Hang On...Why Am I Still Using Windows?

[JMaguire]

Sometimes, we all have to ask ourselves the tough questions, as in this:

"Hang On...Why Am I Still Using Windows?"

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/ent...le.php/3702541

"I’ve installed Windows so many times (no jokes, please) that I know what I’m doing. I know where to pick up drivers and have a pretty good idea as to what’s going to cause me grief and how to go about fixing the problems. I’m nowhere near as competent or confident when it comes to Linux or Mac."


Do you agree?

[JPnyc]

Well I can't say I fully agree because I've never reinstalled windows in my life. I ran 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, and XP Pro, and have never had to reinstall or do a format.

That said, it wouldn't be fair to say that I've never had a problem with Windows OS, but rather that I've never had many serious problems. I managed to keep a computer running fairly well with Windows 98 for eight years, while using Internet Explorer and having no firewall or antivirus loaded.

A combination of online scans, savvy Web surfing habits, and judicious settings manipulation in IE, were all that was required. As the computer aged and struggled more to meet the demands of the newer resource heavy software, I merely kept disabling services that ran at startup to free up resources. Eventually I think I had only four things running at startup.

[ua549]

Right on the mark! Those comments mirror much of my own experience and reasoning for staying away from Linux and OSX. Actually I stay away from all open source software because of the lack of reliable support.

I moved from Windows 3.x directly to NT so I have no experience with Windows 9.x.
I've run various versions of BSD and Unix since the 1970's. I consider myself a novice with *nix despite more than 30 years experience. I know only enough to get the job done.

Virtually every *nix system I've encountered has a very steep learning curve. While it may be easy to use an installer, when something goes wrong there is nothing as simple as the Windows registry that contains the operating parameters of the OS and all of the installed applications. In *nix the files are scattered everywhere and there is no standard naming convention to find them.

In a similar fashion Windows has a learning curve to identify and repair problems, but it is not very steep. I've never had to reinstall a Windows OS to fix a software caused problem. Actually with good backups, there is never a need to reinstall any operating system. IMO Microsoft is their own worst enemy because they promote a turnkey approach for users rather than learning their products.

The bottom line is that for the business desktop, Windows/Office is the standard for interoperability. IMO there are more servers running some variant of *nix than Windows. Mainframes such as the Unisys ES7000 are running *nix as well as Windows concurrently.

Personally, at home I have several systems running FreeBSD, Windows 2003 and Windows Vista along with applications such as IIS, Exchange 2003, Office 2007, IE and Firefox.

[racerzero]

I think you forgot to state the obivious. Industry specific software. I wasted a lot of time on support for software for Windows but they eventually got resolved because number of Windows users who had the same problem I did. I can imagine the amount I've have to pay in support for a minimially supported platform.

[JPnyc]

Another excellent point. Whether we like it or not (and sometimes I really don't) it's a Windows world folks. I know there are all kinds of alternatives to Windows programs for alternate OS, but the simple fact is I don't like any of them as well as the originals.