I too meet them, Steve. My company is large and has a large IT group. They install all of the patches and probably over 95+% of all software installs. Each OS installation is configured from a company-standard image. None of the managers and few of the technical staff are able to do anything except call the IT group.
I don't meet many people who are curious about any of this; it seems to be day and night: a few of us can and almost everyone else cannot do much more than run application software that resides on their C drive. These folks think they can have a similar experience on a Windows computer at home, but, of course, there is no one at home who knows how to administer it. The people I meet in the IT support group appear to be the largest group of Mac OS and Linux users on their home computers (especially since dual-boot has matured). Thank you, Mark Snyder -----Original Message----- On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 11:11 AM, mike<[email protected]> wrote: > Where do you meet these people? I don't know where Tom meets these people, but I meet them all the time. However, my experiences with folks who are completely wedded to Windows seems to be different from what Tom is saying. The folks I meet and speak with about computers are almost exclusively Windows users, but generally not computer "experts" by any measure. They are mainly business owners, people who work in small businesses where Windows is the OS of either choice or perceived necessity, or just individuals who use their own computers for personal use. Most of these folks have numerous computer related issues that they fairly often have to address. First off, they will try to fix the problems themselves, usually failing in those endeavors. Then they have to call in the "Geek Squad" and be prepared to spend a couple or three hundred bucks. I will usually hear them complain about how their computer just suddenly started running very slowly or "freezes up all the time" or how this or that no longer works. However, as much as they might complain about their balky machines, they think that they have no choice but to keep using Windows and keep putting up with the problems they encounter. Are these problems of their own making? Maybe so, but I have no way of knowing and neither do they. Do Mac users have some similar problems? Sure they do, but apparently not nearly to the same extent. Why does that seem to be so? I dunno for sure, but it may often have something to do with the prevalence of viruses, spyware, bots and other assorted afflictions that plague Windows. Maybe the Mac internal hardware is better as well. I also think that the cheap initial cost of Windows machines is attractive to computer neophytes, and these inexperienced and often unthinking new users are prone to doing stupid things that get them into trouble. I somehow have the suspicion that an awful lot of folks who buy Macs are typically a bit more computer smart and experienced, maybe even more mature in their thinking processes even if they are relatively young in age. I'll probably get clobbered now, but hey, that's what I think. Yes, I know that many Windows users HAVE TO use Windows based machines because of work requirements, but those are not the individuals I am talking about here. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
