Why Does Windows Still Suck?

[davidinalameda]

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/

So about a year ago, the SO finally upgraded her Net connection to DSL, carefully installed the Yahoo! DSL software into her creaky Sony Vaio PC laptop and ran through all the checks and install verifications and appropriate nasty disclaimers

And all seemed to go smoothly and reasonably enough considering it was a Windows PC and therefore nothing was really all that smooth or reasonable or elegant, but whatever. She just wanted to get online. Should be easy as 1-2-3, claimed the Yahoo! guide. Painless as tying your shoe, said the phone company.

She got online all right. The DSL worked great. For about four minutes.

[Occulus]

1. Not a mention one of linux in that article that I could see

Bias? Naaaaaah.

?By the way, Micro$oft Window$ really does have a shitload of bugs.....

[uberotto]

3. guess you missed this paragraph...

Perhaps there is something I'm missing. Maybe there's something I don't understand as to why there is not a massive rush of consumers and IT managers to dump PCs in favor of Macs (or even Linux OS). Surely thousands (millions?) of work-hours have been lost nationwide as tech departments spend untold months debugging and installing PC virus protections and keeping abreast of the latest and greatest worm to come down the pike, all due to Microsoft's lousy software.

As someone who has been using Linux since 1994, and been windows free since 1999, I have to admit that I am getting excited about owning my first Mac. It's a strange feeling, knowing that I can actually pay for software again. I will once again have a computer that conforms to the Hardware/Software requirements for most commercial software.

Of course my Linux computer will still be my primary computer. But the Mac mini will make for a fun toy.

[Occulus]

4. yep, missed it

Heh. A teeny tiny little four-word phrase.

It bites, but I have to use Window$... I'm a gamer, and neither Mac nor linux can come close in that sphere...

[FloridaPat]

2. OK, how many here have worked with DOS on their computers?

How many want to go back? No me. Yes, Windows is buggy, but it beat going back to DOS. I worked on a computer that had IBM's OS2 once. It wouldn't run anything without tons of tweeking.

As for Lunix - if it ran windows programs and had a nice gooey interface, it would run Windows out of business.

[Occulus]

5. Got that last right

and there's lots and lots of work being made in that direction.

[uberotto]

6. It does, and it is...

Check out CodeWeavers (http://www.codeweavers.com) and KDE (http://www.kde.org/screenshots).

And if I was given the choice of WinME or DOS, I would choose DOS. And WindowsXP Home isn't much of an improvement either.

[FloridaPat]

11. XP is a big improvement in customer harassment. Instead of the

dreaded Blue Screen I get annoying box with do I want to send a report or not. Half the time I say hoping I am annoying Micrsoft. The Start menu puts the things you use most in a nice little box. That means you have to be careful when you're at work.

There are a lot more hidden files - like the mail files. So when you do a backup, suprise no mail backup. I had done a backup and didn't realize that and then had a hard drive crash. Goodby one years worth of emails.

[davidinalameda]

10. me

in fact, my firm just got rid of a DOS program that I used about a year or so ago

[bemildred]

7. You cannot make a silk purse from a sow's ear.

Nor can you make a robust operating system by forever patching up
a sloppy and disorganized one.

[98geoduck]

16. You nailed it!

[GOPFighter]

8. As an amatuer historian...

...I can't help but compare computers to the history of the automobile. Today's computers are probably comparable to automotive technology of the 1920s. Mid-1920s autos were cantankerous, somewhat unreliable, and needed a lot of maintenance. Yet most people had one and the rest wanted one. That's because when they worked, they gave you more freedom and pleasure than you could have imagined.

20-30 years from now we'll shudder at the thought of what we had to put up with with today's computers, just like we now shudder at the thought of DOS screens, floppy disks amd no hard drives. Few of us look forward to getting old, but at least by then our computers will cease to be major annoyances. Giving us plenty of time to worry about our hip replacements.

[s-cubed]

9. I use both Mac OS X & Windows 2000.

I paid extra to get 2000 instead of XP, because I knew it was more robust, but it still stinks. I am the home "systems administrator" for both, ever since our son moved out.

The Mac is so much easier to maintain, and has so much less trouble with viruses, that I would encourage anyone who has the choice to go that way. Yes there are features on the PC that I miss on the Mac, & vice versa, but on the whole the Mac is a lot easier.

The next machine will probably be a LINIX machine, which has most of the things most people want. If you must have games, buy a game machine, but for doing real work, go with Mac or LINIX.

[reprehensor]

13. Major difference?

I use OSX on my aging laptop. About the only thing that locks it up is... Explorer, which came embedded with OSX.

Beyond that, OSX is fantastic. And just like my vintage MAC laptop, it 'sleeps' like a baby.

I prefer 2000 over XP, but it seems like even XP insists on creating massive 'virtual memory' files no matter how much RAM I have, or how hot the processor is.

I have a sizzlin' graphics box at my place of employ, but every once in a while it becomes practically unusable while it reconciles the absurd files lurking on the hard drive.

Is Linux really the anwer for PC boxes?

[Hand]

12. Insh'Allah... nt

[Selatius]

14. Microsoft's market share is also a liability

Bugs aside, the fact that an overwhelming majority of computers in the US use Windows makes the system a prime target for hackers. When you're at the top, everyone aims at you. This is the danger of having a monoculture. If something affects one, it affects all. Everyone would have the same weakness that could be exploited. There's got to be variation and variety to ensure at least some are immune to begin with. If the market were truly competitive, we'd have several different operating systems to choose from. It would be far more difficult to cause the amount of damage that has been caused with these viruses if few people had operating systems in common. A virus programmed for Windows is useless on a Linux machine or a Mac.

[kineneb]

15. A happy penguinista here

Windows- poorly written, last good version was 3.11, more holes for hackers than a swiss cheese, and as such, an open invitation to the hackers to mess with it, including XP
IE- no major upgrades for last several years, more swiss cheese
Mac- great but out of my price range

...having broken Windoz one too many times I moved to Linux... which will run on some fairly old machines... my personal laptop which I use at work is an old IBM 600E - 366! Runs SuSE 9.0 like a champ, with OpenOffice.org as office package and Scribus for DTP... I would like it to be faster, but it works!!! It would never work if I tried to run any version of Windoz- crash-o-matic!

Windows sucks because...because it just doesn't work well.

[airfoil]

18. User responsibility

Overwhelming folks that get "bad things" installed on their machines and do it by AGREEING to let them run in the first place because they think they are getting something else for free (weather reports, wallets, etc).

There is a rule in that security folks take pretty seriously: If you let me run ANYTHING on your machine, I OWN your machine. That rule holds true regardless of the OS you run. All it takes is one hole, and every OS out there has at least one hole being found per quarter.

Think twice before you run an app of unknown origin.

[mpendragon]

17. release schedules

I don't work for Microsoft, but I do write software. Here is my opinion:


The subset of the software industry that includes consumer operating systems and some large commercial software projects seem to have an awkward development process especially over several versions. This is generally necessary because it is what the market demands.


One issue is the huge, aging code base many projects accumulate over 10-20+ years of releases. While coding practices in general are somewhat better now than 10-20+ years ago we still have to live with a legacy of rushed, poorly written, and fragile code.


After some piece of code has been deployed enough any problems with it have become quirks that someone has coded around. Fixing the problem breaks the previous fix. This means that each release fixes some things, breaks others, and new features sit on top of a weak code base.


The better open source work (Linux) and a few commercial examples (ID Software) have a few advantages over normally scheduled release commercial projects. First, release schedules aren't made by the sales/marketing departments but the development team. That helps cut down on rushed schedules and feature creep (when new features are added during the development work). Second, by not rushing releases and putting things out when they are ready you can take the time to write things in a modular, logical way instead of writing them as quickly as possible. If there is a problem with a piece of code it is easy to modify, fix, or expand.


At Microsoft today (yes Saturday) there is a programmer staring at some code now thinking:
- Why did that asshole have to write this shit that way.
- I wish I had the time to completely rewrite this junk.
- If I change any of this something will not work and I'll be doing more harm than good.
- The deadline is coming up so I'll just hack something in.


Microsoft hires good people that work pretty hard. Unfortunately they spend their time like the rest of us, trying to polish a turd.

[98geoduck]

21. Excellent explanation.

(something I knew in the back of my mind)

[Orsino]

19. The problem might not be native to Windows...

Recall that laptops come with their own "custom" implementation of the OS, often without any installation discs supplied. It may just be that Sony might be part of the trouble--but getting them to admit it could be impossible.

The DSL software might not be 100% compatible with laptops, or with the funky custom Windows on board.

Of course, Windows still sucks. :)

[mulethree]

20. avoid stuff like 'DSL Software' if at all possible

DSL, Cable modems, any sort of broadband - they can all attach their box (modem, bridge, whatever) to your machine with a regular ethernet
card and look to your machine like a 'plain vanilla' network.

There is no need at all for any software. One page of instructions, 10 clicks - then plug it in and it works.

The same is basically true for dial-up - except there's no ethernet involved. Windows handles dial up just fine with no extra software, just a quick configuration of existing stuff.

I've seen some real piggy ones that used a lot of CPU, some with ad-ware, some that hid the actual network so you couldn't perform half of the usual 'network troubleshooting' actions, and some with no un-install so you couldn't get rid of them when you changed ISP's.

[longship]

22. LOTD == Linux on the desktop

I just returned from San Diego and the "Desktop Summit" held at Del Mar by Linspire (AKA Lindows). Great little conference. Mitch Kapor (Mr. Lotus 1-2-3) and Mitchell Baker (Ms. Mozilla Firefox) did back-to-back talks which held everybody transfixed for the two hours they had the stage.

Linux is moving big time to the desktop. I encourage everybody who's disillusioned with Winblows to try one of the handy bootable Linux distributions to give it a try. Knoppix, Morphix, Damn Small Linux (which fits in 50 MB) are examples.