How Microsoft Will Die

I had to add this because it is the perfect add-on to this article. This was exactly my experience with vaunted Windows, the hopeless OS.

This article and comment from bitsurf.com:

http://www.surfbits.com/?p=607

says it all. I quote it all here:

“Just Another Lousy PC - Part 2
by Tim (Surfbits) @ 5:24 pm.

I didn’t jump into the new Dell Inspiron 9300 without a plan. I was going to boot up the computer, get online and do a Windows update ASAP. There are viruses out there that can infect your Windows PC without even opening an email or going to a website, just being online with an unprotected PC means you may get infected. When my Windows update screen ran through the initial diagnosis of what updates and patches I needed, it showed that there were 26 critical updates and patches to be installed on my system. I chose to install them all and it started the downloads and installs. It took three re-boots and three Windows updates to get them all installed, over an hour just for the critical downloads.

Then I started on the anti-virus program, I downloaded all the latest patches and definitions and got them running. I then started deleting the crap files that are shipped with the Dell, all of our favorites like, AOL, Earthlink, Netzero and demos of games, Office suites and then the programs that make spyware and adware look like amateurs, Real Network player and jukebox, and several mp3 players. After I cleared gigs of useless software off the hard drive, I then took out all the PC software I owned from my last Windows desktop. They were mostly utilities, but important ones such as Disk Image, Partition Magic, Macromedia Suite 8, and some smaller programs and freeware I used. I would install each program, download any updates and install them too, then reboot and try to run it. Twice I received the dreaded BSOD, blue screen of death. I deleted the offending program, and tried again. All but one of the programs re-installed fine and avoided the BSOD. I forgot how much I hated this stuff… but it had to be done.

Every few hours I had to get up from the kitchen table where I was performing this ballet of BS and walk into my office, sit down in front of the iMac and just look at the beautiful design, open a few applications to see what solid programming can produce. It was the only thing that kept me from physically assaulting that poor Dell laptop. The morning turned into night and I decided to call it a day. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to actually use my new Dell, maybe.

After a few more hours of downloading and tweaking, I finally had the Dell where I wanted it, or at least close. I was then ready to use Drive Image to take a snapshot of the setup and save it on an external drive. The imaging went smooth and I felt like I had bonded with my Dell, at least a little. That lasted for about half a day. After I kept running into applications that were missing buttons, or links, and there was no way to expand the windows to see these buttons and links, a tech support person told me that my video drivers for the Dell were probably outdated and I should check with Dell’s support center to find out if new drivers existed. Suffice it to say, there were several drivers that were outdated. That pretty much shot the afternoon and when the new video driver didn’t want to install properly, I surrendered to the fact that day two was in the books, and I have not seen the first hour of productivity on my Windows laptop.

Day three started and I thought I’d try something. I had three anti-spyware programs installed. Adaware, Microsoft Anti-spyware, and the Micro Trend anti-spyware program that came with the Dell. I ran each program, one after the other. Keep in mind that the only websites I’ve been to in the first three days of PC purgatory have been the sites of programs I needed to update or download. There were no sports, porn, warez, or game sites in the history folder, honest! Each program found it’s own list of spyware or adware. I had a total of 19 hits between the three utilities. What a sad statement.

The Dell is packed up in my Booqbag, along with the software CD’s I may need and a few manuals, very few since it seems that actual paper manuals for PC’s are a thing of the past, along with actual install CD’s and DVD’s. If all goes as planned, I’ll not have to use the Dell until I start my new job. If life was perfect, I’d not have to use the Dell at all.”

This is the WINDOWS life. Die, Microsoft, die.

Heh, very late post, but I only just found the link since I rarely look at Mac sites.  Anyways…

““And MS-DOS, DOS, whatever, is still there.  I could care less about 16, 32 or 64 bit...it is there.  The back door is there and the crackers are still going through it.  End of story.”
1. The hacker would need to get through the firewall first. This is practically impossible.”

There’s still people out there that have no idea what a firewall is.  There are still people running XP SP1 because they heard SP2 will keep their programs from working.  A solution is only a solution if the person can implement it, or even realize it exists.

“2. The hacker would need administrator privileges to do anything harmful with MS-DOS. Assuming that you are even remotely computer-literate, you will not be running Windows with the administrator account and will have a strong password applied to it. Not only is getting access to the computer near impossible, but even if they get that far it is near impossible to gain administrator privileges.”

What’s your definition of “computer-literate”?  Mine is someone who can go online, check e-mail, web-surf and play games.  My grandparents can do these things (to my amazement, since they have trouble doing anything else).  They don’t know what a firewall is.  They’re still stuck on dial-up.  They run it with admin-like settings, and I wouldn’t dare try to get them to do otherwise because I’d get nothing but bitching that they’d have to input a password every time the comp went on standby ‘n blah blah blah...anyways, they’re computer-literate to me, and yet they don’t use strong passwords or use a non-admin account.  Please define your definition of “computer-literate” next time.

“Bull. Windows XP does NOT have BSODs, they restart themselves. Anything similar to a BSOD is from the computer’s BIOS which means that it is a hardware problem and can occur on any computer regardless of operating system.”

All I can say is..."The Hell?!” XP DOES still have the dreaded BSOD.  It’s happened twice on two different laptops (once on each to be clear).  Once on the older laptop after installing SP2.  It installed, rebooted, then came to the BSOD, then rebooted, BSOD, reboot...you understand.  The second time came on the new laptop, and I believe it to be a conflict between CA’s eTrust Internet Security Suite and Webroot’s Spy Sweeper.  Obviously the second time isn’t the fault of Windows, but the fact remains that the BSOD still exists...hell, I can never go into my school labs without seeing at least one computer stuck on the BSOD or constantly rebooting to it (the students break those things WAY too much...and all the comps ARE XP, in case you were wondering).  Anyways...I believe I’ve made the point.

“ My computer never freezes. Nor does my parents or sister’s. The only “lock ups” I experience are when I explicitly lock the computer using the Windows+L keyboard combination.”

Now, I’ve actually had more Macs lock up on me than Windows, but this was happening back in high-school where we were still using OS 8.  Now in the present, Windows has completely frozen on me 3 times (still counting times from Windows 98), Linux has yet to do it, and I couldn’t tell you how stable a Mac is since I’ve never used any version of OS X.  Anyways, the point...Windows crashes, but isn’t as crash-happy to me as it is to some people.

““Directory/Registry failures”
Never experienced this either”

If the person is talking about registry problems so bad the OS can’t function anymore, yeah, I’ve never had that happen.  However, uninstalling a program almost always leaves me with now-invalid registry entries.  That kind of “failure” happens all the time.

““besides installing bad hardware drivers”—and that only requires an upgrade installation, not a clean one. There is absolutely no reason to perform a clean installation of XP.”

Uhhhh...outside of spyware and virus infestations so horrid that it would take less time and effort to rebuild the hard drive.  And I’ve seen this while simply working in retail.  That’s what back-ups are for.  Just make sure to back-up BEFORE the problem >_>.

So there you have it.  I hate Microsoft as a dishonest company (And for all those complaining about the FUD being directed at Microsoft, Microsoft spends quite a bit of time spreading FUD about Linux, so stop the whining), I hate Microsoft software (Windows included) for their crappy security (IE had 70 holes from 2003 till now, nearly 30% remain unpatched), although I’m stuck with it until I can play my games on my Linux box, I enjoy learning Linux, and I’ll probably never willing touch a Mac because of the crap that happened in high school.  That’s my opinion, no matter how wrong I am.  Don’t like it, tough.

gameprix1 blathered:  “When has Microsoft EVER gone bankrupt?  (by the way, you all know Apple did in the ‘90’s and MS bailed them out).”

Is this guy a troll? Anyone who reads this site (or similar sites) on a regular basis knows the history of Apple, and it was never close to bankruptcy, either in the 90’s or at any other time.

At Apple’s lowest ebb - when they re-acquired Steve Jobs - they still had $3 Billion in the bank; yes, that’s $3 Billion, cash money. Part of the deal they made with Microsoft at the time is that M$ purchase $150 million of non-voting stock - but this wasn’t to bail out Apple - this was to settle the ongoing lawsuit, something about finding stolen MacOS code embedded in key areas of Windows, if I recall. In addition, they had to hang onto the stock for a minimum number of years, and continue to develop Office for Mac. M$ made a ton of $$ on that deal, actually, so it wasn’t anything charitable on Bill of Borg’s part. And M$ has recently committed to continue developing Office for Mac for another 5 years, at least. Turns out Apple users are M$ customers, too, fancy that.

In addition, I’d like to remind certain folks that Steve pulled the plug on cloning because the goal - expanding MacOS market share - wasn’t happening. Overall market share was still dropping, and the “other Steve” was simply taking Apple’s customers away. Some of that $3 billion bankroll was used to buy out Power Computing, including its core brain trust and build-to-order facility. It was concluded that cloning in that context was too little too late. But OS X and Intel could one day change that.

At home, we’re generally a Mac household, as it’s more stable and generally safer, particularly for my wife, who just wants to point and click and have done with it. We have a cheap XP box handy for those times when my spouse, the home-improvement junkie, wants to surf a site that insists on using pee-cee-only CaptiveX controls, which seems to plague the majority of design-it-yourself home improvement websites. We just agree that we won’t send any personal/financial information out via the pee-cee. (Plus, I use it to play Myst: Uru, the only game in the series that’s Windoze only)

At work, I support 100+ machines in a Mac-dominant publishing environment. I have a G5 tower, an XServe, and three XP/SP2 Gateways. Two of them run special services - they’re behind the firewall, and run fine, 24/7 - I find I can generally rely on an XP box, so long as it’s only asked to do one or two things over and over.

But I still look forward to the day when I can empower users by moving them to OS X without having to change out their hardware, PLUS allow them to keep leveraging their Win-apps investment.

hey! only three more blogs till 100 total
2 now..

congragulations! this blog now has 100 comments (iknow, on #98, I ment comments.

Andreco, your first paragraph...they already do (http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/alliances/en/linux?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz).

As for your second paragraph,
Some how i think you had to much sugar this morning.  I really don’t see that happening in the next 10 yrs.  What i do see happening is OSX and Linux gaining marketshare, but they will need to do some major changes to surpass Windows.  The biggest boost for OSX to gain market share, is to easily be installed on the majority of hardware, not just Apple hardware.  Not every has Mac hardware and not everyone needs Mac hardware.  I don’t see Apple getting driver support like Windows has.  Linux would have to support much more hardware, software, and become less text based.  Majority of people can’t intuitively use Linux.  Your prediction is more like fantasy.

A year later and this blog entry looks very naive at best. Actually it reads like just so much more empty Microsoft sniping. Is the next article about George W. Bush? lol

Microsoft saved Apple’s hide. Never forget that.

As for people like tao51nyc making comments such as, “But this wasn’t to bail out Apple - this was to settle the ongoing lawsuit, something about finding stolen MacOS code embedded in key areas of Windows, if I recall.” Well, note the lack of a single source and the total departure from reality as the rest of the free world understands it.

There is a place in the world for Apple. Clearly. Just like there’s a place in the world for Fisher Price. Go Apple!