On Thursday 18 May 2006 01:38 pm, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote: > > > I recently coaxed my mother and sister (both very regular windows > users since the last 4-5 years) to move to linux. > I set up the > system for them and showed them where the apps they wanted were > (openoffice, firefox, ).
THAT is the key. Setting up and hand holding the defector. If u are not available when the defector is stuck he will reboot into familiar territory. The incentive to switch is the disincentive of the ad nauseum window problems - but the pressure to get things done is much more. And from a business point of view handholding for weeks a defector is a total drain. OTOH handholding a newbie on ANY os is an equal pain. So much for "user friendly" UIs. All the eye candy, userfriendlyness etc. arguments are basically individual bias. The "research" is an extension of the bias in a particular direction - M$, Mac, KDE, Gnome whatever. So we dont have a better pointing device than the mouse, and no better data input method than the keyboard. I had conducted informal tests several yrs (2000 afair) ago with many kids in the neighbourhood some familiar with windows, most completely un familiar with PCs. ALL were equally at ease with KDE, GNOME and Enlightenment. They happily booted into both to play their game of the day. I had minimal interaction with them. However my 6 yr old nephew was always watching us use the PC and i suspect that he was the "trainer". As Philip points out developer priorities are different from those of users and in the GNU world usually at odds with short term marketing goals. Computing and software are relatively immature industries. Things should (and have ) improve much more rapidly in an open environment than in a closed one. -- Rgds JTD -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
