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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.
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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!