Posted on 01/12/2008 4:06:08 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Parts, what, the machine itself? Ok, you got me, the machine isn't free. And as point of fact I did build mine, (and added, and rebuilt, and...) but since you need to pay for the machine no matter which of the three OS' you use, I considered that to be a non-factor in the analogy.
Why do you have to stick with MS? Is it a work requirement or your preference?
Instead of whining about how Vista dosn't run on old equipment, maybe folks should just upgrade to new equipment.
Before you ask, I bought my first PC in 1979 (a SWTPC 6800 with 20k of memory), so, I do know a little about computers. Also before you ask, the 3 gig celeron is the 4rd computer i have run out of the cabinet it is in. It is using an old harddisk out of a laptop, old floppy drives (including a 5.25 drive) and a 5 year old CD. I know something about using old parts too. I also know when it's time to move on.
The laptop is a Lanovo 3000 n100. Paid $450 for it.
Ditto that!
IBM went through what MS is, I think, going through now. I remember IBM marketing a laser printer, back when they were new and very expensive, and they wanted another one at a lower price level. They took one of their high-end printers and put a chip in it that slowed it down, then sold it for several hundred dollars less. IBM made a huge mistake in thinking like a monopoly, and believing their products only competed with other IBM products. They similarly lost the PC manufacturing battle by deliberately crippling their PCs so they wouldn't compete with IBM mini-computers and mainframes. It never occurred to them that people would go to other manufacturers because they had been the dominant corporation for so long.
Although OS/2 was a better OS than Windows at the time, you nailed it, that internal politics at IBM destroyed it. I think that was critical to MS becoming dominant. A lot of companies bought off on OS/2, and when IBM killed it, they developed the attitude that the MS operating system, whatever it's shortcomings, at least would be there, and that MS wouldn't pull the plug on it. That killed a lot of OS projects in the womb. Nobody wanted to take a chance on an OS that might go away in three years, creating huge data porting problems and requiring them to start their IT process from ground zero.
At my college, the IT people buy Microsoft products and don't want to hear or discuss anything else. Vista has been a huge problem for them. We currently have no plans to upgrade to Vista, but we have upgraded to the new Office, and I find it to be a pain in the rear end. There's been a huge reshuffling of standard features, so I sometimes spend ten or fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to do something that took two clicks in the old version, and because many of my documents go off-campus, even saving a simple document is a pain, because it defaults to the new document format, and gives me a warning box that I may lose compatibility features every time I save.
Our college also uses Blackboard, a third party service, for online classes, and Blackboard has had serious compatibility problems with Vista. The college position is "Don't go to Vista," but unfortunately for them, they can control the desktop environment at the school, but 8,000 students are NOT going to submit like the employees have to.
Most mission-critical applications still run on mainframes. Almost every bank, insurance company, airline, hospital, and government entity that provides vital services uses a mainframe. Which is not to say that distributed systems aren't growing in importance, or that they won't eventually edge the big iron out. But at this point, legacy still rules.
In 1981. the IBM PC made desktop computers credible with business; the Apple }{ was popular in homes and schools, but had no corporate cred.
IBM and IBM COMPATIBLES made inroads into business. Xerox, TRS, and Texas Instruments were already there, but couldn't carry the clout IBM did. When Blue stepped into the game, the PC came of age. Unfortunately for IBM, its own models were overpriced and underpowered, so they eventually lost their market share to the Dells and Gateways and Compaqs. However, the operating system they used -- compatible with the Intel chipset -- became a de facto standard.
Microsoft leveraged its association with IBM, the big swingin' Richard of the day. And for two decades, that was enough to keep them on top
Yep. Then IBM decided it didn't need Microslop so it came up with OS2, a better OS by the way. But nobody bought it, even though it was part of IBM's Enterprise Service Architecture. DOS, which was really just a rip-off of Unix, continued to run most of the world's PCs in one form or another.
Microsoft prospered not because it had the best answer, but because it had the most popular. Now, when machines and people are closing in on common languages Microsoft cannot control, its influence is fading.
Exactly. Java has had a lot to do with that, as well as Microslop's arrogance about its marginal products. My next machine will run Linux; most of the machines at work run some form of Unix. Microsoft's days on top are numbered.
Not reaching at ALL, just describing a day at a humdrum engineering department. Surely others will respond. All those were used on the job, routinely, and Industry-wide. They are 3-d modelling packages, finite element analysis packages, and CAD programs. Benoit was used to analyze and define the complexity of textured surfaces for catalyst development,etc. They were used in a windows environment by our engineering department. If there were alternatives, it would be great because these are _expensive_ programs.
Thanks very much! I may work up the courage to put it on my Vista machine after I educate myself a bit more.
Are we talking Old School Wargames?
I am a relative newcomer to Wargames, I only started in 1978.
DRM never go in my favor, no matter what I do. :(
A little of both I suppose. I don't want to have to go from all Windows apps at work to Apple version, or even virtual PC, at home.
Then there's the lazy part. I've learned my way around MS products in 25 years and usually can bend XP to my will.
I teach as well and it sounds similar where I am in terms of sticking with XP and grumbling about the new Office products. We've been reassured that Vista will not be deployed anytime soon. A year ago we came back from vacation to find all the computers upgraded to Internet Explorer 7.0 and did the faculty howl.
As for Blackboard, gosh that's a clunky and slow tool as well. It's the beginning of the semester, one of my courses was cloned from last year, and all the quizzes disappeared...
Debian is great, but somebody trying Linux for the first time might be more comfortable with Ubuntu, which is Debian based, and puts more emphasis on accessibility than Debian.
I guess the the re-bootable patches quit coming, I'll know Vista is 'fixed'.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.