Re: XP vs Mac OS X
- From: "Joel Kolstad" <JKolstad71HatesSpam@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:10:05 -0700
"Jon Yaeger" <jono_1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:BE8A7BB2.22C81%jono_1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> For example, compared to OS X:
>
> 1. Microsoft products cost more at each new release. This is contrary to
> other tech stuff (i.e. You get more for less over time). This is the
> hallmark of a monopoly. OS X has always been $129 (Linux is free).
XP Home reatails at $99 and XP Pro is $149 ***when purchased with hardware***.
I do agree that the "not purchased with hardware" prices are pretty absurd.
Still, it's probably a safe assumption that well over 90% of all copies of XP
sold either come with hardware.
> 2. For the most part, the repair and recovery tools that Microsoft provides
> are inadequate, poorly documented, or don't do anything useful (like fix a
> busted install, with rare exceptions).
Well, my usage of recovery tools with Microsoft has been use of the recovery
console and the "last known good profile." They've worked for me. I do agree
documentation on them is pretty sketchy, although there's a certain catch-22
here in that, if you system won't boot, you probably won't be able to access
the documentation anyway. :-)
The tools could be better, I grant you -- I've seen people saved by the likes
of Symantec's "GoBack," for instance, which is a lot easier for the average
user to apply.
I don't know what recovery tools OS X has, although I doubt it's anything
comparable to GoBack.
> 3. When you buy Microsoft OS you'll also need to buy Norton or M cAfee,
> plus anti spyware, plus pop-up blockers, etc. I don't get pop-ups or
> harmful viruses with OS X. This is a huge difference, in initial cost and
> user experience.
XP with service pack 2 comes with pop-up blocking, firewalls, etc. all
built-in, and free pop-up blockers have been around for years.
Does OS X come with anti-virus protection? That would be a tangible benefit.
> 4. Need to transfer or back up applications to another drive (with the
> intention of actually using the app)? Can't do it with Microsoft. Simple
> with Mac. Huge drawback!
Nice feature. Realistically not something that people commonly want to do.
(I'd bet you that >90% of all PC installations only have a single partition,
and while we'd probably both agree multiple partitions are useful, your
typical user just doesn't want to wrap their mind around it.)
I take it OS X is like traditional UNIX where all the physical drives end up
as one monolithic directory structure, so by using a soft link you can easily
re-point an application to a different physical drive? I think the reason
that Windows uses the somewhat lame "shortcut" approach is that FAT and FAT32
don't HAVE directory links (NTFS does, though), and Windows had to work on
older systems.
> 5. System crashes typically take about 3-4X as long to resolve on Windows.
I wouldn't know, the XP/Win2K machines I use crash, I dunno, maybe a couple
times a year when I've been installing new software?
> The registry concept is a kluge and a mousetrap.
I sort of used to think so and well, but I've read the design philosophy
behind it and these days think it's actually not so bad. The idea is to have
one central repository where applications can keep their settings for both
global program install options as well as individual user settings. The
alternative is something nasty like a bunch of .ini or .rc files in some
system directory or individual user directories -- what a mess. With Windows,
..ini files never had more than a "two tier" hierarchy (sections and fields),
so anyone wishing more depth than this had to role their own parser --
something always true in the case of UNIX-style .rc configuration files.
You could convince me that Windows ought to add the ability to import and
export registry contents as XML files, though.
> 6. XP's paranoia is really annoying. I was fixing a bad XP install and
> after every time I changed the System registry keys the OS forced me to
> re-register. It's a lot of fun calling some Indian fella and putting in 40
> digits or whatever . . ..
If you're troubleshooting a system and break the activation, you've still got
15 days of troubleshooting before you're forced to re-activate the product. I
agree it is slightly annoying (it really does suck!), but whether or not
software should be copy protected is some huge debate that's never going to be
settled.
Oh, and as all the pirates immediately figured out, if you use the "corporate
install" versions of XP, it doesn't have any of the activation nonsense
anyway. :-(
---Joel
.
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