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Is Windows Ready For Joe Longneck?

Carewolf writes "Is Windows ready for the desktop? We have heard it year after year, that now is the time for Windows on the desktop. But is it really time? Richard K. Yamauchi at OSNews don't think so and has writen a piece that list a number of issues that needs to be solved before Windows is really ready for the masses and "Joe Longkneck"."

4 of 544 comments (clear)

  1. Windows 2000 with 2 years of uptime by Megor1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the article they point to netcraft which lists a windows 2000 box as being up for 2 years, in the same list (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.last.html ) they also have Mac OS X machines that have been up 1340 days which puts it's last reboot at 3.67 years ago, but the problem is Mac OS x was only released in early 2001, so it could have been up for at MOST 2 years, me thinks these stats arent worth anything.

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  2. Re:My favorite reason here... by ckaminski · · Score: 4, Interesting


    HOW can you possibly say that with a straight face and mean it? Unless you really believe it. Please tell me, AC, how different from NT 4.0 or 2000 that XP really is? Oh wait, it boots faster? Or hold on a sec, the games are in a completely different place. Or maybe it's this new fast-user switching?? Gee, that is kinda rough.

    Now how about copy-paste? Still CTRL-C, CTRL-V huh? Hmm... Alt-F4? Still works. Still got the minimize, maximize, close and system buttons on the title bar... doubleclicking the titlebar still maximizes... pgup pgdown still work...

    Please, I'm VERY curious to know. Just how unusable is XP? Really? I mean, this row of secretaries over here saving dozens of trees by using Word Excel and Email are really confused because they're getting their jobs done with an obviously broken operating system...

    </rant>

  3. Switch == no problem by jcsehak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If the distro had:
    -an MSword clone (and plug and play printer support)
    -a p2p app
    -a CD/DVD player
    -a CD burning app
    -a browser
    -an email client

    if all these things had an icon on the desktop that they could just double-click and use; if all of these things had a decent UI so you could use them without having to learn how; if game developers started making the latest games available on linux; and if, and this is the most important if, if people understood that switching to linux would mean that their 1.8 ghz pentium 4 which right now runs like a 386 because it's so smothered in adware, spyware, and conflicting whatevers, would actually run as fast as it should AND it wouldn't crash 3 times a day; they would switch in a second.

    If at any point they have to type "make," or even look at a CLI, forget about it.

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  4. Re:The Norms by moosesocks · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'll have to disagree with you on this here. In its shipping configuration, windows xp CAN make cds, but cannot eidt video (the version of movie maker that ships with XP is a joke), pictures, and windows media player is one of the most confusing programs in existance.

    On the other hand, Macs do this out of the box. Cd recording, movie editing, image editing, and audio all work well and intuitively OUT OF THE BOX.

    In windows' defence, I will say that I recently bought a sony PC which had a slew of preinstalled software at no extra price - Premere LE, Sound Forge and ACID, Photoshop LE, and a media player which wasn't as good as iTunes, but definitely beat windows media player. If the normal version of windows did all of this, I'd be happier, but it doesn't, and requires a lot of extra (expensive) software do it. Apple bundles utilities to do all these things INTUITIVELY, and intergrates them well into the OS. If you want something more powerful, go get Final Cut, photoshop, premere, etc. But, for most people, the iApps are fine.

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