Windows or Linux. Umm, neither thanks... (Battle of the Giants)

Name: bigbtommy

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Product:	Battle of the Giants
Date:	20.09.01 (77 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Provides a good alternative to Micro$ucker

Disadvantages: Sometimes more difficult than Windows, Or more expensive

Am I a hardware dude? or a software dude? Or an engineer? Or a geek? Or a nerd? Well, I can't say I am anything. I am a user, maybe a power user.

And after years of frustration of using that horrible Windows 95 and 3.1 and before that DOS, and an Amstrad with CPM, and before that a BBC running, um Basic, I decided I wanted a computer, not a maintenance task.

So I said my goodbye's to Windows, but not in a train-just-flowing-away-from-the-platform-with-a-& #39;bigbtommy'-running-along -crying-until-it's-out-of-sight. But a end-of-a-crap-date-with-a-band-toting-geek-because -all-the-cute-girls-were-gone-an d-I-didn't-want-to-look-like-a-loner sort of way. I had only used Windows out of choice and financial dependency on getting a PC free from a dodgy source.

So I took my hard-earned moolah up to PC World and bought myself a tasty blue iMac. Yes, it's coloured, and doesn't have PCI slots. And you have to run the Mac OS. But, seeing as the Mac OS was where Windows got it's 'inspirations' from, and I have never had problems using a Mac before (once you get over the first few hurdles - but you had hurdles when you started '95. Just more of them). PCI? No need. USB... thank you!

Now I am a Mac addict. Certified. Give it another ten years, and I'll have a vague resemblance of some 'pentiums' and 'windows' and a few things like that. But they'll have the same resemblance as your first date when you were a stupid teen.

The Mac represents computing for the rest of us. If there's an error you don't have to delve in to DLL's, PCI's, VXD's and .BAT's. You go in to the Control Panels and Preferences folder. And then change a few extensions. MSCDEX becomes CD-Rom Preferences. Seems a bit more sensible? Yeah I thought that too. MS-SND or some other stupid acronym becomes Sound Properties. Even I understand that!

Linux. Eh? The op description m
entions Linux. But as a consumer OS, I believe Linux doesn't offer a good prospect. Firstly, you can't go and 'buy a copy of Linux'. You get a copy of Red Hat, or Caldera, or LinuxPPC or Slackware. And there all variants. It's like getting Dairy Milk bars made by hundreds of companies with different special offers on the wrappers and different logos on the front. It all seems to confusing for your average user. And then the 'not compatible' seems to hit in.

It's Windows vs. Mac. Unless somebody comes up with some serious 'friendliness' traits for Linux, then it's probably going to fail in consumer markets. Geeks and freaks will love it. Designers (like me ;-) will love the Mac OS and the 'bit-a-Quake-3-and-internet-porno' people who lust over voodoo 17 graphics cards will be distinctly Windows.

But the existence of the Mac and the various Linux and UNIX imitators and deviants provide real scope for doing things never done before with Windows.

-bigbtommy (Made on a Mac)

Summary: