Uh, how about so that he can do his actual job instead of fixing problems with his workstation when they occur?
Yes, it would be nice if he could just do his job properly, but apparently he's having trouble under windows.
Why haven't the 'trained' techs fixed that?
The great thing about having centrally managed setups (like you see so often with Windows) is that you can basically swap out workstations and have your complete environment right there.
Yes, and?
If something breaks on your workstation, you call IT, they bring you a new computer, swap it for your old one, and you continue working.
Yes, it might take a little extra time to restore from backup, but compared to the time this guy obviously loses from Windows, does it really benefit? I don't think so.
Debian is free until such time as you discover that the PC on your desk was built with some strange graphics card and it takes you two days wrestling to get X up and running.
Uhm, maybe if you want 3d acceleration, for 2d acceleration -- no, this is definitely not the case, perhaps five minutes at most.
The company doesn't care, they buy whatever PC Dell/HP/IBM are shipping this month in the knowledge that it'll work in Windows.
Those companies DO provide Linux supported hardware.
Also, the IT department has a limited budget. Training someone up so they can offer support to the 3 people who want Unix desktops is hard to justify.
The person in question is already a tech, no point in doing such a thing.
grep and sed are somewhat slow when combining them into scripts under Windows Services for Unix and Cygwin due to the large execution costs for running programs on Windows.
They may work alright, but in some of the cases (like the one I've mentioned), they're probably running far slower.
This is not normal behavior. I've run XP in many different states on significantly lesser hardware, and dialogs that take an entire minute to open are indicative of something borked in the system (trying to access a dodgy network volume, maybe?). This is by no means typical behavior.
*Shrugs* Stopped using Windows as my main desktop over it.
I'm not denying that they may be doing so, but my point was that they're not doing anything that other application authors couldn't replicate. Dreamweaver uses common controls, Office 2007 uses custom -- they both present the "Open" dialog box in a comparable amount of time.
It was a example of how win32 itself was less than adequate and Microsoft doesn't even use it but they write their own from scratch with the help of NativeAPIs.
There will be execution cost no matter what you're doing. Sure, it's easier to use the common controls -- that's why they're there. Sure, writing your own controls will be more complicated and potentially will have an execution cost. What I'm not convinced of is that any of it will actually be noticable to the user.
With undocumented tricks like DUser, Direct UI being used by MSN messenger, IE and Microsoft Office, yes, I do think (and have seen) there are noticeable things for the user when compared against code that works on documented functionality.
It's the standard MS dialog and it took maybe half a second to load and populate.
That entirely depends on the hardware, state of the OS installation. I often encounter issues where I am waiting over a entire minute for the dialog to actually display content (usually on 2ghz proc systems with 512MB RAM -- even happens when there is no anti-virus software installed).
There's a big difference between saying that "MS custom-codes its UIs for its apps" and "MS codes its apps in a way that other apps can't replicate."
Microsoft are using undocumented features and undocumented APIs in these alternative UIs they are making. I know this just from looking at debugging outputs in Wine, notifying me whenever a NativeAPI is called.
There's no undocumented makeUIWorkFaster() function that's holding you back.
Not exactly. Writing a application that relies ontop of win32 functions that are more limited in functionality than their NativeAPI equivalents can cause a lot of mucking about to get around the lack of functionality additionally there is some execution cost for the extra layer of code to pass data through, you cannot deny that.
I mean, seriously, do people believe that there are APIs in Windows that make Office run better
I do. Microsoft Office tends to have it's UIs written from scratch using things like undocumented NativeAPIs to improve speed performance.
This way, even small things like even file->open dialogs are so much faster/better than what other applications have available to them.
If that was the case, MS would have crippled Adobe and Macromedia (yeah, yeah, they're the same company now) long ago so that Photoshop and Dreamweaver don't lead their very lucrative markets.
Heres one for you. I'm not impressed with the file->open/save dialogs, they seem slow etc.
Perhaps it's not so important now, but I still get really irritated over these things.
Office won because it had a coherent (and, at the time, new) concept: all of your office applications in a single box with a common and comprehensible brand and interface.
Office barely ever uses win32 if it can, it's UIs are mostly written from scratch using alternative reimplementations. So now, I don't agree that it was a common interface, Office tends to even look and behave somewhat different from most normal win32 applications.
On a old Acer laptop: Gigabit ethernet card didn't work on a XP SP2 install, driver only worked upto service pack 1... Searched for driver updates, found none. Inserted Kubuntu live cd -- all the hardware worked immediately no problems in Linux.
These problems go either way. They aren't unique to Linux or Windows.
OpenOffice is great for complex documents under about 30 pages. After that it goes strange. Or at least, it did. This was pre-version 2.0 so things may have changed since then. Scribus is a better tool for the job we have for it to do, anyway, so we don't need to switch back.
I have written documents in OOo writer over 60 pages with pictures, tables etc. Haven't had such issues. Although, I always use page-breaks. If you just kept writing until you got to the next page (no page-breaks), it's quite possible slight changes caused page elements to mess up.
At the end of the day it's about file formats. People need to be able to read MS Word and Excel documents accurately
I'm still waiting for the day I can redistribute.doc files and they'll look the same between last version's version of Microsoft office and current. So far, I have formatting issues between Office 2003, Mac's Office 2004 and Office 2007.
Yes Word and Excel can be used to create some abominations (happily I have no experience of powerpoint), but if you're a small company you need to be compatible
I agree, one should choose the best application or applications (multiple versions of Office) for compatability if your business absolutely relies on it.
I have never met anyone who didn't know how to use MS Word (or admitted it, at the very least).
I have met many people who claimed they knew how to use MS word, but when I saw their documents...
No page breaks, just a bunch of CRs to got the next page
Not setting the headers under the appropriate header style and then just customizing that... Instead they manually change the font, make it bigger, add bold, underline and type it in caps.
Don't let the application word-wrap, instead they hit enter when they get to the end of the line.
Just do something with some elements todo something like tables, but when you look at the document, they some how made it a picture...
Do I think they can do the same crap on OpenOffice? Yes. Will they have a issue at first? Yes, because OOo Writer doesn't look and behave exactly like Microsoft Word. Will they complain they don't like it? Probably, because it's different and they prefer the behavior they know.
TODAY, Microsoft office is probably the best office suite.
I have to acknowledge the UI and behaviour of Microsoft Office is certainly superior to other office suits.
However, that said -- I am not very impressed with the compatability Microsoft Office has with it's own documents between different computers and different versions of Office.
I also find it a little obscure that people complain so loudly about slight formatting issues and things that occur on OpenOffice with documents from Microsoft Office when Microsoft Office itself can't get it right.
How about those wonderful OOo bugs that cause it to totally screw your formatting?
Never experienced it.
Randomly deleting document files?
That's probably a document deleting virus on your computer. OOo doesn't just randomly seek out documents and deletes them. I've certainly never experienced it.
Missing pasted images?
I had this when opening a few documents some people made in Microsoft Word (which I rarely ever do). But do images disappear in OOo when you paste them into it? I certainly haven't experienced it.
Everyone assumes the real problem is just "We need MSOffice people to convert!"
I don't see why? They seem happy paying for Office. Additionally they don't seem to have a interest in software freedoms etc. They just want something that they feel works for them.
when it should be "We should actually get our shit working first before we make other people eat it".
I don't really have any issues with OOo, if I did, I'd try todo something about it.
I must admit I have taken a liking to Microsoft Office's ribbon UI.
They were definitely instructions in MMX, SSE and SSE2 families. Unfortunately the support changed between revisions and with AMD putting stubs to trick detection systems, it wasn't easy to check if the processor actually supported it properly or not.
i also remember intel not implementing all the functions of amd64 on their first 64bit capable x86 chips...
They made up their own cpuflag for the incomplete family of instructions, so they weren't in violation of the specification.
Doubt it. Its still a bit different... since its an all or nothing
Which is exactly how CPU flags are supposed to work.
they'd have to get non-compliant drivers go by microsoft's certification program, fool them, then somehow not crash when direct x calls functions the GPU doesn't have...
AMD actually put in 'stub' instructions later, to make sure the application/OS doesn't crash when it attempts to use said instruction. Didn't really help applications that depended on those instructions actually working.
With DX10, its an all or nothing: a card cannot claim DX10 compatibility if it doesn't support the entire spec.
AMD's x86 processors often claim support for a family of instructions when it doesn't support them fully. Seeing how ATi is now owned by AMD, I wonder if these idiotic practices will spread through ATi's graphic cards too.
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Why haven't the 'trained' techs fixed that?Yes, and?Yes, it might take a little extra time to restore from backup, but compared to the time this guy obviously loses from Windows, does it really benefit? I don't think so.
They may work alright, but in some of the cases (like the one I've mentioned), they're probably running far slower.
This way, even small things like even file->open dialogs are so much faster/better than what other applications have available to them.Heres one for you. I'm not impressed with the file->open/save dialogs, they seem slow etc.
Perhaps it's not so important now, but I still get really irritated over these things.Office barely ever uses win32 if it can, it's UIs are mostly written from scratch using alternative reimplementations. So now, I don't agree that it was a common interface, Office tends to even look and behave somewhat different from most normal win32 applications.
These problems go either way. They aren't unique to Linux or Windows.
*Hides under bed to escape from the Apple and PC fanatics who are going to argue this*
- No page breaks, just a bunch of CRs to got the next page
- Not setting the headers under the appropriate header style and then just customizing that... Instead they manually change the font, make it bigger, add bold, underline and type it in caps.
- Don't let the application word-wrap, instead they hit enter when they get to the end of the line.
- Just do something with some elements todo something like tables, but when you look at the document, they some how made it a picture...
Do I think they can do the same crap on OpenOffice? Yes.Will they have a issue at first? Yes, because OOo Writer doesn't look and behave exactly like Microsoft Word.
Will they complain they don't like it? Probably, because it's different and they prefer the behavior they know.I have to acknowledge the UI and behaviour of Microsoft Office is certainly superior to other office suits.
However, that said -- I am not very impressed with the compatability Microsoft Office has with it's own documents between different computers and different versions of Office.
I also find it a little obscure that people complain so loudly about slight formatting issues and things that occur on OpenOffice with documents from Microsoft Office when Microsoft Office itself can't get it right.
I must admit I have taken a liking to Microsoft Office's ribbon UI.Which costs 269.99 USD more.
He's asking you what the downside is, not whether you think it's good or bad.
Where is the comparison against OpenBSD?
I still blame Apple for the poor quality of the update.