Has Microsoft ever come out with anything original on their own?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Oct 4 2007, 12:38 PM) [snapback]521324[/snapback]</div>

Once a virtual monopoly has been established, the damage is done. Microsoft monopolized the OS market when it convinced IBM to give it the contract to produce the OS for the original IBM PC. If Digital Research (the producer of CP/M) had gotten that contract, the entire world of computing would be different (and much safer and better) today.

Did GNU even exist around 1990? Anyway, I had no access to such a thing. When I went back to college in 1993 to study Spanish I had access to the internet at school, but at home I had no access and no way to get access. I could subscribe to a dial-up BBS, but could not afford the long-distance charges to dial in, and I didn't even have email. If there was free software for unix I had no way to get information about it.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Oct 4 2007, 03:22 PM) [snapback]521314[/snapback]</div>

Daniel, how can you say that???

Look at your N800. If you didn't know it was Linux, could you tell? Installing applications can be as simple as going to a web page and clicking on the Install button. The application catalog application is also pretty slick.

I've used Windows tablets, and I've played with the iPhone. The former tries to do too much, and the latter won't let you do anything Jobs doesn't approve of. The N800 shows how much potential Linux has towards being novice friendly.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TimBikes @ Oct 4 2007, 05:28 PM) [snapback]521393[/snapback]</div>

One thing most people don't realize with this "market share" number is that large numbers of Windows licenses are tied up in "embedded" or limited use systems.


Cash registers
Library computers
Kiosks
Nuclear power plant control computers :blink: -- OOps! Bluescreen!


So if you are a developer trying to decide how many copies you might sell, you surely can't look at the total number of copies of Windows sold. Most of the those machines will have just one specialized app loaded.

Your average home computer, or small business user is much more likely to buy a new piece of software, and more likely to use more pieces of software overall. This is the space where Apple is at it's best.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26 @ Oct 4 2007, 06:10 PM) [snapback]521470[/snapback]</div>

The N800 is very nice, though it is not terribly stable. I didn't know I could install applications on it. Of course, I cannot access the net from home with it because I don't have wireless. I only use it while traveling.

Linux can be an excellent system. But the only distro that I was ever able to get to install and perform properly (Linspire) still lacks applications that I need on my home computer. (Linspire is on the laptop that I take traveling if I'm driving and don't need to worry about weight and space. And a lot of folks don't like it for the same reason that I do like it: It includes some non open-source code and does not require a computer geek to install it or its outside applications.)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(n8kwx @ Oct 4 2007, 06:25 PM) [snapback]521479[/snapback]</div>

Nice try. Either way, if the PC is used as a cash register or in a home office, Microsoft gets the licensing fee for the OS.

By the way, I just asked our tech support guy what he thought about Macs. Well, he said the are a PITA to support and in fact, a recent Apple software update wiped out several machines in our office and he had to do a complete re-install of the OS. He now recommends people with Macs turn off auto-updates. Thank goodness all of the data was backed up to - you guessed it - a Windows server.

Later that day I sat in a meeting with an employee who is a Mac user and all of a sudden "boing" - his Mac notebook crashed and he had to restart. I see this enough to question if Macs are really any more stable than Windows XP. I can't remember the last time XP froze on me (though I hear it IS a regular occurrence with Vista).

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TimBikes @ Oct 4 2007, 10:58 PM) [snapback]521557[/snapback]</div>

I wasn't commenting on how much $$ Microsoft makes. My point was that if you look at the machines where people might actually buy new software for, the Windows market is smaller than the numbers might indicate.

The cash register for example will never have games, Quicken, TaxCut, Photoshop, etc purchased for it.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Oct 5 2007, 02:36 AM) [snapback]521446[/snapback]</div>

DR-DOS has coexisted for a long time with MS-DOS. But it never offered a substantial advantage, and became irrelevant when MS created Windows 3.1.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Oct 5 2007, 02:36 AM) [snapback]521446[/snapback]</div>

Yes, it did. And Unix is the place where free and open software originated!


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26 @ Oct 5 2007, 03:10 AM) [snapback]521470[/snapback]</div>

Good point, and something few people realise.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Oct 5 2007, 05:46 AM) [snapback]521552[/snapback]</div>

Try Ubuntu?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(n8kwx @ Oct 4 2007, 11:56 PM) [snapback]521608[/snapback]</div>

Not sure I agree - I think your point simply demonstrates that the Windows market is broader than you might suspect because of the wide range of applications that get run on it. The "desktop" market is still significantly large for the big guys but the OS supports an enormous range of niche developers as well. One only has to go to CNET downloads to see this. In all there are 5,148 software titles listed for Mac across all range of applications. For Windows, it doesn't give a count for all applications, but in Business Software alone there are 7,313 products listed. There are only, on the other hand, around 127 Windows Point of Sale applications available.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Oct 5 2007, 02:58 AM) [snapback]521609[/snapback]</div>

Actually, didn't MSFT cripple the ability of Windows to run on DR-DOS? And wasn't DR-DOS 7 a fully preemptive, multitasking operating system... while Windows wasn't?

They sure sound like advantages to me.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26 @ Oct 5 2007, 02:22 PM) [snapback]521651[/snapback]</div>

Yes, MS did that, starting with Windows 3.1. And went further with 95. Caldera Systems, that purchased DR-DOS from Novell, even sued MS over that, claimed that they did that on purpose. They forced a settlement. MS knows those dirty tricks for a long time already!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26 @ Oct 5 2007, 02:22 PM) [snapback]521651[/snapback]</div>

DR-DOS 6.0 allowed pre-emptive multitasking on the 386 with it's TaskMax switcher. But there were important limitations that made it almost useless. For example, it did not work with graphical DOS applications, because the video memory was a shared resource and there was no mechanism to deal with that. Same problem with direct access to e.g. peripheral hardware. Windows 3.1 didn't do pre-emptive multitasking (only event based multitasking), but it was actually usable because it was able to take care of shared resources.

DR-DOS 5 and 6 certainly were better than MS-DOS, but not in a substantial way. There was better memory management, on-the-fly compression, etc... But it never had any real crucial advantage, and shared all the fundamental limitations of MS-DOS (16 bit, ...). And of course MS was able to use the leverage of Windows.

DR-DOS actually still is somehow alive, and is sometimes used in embedded applications or as a real-time OS.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Oct 5 2007, 09:31 AM) [snapback]521675[/snapback]</div>

Actually, DR-DOS 7 was 32bit. And I believe some people even got it to multitask graphical applications.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TimBikes @ Oct 4 2007, 08:58 PM) [snapback]521557[/snapback]</div>

My home computer with OS X has never crashed or frozen, though several third-party apps have frozen, requiring me to kill them with the activity monitor (an extremely simple matter of selecting the app and clicking on Kill.)

XP was indeed the most stable Windows ever, but it did crash on me several times. Probably once every couple of months. I suspect the reason this was so seldom was that the very frequent upgrades (due to bad programming in the first place and the large number of security holes) meant frequent re-boots.

My N800 running a modified version of Linux freezes up from time to time. Then not even the power switch functions. I have to open the case and remove the battery, and then replace it and re-boot, and all is well again. Until the next time.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Oct 4 2007, 11:58 PM) [snapback]521609[/snapback]</div>

The first Linux distro I tried was Kubuntu. The next was Ubuntu. I think they are the same except for the default shell. Neither of them would play any media files, apparently due to the absence of the codecs. Some research suggested that the codecs are available on the internet, but the instructions for installing them were extremely long and complicated. I am a relatively competent computer user, but the instructions were way beyond me. Also, while both were able to access the internet to upgrade themselves, neither was able to access the web via the web browser, so that I could not access the web. The problem probably had a solution, but I could not find it. Lastly, there were several error messages during installation which I could not understand, and which I had no idea what to do about.

There are web pages talking about which distros install on which computers, and what devices do not work on a given computer with a given distro. These lists are difficult to figure out, and I was frankly unable to find a single combination of one computer and one distro without problems.

In the end, I read that Compaq is often a good bet, and I settled on Linspire because (for a fee, which I was happy to pay) it provides the codecs for most media files. There are still some which it will not play, but since it is only my travel computer for email and weather reports, I can live without those. Linspire is the ONLY Linux distro that would recognize the DVD player on either of the two laptops I tried Linux on.

My conclusion is that Linux is not ready for the average computer user.

(My N800 also fails to play some media files, but does play others. This would be a serious shortcoming, except that it is only my travel computer, as above, for email and weather reports mostly.)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26 @ Oct 5 2007, 03:47 PM) [snapback]521688[/snapback]</div>

Yeah, but then it was too late. By that time, everybody had their minds full with fancy looking floating windows, dialog boxes, menus and push button bars. Nobody cared for a good command prompt anymore
Ah, those memories...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Oct 5 2007, 09:16 AM) [snapback]521701[/snapback]</div>

Yeah, I still wish Microsoft would someday figure out how to let Word create macros as intuitively as I could in Wordperfect 4 or 5.1.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Oct 3 2007, 02:13 PM) [snapback]520717[/snapback]</div>

... err, actually ballplayers go to Japan when they're too old to earn scratch here in the U.S.A.
The other 'stuff' ?? That's just done where ever the labor force is the least expensive.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Oct 5 2007, 10:11 AM) [snapback]521700[/snapback]</div>

I do find that somewhat hard to believe, unless you're not running the latest firmware.

With the latest firmware, the only thing that bogs the N800 down (not crashes it, mind you, just slows it to a crawl) are bloated and flash heavy websites. Otherwise I have a hard time making it skip a beat.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MegansPrius @ Oct 3 2007, 02:49 PM) [snapback]520745[/snapback]</div>

I believe Gate's crew (or is that Gatescrew) didn't even invent that, rather bought that crap OS to sell to IBM ... originally called QDOS (quick n dirty operating system)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Daniel @ Oct 5 2007, 10:22 AM) [snapback]521706[/snapback]</div>

I do find that somewhat hard to believe, unless you're not running the latest firmware.

With the latest firmware, the only thing that bogs the N800 down (not crashes it, mind you, just slows it to a crawl) are bloated and flash heavy websites. Otherwise I have a hard time making it skip a beat.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Daniel @ Oct 5 2007, 10:22 AM) [snapback]521706[/snapback]</div>

Windows also fails to play some media files... just like with Windows, you need to install the proper software on the N800. I recommend Canola. One click install and you're good to go.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Oct 5 2007, 04:11 PM) [snapback]521700[/snapback]</div>

There is some improvement. In the early days, you had to recompile the kernel on your machine if you wanted support for a specific ethernet card. Install the compiler, launch the makefile, and come back after lunch to see if it was successful.
Sorry, I'm getting nostalgic...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Oct 5 2007, 04:11 PM) [snapback]521700[/snapback]</div>

I would rather say that nobody has made it ready. In principle, it would be perfectly possible to sell a 100% pre-configured computer with Linux, with all the drivers and settings in place and an easy graphical shell that goes a bit deeper than what you find on most current distributions. A bit like what Apple has done with OSX.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Oct 5 2007, 10:26 AM) [snapback]521711[/snapback]</div>

Good god, I can't believe I'm going to stick up for MSFT here... however, Apple makes things so easy by limiting what you can use. You want to use the latest and greatest video card? No luck. You want to use an exotic sound mixing device... maybe you can, maybe you can't.

Honestly, try taking a cheap no-name USB webcam, or some scanner, and try hooking it up to a Mac. Chances are, it won't work. Hook it up to Linux, and chances are it will at least be recognized and somewhat configured. And you know it's guaranteed to work (sort of) with Windows.

Things become easier to auto-configure as you restrict choices, and that's what the Mac is all about.

And FYI Daniel: The newest Suse will automagically go and download codecs as required.