Posted on 01/30/2008 10:17:19 AM PST by XR7
Microsoft released Windows Vista to the world one year ago with ads likening the new PC operating system to such awe-inspiring moments as the first American spaceflight and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Charles Walling just wants it to work with his printer.
The retired Seattle warehouseman has spent hours on the Dell tech support line, installed all the drivers and, yes, double-checked all the cords and plugs. No luck. The cause of the problem isn't clear, but Walling knows one thing: The same printer worked with Windows Vista's predecessor, Windows XP.
"You can see the frustration," Walling said this week, sitting at his desk after Windows Vista displayed an error message in response to an attempt to print.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates recently called Windows Vista the "best new product of the year." The company says more than 100 million copies of the operating system have been licensed since it became available. Outside experts say Windows Vista is a major advance in security, and some users say their experience has been smooth.
But a year after its glitzy retail launch, Windows Vista has developed a reputation as a source of frustration for others.
The effects of that reputation are apparent in the habits of PC buyers. At the computer store Quidnunc in West Seattle, for example, owner Bill Hibler estimates that 40 percent of people ordering computers through his shop still ask for Windows XP.
"I'm still stocking almost as much XP as...Vista," Hibler said. Based on his experience, the only other time people have been so reluctant to choose a new Microsoft operating system was when the company released the widely panned Windows ME.
One of Vista's challenges is the explosion of hardware, software, devices and networks that the operating system has to work with...
(Excerpt) Read more at seattlepi.nwsource.com ...
The Mighty Mouse has 3 mouse buttons and a scroll wheel, and ships standard with every Mac. It looks like a single mouse button mouse, but if you go to the System Preferences you can enable the right mouse button which is invisible but mapped to the right half of the mouse.
There have never been eject buttons on Macs. There is an eject button on the keyboard. Or you could right click on any device and eject it. If for some reason something is particularly unresponsive you can go to the Terminal and eject it as well.
And OS X is built on BSD Unix. It is Unix 2003 compliant as of Leopard (10.5). There’s far more control to be had on the command prompt than you could possibly imagine under Windows.
Applications are bundles, you don’t have to do much to install apps but move them into your Applications folder. I can move a user from one machine to another as fast as it takes to transfer the User folder. And all Apps work afterwards. No stinking Registry, no DLL hell, etc...
Keyboard shortcuts are standardized along all apps, and they make more sense since there is a command key. One problem I have going back to Windows machines is the reach that you have since many shortcuts such as terminate app is done via the F keys (Alt+F4 comes to mind). On the Mac everything is mapped spatially. So Command+Q is quit. Command + W is close window. You can manipulate most of the major commands with your left hand (thumb on command key and ring finger or index finger for most shortcuts).
Also, since we use Command and not Control that means your thumb does more work instead of your pinky. Which seems to work better for me anyway. I type a lot (I’m a programmer)
One major problem with the DOS command line is that Ctrl+C is mapped to Copy as well as Break. On the Mac that is solved because all commands are done through the Command (Apple) key instead. So copy is Command + C. And Control + C can stay mapped to Break.
On large monitors (I have a 30”) having the close, minimize, maximize on the left side of the window works better. I find myself having to move my mouse a lot under Windows to reach the far end of the window. I find most of my work is done on the left side of the window.
Windows still doesn’t have multiple desktops or anything like Expose. Vista’s Flip3D is laughable. It’s eye candy, not usability.
The OS doesn’t scream at me like Windows. Even XP would throw up silly bubbles in the system tray. I have too many unused icons, my security settings are not correct, blah blah. I feel like I’m being yelled at.
XP will also reboot my computer for me when there’s an especially critical update. Everyone I know just hates that. I got rid of the automatic update checking for that reason.
There’s a lot of underlying thought that went into the OS X UI design. Windows unfortunately has a lot of legacy crud in there that prevents it from being as elegant.
There’s tons more that’s simply better than Windows. But this is one large post already!
You could try a Mac Mini, that’s possibly the easiest way to get started ($599):
Because the HW and OS work so well together, I think you will find that you tend to upgrade less often than in the PC world.
One of my friends just bought one. It’s his Media Center and is so tiny that he’s going to embed it in his wall. He also records OTA HD with it. Neat little machine.
LOL.
I just got my new Dell laptop with XP a couple hours ago. : )
Let me see if I have this right. Instead of a single right click with a PC mouse, I have to my other hand to press CTRL while using the MAC mouse? Sounds pretty inefficient to me.
I bought a cheap Acer laptop last year ($350) which was exciting for me because it was my first laptop. I’ve always had desktops because I liked tinkering with them and building them, but I really wanted something more portable that just worked. Again, Vista works just fine, but the actual machine itself is rather cheaply built, and I don’t see myself sticking with this for more than another year or so. It will have served its purpose, that is, determining if I would enjoy using a laptop as my main computer (which I do).
I will give the Macs a serious look next time.
LINUX IS FREE :-)!!!!! I prefer Fedora, which is basically Redhat without a support contract. Many others are free and good like SuSE or Ubuntu or Debian. Most people don’t know that MacOS is built on FreeBSD, which is a unix kernel developed by the geeks at Berkeley many years ago. Much like DOS is to Windows. Unix/Linux is just a hell of a lot more stable.
There is a bit of a learning curve, and i wouldn’t suggest this for gamers or people that don’t have some extra time or the desire to learn anything new.
Personally, i use Windows (XP) and Linux (Redhat) an a Mac (OSX) at work. I use windows XP at home because i primarily use it for games and surfing the net.
I have been tinkering with Vista and have mixed opinions. It is still buggy. It is different. But i won’t condemn it nor endorse it right now. But i would wait another 6 months to a year before using it for my work standard.
If MAC wasn’t so damn expensive and their policies so damn liberal i would buy one, that way i get a unix and mac machine that gives me the granularity for a power user. I just can’t bring myself to give money to such a liberal idiot company. I’ll spend my money with Dell.
Once you go Mac, you don’t go Back!
Vista...the new Windows ME.
Hey, it’s better than giving money to Microsoft (not that you are, but lots of others do). The Gates family is one of the largest benefactors to Planned Parenthood.
All Macs shipping for the last few years come with a two button mouse. In addition, you can plug your USB PC mouse into the Mac.
I have a PC-DOS 1.1 diskette and manual, to show how far I go back with Microsoft.
I’m currently downloading Ubuntu to play with it, after my brief experience with Vista (wife’s new laptop she got for Christmas has it).
Uhhmmm. Al Gore is/or was on the Board of Directors at MAC. I guess since he invented the internet and all you know ;-)
Yeah, I was forced to buy Vista last year when I bought a new Toshiba laptop and just assumed that I could load XP on it. Wrong. Toshiba only provided Vista drivers for my model. OK, so I upgraded from Vista Home to Business. The networking absolutely sucks, although it has gotten marginally better over the year. Windows Explorer still crashes when I drag and drop files.
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