Thursday, January 28, 2010

What Would Life Be Like Without Windows?

Today I read a blog titled the same as what I titled my blog post, from PC World, and giving full credit, were credit is due, by Randall C. Kennedy of InfoWorld.  Now, I don't know Randall, but I have to say, it was the most lopsided view of the world I have ever read.

Basically, it was an article claiming that the monopoly of Microsoft on the desktop is a good thing.  I used to work in telecommunications, and I used to hear the same argument about AT&T.

The fact of the matter is, monopolies are never good, but competition is very good for everyone.  It brings prices down, improves quality, and expands the market.

Besides, I know what life is like without Windows.  I haven't run any version of Windows since Windows 3.1!  I can tell you from my experience, that it wasn't always peaches and creme, but today I couldn't be happier.

I'm currently running Fedora 12 on the laptop that I'm am using to write this blog post.  I have all the software I need for everything I do, and it works great.  I can interoperate with anyone out there, even people using Microsoft products.  Besides that, I have the most stable environment I can imagine.

I don't spend countless hours fixing my system, but spend countless hours getting work done.  No viruses, crashes, hangs, or interoperability issues here.  I even have Mac's in my home, and my Linux system and the Mac's interoperate just fine.  We share drives across the network, e-mail and IM (including video) between the systems, share documents, you name it, and it all works.

Randall's vision of a future without Windows is simply not based on reality.

5 comments:

Jayton Garnett said...

Unfortunately your view is also lopsided, a bit. Every OS I've used has it's disadvantages, I've not found a perfect OS yet.

Windows hasn't been crashy since Win ME. Windows 7 is fantastic. Don't get me wrong I don't dislike OpenSource, I'm all for it and used to run Linux and then FreeBSD, but the constant hassle of upgrading when a new version came out was ridiculous. If I had my own way I would still run FreeBSD, along side Win 7.

Andrig T Miller said...

To say Windows hasn't been crashy since Win ME is an overstatement. While I have not personally run Windows for a long time, I see lots of people that do, and have seen many an unstable system since Win ME.

Of course, we agree completely on the point that there isn't a perfect OS.

That is obvious, as every OS is written by human beings, and will always have bugs.

tamil said...

before think and write article...
u know one thing windows kernel is better then other os.

Andrig T Miller said...

I have no idea how you can say that the Windows kernel is better than other OS's. Based on what evidence? Better in what way?

Exam Cram said...

I collected a lot of interesting things from your blog especially its discussion. From the tons of comments in your posts, I believe I’m not alone having all the enjoyment here! keep up the great work.