Microsoft struggles in emerging markets

TalkBack 36 of 36:

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

win xp is hell to work with

I bought a faster bigger hard drive to upgrade to. After two and a half days of wasted time (factor that into your TCO), I finally gave up and reinstalled everything. Of course, I lost reissue of licence on some Windows Media files I'd purchased.

.....as a result, I'll never ever buy Windows Media downloads again. Move directory, lose a licence. What kind of cruddy dumb system can't track a licence when you move a file from one directory to another on the same machine. Lousy lousy system. I'm sticking with MP3s. (or Oggs).

Also, it beggars belief that upgrade of a hard drive can be so hard. I tried so many disk cloning programs to get my old programs and settings over. By comparison, windows 95/98 was easy, and Linux is so easy to move around it's ridiculous. The commands needed are no more complicated than those in the XP recovery console.

The pictures I've seen of bluedeath or whatever the successor to XP is called (forget the name) are promising eye-candy-wise, so following in OSX's footsteps, for now the GUI is awful (but better than Win2000s).

It is also very slow installing windows xp. Loading all those drivers, loading all the helper apps, clicking on millions of EULAs: how does the TCO take into account actually reading each of these EULA contracts. No-one can, you'd never get anything done. Theoretically I could sign over my house in one of these click-to-accept contract things. Ridiculous.

By comparison, I also installed Knoppix 3.3:
You boot this from the CD, and you have a fully working desktop in minutes. run the hard disk installation, and you have a totally functioning system in about 10 minutes: with KDE-Desktop, OpenOffice, a working TV program (and teletext), graphics editing programs, and so on and so forth. Completely amazing. And Knoppix runs noticably faster than Windows XP.

I've noticed a huge number of people becoming well versed with Linux recently. And it's not surprising. Man pages might be rather brief at times, but taken as a whole, the documentation in the man system is vastly in excess of anything you get with windows.

Let alone all the FAQs and so on. And they don't cost money, so you don't get the "priesthood" who shelled out for the top Microsoft Press textbooks.

In summary, I think Microsoft have made (1) XP far too hard to work with. Fine have activation, why then do you need to make it so awkward to move the system between drives.
(2) The media licence storage system is cruddy. Rip it up and start again. Any legit user using this system will get really really angry really quickly. So much for "DRM technology" - this badly implemented, do not expect any success.

Posted by: hipparchus2000   Posted on: 05/10/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Five Steps to Determine When to Virtualize YourServers VMware Server virtualization isn't just for big companies. Entry-level ... Download Now
• The True Costs of Virtual Server Solutions VMware In an economic environment that is repeatedly heralding the message "do ... Download Now
• Three Steps You Need to Know to Stop Data Loss Varonis Sensitive data exposed to misuse or loss... it is the stuff of nightmares ... Download Now