I have spent the better part of 3 years ghosting this site, as much for entertainment as information and I can't agree KWtm more. The power that Windows controls over the computer world has absolutely nothing to do with how pretty it is. Much like the early complaints with Mac; lack of software, no support and overall ambiguity, these are the same things that plague Linux. For those of us that don't know the power of [windows]+R or any other variation, Linux is to say the least, intimidating.
There are few games that run on Linux and with some distros it's a chore to even get TCP/IP to work off of the line. Stable, absolutely, more secure, you bet, easy to use... depends on who you ask. I would switch all three companies I work for to Linux in a heartbeat, but don't have the time to setup all of the machines and educate the users.
The truth is, Windows works out of the box, barring driver issues (and this along with memory management has always been a problem for Windows). MS Office has very little in the way of competition, Corel and Lotus both lost it at some point and nothing has come from the ashes of either.
I know the uber geeks here are ready with the flamethowers, fire at will. Can any of you really name a distro of Linux that will allow 65 year old aunt Grace to set-up and use her computer without calling Geeksquad? Can they even help her? Put aside the fact that her favorite nephew Timmy is using Outlook 2007 that he pulled from some bit torrent site to email her.
As either professional or hobbyist, we geeks don't see things the way the rest of the computing world does; when was the last time you had to explain to that new IT/IS Director with a background in Accounting, the reason your Firebox(tm) won't allow VPN is because the gateways are on the same subnet as the remote user?
I've used Windows since 3.1 and even though it has caused me more than one instance of frustration I stayed faithful, Vista was the straw. I don't have a cutting edge machine, but with a 3.2 proc, 1GB RAM and a Gforce 6200+ card, I could barely sustain Vista. In fact, my overall "rating" was a 2.1. Linux here I come. This article really does not give a true representation of Vista; sure it lists some of the whirlygigs and whizbangs you get with it, but fails to tell you about driver failures and performance issues. It's safe and secure, as long as you have the dual proc, 3GB RAM machine to run it. I don't even want to know how server 2007 is going to run...
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I have spent the better part of 3 years ghosting this site, as much for entertainment as information and I can't agree KWtm more. The power that Windows controls over the computer world has absolutely nothing to do with how pretty it is. Much like the early complaints with Mac; lack of software, no support and overall ambiguity, these are the same things that plague Linux. For those of us that don't know the power of [windows]+R or any other variation, Linux is to say the least, intimidating.
There are few games that run on Linux and with some distros it's a chore to even get TCP/IP to work off of the line. Stable, absolutely, more secure, you bet, easy to use... depends on who you ask. I would switch all three companies I work for to Linux in a heartbeat, but don't have the time to setup all of the machines and educate the users.
The truth is, Windows works out of the box, barring driver issues (and this along with memory management has always been a problem for Windows). MS Office has very little in the way of competition, Corel and Lotus both lost it at some point and nothing has come from the ashes of either.
I know the uber geeks here are ready with the flamethowers, fire at will. Can any of you really name a distro of Linux that will allow 65 year old aunt Grace to set-up and use her computer without calling Geeksquad? Can they even help her? Put aside the fact that her favorite nephew Timmy is using Outlook 2007 that he pulled from some bit torrent site to email her.
As either professional or hobbyist, we geeks don't see things the way the rest of the computing world does; when was the last time you had to explain to that new IT/IS Director with a background in Accounting, the reason your Firebox(tm) won't allow VPN is because the gateways are on the same subnet as the remote user?
I've used Windows since 3.1 and even though it has caused me more than one instance of frustration I stayed faithful, Vista was the straw. I don't have a cutting edge machine, but with a 3.2 proc, 1GB RAM and a Gforce 6200+ card, I could barely sustain Vista. In fact, my overall "rating" was a 2.1. Linux here I come. This article really does not give a true representation of Vista; sure it lists some of the whirlygigs and whizbangs you get with it, but fails to tell you about driver failures and performance issues. It's safe and secure, as long as you have the dual proc, 3GB RAM machine to run it. I don't even want to know how server 2007 is going to run...