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Why are so many people Anti-microsoft?

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by Maytrix, Nov 17, 2005.

  1. Maytrix

    Maytrix Member

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    One thing I'll add.

    I think Microsoft has made huge leaps and bounds with their new pricing.

    I think a lot of people really lose sight at the value of their 3yr software assurance program. It was always costly for my customers to upgrade. $1k for windows server, $1k for exchange..etc. With the SA, they pay a bit more the first time - $1300 for windows, but they pay it over 3 years. Then when they renew, they pay about $300-500 for the next 3 years.

    Not only does this really reduce their costs moving forward, but it makes budgeting software costs a piece of cake. I certainly think Microsoft still has lots of improvements to make, but this is one thing I can point at which I find to be a huge improvement and cost saving measure for my clients.

    And I think they do listen to customers. Plus, they have very good support and great partner programs which help us support our clients.
     
  2. jkash

    jkash Member

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  3. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    The only reason Windows is not as bad as Apple, is that the programmers at MS are too incompetent to plagarize Apple accurately. The whole concept of Windows was stolen from the Mac. Fortunately, they did such a bad job of it that Windows is not quite as bad.

    If Vista really is dumping the Registry, great. But I'm 57. Will I still be alive when Vista comes out? And will MS really dump the registry? Or will they change their minds in the decades it takes them to actually release Vista?
     
  4. Maytrix

    Maytrix Member

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    But maybe I don't like iTunes? The ipod is a music playing device. It's essentially a hard drive, with an audio port and software for playing music. Why should Apple care how I get the music on to it. Maybe I don't ever play music from my system so I don't want to have extra software i don't need on it. Or Maybe I just like windows media better?

    My Creative Labs MP3 player allows me to copy files to it just as if it's a hard drive.
     
  5. EricGo

    EricGo New Member

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    The ipods can be used in the same way.

    And more -- at least the firewire ipods, which are bootable devices on the Macintosh. I am not sure about the USB iPods for macs.
     
  6. Maytrix

    Maytrix Member

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    ah.. ok. I don't believe that was the case when they first came out though.
     
  7. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    oh geez... i figured after you spent all that time trying to shove that beta tape into your VHS machine that you would have given up by now.
     
  8. Maytrix

    Maytrix Member

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    I'm not sure I see the connection between this and itunes...
     
  9. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    iPod has one big advantage over MP3 players: If you listen to audio books or lectures from The Teaching Company (I do both) the iPod format allows the machine to bookmark your spot.

    What I don't like about the iPod is its quirky response to its controls. Sometimes holding down Rewind or Fast Forward does nothing at all, and then releasing it sends it to the beginning or end of the file. That's frustrating as all get-out.

    As for iTunes, it has the capability to automatically download podcasts. That's nice, if you like any particular podcasted programs.
     
  10. Maytrix

    Maytrix Member

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    I think iPod's are nice devices. Too pricey for me though, when I could buy someone else's mp3 player, since all I'd use it for is listening to music.

    My only gripe with the ipod (and feel free to let me know if I'm wrong) is that I thought when it first came out, that you were limited to using itunes. That's the one thing that always bothered me. I'd much rather take my existing collection and drag and drop it like I do with my current creative labs muvo.

    Other than that, I wouldn't mind having one, but I'd rather save $100 and get Creative labs version.
     
  11. Mystery Squid

    Mystery Squid Junior Member

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    This is almost 100% utter BS.

    half my hard drive is stuffed full of all sorts of game/applications/etc. and the time it takes to boot up/shut down has not increased by any significant margin in comparison to a "bare bones" configuration, for I actually took the time to time everything from a "clean" pc. to what it is currently. Boot up times only go up if YOU allow various programs to "run" in the background, or launch various applications upon startup.

    "Regtistry Rot" :lol:

    "Norton Internet Security 2005" :lol:

    I can't even keep typing, jayman, stop misleading people with your "hodge-podge" of rumors, 2nd hand experiences, etc.
     
  12. NuShrike

    NuShrike Active Member

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    Slowing down the computer for a secure system usually means something isn't being done right. I've already been Norton anti-virus less for 2 years now because all it was doing was sucking CPU for no reason. I don't get virus/worms; haven't for the last 20 years, and I run video conversion to mpeg4 so I'm quite aware of squeezing out every drop of cpu juice.

    It's all about not running random/unneeded programs from untrusted sources, or using Microsoft products to read your email, as such, and using a dedicated firewall in a llayer separate from your main machine. They are very inexpensive these days.

    In fact, a Microsoft-only shop can be just as secure as a UNIX-only shop as long as the admins are competent. The difference is UNIX is a bit more secure out of the box, and takes less work to get secure. When a Microsoft-only shop (like your work?) gets overrun with worms and viruses, the solution isn't to switch OS, it's switch admins.

    As for the longer boot/shutdown stuff.. check out msconfig from START->run (in XP and 98, not 2000). If you look at its Startup tab, you'll notice a lot of stuff in there. A few apps enjoy installing extra stuff into there so they'll be "around" when you need them. This includes QuickTime, iTunes, iPod, Office, Adobe, EFax, etc etc.

    Now, some of these programs are required but not all, especially anything new and related to the above apps I named.

    These are the first places I go to and TURN OFF the crap these apps like to do. They also turn on Services that you don't always need, and so end up slowing down your system. I have a lot of software installed in my XP systems for work/home/laptop, and bootup generally takes a minute or so (not fast like a fresh install, but not slow like most people's tends to get). I also use hibernate resume which cuts down on reboots.

    Check out the tuning guides on the web that tell you the minimal services you really need running. Your processes (task manager) list should be fairly short, and you should be able to identify and justify everything that shows up there.
     
  13. LaughingMan

    LaughingMan Active Member

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    Have you looked at the Vista pricing scheme? There are easily 7 or 8 distinct versions of Windows with different pricing and functionality...

    Like consumers NEED to be further confused with this product...

    But I continue to argue that core functionality like the OS kernel should not be closed and private like it is...

    Have you watched that Nerd TV interview yet?
     
  14. LaughingMan

    LaughingMan Active Member

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    Unfortunately, the hard and fast rule about how non-Apple devices are $100 cheaper no longer applies... You probably won't find a Creative player that is $100 cheaper.

    For a device like the 4GB iPod Nano, you won't find another device like it for any price... 4 GB flash player for that size... simply hasn't been "invented" by anyone other than Apple at the moment.

    And the iPod with Video are priced aggressively and now have features that rival most of it's challengers... And is smaller and thinner to boot.

    There are no iPod killers in the house, folks...

    I personally think the iPods are the best selling players out there for good reason. The interface is highly intuitive and makes a lot more sense than the many buttoned interfaces of competitors...

    you can put 1000+ songs onto one device, but Apple was the first to come along and figure out a way to navigate through those songs quickly... it's been oft copied, but the wheel itself is off limits... patented.

    Plus, as much as you hate iTunes, for most people, myself included, it's an elegant solution that basically automatically sorts and catalogues your music for you on your computer and your iPod for easy searching based on ID3 tag information.

    While you may like just dragging folders to your mp3 player, most people don't want to manage things at the file system level... they'd rather think of the songs and albums as entities, and iTunes handles that for them.

    As for my own reasons, I like to do audiobooks and podcasts... both of which are handled well on the iPod. The iPod bookmarks your audiobooks and podcasts so if you go to another song and come back, it'll remember where you left off. And then if you sync with your computer again, it syncs the bookmark too so that you can start listening to it on your computer from the same point where you left it on the iPod.
     
  15. LaughingMan

    LaughingMan Active Member

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    Hmmm... well there are some political reasons for that, really. Apple knew that their player would be a high profile one for the music industry from the beginning... and the music industry are a bunch of retards really that don't want people using their iPods to move music to different computers... so Apple restricted it so you use iTunes to copy the songs to the iPod so you can't copy them back from another computer.

    This is kind of silly because the iPod doesn't preclude anyone from copying a bunch of MP3s to it and using it as a storage device and copying them to someone else's computer.

    The iPod *does* allows you to copy files to it just like it's a hard drive...

    iTunes basically copies music files to a hidden directory on the iPod along with libary information for searching... the iPod looks in this hidden directory and the library file for player operation...

    if you wanted to you could easily get to your MP3s on the iPod from the file system... the iPod functions in hard disk mode too, allowing you to mount it as a USB mass storage device.
     
  16. maggieddd

    maggieddd Senior Member

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    Right , but the point from the very beginning was that not everyone knows to do all these things in order to make their system to run properly.
    You happen to know to go and shut down all these processes and and how to look up what they mean, but an average user, such as the one that we described earlier, who just wants to run Word etc. has no idea and no desire to do all these things you just described.
     
  17. Mystery Squid

    Mystery Squid Junior Member

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    You know, that is very "leftist" thinking... :lol:

    The more I think about this, the more I come to the conclusion that not having knowledge of something or other, does not give you an excuse to whine about how crappy your pc is. It's sort of like saying my childhood sucked, so I'm not totally at fault for (insert heinous crime here). If people are really that irate at their p.c.'s, it really is up to them to explore, learn more, etc.
     
  18. Mystery Squid

    Mystery Squid Junior Member

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    Same here, like wise with CRAPaffee...


    :ph34r:
     
  19. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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    Whatever. Tell you what, visit Winnipeg, stop by the office where I work, and maybe you can tell the IT department how to properly installl and maintain the servers and workstations.

    You obviously know a lot more than they do. Maybe you will even be offered a contract with no upset limit.
     
  20. maggieddd

    maggieddd Senior Member

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    but you were the one who stated that an average person who is interested in MS Office will LOVE Microsoft. How is that making them love it if now they have to waste their time configuring their computer and learning the crap they don't want to know.
    Just like you complained that Linux sucks because you couldn't figure out how to connect a keyboard. Why don't you just learn it before you whine about it? It's up to you to explore, learn more and you don't do that. You just want to play your MAINSTREAM video games instead of exploring, just like they just want to write a letter in MS Word instead of exploring. Why would you expect them to do that?

    And your childhood analogy is as reterded as stating that kids are smart because they design websites.