At 07:10 AM 7/11/2006 -0500, Stephen the Cook wrote:
...
No I wouldn't agree at all with most of your statement. As a professional
if it took you more then a couple of min to get the newer look to
networking, I would question why you called yourself a professional. The
...
Well how about that. If I can't learn MS's changes in a couple min, I'm not
a professional. Hmm. I guess there aren't many professionals then - or at
least MS professionals. Whole web sites and blogs have been set up to help
people find their way around the changes between XP and Win 2000.
But I'll try to be more fair. First, I'm not a network/OS engineer, I'm
primarily a software developer/DBA. But like anything else, once people
know you work with computers you'll get tapped with all kinds of questions.
Plus, since most of the software I write gets distributed to desktops all
over the place, I get a lot of questions from there. Funny thing is, some
of those remote sites have their own IT shop and they will STILL call me to
get answers and help (I've had to cut that down in the last year or so
though - I just don't have enough time). So, that being said, I do not
focus on MS-OS-internals as my daily bread. The usual occurrence in the
past was someone called with some problem. They had XP I had Win 2000 so we
played the dance on the phone for a while trying to get to the settings
that had meaningful info. The differences between the 2 GUI's were
significant. I think you agreed with that (since you said "if I had the new
GUI it'd have been a snap" (paraphrase)).
But now I do have XP (couldn't help it - vendor didn't give me a choice - I
didn't want to wipe yet another PC and restart from scratch etc). One of my
fun experiences was captured in this message
<http://leafe.com/archives/showMsg/298325>. I suppose if you have nothing
to do but read MS material, all their white papers, all their marketing
material, played with all their previews/alphas/betas etc, the XP learning
curve may have been pretty short. But then, that's not really a fair
assessment. For me, the learning curve was at least a couple weeks. From my
personal contacts with other non-MS-junkies, their learning curve was at
least that if not more (some still don't have it down after a couple months
- but they're not 'computer professionals').
As to my personal experience between Windows and Linux perhaps I should
take a step back and be more fair. When I went into Linux I *wanted* to see
what it was like. When I went into Win XP I didn't *want* things to be
moved around. So, from a psychological standpoint that may have immediately
caused a 'bias' in my experience. With that bias in mind, I am being
totally honest in saying that my experience of going between Linux versions
(Red Hat, Fedora Core, Mandrake, Ubuntu.... and upgrades to those) has been
easier and more logical than what I've experienced with Windows versions.
This is not FUD - this is my personal experience. As a result, I find MS
(or others') claims that switching to Linux would be a big learning curve
to be hollow and without merit. My perspective is, of course, biased.
Others may not have had the same experience.
Speaking of which, this thread has been hijacked I think. It started as
mainly talking about the new eye-candy in Vista. And most of us pointed out
how silly the hype is because MS likes to simultaneously praising its UI
changes while castigating the premise of switching to Linux because it
would be a UI change. Of course, MS-heads don't see it that way and no
amount of exchange will change their minds. So I'm done with this thread
(hopefully).
Sniff Sniff Sniff, smells like FUD to me.
I'm not sure how you can smell anything with all the manure surrounding you
and all the other MS-sheep.
;-)
-Charlie
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