Re: Club Tshirt - Re: Windows haters... WHY???

James 'Woody' Webster (jrwebste@nospam.socs.uts.edu.au)
Mon, 11 Sep 1995 13:32:29 +1000 (EST)

On Mon, 11 Sep 1995, Sammy Yousef wrote:

> there is a general feeling of resentment towards microsoft because they
> adopt the practices that they do when they could very well turn around
> and write good software etc

Interesting point... i have heard that the book 'Writing Solid Code' by
Microsoft Press is incredibly good, and worth reading by all programmers,
but many people wonder whether it is read internally...

> user long to encounter their first "inconvenience" (for inconvenience
> read bug) in a microsoft app. Hell a lot of people out there have seen
> win 3.1 crash a dozen times within a week of installing it (win 3.11 was
> much better)

And I have had OS/2 crash on me, AND stagger to a halt, most of the time
due to myself doing stupid things. Many problems with Windows, OS/2,
whatever can be avoided by sensible use (i.e. not trying to open 10 DOOM
sessions...)

> I agree....Microsoft to date haven't been pushing the price up that
> much....of course this is changing....it's the first time that a company
> has charged consumers to use their BETA release OS.

But no-one forced people to buy the beta... a company can make money in
whatever way it sees fit.

> You forgot slow. Microsoft has a habit of rushing products through

I dispute that. Although I haven't personally used Win95, I have heard that
the 16-bit version of Word6 runs 'like a tiger' under Windows95... If a
Microsoft app runs slow on a machine, you can pretty much guarantee that
all Windows apps will run a little sluggish, probably because the machine
in question is a 386SX with an ISA video card...

> That's the point though.....3rd party OS's aren't going to take off while
> microsoft are industry leaders. One thing I do admire is their BRILLIANT
> marketing. As for wether or not someone has the legal right to do
> something like not publish API calls, I say you're correct on this point
> but what about MORAL and ETHICAL considerations.....now there is
> something that microsoft could afford to improve in.

Bullshit. This is business, there is no room for touchy feely morals or
ethics. The situation would be different where Microsoft in the business
of running a euthenasia clinic or some such. Compared to some modern
businesses (outside of the IT industry) Microsoft is positively angelic.

Also people put to much stock in their Marketing. They assume that the
computing populace is not unable to make up for their own minds what they
want, and automatically buy MS products because of their advertising.
People would not buy them if they weren't happy with them! There are
enough alternatives available to MS's business suite (Lotus, Novell
Office, etc).

> Yes but when I boot my linux partition and load X-free I don't expect to
> SEE the bugs we are talking about. Linux, though it is freeware is much
> more stable than windows. If linux had become the standard early on and

And I am unable to get a business-class word processor, spreadsheet,
database, etc, etc, etc for it... Linux is great for hobbyists I guess,
and people who want to experiment with UNIX, but I doubt it's (Linux and
applications written for it) ability to act in a business capacity.

Later,
James

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