Office 2003 runs just fine and non-laggy on one of my P3 500's.
The P166 came out around 1995, and Office 97 in 1997, that's 2 years lead time. The Pentium 500 came out in 1999, and Office 2003 in 2003 - that's four years lead time.
Considering those numbers, I still don't see where all this bloat is being factored in. Office 2003 has a smoother looking interface and it sports a shit load more tools, features, and UI enhancements over Office 1997 that I can see why it requires a more powerful machine.
As hardware gets better, new software utilizes it. Sure, the end result of a word processor is to put shit down on paper, usually. But that's a really simplistic way to view such a widely used and powerful peice of software.
"Yes, it's "buried", but it's buried in a logical place if you're familiar with Office products."
I think it's also worth mentioning that one DOES need to learn to use software. It's really strange that people think the computer should know exactly what they need, display it on the screen, and nothing else.
And when they want to change something, they shouldn't need to learn to do it.
What happened there? Everything in life takes some learning, and software is certainly no exception.
If you want to use Wordperfect 5.1, go for it. But I like a word processor to do a little more for me now a days, and that includes all the nifty things OpenOffice and Microsoft Office can do for me.
Maybe you don't write system documentation or work with complicated spreadsheets, but I do, and I welcome the feature rich applications available today.
Stop spreading your FUD. You don't need a 2Ghz machine to run a word processor. A 350Mhz Pentium II will run Open/Microsoft Office just fine, assuming you have enough memory.
But since we HAVE 2Ghz+ machines, everything runs faster. I mean, hey, you don't NEED a car that can go above 65MPH, but it's sure nice to have one huh?
Maybe this guy says this could be one of the dumbest ideas he's heard of, but the only REASON people are thinking about it is because companies like Verzions are *not doing anything good with wireless*.
We're sick of the low speed, very expensive crap wireless that's out there now. GPRS is okay for sending an e-mail with your phone but it's slow for anything else. Even Verizon's new fast wireless service being deployed in some cities leaves much to be desired.
If people can't get it from the private sector even if the technology could make it happen, they'll look to local government.
Unless you're a teenager, there's not too much you can do these days that's not at home and doesn't cost a lot more then that.
Sure, $9 isn't exactly cheap but it's not like you have to save up for it or anything, and chances are you've all spent a lot more then $9 on dumb shit.
"Actually, over a 40K connections it would take about 15min to download a song."
15 minutes still sucks man. Compared to the 30 seconds on any sort of real broadband connection. It's symantics.
"Most music however on most iPods did not come from the Internet, "
I didn't say anything about the iPod. I said specificially the iTunes music store, which sells a crap load of songs.
"Usually the application has to come first, then the infrastructure will be created."
I don't agree, not one bit. They kind of feed off each other, and I think infrastructure is more imporatant.
" The automobile made for the construction of good roads. "
On the other hand, good roads were required for the modern automobile.
"The Visicalc spreadsheet started the boom in the personal computer."
Visicalc would have never been created without a viable infrastructure (read: many, many PC's at an affordable price.) If nobody could ever own a PC, there would have been no Visicalc. While I have no doubt that early business applications allowed the IBM PC to push forward to where it is now; the PC came first, not the applications.
"Freeways cost more than 2 lane highways and if there are not enough cars to justify freeways, they will not be built if there are already adequate 2 lane roads."
It's not the same. Cars are cars, trucks are trucks. Bigger, more accessable roads won't spark a new technology that will enable you to do things like never before imagined. The point is, a technical person like you should be able to realize that until a technology is possible, people won't invent them. We have no idea what the Internet will become if everyone had Fast Ethernet speeds at work, home, and everywhere else.
Who will develop a new "killer app" when there's absolutely no infrastructure to support it?
Who knows what fantastic things could be invented.
What came first? eBay or the accessability of the Internet to most people (be it dial-up or otherwise?)
Even e-mail is a good example, without so many people accessable via e-mail it wouldn't be a killer app at all. And without the infrastructure and equipment to support sending those photos to grandma, how would she demand such things?
Your iPod reference is an even better example of why the infrastructure must be made available first - would apple's iTunes music store be so successful if you had to wait 35 minutes to download every song? Probably not - it's successful because our current infrastructure allows them to be downloaded in moments.
The idea isnt' to pay more - you miss the point completely. The idea is to pay the SAME or maybe less, and get ultra high speed internet. THAT is what accessability is all about; affordable access that everyone can get. And that's what the Japanese are doing, very much to their credit.
How do you create demand for something you simply cannot get?
A lot of people now a days DO demand high-speed internet access. And what they get in many cases is a 1.5Mbit/256Kbit connection via Cable, or DSL if you're in the city. Sure, I can say "I want more" but it's just not offered.
Some of it is user education - if people knew the potential in 100Mbit to the house connections, they might want it more. But what do the broadband companies care? They like the status-quo. They can get paid just as much now for low-tech gear that they could if they spent 40 billion dollars on new networks.
And if you're a residential customer in a rural area (and we're not talking about farm land here) you could be completely out of luck and stuck on dial-up.
I understand that the USA is a much larger land-mass then Japan, which this article seems to ignore. But, that's not what's currently stopping true high-speed Internet - it's the fact that there's absolutely no incentive to give people the access they want.
Our governments are SUPPOSED to help the people they govern, and in this case they really should provide the incentive that the market is unable, or unwilling to give. When that happens, and if broadband is still not offered en-masse, then we can talk about land-mass and crap like that.
I think most folks out there browsing web sites are willing to put up with some degree of ads. And I've even clicked one or two.
But a few ads spread here and there is quite a bit different then big javascript or flash popups, animated flashing GIFs, intermission pages, and other obnoxious adversisements (like keyword highlighting, OMFG I hate it. I will not visit Toms Hardware anymore because every mention of "Server" or "Network" or "connection" is highlighted with some popup ad.)
People will only accept so much before seeking alternatives, and when they do, sometimes it's too late to go back.
While I can't say that ALL popular music is bad, a lot of it is. A whole lot.
And the sad thing is that a lot of people just don't know that there's anything else. Or, if they do, they don't give any credit to it because it's not "big time business." Which is just so warped.
I personally like a lot of stuff from hobby musicians - there's a lot of great music up on http://www.modarchive.com/ (People still produce new tracked stuff!) and a lot of the music compo-type stuff they do at the demo parties. Then there's Mike Patton's label(Ipecac), and the WARP label puts out some great stuff (Autechre, Aphex Twin, etc.)
Does this mean I think all pop is bad? No. Usually there's some sort of starters (bands or musicians) that do something different, and the labels have no choice but to promote it because people like it. It's good music. The bad part of pop comes when the labels try to reproduce what made the original bands popular - and fail terribly. We end up with radio waves and record stores full of imitation crap.
I see some of the replies to your post are very flamatory, which is unfortunate.
Windows is not consistent. Meaning, without a bunch of tinkering around, the UI is a lot different. They changed the start menu, the control panel, the login screen, the theme.. just about the only thing that's the same is the minimize, close, and maximize buttons.
If you compare Windows XP to Windows 2000, or KDE to Windows 2000, you'll probably find that KDE is a lot more similar.
Beyond that, Windows may be easy for us geeks to use but it's NOT for the end users. You show me ONE, *one* home user that hasn't managed to fuck up their computer just by using it (not deleting stuff) then I'd like to meet this person. Seriously - all you do is browse and you get spyware, EVEN IF YOU NEVER CLICK YES to a dialogue. There's been so many automatic-install vulnerabilities in IE that it takes zero user interaction to get infected with the shit.
Just like any other "computer guy" out there I'm forced to fix friend and family computers all the time. Sometimes it takes hours to clean up someone's machine after spyware has ravaged it, and it's never been updated.
The funny thing is that most people just don't install any software anymore with the Web. Sure, they might need Office installed. But most users just do e-mail, and browse. And because of this, the OS is becoming increasingly marginalized. If all you do is browse, play java games, and do e-mail - Linux is a lot more "works out of the box" these days then Windows.
I've had trouble getting XP installed on so many machines, that I still think it's funny when someone says it's so much easier and reliable to install it then a modern Linux dist.
S-Video is amazingly better then standard composite. It's unreal.
I had everything going through my Stereo before, which is an older unit that only has standard RCA composite jacks. I mean, it looks okay. But when I hook up the computer's output to it, it looks very junky.
I hooked it up S-Video and it's just great. So I got a switch-box, with a remote control, for 5 S-Video inputs and two outputs. Everything but the VCR supports S-Video now so it's great!
The new fancy digital connectors and digital signals for the new equipment will be great but it's prohibitively expensive at this point. I always hated that about home electronics - it's not new tech (Computers been doing all this digital stuff for a long time now) yet it's priced like it is.
I want to get a PVR-250, you got it running with Myth? It working good for you?
In the sample pictures they provided, the Hauppage card was a little more jagged at some points but the image was a lot more clear. The other screenshots looked very blury.
Because I believe the Hauppage card is capturing the signal into the MPEG more accurately, without fussing with as much AA and smoothing - it will end up looking better on the TV screen - as would be what you would use it for in a PVR setting.
If you're capturing to view on your desktop monitor, then maybe the blurryish smooth images from the eVGA might do you better.
I decided to switch from Register.com because they were way more expensive then the competition out there now, by more then twice. $30/year? When I can get better service from DNSExit for $12?
Anyways, I had about a month left on my domain so I started the transfer. Register.com sent me an e-mail saying that if I did *not* want to accept the transfer, to click this link. Otherwise, it would be.
So I didn't click the link. The transfer was denied.
I called them and they said they mistakenly sent out the wrong e-mail for a few days, and that I needed to transfer again. I only had 7 days left at this point, and it would have gone past it. They would NOT extend me any time at all, even though this was their own damned fault and they admitted it.
So I had to hand over those jackasses another $30 just to get another week to get the transfer done. At least that additional year carries to my new registrar.
DNSExit isn't perfect, but they've been better then Bulkregister, Register.com, and NSI.
Don't tell me what "in many cases" Americans do or don't do. Because in many cases, it happens everywhere. Don't start thinking that we don't work hard just because we're from the USA.
I have always worked with hard working people - from when I was a kid working at a movie theater, through my tech support years, into my job I have now. There's bad apples everywhere, but there's also a lot of people that try their best to get the job done.
If you're at work and all you see is people slacking off, then maybe you should pay more attention to your own job and actually start working rather then complaining about them.
I don't look at construction workers and think they're not working hard, when it's 100 degrees out and they're building a house. Or when it's ten below and they're replacing a burst pipe in the road. Or when one of the guys here has to pull an all-nighter to fix the SAN. Or when the Janitors have to clean the windows. Or when the accountants have 10 boxes of papers to process.
You're a retard if you gage the work ethic of the American public from what you see at check-out lines and Burger King. People work hard for their money - do don't undermine us American workers like that. Got it?
I guess they think the biggest money is in the kid sales. Maybe it is. But I know a LOT of twenty-somethings that buy all this stuff and we're not watching MTV.
MTV was good when they had Music Videos of all types. Not, if you actually catch a video, it's crap eyecandy with all booty and no originality. But now it's all these shows, every one packed full with teenage girls that scream at whatever the next boy band is. No thanks.
So what, MacOS is a decent OS. Who cares? It only runs on Macs anyways. The great thing about Linux and other open systems is that they aren't platform dependant.
You know, some people actually LIKE Linux systems, and they prefer to use them on whatever the hardware of the day is, be it a G5 or an Opteron or an Itanium. At the end of the day, you're still using your trusted and open OS, which you'll more then likely be able to run on the next system out the door by whatever company.
Don't you get it? Vendor lock-in sucks, I don't care if it IS the proverbial underdog that's doing it.
Windows installs are VERY easy, but just like you said, unless it goes wrong. Which it can, and does quite often.
Not as much as your normal Linux distribution, I'll admit, but yea it's gotta a LOT better. Linux is really easy to install. Basically if you click one of the express-type install buttons like "This is a Desktop PC" then it will run through the install with almost no questions.
But I think the obsticle for most Linux distributions isn't the install. It's the addition of software after the fact. While things like YaST have made things easier, you're still limited by the packages available to your distribution unless you're an expert. Of course, there's a hell of a lot of software included with almost any big distribution. And this isn't a fault of the distribution, necessarily. There's a lot of factors out of the scope of this post.
I think we need a standard installer and installed software manager like Windows has.
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Office 2003 runs just fine and non-laggy on one of my P3 500's.
The P166 came out around 1995, and Office 97 in 1997, that's 2 years lead time. The Pentium 500 came out in 1999, and Office 2003 in 2003 - that's four years lead time.
Considering those numbers, I still don't see where all this bloat is being factored in. Office 2003 has a smoother looking interface and it sports a shit load more tools, features, and UI enhancements over Office 1997 that I can see why it requires a more powerful machine.
As hardware gets better, new software utilizes it. Sure, the end result of a word processor is to put shit down on paper, usually. But that's a really simplistic way to view such a widely used and powerful peice of software.
"Yes, it's "buried", but it's buried in a logical place if you're familiar with Office products."
I think it's also worth mentioning that one DOES need to learn to use software. It's really strange that people think the computer should know exactly what they need, display it on the screen, and nothing else.
And when they want to change something, they shouldn't need to learn to do it.
What happened there? Everything in life takes some learning, and software is certainly no exception.
If you want to use Wordperfect 5.1, go for it. But I like a word processor to do a little more for me now a days, and that includes all the nifty things OpenOffice and Microsoft Office can do for me.
Maybe you don't write system documentation or work with complicated spreadsheets, but I do, and I welcome the feature rich applications available today.
Stop spreading your FUD. You don't need a 2Ghz machine to run a word processor. A 350Mhz Pentium II will run Open/Microsoft Office just fine, assuming you have enough memory.
But since we HAVE 2Ghz+ machines, everything runs faster. I mean, hey, you don't NEED a car that can go above 65MPH, but it's sure nice to have one huh?
Maybe this guy says this could be one of the dumbest ideas he's heard of, but the only REASON people are thinking about it is because companies like Verzions are *not doing anything good with wireless*.
We're sick of the low speed, very expensive crap wireless that's out there now. GPRS is okay for sending an e-mail with your phone but it's slow for anything else. Even Verizon's new fast wireless service being deployed in some cities leaves much to be desired.
If people can't get it from the private sector even if the technology could make it happen, they'll look to local government.
Unless you're a teenager, there's not too much you can do these days that's not at home and doesn't cost a lot more then that.
Sure, $9 isn't exactly cheap but it's not like you have to save up for it or anything, and chances are you've all spent a lot more then $9 on dumb shit.
We could go on like this for a month.
"Actually, over a 40K connections it would take about 15min to download a song."
15 minutes still sucks man. Compared to the 30 seconds on any sort of real broadband connection. It's symantics.
"Most music however on most iPods did not come from the Internet, "
I didn't say anything about the iPod. I said specificially the iTunes music store, which sells a crap load of songs.
"Usually the application has to come first, then the infrastructure will be created."
I don't agree, not one bit. They kind of feed off each other, and I think infrastructure is more imporatant.
" The automobile made for the construction of good roads. "
On the other hand, good roads were required for the modern automobile.
"The Visicalc spreadsheet started the boom in the personal computer."
Visicalc would have never been created without a viable infrastructure (read: many, many PC's at an affordable price.) If nobody could ever own a PC, there would have been no Visicalc. While I have no doubt that early business applications allowed the IBM PC to push forward to where it is now; the PC came first, not the applications.
"Freeways cost more than 2 lane highways and if there are not enough cars to justify freeways, they will not be built if there are already adequate 2 lane roads."
It's not the same. Cars are cars, trucks are trucks. Bigger, more accessable roads won't spark a new technology that will enable you to do things like never before imagined. The point is, a technical person like you should be able to realize that until a technology is possible, people won't invent them. We have no idea what the Internet will become if everyone had Fast Ethernet speeds at work, home, and everywhere else.
Who will develop a new "killer app" when there's absolutely no infrastructure to support it?
Who knows what fantastic things could be invented.
What came first? eBay or the accessability of the Internet to most people (be it dial-up or otherwise?)
Even e-mail is a good example, without so many people accessable via e-mail it wouldn't be a killer app at all. And without the infrastructure and equipment to support sending those photos to grandma, how would she demand such things?
Your iPod reference is an even better example of why the infrastructure must be made available first - would apple's iTunes music store be so successful if you had to wait 35 minutes to download every song? Probably not - it's successful because our current infrastructure allows them to be downloaded in moments.
The idea isnt' to pay more - you miss the point completely. The idea is to pay the SAME or maybe less, and get ultra high speed internet. THAT is what accessability is all about; affordable access that everyone can get. And that's what the Japanese are doing, very much to their credit.
You can see it here.
Is about an hour around here, because there's hardly a WiFi hotspot to be found.
But in a closed environment like a school, this technology might be useful for VoIP.
How do you create demand for something you simply cannot get?
A lot of people now a days DO demand high-speed internet access. And what they get in many cases is a 1.5Mbit/256Kbit connection via Cable, or DSL if you're in the city. Sure, I can say "I want more" but it's just not offered.
Some of it is user education - if people knew the potential in 100Mbit to the house connections, they might want it more. But what do the broadband companies care? They like the status-quo. They can get paid just as much now for low-tech gear that they could if they spent 40 billion dollars on new networks.
And if you're a residential customer in a rural area (and we're not talking about farm land here) you could be completely out of luck and stuck on dial-up.
I understand that the USA is a much larger land-mass then Japan, which this article seems to ignore. But, that's not what's currently stopping true high-speed Internet - it's the fact that there's absolutely no incentive to give people the access they want.
Our governments are SUPPOSED to help the people they govern, and in this case they really should provide the incentive that the market is unable, or unwilling to give. When that happens, and if broadband is still not offered en-masse, then we can talk about land-mass and crap like that.
I think most folks out there browsing web sites are willing to put up with some degree of ads. And I've even clicked one or two.
But a few ads spread here and there is quite a bit different then big javascript or flash popups, animated flashing GIFs, intermission pages, and other obnoxious adversisements (like keyword highlighting, OMFG I hate it. I will not visit Toms Hardware anymore because every mention of "Server" or "Network" or "connection" is highlighted with some popup ad.)
People will only accept so much before seeking alternatives, and when they do, sometimes it's too late to go back.
While I can't say that ALL popular music is bad, a lot of it is. A whole lot.
And the sad thing is that a lot of people just don't know that there's anything else. Or, if they do, they don't give any credit to it because it's not "big time business." Which is just so warped.
I personally like a lot of stuff from hobby musicians - there's a lot of great music up on http://www.modarchive.com/ (People still produce new tracked stuff!) and a lot of the music compo-type stuff they do at the demo parties. Then there's Mike Patton's label(Ipecac), and the WARP label puts out some great stuff (Autechre, Aphex Twin, etc.)
Does this mean I think all pop is bad? No. Usually there's some sort of starters (bands or musicians) that do something different, and the labels have no choice but to promote it because people like it. It's good music. The bad part of pop comes when the labels try to reproduce what made the original bands popular - and fail terribly. We end up with radio waves and record stores full of imitation crap.
I see some of the replies to your post are very flamatory, which is unfortunate.
Windows is not consistent. Meaning, without a bunch of tinkering around, the UI is a lot different. They changed the start menu, the control panel, the login screen, the theme.. just about the only thing that's the same is the minimize, close, and maximize buttons.
If you compare Windows XP to Windows 2000, or KDE to Windows 2000, you'll probably find that KDE is a lot more similar.
Beyond that, Windows may be easy for us geeks to use but it's NOT for the end users. You show me ONE, *one* home user that hasn't managed to fuck up their computer just by using it (not deleting stuff) then I'd like to meet this person. Seriously - all you do is browse and you get spyware, EVEN IF YOU NEVER CLICK YES to a dialogue. There's been so many automatic-install vulnerabilities in IE that it takes zero user interaction to get infected with the shit.
Just like any other "computer guy" out there I'm forced to fix friend and family computers all the time. Sometimes it takes hours to clean up someone's machine after spyware has ravaged it, and it's never been updated.
The funny thing is that most people just don't install any software anymore with the Web. Sure, they might need Office installed. But most users just do e-mail, and browse. And because of this, the OS is becoming increasingly marginalized. If all you do is browse, play java games, and do e-mail - Linux is a lot more "works out of the box" these days then Windows.
I've had trouble getting XP installed on so many machines, that I still think it's funny when someone says it's so much easier and reliable to install it then a modern Linux dist.
S-Video is amazingly better then standard composite. It's unreal.
I had everything going through my Stereo before, which is an older unit that only has standard RCA composite jacks. I mean, it looks okay. But when I hook up the computer's output to it, it looks very junky.
I hooked it up S-Video and it's just great. So I got a switch-box, with a remote control, for 5 S-Video inputs and two outputs. Everything but the VCR supports S-Video now so it's great!
The new fancy digital connectors and digital signals for the new equipment will be great but it's prohibitively expensive at this point. I always hated that about home electronics - it's not new tech (Computers been doing all this digital stuff for a long time now) yet it's priced like it is.
I want to get a PVR-250, you got it running with Myth? It working good for you?
Yea, you're right. If they wanted to do a real hardware review, they would have done that - to remove the software variable.
It was a very short little article and not nearly as well thought out of a review then they have over at Toms Hardware or Anandtech.
In the sample pictures they provided, the Hauppage card was a little more jagged at some points but the image was a lot more clear. The other screenshots looked very blury.
Because I believe the Hauppage card is capturing the signal into the MPEG more accurately, without fussing with as much AA and smoothing - it will end up looking better on the TV screen - as would be what you would use it for in a PVR setting.
If you're capturing to view on your desktop monitor, then maybe the blurryish smooth images from the eVGA might do you better.
I decided to switch from Register.com because they were way more expensive then the competition out there now, by more then twice. $30/year? When I can get better service from DNSExit for $12?
Anyways, I had about a month left on my domain so I started the transfer. Register.com sent me an e-mail saying that if I did *not* want to accept the transfer, to click this link. Otherwise, it would be.
So I didn't click the link. The transfer was denied.
I called them and they said they mistakenly sent out the wrong e-mail for a few days, and that I needed to transfer again. I only had 7 days left at this point, and it would have gone past it. They would NOT extend me any time at all, even though this was their own damned fault and they admitted it.
So I had to hand over those jackasses another $30 just to get another week to get the transfer done. At least that additional year carries to my new registrar.
DNSExit isn't perfect, but they've been better then Bulkregister, Register.com, and NSI.
How would you use anything to destroy the data through the bus on a dead drive - the reason you're replacing it in the first place?
So anyone that hates anything is a Zealot?
I hate onions and tomatoes, too. Does that make me an Anti-Onion&Tomato Zealot?
What if you hate the stereo-typical crowd of fans that likes 'gangsta rap'? Does that make you anti-GangstaRap Zealot?
I guess I'm just being a "The Bungi" Zealot, because I really don't like you either.
Any high traffic area, especially where you put your hands, is going to be more dirty then, say, a bookshelf.
This just in: Toilets are full of crap until flushed.
Don't tell me what "in many cases" Americans do or don't do. Because in many cases, it happens everywhere. Don't start thinking that we don't work hard just because we're from the USA.
I have always worked with hard working people - from when I was a kid working at a movie theater, through my tech support years, into my job I have now. There's bad apples everywhere, but there's also a lot of people that try their best to get the job done.
If you're at work and all you see is people slacking off, then maybe you should pay more attention to your own job and actually start working rather then complaining about them.
I don't look at construction workers and think they're not working hard, when it's 100 degrees out and they're building a house. Or when it's ten below and they're replacing a burst pipe in the road. Or when one of the guys here has to pull an all-nighter to fix the SAN. Or when the Janitors have to clean the windows. Or when the accountants have 10 boxes of papers to process.
You're a retard if you gage the work ethic of the American public from what you see at check-out lines and Burger King. People work hard for their money - do don't undermine us American workers like that. Got it?
So, what kids do you know that watch MSNBC?
I guess they think the biggest money is in the kid sales. Maybe it is. But I know a LOT of twenty-somethings that buy all this stuff and we're not watching MTV.
MTV was good when they had Music Videos of all types. Not, if you actually catch a video, it's crap eyecandy with all booty and no originality. But now it's all these shows, every one packed full with teenage girls that scream at whatever the next boy band is. No thanks.
Not everyone that disagrees with you is a fucking Zealot. Get over yourself.
So what, MacOS is a decent OS. Who cares? It only runs on Macs anyways. The great thing about Linux and other open systems is that they aren't platform dependant.
You know, some people actually LIKE Linux systems, and they prefer to use them on whatever the hardware of the day is, be it a G5 or an Opteron or an Itanium. At the end of the day, you're still using your trusted and open OS, which you'll more then likely be able to run on the next system out the door by whatever company.
Don't you get it? Vendor lock-in sucks, I don't care if it IS the proverbial underdog that's doing it.
I was going to say all that!
Windows installs are VERY easy, but just like you said, unless it goes wrong. Which it can, and does quite often.
Not as much as your normal Linux distribution, I'll admit, but yea it's gotta a LOT better. Linux is really easy to install. Basically if you click one of the express-type install buttons like "This is a Desktop PC" then it will run through the install with almost no questions.
But I think the obsticle for most Linux distributions isn't the install. It's the addition of software after the fact. While things like YaST have made things easier, you're still limited by the packages available to your distribution unless you're an expert. Of course, there's a hell of a lot of software included with almost any big distribution. And this isn't a fault of the distribution, necessarily. There's a lot of factors out of the scope of this post.
I think we need a standard installer and installed software manager like Windows has.