Posts by t20racerman 32 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jan 2012
But you, and millions of you "I'll-move-to-Linux-if-this-s**t-continues" guys never do, do you? You just come on here claiming you are tempted and will do so, maybe, possibly, soon etc........
Sorry, don't believe you. Just do it and stop prattling on with idle threats.
(NB Before the down votes start - I've been using Linux as my main operating system (>95% of the time) since 2007. Only boot Windows for Photoshop as I prefer it to Gimp)
I moved my elderly parents from XP to Mint over a year ago. The number of IT support phone calls I have received from them has dropped massively and they are very happy with their 'new' computer. If you don't need PhotoShop and other Win specific programs, Linux Mint is a superb choice.
My elderly parents (78 & 74 at the time, now 4 years older) had used XP successfully for a few years and had become quite proficient as long as I kept helping them. However, their PC died and new PCs had the horrible Win 8 on, or if I searched around, Win 7. My parent's do struggle with any change, and as they have got older, they find IT things increasingly difficult.
I decided to renovate an old PC and give it them with Linux Mint installed - set up as best as I could to look roughly the same as their old XP computer. It was a revelation. It took then very little time to get used to it and the many (oh so many...) phone calls I used to get asking me what various pop-ups or nag screens or malware notices were, decreased rapidly. It has been the best thing I did for them and now I only get very few phone calls asking me for help.
They didn't even realise that they didn't have Microsoft Office on their Computer - My Mum got quite cross with me when I explained that LibreOffice was NOT Microsoft Office - "Yes it is" she said - "I do all my letters on it"
At work we still have the 'replace every desktop' every 2/3 years mentality even though they sit on a network, work perfectly, and will continue to do so for years.
I asked for, and was given, 'old' PCs and a laptop (wiped HDD) and upgraded my own PC with those. The laptop is an old Celeron one that now runs nice on Mint, for basic stuff, and my main PC is a very nice box that was higher spec for a graphics user, and I upgraded the RAM, put a better video card in and run the excellent PCLinuxOS on that - and it is superb.
As the family nerd (ie free IT consultant) I'm moving Windows XP users over to Mint to make their PCs faster and more secure. Only those who insist it HAS to run MS Office have a problem... and they are on their own as far as THIS unpaid IT guy goes.
"Refusing to serve your site to someone using a specific browser that you haven't tested for?
Why yes, that seems like a sensible way to behave."
Absoutely - it is called Personal Choice. We aren't all determined to please everyone all the time (unless forced to as a web designer), sometimes its nice to please yourself and if people don't want to use something appropriate to see you site, fair enough - they have a choice too!
I would drop the b****y BBC at the first opportunity. Biased, PC, mostly rubbish output that mirrors commercial channels.
If you disagree with my assessment of the BBC, that's great, that's choice - ie something we don't currently have with the licensing system that FORCES me to pay the BBC so that I can watch Sky Sports and Sky News.
You want it? You pay? I don't want it but I still have to pay! I like the Daily Telegraph, but that shouldn't mean everyone has to buy a bl***y copy if they fancy reading another paper or a magazine.
People also need to get over Windows 8 - used it since the beginning, works great, and I like it. People don't like change, but change comes all the same, don't all be a load of King Cnuts.
You are EXACTLY the kind of customer Microsoft wants - ie one who takes any sh**e thrown at them, claims its great and then insults everyone else who doesn't agree.
I'm sure you like your Surface, and I'm pleased for you, but the VAST majority of consumers don't like the Surface and hate Windows 8. We may well be 'wrong' in your eyes - and in Microsofts too - but frankly who cares what you or Microsoft think? Microsoft are hemorrhaging PC sales, customer goodwill, and shareholders money. That is the only real 'opinion' that matters.
"I've had several non-tech people profess to me that Win8 is a turkey, and I've asked if they've used it, the answer is always "No, but that's what everyone on the Internet is saying."
The thing you are forgetting is that it us IT techies who get repeated phone calls, problems to fix, hassle etc when customers/friends/family buy some IT that they haven't a clue how to work. I for one tell EVERYONE who asks me, not to touch Windows 8 with a barge pole. The reason is simple - I'll be the stupid idiot having to do all the retraining so that people can use their PC again! If you are a techie and love Win8, then that is great and you can do all the fixes yourself that make it useable. However, if you are in the position where you know how much grief you personally are going to get from Win 8 users, you can only advise - please don't buy that.
I'm not in IT support as a full-time job, so can tell the many, many people who ask me about it that I for one will NOT give any help, advice or fixes to a Windows 8 machine they buy. If they want one - then set it up and/or fix it yourself. I wouldn't touch people's Vista machines for the same reasons - its not my job to fix microsoft's f*** ups. (Happy to work on Win XP, 7, Mac or Linux)
For those working in IT support, with hundreds of IT illiterate people to support - what would you do about advising Windows 8 or not to company bosses? Simple really - get out that long bargepole......
I gave up Windows in about 2007 having dabbled with Linux for a few years before that. I used to 'Dual Boot' between the two but after a while I found I was running Linux almost exclusvely, rarely booting into windows. As Head of Physics in a busy College, I don't have time for playing with IT or putting my preference for Linux first - I just want to use a computer effectively and efficiently to do what I need to do.
As such, I need reliability, simplicity, and no hogging of resources, viruses etc. No, I'm not claiming Linux is 'perfect' but purely on useability, it is my OS of choice as it works so well, without the problems long time Windows users are used to. I want my OS to enable me to work, and play, with ease - not be a means into itself. Incidentally, if you boot up a PC just to admire the OS and what it does (or doesn't in the case of Windows 8) then might I suggest you go out a little more....
Although undoubtedly Windows 8 has been a failure in the marketplace (plummeting PC sales since its release shows this, as clearly explained above by others) the market place has changed for good, just at around the same time that Microsoft F'ed up with W8. I'm the typical poster here - IT nerd and the one everyone I know goes to to have PCs fixed and advice about new computers. I always analyse carefully what people actually want - not what they THINK they want - and I can honestly say I've not recommended they buy a PC for a couple of years now. In most cases an old PC could be upgraded cheaply to do what they needed, and then it used to be that a notebook could be bought for portable use. However, this has now changed and, partly because of the nightmare of Windows 7 Starter edition, but mostly because Tablets are just SO good, everyone I have advised recently has bought a Tablet instead. Very few home users need a desktop PC for anything other than office stuff and photos. Clearly the real geek needs more than that, but I'm talking 'normal' users here.
Personally I needed more than a tablet to use on the go recently and rather than buy a laptop, I got an old one that work was throwing out, put Linux Mint on it and use that when my tablet or PC aren't the best options. My PC too is an old throwout, upgraded by myself. It runs linux as the main OS but I can dual boot to XP if I need iTunes (hate it!) or Photoshop, which I can't get to run under Wine, sadly. I don't give a rat's arse about XP not being supported soon as a rarely boot up into it, and have very little chance of it getting infected by anything.
So, will I ever pay the Microsoft Tax again? No! As for friends and family, I think very rarey either. It isn't all Windows 8's fault by a long chalk, but coming out with that rubbish at this particular moment in time has been a real disaster for Microsoft and its hardware partners.
I moved to PCLinuxOS about 5-6 years ago and have never looked back. Love it. Use it for everything. I still try different distros regularly though on other machines and just loaded Mint 14 Mate on an old basic laptop.... and it flies!
Meanwhile, back to the topic... I teach Physics in an Independent school and am known as a techy geek (I run Computer Geek club...). Because of this I have seen first hand that the children I meet are already very, very anti Windows 8. One guy has it on his new laptop and the others laugh at him! This is actually quite important, as it shows that even youngsters hate the sh**e that is Win8. They are never going to warm to it.
Similarly, in my job, I probably see 100+ mobile phones a day clutched in the hands of our pupils... and I've never yet seen ONE Windows phone. This isn't me being a Windows hater, it is just the truth. If I see a new phone I haven't seen before I ask to play on it to see what its like, and have actually been looking for a Winphone8 so that one of the kids could show me what its strengths are. I'm still looking. Seems the kids of today laugh at Windows8 on a laptop, and won't buy Winphones either.
This signifies trouble ahead for Microsoft.
Good.
So as you wrote I think that without a very big marketing push, and huge financial incentives for salesmen, it will be very hard for the WP ecosystem to grow, despite outstanding products availability, and despite perfectly competitive prices.
err... correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Microsoft financed a HUGE and unprecedented marketing push for Windows phones that has so far cost them hundreds of millions of pounds??
... and they stay hooked for life. :-(
I'm a Physics teacher in the UK and despair of the "All computers and Software are made by Microsoft" approach in FAR too many schools. OOo or Libre Office, Firefox, Chrome etc are all BANNED from being used in my school as 'dangerous' to the network'! Open Source is deemed as virus riddled insecure stuff and is all banned... although we use Java!!!
Actually, this ius rubbish. it isn't a 'money-needed-from-goverment' problem - it is a huge, and possibly insurmountable Physics problem. Stephen Hawking described fusion power (in 1997) as being "the fuel of the future - and it probably always will be".
We all know E=mc^2 tells us that matter is stored energy (and in HUGE amounts) but it isn't easy to find a way to harness this energy. It is NOT politics, or enviromentalism, or Greens, or petro-chemical lobbies that is preventing fusion from working in power stations - it is Physics and technology requirements that possibly can't ever be met at a reasonable cost.
"I don't understand what people wanted from Win 8? Did you expect MS to just make a faster version of Win 7? Are there any changes that you would have tolerated, because it doesn't feel like there are."
What strikes me about this comment is that I don't really expect a new bells and whistles OS that changes the way I work, what I want is to run the programs I want, and then to use them without the OS hogging resources and becoming virus and malware infested. An OS is supposed to enable your computer to run things, it should NOT be an end in itself. Microsoft seem to have forgotten this with Windows 8, making the user change to fit the new OS! They are desperately trying to make Windows the reason we should run out and buy/upgrade a PC, when in actually fact the OS should be there to enable you to USE your computer productively.
Wrong way around!
"Did the big nasty Auntie ask you to consider an alternate point of view?"
No, big nastie Auntie asks me to pay them £142 every year, with threat of imprisonment if I don't, if I want to watch Motorbike racing on Eurosport.
Why should I have to pay? Because you personally like it maybe, but want me and others to fund it for you?
Well how about making it illegal to buy the Guardian unless you buy a Daily Mail first? Does that sound a sensible policy? It is about as sensible as enforced publc funding for the BBC
Similar story here. I was in John Lewis' electrical dept, which is always jam-packed, and I looked at the Windows 8 laptops, as I hadn't yet played with one. It flummoxed me and after about 5 mins of trying to work out what the hell I had to do to get to stuff I recognised, I gave up. Yes, that irrelevant, and I'm sure with time I'd have mastered it, but what WAS interesting, was how many people tried to use one too and gave up. One couple were in there to buy a laptop, and after the salesman introduced them to Win 8 and showed them around (I was watching for tips!), the chap asked why he had to keep doing things in an awkward way and how could he just 'get on the desktop to do some work'. The salesman tried to explain how he had the 'choice' between two environments, but the guy wasn't impressed and walked off saying to his wife he'd try and get a 'proper Windows laptop' elsewhere.
Most of the people who tried to use one to see how it worked, gave up too.
Yes, vote me down if you must as "any idiot could learn Win 8 in no time", but Jo Public were NOT impressed at the shop I was in (and I was in there a long while as the missus was looking at shoes, handbags and christmas decorations....)
Both Dell (who I had a trade account with) and HP refused pointblank to sell me the laptop I wanted WITHOUT Windows pre-installed. I hate Windows and only use Linux on my own computers, but to buy hardware, from a hardware manufacturer, I had to pay Microsoft money for I product I hate and detest. Dell agreed to close my business account rather than sell me the laptop I wanted.
That my friend is why I hate Microsoft so much - they have a huge monopoly, abuse it, make crap products, and bully OEMs into refusing to sell computers without Windows pre-installed. I hope they collapse when Windows 8 and their shit phones fail.
I hate and detest the ribbon. I was screaming at my PC in frustration just today trying to do something on it. OK' I'm a Linux user at home, and only use Libre Office (and before that OpenOffice) for every document or spreadsheet I produce (including at work), but occasionally I have to use Office at work.... and despite this happening fairly often I just can't 'get' the ribbon interface. I hate it so much... it isn't intuitive, I can't find stuff and I'm not prepared to spend hours and hours teaching myself where things are. I have tried, but I just bloody hate it. Vote me down if you must for not being 'techie' enough, or too stupid to cope, but never before have I failed to come to terms with using a program menu despite hours and hours of use. Is it my fault that nothing else I've ever come across has caused me so much grief? Maybe, but Photoshop is nursery school stuff compared to that bloody ribbon in Office.
I'm all for choice, and if it suits you personally, fine, but don't slag those off who just don't get it (and no, please don't give me pages of advice on what I'm doing wrong - IT is supposed to make things easier for the user, not expect him/her to completely change what they normally do to accomplish something they used to do easily)
Spot on.
I'm reading this post on my old Compaq laptop, bought in 2004. I replaced the hard drive a few years back when I installed Linux (PCLinuxOS rocks!) and the hardware is still coping fine with the latest PCLinuxOS 2012 version. Yup, a bit slow at times if running several things at once, and the mouse pad is erratic, but why upgrade? I bought a Xoom tablet for playing with, and found that after that, I rarely used my laptop unless I had some serious work to do. Similarly I recently bought a Galaxy S111 phone, and find that I now use that for almost everything as it is SO good for internet use and my Xoom now spends days without being booted up.....
At work I have to use the supplied PCs, and at home I have a dual booting desktop that runs PCLinuxOS, but also Windows if I want to use photoshop. That Desktop was a 'scrap' one thrown away at work! I fitted 3G of RAM and a decent graphics card and it now does everything I could ever want on it, including heavy duty photoshop work.
None of the hadware in my house, other than my phone and tablet, are newer than 5 years old. All work superbly. The only problem I've ever found with old hardware is that if it runs Windows which gets horrendously slow and bloated after a few years. Wipe that and use Linux and the hardware suddenly seems brand new again.
The need for continual hardware upgrade "to keep up" has passed. Now, the limiting factor seems to be broadband speed, and that isn't anything to do with either the OS or the hardware. The only exception is gaming - and if you are into gaming, buy a gaming console!
Sure its nice (some will say, I don't, but hey, we all like different things), but realistically it is going to have to blow the socks of the opposition to wrestle out a decent market share... and I just can't see it doing that.
Alternatively, Microsoft will have to throw billions at the market, undercutting everyone else, and muscle in that way which it might well have to, as no way will they want this to fail.
You can buy SOME laptops without Windows, but not the ones you actualy want to buy. I had a business account with Dell and had bought several laptops recently with Windows on for work. I then tried to buy the same laptop WITHOUT windows pre-installed as I'm a Linux user at home and don't like Windows. Dell refused point blank. Their rep offered me ONE choice of low spec high cost laptop and said that they would not sell me any other without Windows on. I took it up the management chain and still got no where. I asked them to sell me one without a HDD then - again this was refused. There reason was that I might 'pirate' Windows if I bought a laptop without an O/S preinstalled! Is this really THEIR concern?
In the end, I said either sell me one, or close my account. The account is now closed.
Next I tried HP - exactly the same result.
What kind of corrupt world are we in when a computer MANUFACTURER won't sell you a computer unles you buy a load of pre-installed software that you have no use for and will never use?
I have the records of my emails and online converstaions to back this up.
"pah, if you're such a techhead, then why did you go and buy prefab machines? any IT person worth his salt will build their own."
I normally do, but if you read carefully you would see I wanted a specific laptop. Laptops are almost impossible to build yourself from scratch.
Re pre:loaded Windows.
It is called customer choice. I should not be forced to buy one companies product, when I have no intention of ever using it. If you like Windows so much, that is fine, but would you like to be forced to buy a spare Mac OS every time you wanted a new Windows computer?
As a long time IT nut, I've grown to hate Microsoft and everything it does. Too long spent fixing peoples insecure computers, trying to speed them up, removing junk, registry problems etc etc. Sick of BSoDs, sick of needing to run AV, sick of re-installs taking HOURS, sick of chasing down drivers after a fresh install, sick of buying new PCs full of Junk ware that takes hours to remove before the PC is as it should be..
I use Linux myself, and it is almost impossible to buy a computer WITHOUT bl***y Windows on it pre-installed, as manufacturers refuse point blank to sell you one without. I had a small business account with Dell that I closed when they refused to sell me a laptop I wanted unless I had Windows on it - and Dell are a Hardware company FFS! HP did the same. What kind of stranglehold does M$ have when a computer company refuses to sell you a computer without M$ installed? Can you imagine Sony refusing to sell you a TV unless you paid up front for a SkyTZ subscription too? Imagine buying a TV that you had to buy AV for in case you went to the 'wrong' channel!
I work as a teacher, and M$ products are rammed down pupils throats. IT 'qualifications' mean learning how to use 'M$ Office' and no concept of alternative Office programs, browsers or OS are given - it is M$ being force fed to the next generation.
When Linux netbooks appeared, M$ were worried and killed the market dead by re-releasing XP and "encouraging" hardware manufacturers to sell XP ones only. (At my local PC World I was offered Norton Anti-virus as an "essential" when buying a Linux netbook!!)
With the Linux netbook market killed off Microsoft sat back on its Laurels, but didn't see what was going to hit them when tablets came out, and when Android took off in the phone market. All of sudden they get desperate and fly executives into Nokia to try to buy the phone market with their junk products. If M$ EVER get a hold on the phone/tablet market they will try to dominate everything and get back to the market abusing monopoly position they have on the desktop.
Personally, I don't care whether WinPho is any good or not (it isn't though!), I want Microsoft OUT of this market before they kill it dead. The future with them becoming dominant is too dreadful to behold.
</rant>
Actually, I tried very hard to buy a laptop without Windows on it. I had a small business account with Dell and had bought some good laptops from them in the past but wanted one high spec one that they sold, but without Windows as I had no intention of using it (I'm a PCLinuxOS user). Dell refused point blank. I told them I'd close my account if they wouldn't, and eventually did so. Dell absolutely refused to sell me the hardware I wanted if I didn't pay the Microsoft tax.
I contacted HP, same story.
Yes there are some manufacturers out there who will sell you a laptop without Windows, but not many and so your choice of hardware is very limited. Is this what you would call a level playing field?
If Microsoft ever get dominant in the phone market (don't bet on it!!) expect the same strong-arm monopoly tactics. I personally will NEVER buy anything ever again that Microsoft are involved with.
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