I think there's the price / convenience ratio. Many people I know who pirate also have Netflix. Why? Netflix is cheap enough for them that the ease of getting DVDs in that method or simple streaming is worth it over dealing with the hassle of piracy.
However, DVD DRM or Netflix streaming DRM isn't likely to break your DVD Player / set top box or TV. The crap in PC games are likely to break your PC.
DRM has killed games on the PC for me, except for some indie games that don't have any DRM and OSS non DRM games. I've mostly given up playing games, but do have a PS3 - it's far cheaper than a known broken gaming PC. I've just figured that it's mostly Consoles for gaming now.
That said, the pricing leaves me playing only games I really really want like Uncharted 3, that I often get as gifts (hey, not overly expensive Christmas Presents!) as there aren't a lot that come out yearly.
Anyway, back on target here - if you want to compete with free, you need to be a better experience than the freeloaders get. This is often the case with first run movies (Till the DVD comes out), books and breaks even with TV shows... But DRMed games basically punish the paying customers, and that rarely works out in the long run.
How does this program help if there are no device drivers for Windows 7 and the XP drivers don't install on Win 7... I mean, how can it even talk to the scanner?
What did it for me was the increasing difficulty of getting XP to work right on newer laptops that I had to buy. Windows 7 "just works" with far more current hardware (well, of course!).
Well, from my point of view there are several points here. 1) I've never supported the war in Iraq, and multiple times voted against politicians who have furthered it. I support getting out of Afghanistan, and expect to see movement on that soon, or it will affect my future votes. 2) However, being in a war zone should be different than being in a protest. 3) Our cities should not be treated as war zones, and police should not act like the army. The Army should not be deployed domestically per various well known laws. 4) Our military ought to not be operating in non war situations in foreign countries, certainly not shooting anyone most of the time.
Finally, from a self interested standpoint, I would hope any government gave more thought to it's citizens than to non-citizens.
For occasional use voice, PagePlus is the best I've found. $10 / 119 days, verizon network, 6-10 cents a minute depending on how big a "card" you buy ($10 card is 10 cents a minute, $80 is 6 cents a minute)...
I know a number of people who use it and saved over Virgin Mobile which they used to use.
So you never need to refer to an e-mail away from your computer?
Let me describe to you how to lose your job
1) Not use e-mail / calendaring set by management.
Yes, some of us can dictate what software we use at work. Most of us cannot. And I would venture to say most of us cannot find a different job where we can dictate the software at work in the current economy - if we ever could.
I have many examples, but here's one from Thunderbird - which I use for e-mail at home. In v2 - when I wanted to search for an e-mail, I typed in the search box above the subjects and it worked like a find as you type filter. Really great - probably my favorite sort of search. And it was fast. (One thing Outlook does do right on Win7)
In v7 or whatever version they're up to (Mozilla says version numbers are irrelevant right? Another new design decision that's *clearly* better ) the find as you type filter either is so slow to be useless or just doesn't work as far as I can tell. The actual search opens in a new tab, so again takes you out of the context you're in, gives you a new and different sort of listing, and doesn't let you quickly click through a filtered e-mail list and view the content in the preview pane. Awesome
it's to make your work on the computer faster, more efficient, easier to learn, and less error-prone.
The problem I see with all these new UIs is that they (at least in the short - medium term) do none of these.
1. Easier to learn isn't necessarily easier to use. And the people complaining have already learned the old way. So they don't care about easier to learn.
2. Less error prone - it's more error prone because you're stumbling through a new way of doing things, rather than flying through the well known methods.
3. Work on the computer is faster - same issue, what you used to do in 3 seconds now takes finding a manual, web page, or asking for help. Way slower.
4. It may make some things more efficient. Not that I've actually seen in any new UIs recently
Example, Outlook 2007 to print my e-mail was: click on print button in UI, hit print.
In Outlook 2010 it's realize there is no print button. Hmmm, file menu? Oh, no menus. Right, ribbon / tab file thingy - gahhh where did my e-mail go? Did I lose it? What e-mail are the choices I may be making apply to? Ok, deep breath. Where is anything? Oh, print in small print on the left. Ok, click that. Click print button? Didn't I already do that? Ok, click it. Now it prints out.
Even now that I know I have to do that, I've added 3 clicks and mousing around to do what used to be one click...
I think the issue here is that for many users the new UIs don't offer any benefits they can see. To me, it's equivalent to the US deciding they are going to change over to the UK driving on the left. What is the benefit to anyone?
UI designers need to realize that the two groups of users who are complaining are those who either: a) Power users who know the current UI inside and out and can do anything they need to do and would rather spend time learning new stuff that, you know, lets them do new stuff rather that re-learn something that isn't broken to try and get back to where they are today. b) Users who have memorized the pixels of the UI and App they need to use, and who *can't* figure out a changed UI and freak out and now want to know why their computer is broken in the update.
Maybe there is some user who is not in the above groups, and who likes change for the sake of change - but I have yet to meet them.
Oddly enough, due to working with desktops and laptops a lot for home users and at work, I can recommend only two purchasing methods: 1) If you are price sensitive, and don't expect your computer to last for more than a year or so (i.e. anything more is gravy to you), get the cheapest branded thing you like. I.e., Acer version eMachines, Acer, Asus, SystemMax whatever. Though I do suggest avoiding HP and Dell myself, each generally will make it to 1 year, and the warranty ensures that most of the time anyway.
2) If you've got a bit more money to spend and don't want to plan on upgrading at a year or to plan to have a warranty visit during that time, buy a business class Lenovo (Thinkcenter, Thinkstation,Thinkpad) though the low end ThinkPad Edge hasn't lived up to this for me (sad face here as I bought one for my sister and she's had some issues), all the other (even cheap Thinkcenters) models have been more solid than ANY other computer brand I've ever bought that's still on sale. (Micron, IBM - though they are Lenovo right? used to be like this but now not available)
Also, unless you get a certificate or special contract, the business support from Lenovo is awesome in comparison to anyone else I've tried. I can't say the times I've spent 45+ minutes on web chat, phone, or whatever with Dell and HP trying to convince them that yes, there is a broken part, and please fix it. HP's actually worse than Dell because Dell, once you get in touch with the *right* person (which can take 7 transfers IME) they will send out the part. HP support will ask you to change windows settings on a business desktop that doesn't turn on and the power light doesn't light...
Lenovo only seems to have 2 numbers, one for consumer and one for business, so there's no transferring around. They always just let you send in the Laptop for diagnosis or send out the broken part replacement on a PC (though I only recall this happening once in the last 5 years - yes, you almost never have to call them).
On the Ideacenter / consumer line, they do have slightly worse support, but so far I've only spent 20 minutes convincing them something was broken before getting to mail it in for repair. Not awesome, but far better than Dell / HP...
Now, for Dell at least, I am aware I could take a class to get a cert that proves to them that I'm able to tell when the PSU fried itself... And I can buy the higher support contract to get right through to useful Enterprise support. But when I do all that, suddenly their price advantage vs Lenovo goes away...
I'm actually OK with opinion pieces if done appropriately. Think of the low bar of Time Magazine sort of stuff. Either as a separate add on to the TFS or a second post - either has merits I think.
What I wouldn't and don't like is editors or submitters making the headline and TFS the opposite from what TFA actually says.
I don't know how much money they all make on Slashdot, but having an actual editor or two seems fine to me. And in fact editors could always add another interesting facet / comment to TFS assuming they can do it appropriately separated from the actual submission.
I disagree, mostly because rarely does the organization work for me. For instance, if I want Kedit, do I look in Utilities, Office, Accessories, possibly Text Editors if it's an option?
If I want to change the wireless configuration, is it in Internet, Utilities, System, KDE Conf, etc?
It may just be I'm unfamiliar with the KDE environment, but their "Start Menu" categorization is probably my biggest pet peeve with it.
You know, I am getting into cooking, but there is an issue - I'm not at all convinced any of the interesting things to cook are actually healthier and cheaper than packaged food.
To clarify that statement, pretty much anything cheap, except perhaps lettuce, isn't amazingly good for you that I can tell. Spaghetti as a point is a lot of carbs for instance...
Hamburger / hotdogs etc - not great for you.
Bread, not amazing for you.
The healthy (ish) stuff tends to be a lot more expensive, i.e. frozen fruit for smoothies, or even stir fry stuff - the meat alone is kind of expensive...
Maybe it's what I cook, but if I set out to make Lasagna say (going for cheaper than buying here), one tray ends up costing me as much as buying it at, say, Pizza Hut, but I get to spend a day putting it together. Yay! Actually, I usually make 2 trays, but it costs me roughly $60 and that's shopping at Sams club for stuff...
Another thing is most of the current popular recipe books all like to have "fancy" ingrediants like Goji Berries (WTH? totally waste of money and unnecessary) or other strange things - as I think much of cooking is now by foodies or the like. I'm very glad to have my mothers and grandmothers cookbooks that were about putting food together.
I will say that I think cooking is right up there with exercise - - you're asking people to totally change their daily habits. This is a big deal - spending 2 hours after work to cook so you eat at 7:30PM instead of at 5:30 when you get home with takeout. Or spending all Sunday to pre-make meals for the week. This is a big time investment, so it's really not necessarily that easy, and this assumes you're working one job so have all Sunday or whatever to do the cooking - and that you don't want to have plans on the weekend that don't involve shopping and then cooking.
Yes, shop on Saturday if you'd checking the circulars, going to buy the on sale items etc and spend much of a day doing so, especially if you're in a more rural area where driving time to big stores with non crazy prices is on average an hour one way.
I think the point here is that Android isn't good enough at whatever people want a tablet to do at the price point the manufacturers can sell them at to make them any sort of value to potential buyers, so they don't gain market share.
Or, and I think this is potentially equally likely - without the "cool" factor Apple has, the entire tablet form factor running a limited OS isn't compelling at (decent) laptop prices.
I think Windows 8, some running a full ubuntu or other linux OS or the like *might* be compelling at the ~$650 price range.
Well I don't use Apple products, but that's what she calls it. It's a little touchscreen device that seems like a small 4" tablet sort of thing that does wi-fi but doesn't hook up to the cell network and isn't a phone, nor does it have a camera.
PCs are what we use because we can get them to do what we want, and they're cheap. We both have had multiple Creative branded devices that worked fine.
She does keep saying the thing is a great little computer, if only it worked for shit to play music. Kind of like an Apple version of Emacs as I understand it.
This is also another problem. However iTunes likes to sync, my sister has an iTouch2 and is afraid to hook it up to her computer. Anytime she does, it takes it hours to sync. Even if she wanted to add one song, which takes like 20 seconds on a Sansa, the iTouch2 will lock itself to the PC for like 4 hours. So no last minute additions of songs. And forget about hooking up to charge - much easier to plug into the wall with the extra adapter so it doesn't decide you can't charge for only 20 minutes because it's still syncing, updating, something...
This is great if all my files fit on the device. But I may have more music than fits on my device, especially if it's 4 or 8GB.
I also don't like sync software. I've tried several variations, and I'm pretty much always a bit in the dark about what's going to end up where. I especially *never* want the client device to change *anything* on the master storage (my computer).
Just as everyone is happy that cars are easier to drive and need less maintenance except for a few car maintenance geeks.
I'm going to call bullshit here. While I'm sure everyone likes less maintenance, I know a bunch of non-car geeks who complain about how it used to be they could pretty easily fix many minor problems of cars from the 60s-80s, the modern computer controlled cars force them to go to shops and spend lots more money because of special tools that the manufactures can now require. [it sounds a bit like the inkjet carts, it's added on incompatibility and points of failure]
I also know many people who like manual transmissions for many reasons over automatics.
To file management: The biggest issue I have is that it seems important to me, even as a user, to know where my files are. To work with them, to move them, to make sure they're in an appropriate place (security of data) and for backups.
Some of this may just be failings of the abstraction interface. I.e. windows not realizing if you copy a shortcut to a word file to a flash drive, you probably want the file and not the shortcut on the flash drive.
The other problem, of course, is that I haven't actually seen an implemented improvement over a filesystem for managing files. Media Managers like iTunes or WinAmp are fine, *as long as you're in that program*. I only use Winamp, and I like the playlists etc. But I can't put the playlist on my car stereo, where I can copy the files over in Explorer just fine. I can't burn a CD with CDBurnerXP from Winamp. etc...
Abstraction is only useful if it works across other programs, so it needs to be in the OS, not bolted on in another application.
I prefer the players from the Creative Zen Vision through many available today that *just play* many videos without transcoding.
Then again, I have to say I've never understood wanting to try and watch any video on a screen that small. I tried for a while with my Creative, and never found it that compelling. And once I wanted a bigger screen I could just use a laptop which would play most *anything*.
I don't actually personally, in the real world, know *anyone* who likes iTunes. I know plenty of people who like iP* devices, but they pretty much all hate iTunes. This may be because it seems to suck on the PC and installs extra crap when updating and works nothing like Explorer which is how most people I know have ever dealt with managing files.
I also wonder if IBM does much of the development anymore. They dropped making PCs, I have no idea how much they really put into Servers etc. Their advertised product seems to be services, so I don't think they're really that comparable to Apple or even Cisco who are primarily (to my knowledge anyway) product companies.
Slashdot Mirror
I think there's the price / convenience ratio. Many people I know who pirate also have Netflix. Why? Netflix is cheap enough for them that the ease of getting DVDs in that method or simple streaming is worth it over dealing with the hassle of piracy.
However, DVD DRM or Netflix streaming DRM isn't likely to break your DVD Player / set top box or TV. The crap in PC games are likely to break your PC.
DRM has killed games on the PC for me, except for some indie games that don't have any DRM and OSS non DRM games. I've mostly given up playing games, but do have a PS3 - it's far cheaper than a known broken gaming PC. I've just figured that it's mostly Consoles for gaming now.
That said, the pricing leaves me playing only games I really really want like Uncharted 3, that I often get as gifts (hey, not overly expensive Christmas Presents!) as there aren't a lot that come out yearly.
Anyway, back on target here - if you want to compete with free, you need to be a better experience than the freeloaders get. This is often the case with first run movies (Till the DVD comes out), books and breaks even with TV shows... But DRMed games basically punish the paying customers, and that rarely works out in the long run.
How does this program help if there are no device drivers for Windows 7 and the XP drivers don't install on Win 7... I mean, how can it even talk to the scanner?
Heh, that's why I'd recommend a HIPS enabled security suite like Comodo or a paid product. Much better than UAC in my opinion, and far less annoying.
What did it for me was the increasing difficulty of getting XP to work right on newer laptops that I had to buy. Windows 7 "just works" with far more current hardware (well, of course!).
Well, from my point of view there are several points here.
1) I've never supported the war in Iraq, and multiple times voted against politicians who have furthered it. I support getting out of Afghanistan, and expect to see movement on that soon, or it will affect my future votes.
2) However, being in a war zone should be different than being in a protest.
3) Our cities should not be treated as war zones, and police should not act like the army. The Army should not be deployed domestically per various well known laws.
4) Our military ought to not be operating in non war situations in foreign countries, certainly not shooting anyone most of the time.
Finally, from a self interested standpoint, I would hope any government gave more thought to it's citizens than to non-citizens.
For occasional use voice, PagePlus is the best I've found. $10 / 119 days, verizon network, 6-10 cents a minute depending on how big a "card" you buy ($10 card is 10 cents a minute, $80 is 6 cents a minute)...
I know a number of people who use it and saved over Virgin Mobile which they used to use.
I'm not whining, I'm pointing out what to me was a bad UI change in a program I use daily. You know, the topic of this thread?
So you never need to refer to an e-mail away from your computer?
Let me describe to you how to lose your job
1) Not use e-mail / calendaring set by management.
Yes, some of us can dictate what software we use at work. Most of us cannot. And I would venture to say most of us cannot find a different job where we can dictate the software at work in the current economy - if we ever could.
I have many examples, but here's one from Thunderbird - which I use for e-mail at home. In v2 - when I wanted to search for an e-mail, I typed in the search box above the subjects and it worked like a find as you type filter. Really great - probably my favorite sort of search. And it was fast. (One thing Outlook does do right on Win7)
In v7 or whatever version they're up to (Mozilla says version numbers are irrelevant right? Another new design decision that's *clearly* better ) the find as you type filter either is so slow to be useless or just doesn't work as far as I can tell. The actual search opens in a new tab, so again takes you out of the context you're in, gives you a new and different sort of listing, and doesn't let you quickly click through a filtered e-mail list and view the content in the preview pane. Awesome
it's to make your work on the computer faster, more efficient, easier to learn, and less error-prone.
The problem I see with all these new UIs is that they (at least in the short - medium term) do none of these.
1. Easier to learn isn't necessarily easier to use. And the people complaining have already learned the old way. So they don't care about easier to learn.
2. Less error prone - it's more error prone because you're stumbling through a new way of doing things, rather than flying through the well known methods.
3. Work on the computer is faster - same issue, what you used to do in 3 seconds now takes finding a manual, web page, or asking for help. Way slower.
4. It may make some things more efficient. Not that I've actually seen in any new UIs recently
Example, Outlook 2007 to print my e-mail was: click on print button in UI, hit print.
In Outlook 2010 it's realize there is no print button. Hmmm, file menu? Oh, no menus. Right, ribbon / tab file thingy - gahhh where did my e-mail go? Did I lose it? What e-mail are the choices I may be making apply to? Ok, deep breath. Where is anything? Oh, print in small print on the left. Ok, click that. Click print button? Didn't I already do that? Ok, click it. Now it prints out.
Even now that I know I have to do that, I've added 3 clicks and mousing around to do what used to be one click...
I think the issue here is that for many users the new UIs don't offer any benefits they can see. To me, it's equivalent to the US deciding they are going to change over to the UK driving on the left. What is the benefit to anyone?
UI designers need to realize that the two groups of users who are complaining are those who either:
a) Power users who know the current UI inside and out and can do anything they need to do and would rather spend time learning new stuff that, you know, lets them do new stuff rather that re-learn something that isn't broken to try and get back to where they are today.
b) Users who have memorized the pixels of the UI and App they need to use, and who *can't* figure out a changed UI and freak out and now want to know why their computer is broken in the update.
Maybe there is some user who is not in the above groups, and who likes change for the sake of change - but I have yet to meet them.
Why would Lenovo not be an option for Desktops? Just pick up a Thinkcenter or Thinkstation . . .
Oddly enough, due to working with desktops and laptops a lot for home users and at work, I can recommend only two purchasing methods:
1) If you are price sensitive, and don't expect your computer to last for more than a year or so (i.e. anything more is gravy to you), get the cheapest branded thing you like. I.e., Acer version eMachines, Acer, Asus, SystemMax whatever. Though I do suggest avoiding HP and Dell myself, each generally will make it to 1 year, and the warranty ensures that most of the time anyway.
2) If you've got a bit more money to spend and don't want to plan on upgrading at a year or to plan to have a warranty visit during that time, buy a business class Lenovo (Thinkcenter, Thinkstation,Thinkpad) though the low end ThinkPad Edge hasn't lived up to this for me (sad face here as I bought one for my sister and she's had some issues), all the other (even cheap Thinkcenters) models have been more solid than ANY other computer brand I've ever bought that's still on sale. (Micron, IBM - though they are Lenovo right? used to be like this but now not available)
Also, unless you get a certificate or special contract, the business support from Lenovo is awesome in comparison to anyone else I've tried. I can't say the times I've spent 45+ minutes on web chat, phone, or whatever with Dell and HP trying to convince them that yes, there is a broken part, and please fix it. HP's actually worse than Dell because Dell, once you get in touch with the *right* person (which can take 7 transfers IME) they will send out the part. HP support will ask you to change windows settings on a business desktop that doesn't turn on and the power light doesn't light...
Lenovo only seems to have 2 numbers, one for consumer and one for business, so there's no transferring around. They always just let you send in the Laptop for diagnosis or send out the broken part replacement on a PC (though I only recall this happening once in the last 5 years - yes, you almost never have to call them).
On the Ideacenter / consumer line, they do have slightly worse support, but so far I've only spent 20 minutes convincing them something was broken before getting to mail it in for repair. Not awesome, but far better than Dell / HP...
Now, for Dell at least, I am aware I could take a class to get a cert that proves to them that I'm able to tell when the PSU fried itself... And I can buy the higher support contract to get right through to useful Enterprise support. But when I do all that, suddenly their price advantage vs Lenovo goes away...
I'm actually OK with opinion pieces if done appropriately. Think of the low bar of Time Magazine sort of stuff. Either as a separate add on to the TFS or a second post - either has merits I think.
What I wouldn't and don't like is editors or submitters making the headline and TFS the opposite from what TFA actually says.
I don't know how much money they all make on Slashdot, but having an actual editor or two seems fine to me. And in fact editors could always add another interesting facet / comment to TFS assuming they can do it appropriately separated from the actual submission.
Or, you know, win-r for the old run dialog.
I disagree, mostly because rarely does the organization work for me. For instance, if I want Kedit, do I look in Utilities, Office, Accessories, possibly Text Editors if it's an option?
If I want to change the wireless configuration, is it in Internet, Utilities, System, KDE Conf, etc?
It may just be I'm unfamiliar with the KDE environment, but their "Start Menu" categorization is probably my biggest pet peeve with it.
You know, I am getting into cooking, but there is an issue - I'm not at all convinced any of the interesting things to cook are actually healthier and cheaper than packaged food.
To clarify that statement, pretty much anything cheap, except perhaps lettuce, isn't amazingly good for you that I can tell. Spaghetti as a point is a lot of carbs for instance...
Hamburger / hotdogs etc - not great for you.
Bread, not amazing for you.
The healthy (ish) stuff tends to be a lot more expensive, i.e. frozen fruit for smoothies, or even stir fry stuff - the meat alone is kind of expensive...
Maybe it's what I cook, but if I set out to make Lasagna say (going for cheaper than buying here), one tray ends up costing me as much as buying it at, say, Pizza Hut, but I get to spend a day putting it together. Yay! Actually, I usually make 2 trays, but it costs me roughly $60 and that's shopping at Sams club for stuff...
Another thing is most of the current popular recipe books all like to have "fancy" ingrediants like Goji Berries (WTH? totally waste of money and unnecessary) or other strange things - as I think much of cooking is now by foodies or the like. I'm very glad to have my mothers and grandmothers cookbooks that were about putting food together.
I will say that I think cooking is right up there with exercise - - you're asking people to totally change their daily habits. This is a big deal - spending 2 hours after work to cook so you eat at 7:30PM instead of at 5:30 when you get home with takeout. Or spending all Sunday to pre-make meals for the week. This is a big time investment, so it's really not necessarily that easy, and this assumes you're working one job so have all Sunday or whatever to do the cooking - and that you don't want to have plans on the weekend that don't involve shopping and then cooking.
Yes, shop on Saturday if you'd checking the circulars, going to buy the on sale items etc and spend much of a day doing so, especially if you're in a more rural area where driving time to big stores with non crazy prices is on average an hour one way.
Print to PDF - send PDF to customer. Or in OO, export to PDF. Or however you like to generate the PDF.
I think the point here is that Android isn't good enough at whatever people want a tablet to do at the price point the manufacturers can sell them at to make them any sort of value to potential buyers, so they don't gain market share.
Or, and I think this is potentially equally likely - without the "cool" factor Apple has, the entire tablet form factor running a limited OS isn't compelling at (decent) laptop prices.
I think Windows 8, some running a full ubuntu or other linux OS or the like *might* be compelling at the ~$650 price range.
Well I don't use Apple products, but that's what she calls it. It's a little touchscreen device that seems like a small 4" tablet sort of thing that does wi-fi but doesn't hook up to the cell network and isn't a phone, nor does it have a camera.
PCs are what we use because we can get them to do what we want, and they're cheap. We both have had multiple Creative branded devices that worked fine.
She does keep saying the thing is a great little computer, if only it worked for shit to play music. Kind of like an Apple version of Emacs as I understand it.
This is also another problem. However iTunes likes to sync, my sister has an iTouch2 and is afraid to hook it up to her computer. Anytime she does, it takes it hours to sync. Even if she wanted to add one song, which takes like 20 seconds on a Sansa, the iTouch2 will lock itself to the PC for like 4 hours. So no last minute additions of songs. And forget about hooking up to charge - much easier to plug into the wall with the extra adapter so it doesn't decide you can't charge for only 20 minutes because it's still syncing, updating, something...
This is horrendous IMO.
This is great if all my files fit on the device. But I may have more music than fits on my device, especially if it's 4 or 8GB.
I also don't like sync software. I've tried several variations, and I'm pretty much always a bit in the dark about what's going to end up where. I especially *never* want the client device to change *anything* on the master storage (my computer).
Just as everyone is happy that cars are easier to drive and need less maintenance except for a few car maintenance geeks.
I'm going to call bullshit here. While I'm sure everyone likes less maintenance, I know a bunch of non-car geeks who complain about how it used to be they could pretty easily fix many minor problems of cars from the 60s-80s, the modern computer controlled cars force them to go to shops and spend lots more money because of special tools that the manufactures can now require. [it sounds a bit like the inkjet carts, it's added on incompatibility and points of failure]
I also know many people who like manual transmissions for many reasons over automatics.
To file management:
The biggest issue I have is that it seems important to me, even as a user, to know where my files are. To work with them, to move them, to make sure they're in an appropriate place (security of data) and for backups.
Some of this may just be failings of the abstraction interface. I.e. windows not realizing if you copy a shortcut to a word file to a flash drive, you probably want the file and not the shortcut on the flash drive.
The other problem, of course, is that I haven't actually seen an implemented improvement over a filesystem for managing files. Media Managers like iTunes or WinAmp are fine, *as long as you're in that program*. I only use Winamp, and I like the playlists etc. But I can't put the playlist on my car stereo, where I can copy the files over in Explorer just fine. I can't burn a CD with CDBurnerXP from Winamp. etc...
Abstraction is only useful if it works across other programs, so it needs to be in the OS, not bolted on in another application.
I prefer the players from the Creative Zen Vision through many available today that *just play* many videos without transcoding.
Then again, I have to say I've never understood wanting to try and watch any video on a screen that small. I tried for a while with my Creative, and never found it that compelling. And once I wanted a bigger screen I could just use a laptop which would play most *anything*.
I don't actually personally, in the real world, know *anyone* who likes iTunes. I know plenty of people who like iP* devices, but they pretty much all hate iTunes. This may be because it seems to suck on the PC and installs extra crap when updating and works nothing like Explorer which is how most people I know have ever dealt with managing files.
Then again, I'm on /. so what do I know...
I also wonder if IBM does much of the development anymore. They dropped making PCs, I have no idea how much they really put into Servers etc. Their advertised product seems to be services, so I don't think they're really that comparable to Apple or even Cisco who are primarily (to my knowledge anyway) product companies.