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Windows Vs Other Operarting Systems

 
Rancher
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Originally posted by Doug Slattery:
after they learned Unix, they thought it was what an OS should be. May I be so bold to say that it is the OS for real men.



Clearly some folks haven't used Tenex.

Kernigan and Ritchie said that they built Unix because the boss would not buy them a PDP-10.

Unix has some newer and great ideas, but it was named as a pun on Multics and has a lot of Tenex in it.

Real men toggle in programs using console switches, and their code swaps to high speed paper tape.
 
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Originally posted by Pat Farrell:
Real men toggle in programs using console switches, and their code swaps to high speed paper tape.


Oh, oh, oh, then I used to be a real man!!! Now I'm just a wimp along with all the other GUI users!

Do I get extra man points for having written a paper tape driver for a PDP-11?
 
Bear Bibeault
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Originally posted by Doug Slattery:
It seems to be getting a little warm in here.


Naw, the debate has gotten spirited, but no flame wars. Trust me, if that happens a staffer will make this thread disappear faster than shrimp cocktail at a buffet!
 
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I don't think Microsoft played any major role in shaping of Internet revolution; In-fact the Microsoft think tank were caught in the wrong foot when the Internet bomb exploded from nowhere.

The Microsoft were very slow to react and missed the boat, which was taken over by Sun Java and Netscape like companies.


The only area where Microsoft has scored points is in Operating System arena where they happen to be in the right place at the right time.

Fact is Microsoft is still losing ground because any technology they release for Internet has a binding to their operating system, that is a biggest draw-back where consumer is asked to adopt all or nothing,
 
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Well, when people talk about how XYZ OS is better than Windows and all, they forget to qualify "better". For examples, Linux is better than Windows, on price paid upfront. Mac OS in better than Window, on user experience. OS/2 was better than Windows, on I don't know, technology?. Whatever.

Windows in better than all the others OSs, in terms of market penetration. It captured what majority of people wanted. It got the right combination of price, quality, ease of use, business practices, and 10 others that I don't know. It is possible that windows in not the best in any of these factors. But it is the best in terms of the combination of all factors. The end result proves it.
 
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fred

MS has been know to use it's market share to force retail outlets to install windows, and thus charge the customers for it. Go into a big box store and TRY to buy a PC WITHOUT windows.



MS has also been known to push the competition aside. For a while, when you bought a PC, Microsoft messenger came pre-installed. Microsoft forced other IM services, such as Yahoo's or AOL's, to pay Microsoft a FEE to have their IM client pre-installed on the desktop



Completely agree , but just one question isnt that how buisness is.. I mean business is monopolistic
Now I know MS was not all ethical in the way it tried to get rid of competetions but are the other companies really being ethical...I dont think so

Ann Basso

Windows in better than all the others OSs, in terms of market penetration. It captured what majority of people wanted


true windows may not be an OS of choice for say a graduate in Comp Science , but does the non-technical person really care about all that... Windows offered what the masses wanted

[ June 06, 2008: Message edited by: abhishek pendkay ]
[ June 06, 2008: Message edited by: abhishek pendkay ]
 
Rancher
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Originally posted by Ann Basso:
Windows in better than all the others OSs, in terms of market penetration. It captured what majority of people wanted. It got the right combination of price, quality, ease of use, business practices, and 10 others that I don't know. It is possible that windows in not the best in any of these factors. But it is the best in terms of the combination of all factors. The end result proves it.


As was pointed out before, quantity proves very little about quality. It also proves very little about what people wanted to do; it only shows what people did do. And judging by what most Windows users one talks to say about it, it's pretty clear that what they ended up with is not what they wanted, for the most part. Its latest incarnation -Vista- is a rolling trainwreck that just about everybody who has a choice steers clear of.
 
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They say when you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear satanic messages ..... but that's nothing, if you play it forward it will install Windows.
 
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I think this thread looks the fastest growing thread like MicroSoft.
 
Ann Basso
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Originally posted by Ulf Dittmer:

As was pointed out before, quantity proves very little about quality. It also proves very little about what people wanted to do; it only shows what people did do. And judging by what most Windows users one talks to say about it, it's pretty clear that what they ended up with is not what they wanted, for the most part. Its latest incarnation -Vista- is a rolling trainwreck that just about everybody who has a choice steers clear of.



Sure. Qualitywise, depending on how you define it, there may be better options. Yet, the fact remains that PC makers chose a package that maximized their profits. An inherent requirement of maximizing profits is to maximize sales, which in turn depends on end users preference. Options were available when windows first came out and still it was the picked up. So obviously, they did something right. They were at the right place at the right time.

Quality is not a very narrow thing. Only defects per lines of code is not quality. Further, quality has no meaning without the associated price. So everything has to be taken into account. And when you take everything into account, windows is the clear winner. Calling an OS "better" or "worse" than another OS, without specifying the aspect, is childish at best.
 
Ulf Dittmer
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Originally posted by Ann Basso:
So obviously, they did something right. They were at the right place at the right time.


Agreed. And what they did to hamper competing products like GEM, DR DOS and OS/2 once they got there has been well documented in various lawsuits.

Calling an OS "better" or "worse" than another OS, without specifying the aspect, is childish at best.


Correct. Which is precisely what you did in your earlier post:

But it is the best in terms of the combination of all factors.


Or would you say that "A is better than B" means something different than "A is better than B when all factors are considered"?
[ June 06, 2008: Message edited by: Ulf Dittmer ]
 
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Originally posted by Ulf Dittmer:

Or would you say that "A is better than B" means something different than "A is better than B when all factors are considered"?

[ June 06, 2008: Message edited by: Ulf Dittmer ]



To me the above two statements are different, but then its IMHO.
 
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Y'all remember Bill Gates' book "The Road Ahead"? It came out in 1994. The first edition did not mention the Internet. They added a chapter on the Tubes in subsequent printings. How's that for "visionary?"
 
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[Pat Farrell:]Clearly some folks haven't used Tenex.
This is correct,.. I wanted to google the term yesterday but had several posts I was doing some good on and would rather get some cites from you. The historical record depends on who saved what material where and availability of musea for preservation. Not meaning to be a Glory Hound or anything, I think some observations from your position may serve Historical Accuracy.

Kernigan and Ritchie said that they built Unix because the boss would not buy them a PDP-10.


Was that a PHB or a budgetary meeting?

Unix has some newer and great ideas, but it was named as a pun on Multics and has a lot of Tenex in it.


Well it sounds like what Tenex did was make the page demand transparent, leaving an addressable space for the programmer that allowed effort to be focused on the application of programming work to the problem domain rather than repetitive os chores.

Real men toggle in programs using console switches, and their code swaps to high speed paper tape.


Wow, you have high-speed paper tape? No more ears on hot steel rails, no more WU splices on bare #6 - ?
 
Ann Basso
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Originally posted by Ulf Dittmer:

Correct. Which is precisely what you did in your earlier post


You are taking the sentence out of context. What I said was, "It got the right combination of price, quality, ease of use, business practices, and 10 others that I don't know. It is possible that windows in not the best in any of these factors. But it is the best in terms of the combination of all factors. The end result proves it. "

So basically, I was talking about the factors that I mentioned and some others that I do not know about. But these factors are neither infinite and not non-deterministic. These are the factors which have made windows widespread. So what you mean by "all" is not what I meant by "all". So does that mean windows is better than xyz? I don't think this question makes sense.
 
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google 'windows sucks' results: 504,000 pages
google 'OS X sucks' results 606,000 pages


considering the tiny tiny % of people using a Mac the above stats are frightening to say the least.
 
Bear Bibeault
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Are you seriously trying to contend that that's a meaningful statistic? Are you really surprised that a search term containing a single 'x' yields a large result set?
 
Arvind Mahendra
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Originally posted by Bear Bibeault:
Are you seriously trying to contend that that's a meaningful statistic? Are you really surprised that a search term containing a single 'x' yields a large result set?



Youre right one shouldn't be surprised at the number of people who think other OSs suck that much. I wasn't either. those page hits are a great way to get a sense of the perceptions out there but Better still are actual usage statistics and Windows stands somewhere around ohhhhhh I don't know 80 % despite cut throat competition from apparently better products out there.

What I'm more surprised that the 2 people I know who have actually used Macs and other Os's and are so vocal about defending it are blogging about how badly it sucks when they go home.

I dont want to bad mouth Apple here, but you do realise that had MS not bought a percentage of the company and pumped in much needed $$ it might have gone under by now?
 
Pat Farrell
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Originally posted by Arvind Birla:you do realise that had MS not bought a percentage of the company and pumped in much needed $$ it might have gone under by now?



Again, why did M$ do that? out of the goodness of their heart? Not bloody likely.

They did it because with Apple, they could claim that there was competition, and thus avoid being forced to split. Without Apple, no matter how sick and near death, they could claim that they were just businessmen.

Microsoft needed Apple to exist. So they made it happen.

And as folks have said upthread, before OS-X, Apple was in sorry, sorry shape.
 
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Quantity doesn't mean superiority. However, the penetration of Windows did mean a certain degree of interoperability. I think the fact that "everyone was on Windows" in the early 90's was probably a good thing for early interoperability. We're ready for something new now, but I think it had value.

Personally, I always enjoy a good "Apple vs. MS" flame war. Fun to sit on the sides and watch the two teams go at it.
 
Ulf Dittmer
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Originally posted by Arvind Birla:
you do realise that had MS not bought a percentage of the company and pumped in much needed $$ it might have gone under by now?


Better get your facts straight. Microsoft invested $150m at a time when Apple had $5b in the bank. The money was not needed at all.

What was useful was the simultaneous commitment by Microsoft to keep developing Office for the Mac. Had they stopped developing that, Apple might indeed have gone under. Which would not at all have been a useful outcome for Microsoft, given all their antitrust problems at the time.
[ June 06, 2008: Message edited by: Ulf Dittmer ]
 
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Originally posted by Ann Basso:
... Windows in better than all the others OSs, in terms of market penetration. It captured what majority of people wanted. It got the right combination of price, quality, ease of use, business practices, and 10 others that I don't know. It is possible that windows in not the best in any of these factors. But it is the best in terms of the combination of all factors. The end result proves it.


I think the only thing volume "proves" is Microsoft's marketing savvy (regardless of whether it's ethical or legal) and their fortuitous positioning (being at the right place at the right time). Sure, we can lump in all those other factors and say that MS has achieved a winning "combination." But that's grossly misleading, because it says nothing about how those factors are weighted. Some of the factors might have a weight close to zero. If Microsoft's success is attributable to, say, 95% marketing and only 5% features, then the "end result" isn't really telling us anything about their product.

In the end, it's a McDonald's argument: Billions served is "proof" McDonald's has developed a winning combination of factors, including nutrition, taste, environmentally friendly packaging, educational TV commercials... We could even conclude that they've positioned their rest rooms in the optimal location with respect to the condiment counter.
 
Nicholas Jordan
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Originally posted by marc weber:
...We could even conclude that they've positioned their rest rooms in the optimal location with respect to the condiment counter.



It probably proves that they, like you, are Masters of the Subtle. Like the comparison of Mesquite as a grilling fuel when stirred by a Grinning Fool.

( vis-a-vis stick in the mud stirring )
 
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I think the only thing volume "proves" is Microsoft's marketing savvy (regardless of whether it's ethical or legal) and their fortuitous positioning (being at the right place at the right time).



Do you mean to say its very difficult for some one to beat microsoft in their marketing strategy ? and bring up their own flawed or flawless product ? i still believe the market is open for every one
 
marc weber
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Originally posted by Nicholas Jordan:
...It probably proves that they, like you, are Masters of the Subtle...


Probably too subtle at times, which tends to get me into trouble.
 
Ulf Dittmer
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Originally posted by marc weber:

Probably too subtle at times, which tends to get me into trouble.


I like your style - keep it up!
 
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Originally posted by Ann Basso:
You are taking the sentence out of context. What I said was, "It got the right combination of price, quality, ease of use, business practices, and 10 others that I don't know. It is possible that windows in not the best in any of these factors. But it is the best in terms of the combination of all factors. The end result proves it. "

So basically, I was talking about the factors that I mentioned and some others that I do not know about. But these factors are neither infinite and not non-deterministic. These are the factors which have made windows widespread. So what you mean by "all" is not what I meant by "all". So does that mean windows is better than xyz? I don't think this question makes sense.


The only reason why Windows is so widespread is because Bill Gates is such a cunning business man. It doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the operating system itself. And certainly not with the price-quality ratio...

The ease of use of Windows is not better than the ease of use of for example Mac OS X. It's just that the whole world is used to Windows, and when you use a different OS for the first time you don't realize that Windows was just as difficult and confusing the first time you used it - and then you think instead that Windows is really easy, and that other OS isn't.

How can you say that the success of Windows is because of 10 other, unknown, vague factors? If you don't have any idea what those factors are, then how do you get to a conclusion like that?

Here's a fun story, that shows that not all manufacturers agree that Windows is the best OS for their systems: Acer bets big on Linux - Vendor shifts towards open source 'because of Microsoft'
 
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Wow, this is fun. But here is the verdict. Windows wins.

Windows wins because:

1) It is easier to use: If you disagree, then you are doing nothing but "simply" disagreeing. You are in denial, and you will continue to hate Windows and god save you. I don't have the time to convince you.

For those you are ready to listen, I have a story.

I know a very small company who use Windows and I had this question for the founder: Why don't you use Linux and save money? He said, he would rather spend $150 than wasting the developers' time in figuring out some stupid thing (like trying to install a software).

And Windows definitely has a better way of installing software. Yes, I know that registry thing is a big crap but do you really think my grand mom has anything to do with regedt32.exe? (She doesn't even know that it exists. That's the problem for developers.)

In Windows, the installation is almost always Installer.exe -> Next -> Next -> Next -> Finish. NullSoft Installer System is a beauty.

I have seen developers struggling with Linux to find out where the apache installation has gone. There is this /usr/lib, there is /etc/, there is /var/log/, and there is this /usr/bin. And apache files are all over the place. In Windows you have "/Program Files/Your Software" and you find almost everything related to it there inside.

And there is only one Desktop Manager in Windows: the explorer. It has "Start -> Programs", a Desktop, and a Quick Launch. The idea is not very simple but consistent. Now think about the same for Linux. You have Gnome, KDE, XFCE. Every distribution does in its own way. And now, you have stuff like Beryl, Compiz Fusion, blah blah. I have lost track of it. I don't care, just give me a consistent UI damnit.

You know the problem? Choice. Simply too many. You can say the same for Windows but how many users do you think install a separate browser? For them, Internet ExploDer is the Internet.

Huh, Jamie Zawinski has problems with Linux: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001089.html


2) Cheaper than Mac: OK, Mac users claim that Mac has a better usability but come on guys, many people can't afford a Mac. I have never used or could afford a Mac. Windows' price strikes a right balance for people to buy.

3) It serves the majority: The majority here is client operating systems or desktop or whatever you call them. It is the OS used by the ordinary mortals. Sure, *nix wins in server market that's because the server market is targetted towards programmers and sys-admins. But even for application programmers, I guess Visual Studio is good and C# implemented many features before Java did. (When are we going to have partial classes?)

Linux can win:
- If they can offer a consistent UI
- If there is one distribution for desktops
- If it looks slighly better and renders the fonts well

That's all they need. Users don't understand security and they give a damn. They just want to write their document, play songs and watch movies. And one more question: why do you think Dell ships Windows (despite the extra cost) with their computers? Because they don't want to get stupid customer calls asking "How do I configure to connect to the Internet?". Because that's really not Dell's problem. They can at least say here: Contact Microsoft for Operating System related issues. But for Linux, what are they going to say? Contact Linus Torvalds? He will probably answer them: Go away *luser*.

I like Linux because I am a programmer. I have to automate many stuff, I need grep, I need pipes. But for a user, these are not the important things.
[ June 07, 2008: Message edited by: Srikanth Raghavan ]
 
Ernest Friedman-Hill
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If your friend's developers "struggle to find out where things have gone in Linux" then I might humbly suggest that they're undeserving of the moniker.

In any event, at this point I am just so annoyed by this thread that I'm going to close it so I don't have to listen to the nonsense anymore.
 
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