for anyone. It's not as if it matters that the email program can't talk to your email server. And, yes, I'm so picky that I expect IE to work more often than "sometimes." I demand nothing less than "mostly," and you should, too.
Lindows... "IT CAN" run Windows software. And my friend's Northstar computer wasn't broken.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The last press release from Lindows.com contains the 'word' AOL 20 times in the first 5 paragraphs, including the phrase 'AOL computer' and claims of a partnership with AOL/Netscape.
Exactly how would that be MSNBC's fault, except that MSNBC should've contacted AOL for comment?
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Since they change the look and feel with every release, and move important functions around so that you have to search for them.
The changes aren't that bad unless you're tweaking. Right-click still brings up the same menu, all the windows keys still work, and everything still has the same names it did in 2000.
I wouldn't have touched XP yet, except that an artist friend of mine just upgraded from a hand-me-down machine to a new one. That was his first comment, why did they change everything? He's thinking about returning it and spending a little more on an Apple.
An apple would be good if he's doing Photoshop or graphics.
But if he just wants Windows to work the old way, he can finally make it work however he wants. XP, without installing anything, lets you use the new or old start menu, the new or old GUI theme, and you can customize the start menu.
The changes in XP are up there, but they're hardly "change for change's sake." I was considering using a differnet shell, but I haven't found one that works in Win32 as well (usablity-wise) as XP's Explorer
I loaded the Windows version of the GIMP to give him a chance to get away from Photoshop. I'm trying to convince him that it is worth his time to learn GIMP rather than Photoshop which will continue to cost him money that he doesn't have. Unfortunately, I'm not experience enough with any of these tools to be able to say that the GIMP has all the features that he will want from Photoshop, or to help him learn it.
GIMP does not have everything Photoshop does, nor is it an easy transition. I get to play with Photoshop & a few other Acrobat programs at work (comes from being the only geek in the office) and there's a world of difference between GIMP and photoshop.
If he doesn't have the cash for a full version of Photoshop, he might want to look at the dumbed-down version. It's rather crippled, but it might be closer to what he needs than GIMP. (Then again, it might not--I don't know what he needs, and I haven't played around with the dumbed-down version.)
As for Photoshop costing money... it's perpetual licensing, so he can stop upgrading at just about any time.