Micro$haft

[Glaucus]

What has the warm, cuddly penguin ever done to you?

pain to install, hard to setup and generally a pain in the backside, doesn't run games.

Although it is getting better all the time.

 

[Frank_Rizzo]

Some good replies here people. Give me a bit of time to try and respond to each in turn.

What I will say now though is that this place is clearly pro-Micro$haft (I realise now I can still say this, even if I look immature. But I'd rather be seen to be a immature than be totalitarianised ) and that it is not the done thing to speak ill of the great company.

Maybe we should start clearing up other words? Like earlier I read some guy ask a question about t'internet. Isn't that so Peter Kay 2005?

Why not start on the whole l-8-r m8, woot, puter, rev up me scooter kind of text?

10-10 till we do it again good buddy

 

[Frank_Rizzo]

BTW, I did have a previous username here prior to this one. Long before Rizzo I went under the username of NTSucks.

I think one of the Dons got it toasted (for you new age geeks read: bagelled). Now I guess some of you guys are too young to know what NT is or how it sucked

 

[Andri]

i get the impression that you seem to think you are better than us "pro-microsoft" guys here.

when i read your posts and see "Micro$haft" i can clearly see you have a very biasd opinion towards the company. This in turn means you have no desire to compromise or even form a valid discussion based on both sides (i.e Mac, Linux or Microsoft.).

This causes people to not take you seriously.

i currently use both Operating systems at work Microsoft and Linux alike and they both have their benefits and draw back.

 

[DavidMarq]

From the point of view of a user of Microsoft products. Three years ago I bought a legal OEM copy of Windows XP pro for about £65. I so far have had three years use of the product with regular free updates and security fixes. In no way do I feel that I have been shafted.

 

[Frank_Rizzo]

i get the impression that you seem to think you are better than us "pro-microsoft" guys here.

That would not be true.

My original beef was with a poster who took it upon himself to hijack a thread just to point out that I was "childish" and such. I was surprised at this because

a) I didn't realise it was not the done thing to talk of Microsoft in this way

b) I later read that there are other threads here with variations of M*$* and yet there is no riposte.

 

[DavidMarq]

That would not be true.

My original beef was with a poster who took it upon himself to hijack a thread just to point out that I was "childish" and such. I was surprised at this because

a) I didn't realise it was not the done thing to talk of Microsoft in this way

b) I later read that there are other threads here with variations of M*$* and yet there is no riposte.

a) Make a valid argument and people will read and discuss it, there are many different views about Microsoft held by users of these forums.

b) It is simply the luck of the draw.

 

[aix0]

That would not be true.

My original beef was with a poster who took it upon himself to hijack a thread just to point out that I was "childish" and such. I was surprised at this because

a) I didn't realise it was not the done thing to talk of Microsoft in this way

b) I later read that there are other threads here with variations of M*$* and yet there is no riposte.

You're fighting a losing battle, go to bed or something...

 

[Vixen]

Some good replies here people. Give me a bit of time to try and respond to each in turn.

What I will say now though is that this place is clearly pro-Micro$haft (I realise now I can still say this, even if I look immature. But I'd rather be seen to be a immature than be totalitarianised ) and that it is not the done thing to speak ill of the great company.

Maybe we should start clearing up other words? Like earlier I read some guy ask a question about t'internet. Isn't that so Peter Kay 2005?

Why not start on the whole l-8-r m8, woot, puter, rev up me scooter kind of text?

10-10 till we do it again good buddy

You are just making yourself sound even more like an idiot than in the OP. Wow, you're so cool because you hate a corporation that, to be honest, you probably know very little about beyond the fact you can't afford to buy their products.

 

[NathanE]

BTW, I did have a previous username here prior to this one. Long before Rizzo I went under the username of NTSucks.

I think one of the Dons got it toasted (for you new age geeks read: bagelled). Now I guess some of you guys are too young to know what NT is or how it sucked

NT is almost universally praised for being a great OS and one very much ahead of its time. Windows 2000 was the culmination of years of development on NT and was really the "last" incarnation before all the user friendliness in XP arrived. Although XP and even Vista are still built on the terrific NT kernel, it is so well hidden away, that, other from the fact programs very rarely crash and can't take down the whole OS, you'd never know.

 

[Moredhel]

Does anyone here hate linux? like myself?

Most distros are badly put together, and the whole thing is released under an awful awful licence. People say Microsoft are bad, at least they don't pile on the restrictions on one hand while shouting about how free their software is on the other.

Give me a BSD (Free / Open / Net / Dragonfly) alternative any day of the week.

 

[monkeyspank]

Ah yes, Bill Gates the evil money grabbing mastermind. this Bill Gates. The Bill Gates that has donated billions to charity.

 

[stoofa]

Some good replies here people. Give me a bit of time to try and respond to each in turn.

What I will say now though is that this place is clearly pro-Micro$haft (I realise now I can still say this, even if I look immature. But I'd rather be seen to be a immature than be totalitarianised ) and that it is not the done thing to speak ill of the great company.

Maybe we should start clearing up other words? Like earlier I read some guy ask a question about t'internet. Isn't that so Peter Kay 2005?

Why not start on the whole l-8-r m8, woot, puter, rev up me scooter kind of text?

10-10 till we do it again good buddy

This place is not neccessarily pro-Microsoft at all.
There are plenty of people here who are not in favour of the company however at the same time don't feel they need to use the "oh so funny" terms you used.
Many people on these and other forums are happy to debate or argue pro/con Microsoft so long as it is done at a mature level.
When you opening gambit includes calling the said company names then funnily enough it is highly unlikely that you are going to be taken seriously or assumed to be mature.
You writing M$ or Micro$haft or Micro$oft in my eyes is akin to you walking into a car forum and starting your debate:
"Fords are all rubbish and smell of Pee"
A complete lack of matuirty.
You may have used the above terms in the past - most people who did grew up.

As for the whole "txt speech".
I do go on at people about this too and anybody attempting to contribute to a thread I will consider too immature to consider if they start using such words.
In threaded conversations such as these it doesn't take long to dismiss a lot of the posts due to extremely bad content or a maturity issue - it then just leaves the "meat" of the conversation to digest.

 

[stoofa]

BTW, I did have a previous username here prior to this one. Long before Rizzo I went under the username of NTSucks.

I think one of the Dons got it toasted (for you new age geeks read: bagelled). Now I guess some of you guys are too young to know what NT is or how it sucked

You see it is posts like this that get my back really up.
I've been working in the industry for a while now, selling PC's, repairing PC's for customers, being on helpdesks, internal support, internal IT Manager.
When I started out DOS 5 was coming to the end of it's life being replaced with 6.
Windows 3 was becomming Windows for Workgroups 3.1 and then 3.11
In the NT world we were using NT 3.51

I get the impression from your post that when you go on about "NT Sucks" you were talking about NT4 when you really couldn't be further away from the truth.
NT4 was an amazing OS and I rolled out numerous systems running it.
It wasn't a plug & play OS and forced the use of a HAL which meant as a home user OS it wasn't the best choice - but it was NEVER touted as a home user OS.
This is where Win95 and later Win98 sat.
NT4 was one of the true milestone OS's and to say it "sucked" is to say that some of the classics in all industry did.

 

[Frank_Rizzo]

IMO NT did suck. The only reason it was popular as a desktop is because there was hardly any alternative. For server operations Netware was far superior.

In both desktop and server mode it was slow, clunky, memory hungry but the biggest gripe I had with it at the time was that the board of directors were fooled by brown corduroy troused, and jesus sandaled geeks that this next technology was the big thing, and needed for the year 2000.

The truth was that in the mid to late 90's a lot of money was wasted on staff who did not necessarily need NT, or faster PCs. IMO this is the classic cycle of waste perpetuated by Microsoft: constantly offer users stuff they do not need.

Back in the mid 90's 99% of users in a company just need a basic wordprocessor, email, and mainfraime client (where the mainframe client was used for the majority of the day). These users did not need faster PCs and did not improve their productivity by using NT - all it did was waste millions on an IT budget which would have been better spent improving existing support facilities.

I saw this in government agencies, in the financial sector, and the retail sector.

Now I know exactly what you want to type right now "Rizzo thinks that in 2007 everyone should be running Windows 95 on a 200Mhz pentium".

No that is not the case. IMO there was a one sided race to get out as many products and as much hardware in a short period of time which was unecessary and wasteful.

Obviously today there are much better advantages with faster hardware and better O/S. The difference today is that the project developers have more choice of which O/S and hardware to choose from such that TCO and other budgetry considerations are more acceptable to the suits.

All the above is MO from working in the IT sector for three decades. The period from 97-00 was one of the worst for Microsoft 'roll outs'.

---

To those who say that Microsoft is bona fide and that they never shafted anyone answer this:

Why were they fined 500M Eur for "violating the European Union treaty's competition rules by abusing it's near monopoly"

 

[manic_man]

IMO NT did suck. The only reason it was popular as a desktop is because there was hardly any alternative. For server operations Netware was far superior.

Sorry just to take this snippet I know you said more, but its this specifically im answering.

"the only reason it was popular was because there were no alternatives"

Now... please dont get me wrong, im no corporate whore, on the contrary after spending 13 months in big industry I couldnt hack the way of thinking and seem to be sacrificing the chance for a big salary to at least work in a non corporate setting... BUT... does this lack of alternative not tell you something?

It could be argued that MS have gotten where they are by buying out the competition... but last time i looked it generally takes two to tango with buyouts. Sure lawyers can pressure in the backstages etc but generally speaking these smaller competitors have looked at the $$$ symbols and sold instantly.

You Laud MS's products as being rubbish, yet no one has come up with a viable alternative, in your own words even at the NT4 stages nothing else was available that fulfilled the role.

Perhaps the NT kernel is "terrible" but at least MS did something with it that turned out a usable and reasonably user friendly product, more recently it cannot be argued that only OS X and the windows family have truly user friendly UI's. Now I know as a "geek" I should love typing commands to do things... but I dont... the move from DOS to windows 3.1 proved that we are a graphically driven species, it was only when we could see things pictorally that computingreally took off.

Perhaps MS have made some bad errors in the past with their software, but it cannot be argued that they are still the best (of the worst if you want).

Other than the "slow and clunky" argument, is there any other reason why the original NT core and the subsequent builds on that technology are awful?

Security wise, yes windows always has holes, but it also has the widest user base so is a more obvious target. Slow? Well Windows NT4 worked very quickly on my schools Pentium 120's as I recall and 30+ in a room never blue screened even under the duress of 30 school kids. Clunky? The interface has evolved but the core concepts have been proven time and time again.

I am not a fanboy before that old internet addage gets used, if I loaded a Distro of anything and found it to be as user friendly as OS X or Windows XP / Vista I would be the first to shout about it, but the fact of the matter is, even as a power user my computer is a tool that I just want to use to perform tasks, I dont have the time nor inclination to spend 15 minutes doing something that could take me 2 under Windows, and if you really put aside the geek aspect of hating a facelesss corporation you have to admit theres a lot that Windows does correctly.

 

[Nebzor]

To those who say that Microsoft is bona fide and that they never shafted anyone answer this:

Why were they fined 500M Eur for "violating the European Union treaty's competition rules by abusing it's near monopoly"

Firstly, you really need to take a step back from the Microsoft-hating and view NT for what it was. Pretty darn good. Considering XP and now Vista are also based on the NT Kernel, you can't say it's crap. Unless you're horribly biased.

And they were fined for not allowing other software developers to interact with their software, mainly their servers. I don't recall Novell being slated for forcing Microsoft to code NWLink for emulation of IPX/SPX for cross-communication between Windows and NetWare.

The only other thing they were in trouble for is for packaging Windows Media Player with the Windows copies they sold to system builders, and making the version without WMP seem less financially attractive. Which to me is a bit retarded, as it's free and pretty damn good for what your general user needs. Also, they'd probably end up using it anyway.

 

[Frank_Rizzo]

You Laud MS's products as being rubbish

I'd rather say wasteful, inefficient, expensive - could be better.

Well Windows NT4 worked very quickly on my schools Pentium 120's

Sure - in a classroom environment where you are learning something.

But in the real world, with real end users (and I don't mean IT geeks in their offices) it was overkill. For the vast majority of a companies workforce NT was not needed at the time. The prime function of a PC was to provide a session to an as/400 or similar and that could easily be done with O/S earlier than NT.

My point being that:

9am User switches on PC.
User loads up terminal client software
User uses the front end provided by the client software
5pm User logs out of session and shuts down PC.

That was the scenario for the majority of a workforce. Now I know the IT geeks would have their helpdesk (jeeze, I nearly typed helldesk there but thought I'd get slated for it), and other stuff, and Finance would have the spreadsheets and custom databases, and other departments the odd custom app etc.

But the truth is that NT was not needed by the mass workforce at that time.

 

[Scrutinize]

Back in the mid 90's 99% of users in a company just need a basic wordprocessor, email, and mainfraime client (where the mainframe client was used for the majority of the day). These users did not need faster PCs and did not improve their productivity by using NT - all it did was waste millions on an IT budget which would have been better spent improving existing support facilities.

I know lets not support progress, tell you what, "here is a torch, a club and a nice cave, now go an hunt your dinner"

So money was wasted [meh], if no one ever upgraded or implemented the latest equip/software we would still be using PIIs if we ever got that far. Heck we could have stuck with the typewriter, I mean it did the job perfectly well.

No one forced business to upgrade; it was usually the choice of the Board or the IT dept, so blame them for buying into the product not just the people selling it.....supply and demand.

And what is with all this M$ business, its so passé.

 

[Frank_Rizzo]

Now I know exactly what you want to type right now "Rizzo thinks that in 2007 everyone should be running Windows 95 on a 200Mhz pentium".

Mark1@1 has replied as expected