So, let me get this right. You're paying this money to watch something on a 2.5" screen? Could that possibly suck any more? Oh, yes, I suppose it could have if they added that functionality to the ipod nano with it's 1.5" screen. If you want something portable that plays videos, you may as well get a PSP. Sure, it doesn't have the storage space than an ipod does, but it costs half as much than an ipod, and the screen is *much* larger (4.3" 16:9 widescreen). Not to mention, players have now been hacked in to the PSP to handle more video formats than just the native MP4 support.
I'm sorry, but the ipod is such a lousy platform for video, and the fact that so many people bought in to it is just proof that Jobs is really good at convincing people that they need things when they really don't. The scary part is, those people are going to come back thinking they got a good deal.
It's bound to happen in any country that lets religion drive policy to any degree. Religion is about making sure things don't change so control can be kept. Science is about change, and having a solid understanding of why things are the way they are. With greater understanding comes questioning about religious beliefs. On this basis alone, science is an enemy of religion.
At what point did I call learning curve a feature? It's not a feature, it's the overall design. These editors have absolute shit for overall design. They should have hired a real UI expert to help them during the conception of these editors. Yes, it's possible to have a good UI in a console. Your program doesn't have to suck just because it's text. If you have to spend a significant amount of time fighting with your editor to get it to do something, you're wasting your time. Wouldn't you rather use that time to write code? I know I would. I am one of those programmers who spends 8+ hours a day with my nose in an editor. I want to focus on my code, not on the tool used to input text in to a file. I don't want an editor like Vi which has a ridiculously stupid command-set, and little or no integration with things that are important to my job. I don't want en editor like Emacs, which is so overkill for things it's insane. I'm sure if you dig deep enough, you'll find the kitchen sink in Emacs. I'm sorry, but I get the honest impression that people only use these editors as a status thing - it sure doesn't have anything to do with productivity or efficiency. and before you say "well, vi makes it so your fingers never need to leave the home row!" keep in mind that vi has such crappy tie-ins to things like CVS clients, and FTP clients that you lose any time saved by it's input method screwing around with commandline crap. No thanks, I'm here to work, not to try to coax the editor in to doing something useful.
If you're a programmer who needs a tutorial to use an editor, the chances are good that the editor sucks. I love the Vi(m) vs Emacs arguments, because they are both highly unintuative editors that have an oddly steep learning curve where you really shouldn't need one. While I understand that many have some kind of strange love for these editors, I think it's misplaced. These editors were great when they were our only options for a powerful text editor, but they are outmoded by editors which do a far better job of doing what editors should do best: letting you edit text in an intuative and unconfusing manner.
n00b is not a word. Words do not contain numbers. Even spelled 'noob', though, it's still not a word. I know a million people use it, but, as the saying goes: "A million people can have a dumb idea, it's still a dumb idea."
I was going to post this anonymously, but at this point, I don't really care if it gets modded down, or if taco goes right in to the database and manually fries my karma, or if aliens from the nineth dimension steal my cornflakes and leave me in a bathtub full of ice missing a kidney.
Honestly, big... freaking... deal. So what. So you can't use that name. Life goes on. This article doesn't make you come across as the great creator of slashdot, it makes you come across as a whining, sniveling kid who feels that people aren't respecting him when they should. It makes you come across like this: "Bow down before me, or I will freak out on my site and denounce you to the masses.". I remember when slashdot used to be a news repository, not a place to settle personal grudges.
Nothing is wrong with that. Except you can't really put them in the same category. Indexing millions of people's emails gives you a tremendous amount of power if those people trust the service to be private. When the telephone was invented, nobody was thinking about information on that scale. It simply wasn't possible to abuse it the same way you can abuse this. In all honesty, I think it's probably safer to talk about private details on the phone than it is to talk about private details in email. Sure, both can be intercepted, and read/listened to, but text data is far easier to turn in to something useful.
I for one will not entrust the personal details of my life to Google. Think about how many things email passwords these days when you forget what it is. Scary thought, especially if you start looking at internet banking. Do you really want things like that indexed? And if so, do you really think you can trust people at google not to misuse it?
And that's great! Since a financial company did it, large software houses can no longer say "Yes, it's free (as in beer) to use, but eventually you'll have to pay more to get competent Open-source techies and invest in more/different hardvare that if you just went with Our Solution(tm) all the way."
Actually, you have to look at a longer term than the first week to figure out if it's actually costing you. A month down the road they may decide they want it to do something else, then you're in to paying developers and qualified system administrators to do it. So, your argument doesn't hold up because there hasn't been sufficient time elapsed to see if it's true or not in their case. Keep in mind too that not everyone uses their hardware the same way. Some might be satisfied with available stock solutions, and others may not be. You can't issue a blanket statement that is true in all cases.
This has to be the worst advice I've ever heard anyone give. Not only is this stupid from the standpoint that nobody will be aware of a change which affects a critical system, but if it breaks, it will all come crashing down on YOU. Making a move to opensource can be a good idea, but not this way. Not if you like your job.
It's not something that is meant to compete with bash. It's not meant to fix any underlying issues other than an inflexable commandline. It's not meant to force 3rd party software people to make their software talk to other software. How exactly were you planning to blame that on Microsoft anyway? The infrastructure for extremely interoperable software is already there, but it's hardly Microsoft's fault if application developers don't use it properly, if at all. MSH is a tool, and nothing more. Hell, it was a tool they probably could have not written, and people may have grumbled when vista came out, but it would have been business as usual the next day. I'm not saying we should bow down for them doing it, but it IS an improvement for those who have to use/administer windows.
In fact, why are you ranting at all about Windows vs. Linux? This isn't about Linux, it's about MSH. Linux has about as much to do with MSH as it has to do with the price of tea in China.
Don't you mean "It doesn't act like, SH, ZSH, Bash, etc... AND IT WAS MADE BY MICROSOFT, BUUUURN!"
I really don't understand people like you. You whine, moan and complain because Microsoft's command prompt sucks, and when they fix it, you go out of your way to find new things to bitch about. What is very interesting, is that if they HAD copied Bash, or one of the other unix command lines, you would have immediatly jumped on them for that too.
The original Gmail engineer, Paul Buchheit, reminisces on the creation of email, and how he designed Gmail in hopes of it improving the way we communicate.
Sorry, but I don't buy the google altruistic angle - they did this so they could better serve us ads. This is all about information, and who controls it. I doubt highly that it had anything at all to do with improving anyone's way of life. Google is a corporation, it's primary motive is, and always will be, profit.
[..]demand all kinds of crap from us to prove we aren't (thieves) when no other major OS vendor does that[..]
Really? What about OS X on x86? Doesn't the operating system demand an Apple Mac branded computer even though the OS is perfectly capable of running on any intel x86? Be realistic here - license keys and verification are nothing new. Lots of software companies do it, not just Microsoft.
No. It implies that people who don't use windows machines regularly may find them difficult to use. Just like people who don't use Macs on a regular basis may find them difficult to use. Or people who don't use Linux/Unix systems on a regular basis may find them difficult to use. It's a matter of exposure and experience.
You're right, because, well, we *all* know blanket statements are awesome, and never wrong. We also all know that the basis of your experience should be used as the metric against which all other experience is measured. Plus, using the term 'M$' truly lends weight to your opinion - it doesn't make you sound or seem like a zealot at all. Really!
They're talking about exposure. If you've never been exposed to a windows PC to get day-to-day things done, it WILL be harder. Just like someone having to use a Mac with no exposure to them will find that harder. Given the choice, people take their own path of least resistance. It's not simply "X sucks, Y is better".
1) Except Linux is almost never refered to as "the kernel only" - as much as Linus would want it to be seen that way. Efforts to bring linux to the desktop ARE fragmented.
2) With regards to wasting time: Yes. Yes they are. How many package managers do we have now? How many configuration wizards? How many hardware detection programs? How many times are we going to reinvent the text editor? Granted, it was my folly to refer to 'linux as fragmented' since so few people actually work on linux. I should say the linux desktop is fragmented. and it is.
3) I'm not wrong. I run Ubuntu at work. While most of the time it works fine, major upgrades *always* break something. You're confusing me with someone who doesn't actually use Linux. When I went to breezy, ubuntu promptly broke eclipse. Why? It decided to change java interpretors without telling me. As a result, all my views in eclipse broke and were reset to defaults. Then I had to figure out how to switch the JRE around. This is not the start and stop of my Linux problems though.
4) Many pieces of hardware are NOT supported. A great example is my motorola Wifi card, which needs to run under ndis wrapper. Another example of something that doesn't work properly is my Soundblaster MP3+ USB - it works most of the time, but has no full duplex support, and if you unplug it, the (PS/2) keyboard stops working.
5) In terms of cost - my point was not that windows was cheaper, it was that linux is not 'free' like people say it is. I agree, in the long run, you will probably save money using linux. But in the short term, it *will* cost you.
6) *Initial* linix setup is easy. The pain usually is caused by things you need to do *after*. I know my setup never stays stock for long. That would be worthless to me.
7) You mark yourself as a fanboy. I'm here trying to be honest about things, and all you can do is get insulting. Bravo. I'm sure opensource really needs that. Zealots like you sure do convince people about this kind of thing.
8) The point about KDE is that it's one of the major default desktops. The author of the article for which I originally wrote this for the first time makes it sound like KDE will run on grandma's 486. This is not true. KDE is a pig. No comparison was made by me between KDE and windows, so you can relax now.
9) Again, with maintaining a system, no comparison was made to windows by me. The original author tries to make Linux sound problem free. Indeed, many of my Linux using friends try to recruit new users on the premise that Linux has 'no viruses'. While this is almost (if not completely) true, they fail to mention the problems you *can* run in to. Linux is not a utopia. It's not a system that never breaks. It's not a system without it's own problems. Did you even read what I said?
10) In short, the author *doesn't* tell the whole story. Only the points he wants you to see. The points that make Linux look better without getting too close to it's caevets. This is biased, and worthless - it doesn't give anyone a clear idea of anything. What usually happens when Linux users lie about the operating system is that people convert, run in to issues after a few weeks, then feel like they've been duped by the guy who told them to install it in the first place. If they can't, or don't have the patients to fix it, they'll go back to windows and be less likely to try an alternative in the future. So, by lying, you're actually driving people to windows, and away from alternatives. This isn't good for the Linux userbase.
11) Obviously I was refering to the writeup I was commenting on. It's unfortunate that your english skills are too lacking to see that.
Thanks Max, perhaps you could play again when you grow up:)
not that i'm a windows apologist, but this whole comparison seems flawed. lets look at some things here:
Designed by a worldwide community development process open to anyone. Sold and supported by thousands of companies, large and small.
While this is somewhat true, linux is also very fragmented by it's many distrobutions. many people try to reinvent the wheel again and again wasting time which could be used catching up with more advanced desktop environments. Choice is good, but so is having a functional desktop that works without the many usability and technical issues linux desktops have. You don't even have to look at windows to see this is true; just look at OS X.
Comes with complete schematics and a set of tools for making custom modifications. If you can't do this yourself, there are hundreds of different organisations and companies worldwide who offer customisation as a service.
Can't find fault with this point, it's very true
Uses standard pipe fittings; designed to connect with equipment from all suppliers.
Except many suppliers can't be convinced to allow people to design drivers for the operating system. This isn't really linux's fault, but it is a harsh reality.
There are no additional licensing costs on top of the cost of the equipment.
This is dead wrong, or at the very least, misleading. It's true there is no licensing fee, but the additional cost comes either in the form of hiring competant administrators who undertand linux in order to maintain the machine(s), or in the form of time, which you will spend a lot of trying to make your new linux installation work exactly the way you want it to. Most people who wander outside of the standard installation will at some point encounter a complicated problem which will require many, many hours of study to overcome.
A growing number of add-ons are available.
it isn't made clear what an 'add-on' is in this case. are we talking software? hardware? adhesive decals? what? In the case of software, it could be said that any operating system has a growing number of addons. same with hardware, and decals are hardly OS specific;).
Has maybe 1% of the consumer mass-market, but is used by perhaps 30% of specialists in the field.
It should be noted that the specialist market is dwarfed by the consumer market. It's great that linux has (and still is) making inroads in to the specialist markets (servers, programmers, etc) but they need the consumer desktop if they want to get anywhere. Not enough consolidated focus is placed on this.
Has a highly configurable control system.
This should also read "highly confusing. steep learning curve. the uninitiated may be eaten by things in/etc." - linux configuration is habitually painful, and needlessly overcomplicated. Requiring a knowledge of the command line to configure some things hurts linux.
Is highly resource-efficient; works with older power sources.
Until they try to fire up KDE, and find that their system grinds to a halt after they open 3 or 4 windows. Yes, I'm aware there are other window managers which are better on resources, but people will often want what installs by default which will probably be KDE or Gnome in most cases. When they go to install another, they will probably encounter a painful configuration processes.
Often runs for years without any problems.
This is a very interesting statement. By your definition of linux, we shouldn't need system administrators who specialize in linux at work, because it almost never has problems. Let me be the first to say, this is not true. Even with highly trained people maintaining linux, there can and probably will be problems along the road.
I don't have any real problem with people trying to show the benefits of open source and linux, but at least tell the whole story. Linux is not a
Seriously though, if corporations can't be trusted to be objective about their own products/ideologies then why would we immediately decide that we should take to heart the word of someone who is clearly pro-OSS regarding the state of OSS profitability? Following that, where do we look for an objective opinion these days?
Granted there are a few key profitable OSS creator/providers, but in the same breath, I'm sure there are many, many more that fall on their faces and drown in debt.
I can only speak from limited experience, but I have used an m400, a T5 and the Lifedrive, and I've found the screen to be quite nice on the T5 and Lifedrive (which should almost be seen as the same thing, aside from storage capacity). Like most LCD devices, it does suffer quite a lot in direct sunlight. So if you're looking for something that is usable at the beach, this one is probably not for you.
Slashdot Mirror
So, let me get this right. You're paying this money to watch something on a 2.5" screen? Could that possibly suck any more? Oh, yes, I suppose it could have if they added that functionality to the ipod nano with it's 1.5" screen. If you want something portable that plays videos, you may as well get a PSP. Sure, it doesn't have the storage space than an ipod does, but it costs half as much than an ipod, and the screen is *much* larger (4.3" 16:9 widescreen). Not to mention, players have now been hacked in to the PSP to handle more video formats than just the native MP4 support.
I'm sorry, but the ipod is such a lousy platform for video, and the fact that so many people bought in to it is just proof that Jobs is really good at convincing people that they need things when they really don't. The scary part is, those people are going to come back thinking they got a good deal.
When did they call it innovating? It occurs to me that the only people who call symlinks in vista an innovation are the trolls on slashdot.
It's bound to happen in any country that lets religion drive policy to any degree. Religion is about making sure things don't change so control can be kept. Science is about change, and having a solid understanding of why things are the way they are. With greater understanding comes questioning about religious beliefs. On this basis alone, science is an enemy of religion.
It looks like Kryptonite bike locks deserve to be bashed.
If you think Apple is God, you have some serious issues. Not to mention, MacOS sucks. Are you sure you didn't mean Mac OS X?
People aren't stupid and people who use computers learn new things all the time.
You've obviously never worked in tech support anywhere, have you?
You're right, it's better to get the bad news out of the way first.
At what point did I call learning curve a feature? It's not a feature, it's the overall design. These editors have absolute shit for overall design. They should have hired a real UI expert to help them during the conception of these editors. Yes, it's possible to have a good UI in a console. Your program doesn't have to suck just because it's text. If you have to spend a significant amount of time fighting with your editor to get it to do something, you're wasting your time. Wouldn't you rather use that time to write code? I know I would. I am one of those programmers who spends 8+ hours a day with my nose in an editor. I want to focus on my code, not on the tool used to input text in to a file. I don't want an editor like Vi which has a ridiculously stupid command-set, and little or no integration with things that are important to my job. I don't want en editor like Emacs, which is so overkill for things it's insane. I'm sure if you dig deep enough, you'll find the kitchen sink in Emacs. I'm sorry, but I get the honest impression that people only use these editors as a status thing - it sure doesn't have anything to do with productivity or efficiency. and before you say "well, vi makes it so your fingers never need to leave the home row!" keep in mind that vi has such crappy tie-ins to things like CVS clients, and FTP clients that you lose any time saved by it's input method screwing around with commandline crap. No thanks, I'm here to work, not to try to coax the editor in to doing something useful.
If you're a programmer who needs a tutorial to use an editor, the chances are good that the editor sucks. I love the Vi(m) vs Emacs arguments, because they are both highly unintuative editors that have an oddly steep learning curve where you really shouldn't need one. While I understand that many have some kind of strange love for these editors, I think it's misplaced. These editors were great when they were our only options for a powerful text editor, but they are outmoded by editors which do a far better job of doing what editors should do best: letting you edit text in an intuative and unconfusing manner.
n00b is not a word. Words do not contain numbers. Even spelled 'noob', though, it's still not a word. I know a million people use it, but, as the saying goes: "A million people can have a dumb idea, it's still a dumb idea."
I was going to post this anonymously, but at this point, I don't really care if it gets modded down, or if taco goes right in to the database and manually fries my karma, or if aliens from the nineth dimension steal my cornflakes and leave me in a bathtub full of ice missing a kidney.
a aaaaaah
... freaking ... deal. So what. So you can't use that name. Life goes on. This article doesn't make you come across as the great creator of slashdot, it makes you come across as a whining, sniveling kid who feels that people aren't respecting him when they should. It makes you come across like this: "Bow down before me, or I will freak out on my site and denounce you to the masses.". I remember when slashdot used to be a news repository, not a place to settle personal grudges.
This is what I see in this article:
-- snip
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
*sniff*sniff*sniff*
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
-- snip
Honestly, big
Nothing is wrong with that. Except you can't really put them in the same category. Indexing millions of people's emails gives you a tremendous amount of power if those people trust the service to be private. When the telephone was invented, nobody was thinking about information on that scale. It simply wasn't possible to abuse it the same way you can abuse this. In all honesty, I think it's probably safer to talk about private details on the phone than it is to talk about private details in email. Sure, both can be intercepted, and read/listened to, but text data is far easier to turn in to something useful.
I for one will not entrust the personal details of my life to Google. Think about how many things email passwords these days when you forget what it is. Scary thought, especially if you start looking at internet banking. Do you really want things like that indexed? And if so, do you really think you can trust people at google not to misuse it?
And that's great! Since a financial company did it, large software houses can no longer say "Yes, it's free (as in beer) to use, but eventually you'll have to pay more to get competent Open-source techies and invest in more/different hardvare that if you just went with Our Solution(tm) all the way."
Actually, you have to look at a longer term than the first week to figure out if it's actually costing you. A month down the road they may decide they want it to do something else, then you're in to paying developers and qualified system administrators to do it. So, your argument doesn't hold up because there hasn't been sufficient time elapsed to see if it's true or not in their case. Keep in mind too that not everyone uses their hardware the same way. Some might be satisfied with available stock solutions, and others may not be. You can't issue a blanket statement that is true in all cases.
It's also easier for you to lose your job than it is to get it back.
This has to be the worst advice I've ever heard anyone give. Not only is this stupid from the standpoint that nobody will be aware of a change which affects a critical system, but if it breaks, it will all come crashing down on YOU. Making a move to opensource can be a good idea, but not this way. Not if you like your job.
It's not something that is meant to compete with bash. It's not meant to fix any underlying issues other than an inflexable commandline. It's not meant to force 3rd party software people to make their software talk to other software. How exactly were you planning to blame that on Microsoft anyway? The infrastructure for extremely interoperable software is already there, but it's hardly Microsoft's fault if application developers don't use it properly, if at all. MSH is a tool, and nothing more. Hell, it was a tool they probably could have not written, and people may have grumbled when vista came out, but it would have been business as usual the next day. I'm not saying we should bow down for them doing it, but it IS an improvement for those who have to use/administer windows.
In fact, why are you ranting at all about Windows vs. Linux? This isn't about Linux, it's about MSH. Linux has about as much to do with MSH as it has to do with the price of tea in China.
Don't you mean "It doesn't act like, SH, ZSH, Bash, etc... AND IT WAS MADE BY MICROSOFT, BUUUURN!"
I really don't understand people like you. You whine, moan and complain because Microsoft's command prompt sucks, and when they fix it, you go out of your way to find new things to bitch about. What is very interesting, is that if they HAD copied Bash, or one of the other unix command lines, you would have immediatly jumped on them for that too.
The original Gmail engineer, Paul Buchheit, reminisces on the creation of email, and how he designed Gmail in hopes of it improving the way we communicate.
Sorry, but I don't buy the google altruistic angle - they did this so they could better serve us ads. This is all about information, and who controls it. I doubt highly that it had anything at all to do with improving anyone's way of life. Google is a corporation, it's primary motive is, and always will be, profit.
[..]demand all kinds of crap from us to prove we aren't (thieves) when no other major OS vendor does that[..]
Really? What about OS X on x86? Doesn't the operating system demand an Apple Mac branded computer even though the OS is perfectly capable of running on any intel x86? Be realistic here - license keys and verification are nothing new. Lots of software companies do it, not just Microsoft.
No. It implies that people who don't use windows machines regularly may find them difficult to use. Just like people who don't use Macs on a regular basis may find them difficult to use. Or people who don't use Linux/Unix systems on a regular basis may find them difficult to use. It's a matter of exposure and experience.
You're right, because, well, we *all* know blanket statements are awesome, and never wrong. We also all know that the basis of your experience should be used as the metric against which all other experience is measured. Plus, using the term 'M$' truly lends weight to your opinion - it doesn't make you sound or seem like a zealot at all. Really!
They're talking about exposure. If you've never been exposed to a windows PC to get day-to-day things done, it WILL be harder. Just like someone having to use a Mac with no exposure to them will find that harder. Given the choice, people take their own path of least resistance. It's not simply "X sucks, Y is better".
1) Except Linux is almost never refered to as "the kernel only" - as much as Linus would want it to be seen that way. Efforts to bring linux to the desktop ARE fragmented.
:)
2) With regards to wasting time: Yes. Yes they are. How many package managers do we have now? How many configuration wizards? How many hardware detection programs? How many times are we going to reinvent the text editor? Granted, it was my folly to refer to 'linux as fragmented' since so few people actually work on linux. I should say the linux desktop is fragmented. and it is.
3) I'm not wrong. I run Ubuntu at work. While most of the time it works fine, major upgrades *always* break something. You're confusing me with someone who doesn't actually use Linux. When I went to breezy, ubuntu promptly broke eclipse. Why? It decided to change java interpretors without telling me. As a result, all my views in eclipse broke and were reset to defaults. Then I had to figure out how to switch the JRE around. This is not the start and stop of my Linux problems though.
4) Many pieces of hardware are NOT supported. A great example is my motorola Wifi card, which needs to run under ndis wrapper. Another example of something that doesn't work properly is my Soundblaster MP3+ USB - it works most of the time, but has no full duplex support, and if you unplug it, the (PS/2) keyboard stops working.
5) In terms of cost - my point was not that windows was cheaper, it was that linux is not 'free' like people say it is. I agree, in the long run, you will probably save money using linux. But in the short term, it *will* cost you.
6) *Initial* linix setup is easy. The pain usually is caused by things you need to do *after*. I know my setup never stays stock for long. That would be worthless to me.
7) You mark yourself as a fanboy. I'm here trying to be honest about things, and all you can do is get insulting. Bravo. I'm sure opensource really needs that. Zealots like you sure do convince people about this kind of thing.
8) The point about KDE is that it's one of the major default desktops. The author of the article for which I originally wrote this for the first time makes it sound like KDE will run on grandma's 486. This is not true. KDE is a pig. No comparison was made by me between KDE and windows, so you can relax now.
9) Again, with maintaining a system, no comparison was made to windows by me. The original author tries to make Linux sound problem free. Indeed, many of my Linux using friends try to recruit new users on the premise that Linux has 'no viruses'. While this is almost (if not completely) true, they fail to mention the problems you *can* run in to. Linux is not a utopia. It's not a system that never breaks. It's not a system without it's own problems. Did you even read what I said?
10) In short, the author *doesn't* tell the whole story. Only the points he wants you to see. The points that make Linux look better without getting too close to it's caevets. This is biased, and worthless - it doesn't give anyone a clear idea of anything. What usually happens when Linux users lie about the operating system is that people convert, run in to issues after a few weeks, then feel like they've been duped by the guy who told them to install it in the first place. If they can't, or don't have the patients to fix it, they'll go back to windows and be less likely to try an alternative in the future. So, by lying, you're actually driving people to windows, and away from alternatives. This isn't good for the Linux userbase.
11) Obviously I was refering to the writeup I was commenting on. It's unfortunate that your english skills are too lacking to see that.
Thanks Max, perhaps you could play again when you grow up
not that i'm a windows apologist, but this whole comparison seems flawed. lets look at some things here:
Designed by a worldwide community development process open to anyone. Sold and supported by thousands of companies, large and small.
While this is somewhat true, linux is also very fragmented by it's many distrobutions. many people try to reinvent the wheel again and again wasting time which could be used catching up with more advanced desktop environments. Choice is good, but so is having a functional desktop that works without the many usability and technical issues linux desktops have. You don't even have to look at windows to see this is true; just look at OS X.
Comes with complete schematics and a set of tools for making custom modifications. If you can't do this yourself, there are hundreds of different organisations and companies worldwide who offer customisation as a service.
Can't find fault with this point, it's very true
Uses standard pipe fittings; designed to connect with equipment from all suppliers.
Except many suppliers can't be convinced to allow people to design drivers for the operating system. This isn't really linux's fault, but it is a harsh reality.
There are no additional licensing costs on top of the cost of the equipment.
This is dead wrong, or at the very least, misleading. It's true there is no licensing fee, but the additional cost comes either in the form of hiring competant administrators who undertand linux in order to maintain the machine(s), or in the form of time, which you will spend a lot of trying to make your new linux installation work exactly the way you want it to. Most people who wander outside of the standard installation will at some point encounter a complicated problem which will require many, many hours of study to overcome.
A growing number of add-ons are available.
it isn't made clear what an 'add-on' is in this case. are we talking software? hardware? adhesive decals? what? In the case of software, it could be said that any operating system has a growing number of addons. same with hardware, and decals are hardly OS specific ;).
Has maybe 1% of the consumer mass-market, but is used by perhaps 30% of specialists in the field.
It should be noted that the specialist market is dwarfed by the consumer market. It's great that linux has (and still is) making inroads in to the specialist markets (servers, programmers, etc) but they need the consumer desktop if they want to get anywhere. Not enough consolidated focus is placed on this.
Has a highly configurable control system.
This should also read "highly confusing. steep learning curve. the uninitiated may be eaten by things in /etc." - linux configuration is habitually painful, and needlessly overcomplicated. Requiring a knowledge of the command line to configure some things hurts linux.
Is highly resource-efficient; works with older power sources.
Until they try to fire up KDE, and find that their system grinds to a halt after they open 3 or 4 windows. Yes, I'm aware there are other window managers which are better on resources, but people will often want what installs by default which will probably be KDE or Gnome in most cases. When they go to install another, they will probably encounter a painful configuration processes.
Often runs for years without any problems.
This is a very interesting statement. By your definition of linux, we shouldn't need system administrators who specialize in linux at work, because it almost never has problems. Let me be the first to say, this is not true. Even with highly trained people maintaining linux, there can and probably will be problems along the road.
I don't have any real problem with people trying to show the benefits of open source and linux, but at least tell the whole story. Linux is not a
...Microsoft funding a TCO study?
Seriously though, if corporations can't be trusted to be objective about their own products/ideologies then why would we immediately decide that we should take to heart the word of someone who is clearly pro-OSS regarding the state of OSS profitability? Following that, where do we look for an objective opinion these days?
Granted there are a few key profitable OSS creator/providers, but in the same breath, I'm sure there are many, many more that fall on their faces and drown in debt.
I can only speak from limited experience, but I have used an m400, a T5 and the Lifedrive, and I've found the screen to be quite nice on the T5 and Lifedrive (which should almost be seen as the same thing, aside from storage capacity). Like most LCD devices, it does suffer quite a lot in direct sunlight. So if you're looking for something that is usable at the beach, this one is probably not for you.