[PLUG] that's it..I'm going to windows

[Robert Kopp]

--- Robby Russell <robby at planetargon.com> wrote:
> This article has convinced me that Windows is better
> than Linux.
> 
>    - http://www.divisiontwo.com/articles/mcse2.htm
> 
Are you still there? As I read the article, I myself
was using Windows XP. Despite what some on this list
have said, after all was said and done, I couldn't get
the Promise drive controller to work with Linux on the
system I have. (Unless there is some kind of
workaround, that would limit me to "live"
distributions not needing HD access.)

Anyhow, back to the article. One advantage to Windows
is that, because of the activation requirement, people
don't dare modify their hardware. So you don't get
annoying calls from friends who tried such
modifications and don't know what they're doing.

Windows is closed source. You don't have to worry
about copyright infringement by independent
developers, as in the SCO business. I can't imagine,
though, why the author of the article didn't realize
that this means you can't make a custom kernel, and I
hardly consider this an advantage.

There were a couple of things he forgot to mention
about Windows XP. It rarely crashes, though individual
applications often do. This includes Outlook and MSIE,
two of the ones you use most often. Installing an
incompatible driver is the kiss of death: the system
won't boot. And, because the registry is NTFS and
cannot be edited by any other OS, some users have
resorted to installing multiple copies of XP as a
precaution. 

I didn't see any speed benchmarks. Those I have seen
elsewhere seem to show XP and Linux comparable in this
respect.

If you're serious about Windows, avoid reading books
about it by the MS Press. Third-party books which are
candid about the problems associated with Windows are
much more valuable.

=====
Robert "Tim" Kopp
http://analytic.tripod.com/