Ted Hastings wrote:
Try telling that to my son, who has been unable to work at all for the last three daysAs far as I can see, the principal characteristic of the "Unix user community" is to criticise Microsoft and Windows at every opportunity. Windows users don't seem to be nearly as prone to bashing the competition, perhaps because they're getting on with productive work using the world's best-selling software, rather than writing their own fixes for OS bugs :<)
because of the ridiculous registry system used by Microsoft, which if you are obliged to install many programs and attempt to remove them (we have to test digital cameras, scanners, software etc all the time) and also run heavily protected software like Sage Payroll on the same machine - well, the risks are huge.
I was told that Mac OS X with its 64,000 system components was a nightmare but not so - unlike Windows NT/2000/XP whatever, it really can handle a re-installation without losing a single user preference or a single essential file, or any of the links betweens programs, data and system-level components installed by programs for their own use.
We can't afford to have multiple PCs but we are now considering having one just to run payroll and contact info software, one just to run Internet access, and one for testing equipment and software which can be erased and reinstalled without risk. We've been using Sun, Mac, BeBox, Acorn, various Linux installations (on both Mac and PC), many handhelds and pioneer products over the last decade or so and:
of all the systems and platforms out there, not one is as utterly awful as the Microsoft/PC platform. It is the only platform which consistently costs us time, money and anger.
I can be frustrated at time with Macs, but at least:
I can switch in two minutes to working under OS9 and do any work I need to on OS X components, without 'ownership' issues and access privileges hampering me
I can boot up and run my system from a CD
I can run software we bought in 1984 alongside the latest packages, and be utterly stable and print reliably - not ALL software from 1984, of course, and I have a cupboard full of software which stopped running the year after it was purchased, as was never rewritten...
because Windows was the world's leading platform, and it wasn't worth keeping stuff live on Macs at the time
However, now Macs are essentially Unix machines, that problem has gone, and I can well understand why the peculiar folk of the Unix community have been so gnarly for so many years. They were right all along.
David
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