Posted on 11/01/2010 5:28:00 AM PDT by ShadowAce
To me, it’s a sort of miracle that a 1.6 GHz general processor, running an operating system, having to perform a whole lot of little-noticed things going on under the hood, could come even close to real-time decoding of a (fill-in-your-choice type of) video stream.
That's okay. When your vroom-vroom stops working, you probably take it to the magical cave where the sorcerer in greasy overalls recharges it with faerie dust.
And here, 40 years later, we still don't have a perfect operating system, in spite of what the worshipers say.
I’m on my second PC in fifteen years.
My first Dell started out with windows 3.1, upgraded to 98, upgraded again to Windows XP. The little trooper ran pretty much 24/7 for over 10 years. Never had a single problem with it. Added some RAM and storage space to it a couple of times, but no software problems.
Second Dell is now a couple years old and has been just as reliable, so far, started out with Windows XP and now upgraded to 7.
I always had/have some kind of antivirus, some paid for, some free, set it to automatically update both the programs and the antivirus, and it was virtually invisible and maintenance free.
I have gotten exactly one virus in life, and it was my fault for clicking it. No software can protect a person who is dead set on installing a virus. :) Never have trouble with spyware or malware either. No check has ever found any. Not sure where people get that stuff, but I don’t get it where I go... and I’m on the internet ALL DAY.
Punch line. It works pretty good, and it’s just not all that hard to keep a computer running Windows running good. Don’t try to dink with it all the time, keep it updated, and maybe stay away from porn sites, and it works really really well. :~)
Inertia is a powerful force. How many of us are typing on QWERTY keyboards when DVORAK keyboards have a more efficient and logical layout?
Until their mechanic quits, or the farmers stop producing, that is.
Hah! Not so fast....
oh, I thot this wuz an article on liberalizm
Well I am a sysadmin at a location using both Macs and Windows systems both on the desktops and server side.
Macs are reasonably compatible these days, certainly far better than in the past. They can be integrated into the networks pretty easily now, and I believe the latest Mac Office is going to be pretty solid (the last one was a stinker). You do tend to lose some functionality on the Mac versions of Office depending on the vagaries of Microsoft at the time. However a Word document will pretty much be a Word document and will be platform independent. If you are big on Macros and VB scripting, you might have issues (I know the last Mac Office was completely lacking in this regard, I am unsure if it has been addressed in the new release).
The main thing you might miss on a Mac is specialty software, but honestly not enough people use that in my experience to justify the PCs given their propensity to get nailed with malware. Also if you are a gamer, the selection available on Macs is much, much smaller.
And stay away from freeware.
I suspect most of the problems with crashes and malware comes from freeware people install. Including, btw, free antivirus tools.
Don’t try to get by on the cheap installing free crap someone wrote in their basement and funded with adware, and most people will be fine. :~)
The problem here is that the author assumes most people want to, or should want to, be computer geeks and tune up and maintain the OS. This is similar to thinking that everyone should want to be knowledgeable enough about their car’s inner workings to rebuild the engine.
Most people, including me, just want to use their computer to do stuff (or their car to go places), they don’t want to have to become experts at what makes them go. They want to operate the programs that do stuff.
Personally, I would prefer it if I were unaware my computer had an operating system. The ideal OS would be quite invisible.
>And here, 40 years later, we still don’t have a perfect operating system, in spite of what the worshipers say.
Well heck, it’s over 200 years later and we don’t have even close to a perfect government. I’d cut the computer geeks some slack.
Too bad they can’t come up with Ultra-High-Quality programming.
A “faulty” operating system is the fault of the user and the user alone. Even Linux can be easily compromised if the end user doesn’t know what he is doing (i.e., runs as root, etc.).
Then along came Bill Gates, with his "we will fix it in the next release" mentality. It is pure laziness in my opinion.
I also don't discount "the farm the code out to the cheapest programmer in India or China" mentality. I have supervised these type of programmers. While they are good, they take shortcuts and you must be ever vigilant to make sure the code is hardy enough to with stand the real world.
In addition, I look at our office where we can barely get the system backed up in 24 hours. A lot of the time it doesn't make it. The smaller systems simply can't do as much as the big old machines used to.
The problem comes when people start putting junk into the gas tank, or throwing the latest cool thing under the hood to make it go faster, or ride more comfortably, or something else they have no business doing--because they are not trained. Then they expect the local mechanic to just fix it.
Even mechanics get tired of the stupid things people do to their cars.
"Accidents" are a different matter. A little better, but not a big step up. They are always preventable.
This is why I've been going off on this thread about the users and the "appliance" mindset.
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