Another year with Windows

[Active.]

Linux people think Windows people are dumb.  Windows think OS-X is for people too stupid to use windows (linux would make their feeble heads explode) 

 

As I see it, OS X is what the best Linux distributions try (but consistently fail) to achieve. While all the power of certified UNIX is available, absolutely no knowledge of it is required. 

[simplezz]

Don't be too hard on it.. you're bad-mouthing Linux's roots (most of the ideas the Linux OS incorporated came from Unix..), never mind it's not all proprietary any more, you got open source and free options too.

I'm hardly bad-mouthing it ;) The whole reason for GNU/Linux's existence is because Unix was proprietary and expensive. They might share some superficial similarities, but they are quite different really.

 

Oh lord no, XP was a total dog. Inefficient and extremely unstable, can make it crash just by looking at it funny. A few seconds of tweakery and 7 or 8 will run circles around XP in both usability and stability. User dumbassery aside, it's solid as a rock.

My XP SP3 machine is very stable and has excellent performance compared to the sluggish Win7/8.

 

Except that you totally can? There's tons of ways you can customize it, even replacing the entire shell is trivial settings change. Not that there's a lot of full-blown shell replacements out there of course, but that's a fault on the community if anything. (Apparently not that many people are actually interested in something like that.. a few came and went.) The guts themselves however, lots of options. That's what I love about people who push a single OS agenda down people's throats.. "oh it's all about customization".. except when it comes to the "bad" choice, then they totally refuse to exercise that right and claim it's impossible.

Without a package manager to install all the associated software, a Window manager won't do much. It's only a thin cover over Windows. There's no GDM to select different environments, no software packages, no proper terminal, nothing. If all you want is a superficial reskin, then sure, you can fiddle with the registry and load another shell. It's hardly the same as the variety, depth, and uniformity you get when you install FOSS desktop environments from a Linux package manager. I'm sorry but it's not.

 

When the majority of the world uses a particular standard, doesn't help by going with a different one "just because", especially when you actually have to work with those other people.

There's vendor independent standards like OpenDocument, and there's Microsoft's convoluted pseudo open formats. Governments and users are rejecting it in their droves. Even Microsoft conceded to including OpenDocument support in their Office products. There's absolutely no excuse for encoding documents in Microsoft formats in this day and age.

[Max Norris]

I'm hardly bad-mouthing it ;) The whole reason for GNU/Linux's existence was because Unix was proprietary, expensive. They might share some superficial similarities, but they are quite different really.

End of the day, no not really that different at all, excluding the kernel obviously. Even a lot of the Linux software had it's start with Unix. Looking beyond the initial "please don't sue us" mantra of course when it first came about.

 

Without a package manager to install all the associated software, a Window manager won't do much.

You don't need a package manager to install things in *Nix. Convenient as all hell, yes. Required, no. Many times I personally have to go outside of the official repositories anyway just to get up to date software.

 

There's no GDM to select different environments, no software packages, no proper terminal, nothing. If all you want is a superficial reskin, then sure, you can fiddle with the registry and load another shell. It's hardly the same as the variety, depth, and uniformity you get when you install FOSS desktop environments from a Linux package manager. I'm sorry but it's not.

You can write your own selector to pick a different shell (and GDM is specific to Gnome.. you won't find it elsewhere, they all write their own), there are tons of terminal options, launchers, file managers, task managers, all that jazz, and it goes beyond the superficial reskin. There's already a few working shells out there.. granted not to the extent of the *Nix world, but Linux doesn't provide one out of the box to begin with.. the "community" needs to get busy working on one if there's a bigger demand. Oh, and having used Linux since its beginning days.. please don't ever say "uniformity." There is zero of that, you couldn't make a more fragmented operating system if you tried. Even simple things like desktop applications.. one may use GTK, one may use QT, neither look like they belong together. Under the hood it gets much much worse. There is zero standards, just a convoluted mess and nobody can agree on anything. That's where (if I had to switch) I'd probably go with OSX first.. Unix without the mess, true uniformity.

 

There's vendor independent standards like OpenDocument, and there's Microsoft's convoluted pseudo open formats. Governments and users are rejecting it in their droves. Even Microsoft conceded to including OpenDocument support in their Office products. There's absolutely no excuse for encoding documents in Microsoft formats in this day and age.

Except that governments and users are also adopting it in droves, and some of those "droves" have come back after switching because it doesn't always live up to the marketing.. just look at it's marketshare. Nobody (aside from people pushing an agenda) cares about who owns the format or if its license.. they just care if it works. Microsoft just added it OpenDocument support as obviously it's nice to be able to import anything that's necessary.. just like the alternatives give you the option to import Microsoft's. (Shockingly without Microsoft kicking their doors in.) It's great if you're quoting FOSS gospel and don't actually have to rely on interoprerability.. it's another thing entirely if you actually have to work in the business world.

[nosense]

Windows will always be my main desktop OS to many apps that are not in linux and osx. (I also have Yosemite on dual boot, I don't know why?)

 

Desktop Windows= Real work ,  Laptop OSX= Simple functions ,  VM Linux=Server

[TDT]

 

My XP SP3 machine is very stable and has excellent performance compared to the sluggish Win7/8.

 

You're kidding, right? Win 7 is FASTER and obviously more secure than XP even on older hardware. You're either joking or just a troll.

 

On topic, here's my 2 cents on the matter:

 

I've been using Windows since the 95 era, and I'm using it today, in dual boot, 8.1 and the 10 tech preview. Also, I played with Linux for years, since Slackware was the "bomb". I never got the chance to use OSX until I discovered the OSX86 project and had my first hackintosh. So, overall, I think it's right to say that I have a pretty good experience in all the major players in the OS market.

 

In my opinion, Windows will ALWAYS be the major player here, and for good reasons. You can hate and bash MS and Win all you want, but the reality is that Windows is whatever you need from a OS. While I do see the other OSes advantages over Windows, it's just too little to make me wanna switch for good. For me, the hardcore Linux supporters (actually, the Linux advocates that bash MS) are just some people that want to make a point - that a PC can work with free stuff. But it's like thinking "hey, why do I need a Mercedes when I can get a Volvo, both have 4 wheels and take me from point A to point B". While this is true, people will always prefer the best as long as they can afford it, because the best means better support, better experience, etc. The internet is full of Linux tutorials and guides, but how many are really able to open up a terminal and type a series of commands to get something done? Linux is not for average Joe, and no matter how pretty the GUI is, it will never be the number one choice.

 

About OSX, I really don't know what to say. Obviously, there's also a much smaller software market than Windows's, but clearly bigger than Linux's. Besides this, I can't think of a reason that someone would prefer OSX over Windows, from a functional point of view. And the price of the hardware (unless you're running a hackintosh) clearly doesn't justify it.

 

In the end, I want to say something that I said to many people for a long time: while you're bashing MS and Win for BSOD's and whatever, think about how many different hardware combinations need to be tested with Win. It's impossible to get it done 100%. Apple, on the other hand, has only a handful of devices to test with its new OS versions, and they still manage to screw it up (like iOS 8).

[PGHammer]

THey share that viewpoint (at least I did) because there experiences were about Windows 98 and not a real OS. These guys have not run Windows in 15 years??

 

Windows 98 was dos based. Registry would rot if you ran poorly run programs that altered it each time it ran which created thousands of junctions or copies of copies which slowed down the system immensely over time. It had no security. The list could go on and on etc ...

 

DOS itself too was quite terrible by the 1990s when 486s with 8 megs of ram were out. Why limit yourself to 640k and use hacks like memaker.

 

Anyway These Linux guys who are hardcore on Slashdot.org remember this as their only experience of Windows. As a result they are dumbfounded by articles like these and view their OS as a battle cry agaisn't tyranny.

 

I was a BSD Unix guy because I liked unix and simplicity and it came with a great book! Linux shell scripts are freaking whole programs with if/else loops. Not simple config files like BSD Unix and Windows are.

 

But XP started to change my opinion and 7 and Office 2010 were Microsoft's best operating systems. No reason to hang on to the past and I know understand where MS was coming from back in the dark days after working in intranet corporate sites. Freaking compability. It is why IE 6 refused to die and why Windows 9x had to be written instead of just NT fresh back in 1993.

That means they ignored NT - which shows just how single-tracked they really were.

I started following NT before there was even a Windows 95 beta - in fact, I started following NT during its beta (pre-NT 3.1, in other words).  While NT 3.1 had hardware requirements similar to UNIX, it did that for a reason - UNIX was, in fact, NT's target.  With the later NT 3.5 and 3.51, there started to become a LOT of overlap with the MS-DOS+Windows and Windows 9x hardware base - I would, in fact, convert my original 9x beta box to an NT box - merely by adding RAM and a dual-channel ATAPI-I/O card (the SIIG ISA Master +I/O, to be precise) on an AM386-40-driven mATX motherboard in a mini-tower case.  And that was just the HARDWARE side of things.

 

9x and NT had application commonality from the 9x beta days - outside of Office, ALL my original set of utilities were not MS-DOS apps converted to Win16 or Win32, but full-tilt Win32 applications from NT (Diskeeper and WinZip were two of the first, with Netscape Navigator following suit).  In fact, in a lot of cases, that would remain the case for as long as 9x existed.  (That was, in fact planned.)

 

Also on the hardware side, I saw my first Toshiba "portable" - a luggable, in fact - at a late-night seminar discussing the NT 4 beta (the event was sponsored jointly by Microsoft and the old DC chapter of NT ASUG, of which I was a member).  Three guesses what the luggable was running.

 

Even then, the writing was pretty much on the wall - the question wasn't IF NT would overtake, and eventually replace, 9x - but WHEN.

 

The death knell for 9x was sounded with the first beta of NT 5 (which would later become Windows 2000 Professional).  Not only could it run ALL the software that NT could, it also supported gaming using DirectX - utterly alien for a "workstation" OS.

 

I was still using dial-up to get online, and it was the SECOND beta of NT 5 (still called that), which actually got me to leave 9x completely - taking ALL my software with.  Internet performance was vastly improved over 98 Second Edition - on the SAME hardware (Pentium II-350 with 64 MB of RAM - the upper boundary for 9x, but pretty darn ordinary for NT).  Within two years, I would follow up with my ultimate pre-XP box - it had so much RAM I called it the UNserver.  It had four 256MB PC-133 SDRAM sticks, dual Socket370 Tuliatin-S sockets, and was full-size ATX - the motherboard in question was the full-workstation-class ABIT VP-6.  (That's right - a full gigabyte of RAM.  Needless to say, the chances of my running ME on that were exactly zero - and I had exactly zero plans of even trying.  Despite still using ATI AIWs for graphics (and TV watching - something I had been doing since my 9x days), I was quite happy running 2000 Professional as my daily driver - while those still running 9x looked at me as if I were an alien.  (Of COURSE I was an "alien" - I didn't stay in the box.)

[PGHammer]

Don't be too hard on it.. you're bad-mouthing Linux's roots (most of the ideas the Linux OS incorporated came from Unix..), never mind it's not all proprietary any more, you got open source and free options too.

 

Oh lord no, XP was a total dog. Inefficient and extremely unstable, can make it crash just by looking at it funny. A few seconds of tweakery and 7 or 8 will run circles around XP in both usability and stability. User dumbassery aside, it's solid as a rock.

 

Except that you totally can? There's tons of ways you can customize it, even replacing the entire shell is trivial settings change. Not that there's a lot of full-blown shell replacements out there of course, but that's a fault on the community if anything. (Apparently not that many people are actually interested in something like that.. a few came and went.) The guts themselves however, lots of options. That's what I love about people who push a single OS agenda down people's throats.. "oh it's all about customization".. except when it comes to the "bad" choice, then they totally refuse to exercise that right and claim it's impossible.

 

When the majority of the world uses a particular standard, doesn't help by going with a different one "just because", especially when you actually have to work with those other people.

Word has supported non-Microsoft formats from the beginning (at least on Windows) - I switched from WordPerfect for Windows 6.0a because Word had better backward compatibility than WordPerfect did.

 

Yes - that severely stung.  For me, it stung worse - I had been teaching WordPerfect for several years, and had been recommending it for even longer.

 

However, I took my lumps and ate my crow (washed down with a half-gallon of pride) and declared my new allegiance - in the old FidoNet WordPerfect forum (where I was a regular).

 

If you are referring to ODF, Word has supported THAT since Word 2010 (and included PDF support at the same time).  That was one reason I quite happily upgraded TO Word 2010 - no more third-party converting needed - I could actually save directly (in ODF, PDF, or any OTHER format I needed).  Or have we ALL forgotten about Save As (a feature of any software that supports multiple file formats, including every version of Word OR WordPerfect)?

[PGHammer]

You're kidding, right? Win 7 is FASTER and obviously more secure than XP even on older hardware. You're either joking or just a troll.

 

On topic, here's my 2 cents on the matter:

 

I've been using Windows since the 95 era, and I'm using it today, in dual boot, 8.1 and the 10 tech preview. Also, I played with Linux for years, since Slackware was the "bomb". I never got the chance to use OSX until I discovered the OSX86 project and had my first hackintosh. So, overall, I think it's right to say that I have a pretty good experience in all the major players in the OS market.

 

In my opinion, Windows will ALWAYS be the major player here, and for good reasons. You can hate and bash MS and Win all you want, but the reality is that Windows is whatever you need from a OS. While I do see the other OSes advantages over Windows, it's just too little to make me wanna switch for good. For me, the hardcore Linux supporters (actually, the Linux advocates that bash MS) are just some people that want to make a point - that a PC can work with free stuff. But it's like thinking "hey, why do I need a Mercedes when I can get a Volvo, both have 4 wheels and take me from point A to point B". While this is true, people will always prefer the best as long as they can afford it, because the best means better support, better experience, etc. The internet is full of Linux tutorials and guides, but how many are really able to open up a terminal and type a series of commands to get something done? Linux is not for average Joe, and no matter how pretty the GUI is, it will never be the number one choice.

 

About OSX, I really don't know what to say. Obviously, there's also a much smaller software market than Windows's, but clearly bigger than Linux's. Besides this, I can't think of a reason that someone would prefer OSX over Windows, from a functional point of view. And the price of the hardware (unless you're running a hackintosh) clearly doesn't justify it.

 

In the end, I want to say something that I said to many people for a long time: while you're bashing MS and Win for BSOD's and whatever, think about how many different hardware combinations need to be tested with Win. It's impossible to get it done 100%. Apple, on the other hand, has only a handful of devices to test with its new OS versions, and they still manage to screw it up (like iOS 8).

I multi-boot with Yosemite because there are family members that run Macs - keeping up to date there is a necessity.  Macs - NOT iDevices; it's gotten just as easy, if not easier, to sync an iDevice on Windows as it is with OS X - and that is JUST using iTunes. (Rather embarrassing for Apple.)  I have no animus against iDevices any more than I do against Android.  (The last time I had to do a complete restore of an iDevice, I did it from my Windows-driven notebook - using iTunes.)

[f0rk_b0mb]

I use all 3. I believe in using the right tool for the job.

 

OS X - Multimedia and content creation

Windows - Gaming, School, Work related task

Linux - Server, Programing, working/handling sensitive data

 

 

If someone put a gun to my head and told me to choose ONE and never use any competitor products or else I would get shot, I'd probobly choose Windows and end up getting shot. :D

[sinetheo]

That means they ignored NT - which shows just how single-tracked they really were.

I started following NT before there was even a Windows 95 beta - in fact, I started following NT during its beta (pre-NT 3.1, in other words).  While NT 3.1 had hardware requirements similar to UNIX, it did that for a reason - UNIX was, in fact, NT's target.  With the later NT 3.5 and 3.51, there started to become a LOT of overlap with the MS-DOS+Windows and Windows 9x hardware base - I would, in fact, convert my original 9x beta box to an NT box - merely by adding RAM and a dual-channel ATAPI-I/O card (the SIIG ISA Master +I/O, to be precise) on an AM386-40-driven mATX motherboard in a mini-tower case.  And that was just the HARDWARE side of things.

 

9x and NT had application commonality from the 9x beta days - outside of Office, ALL my original set of utilities were not MS-DOS apps converted to Win16 or Win32, but full-tilt Win32 applications from NT (Diskeeper and WinZip were two of the first, with Netscape Navigator following suit).  In fact, in a lot of cases, that would remain the case for as long as 9x existed.  (That was, in fact planned.)

 

Also on the hardware side, I saw my first Toshiba "portable" - a luggable, in fact - at a late-night seminar discussing the NT 4 beta (the event was sponsored jointly by Microsoft and the old DC chapter of NT ASUG, of which I was a member).  Three guesses what the luggable was running.

 

Even then, the writing was pretty much on the wall - the question wasn't IF NT would overtake, and eventually replace, 9x - but WHEN.

 

The death knell for 9x was sounded with the first beta of NT 5 (which would later become Windows 2000 Professional).  Not only could it run ALL the software that NT could, it also supported gaming using DirectX - utterly alien for a "workstation" OS.

 

I was still using dial-up to get online, and it was the SECOND beta of NT 5 (still called that), which actually got me to leave 9x completely - taking ALL my software with.  Internet performance was vastly improved over 98 Second Edition - on the SAME hardware (Pentium II-350 with 64 MB of RAM - the upper boundary for 9x, but pretty darn ordinary for NT).  Within two years, I would follow up with my ultimate pre-XP box - it had so much RAM I called it the UNserver.  It had four 256MB PC-133 SDRAM sticks, dual Socket370 Tuliatin-S sockets, and was full-size ATX - the motherboard in question was the full-workstation-class ABIT VP-6.  (That's right - a full gigabyte of RAM.  Needless to say, the chances of my running ME on that were exactly zero - and I had exactly zero plans of even trying.  Despite still using ATI AIWs for graphics (and TV watching - something I had been doing since my 9x days), I was quite happy running 2000 Professional as my daily driver - while those still running 9x looked at me as if I were an alien.  (Of COURSE I was an "alien" - I didn't stay in the box.)

 

I can't tell you how many clients I had whined and moaned even after being infected with Windows 98 who did everything to resist XP last decade. If it didn't run their DOS based app they didn't want to hear about it. Case closed. Users too were too familiar and afraid of change with XP. It wasn't until 2004/2005 before they finally left 98 behind and many cried asking for where is "my briefcase" etc.

 

These same users now claim XP BEST OS EVER!! Sigh.

[f0rk_b0mb]

I can't tell you how many clients I had whined and moaned even after being infected with Windows 98 who did everything to resist XP last decade. If it didn't run their DOS based app they didn't want to hear about it. Case closed. Users too were too familiar and afraid of change with XP. It wasn't until 2004/2005 before they finally left 98 behind and many cried asking for where is "my briefcase" etc.

 

These same users now claim XP BEST OS EVER!! Sigh.

 

I may be a little too young (23) but uhh...I honestly have not a clue what that did... :D

 

 

[sinetheo]

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061029104006AAo9CJw

 

One of those things once you get used to have a psychotic episode when that feature is removed out of habit. :-)

 

It is used to move files between a desktop to a laptop and vice versa. Today USB flash drives do this. ... however mcCrappy AV and others are removing USB access for security so in some workplaces a sync solution like this is desirable like where I work.

[francescob]

I swear sometimes Microsoft changes things around just to ###### power users off:

1. Win8 automatic maintenance cannot be turned off, you can disable the tasks and everything but it reinstalls itself as soon as it's manually launched. That "awesome" feature trashes the hard drive every time you leave the computer idling so if are you burning a dvd or a blu-ray it's going to cause continuous buffer underruns ruining the burned discs. Not to mention all the memory it uses that forces everything else to swap.

2. OneDrive clogs all the upload bandwidth on DSLs and makes browsing the most annoying experience ever for all the hours that the files are loading.

[PGHammer]

I swear sometimes Microsoft changes things around just to ###### power users off:

1. Win8 automatic maintenance cannot be turned off, you can disable the tasks and everything but it reinstalls itself as soon as it's manually launched. That "awesome" feature trashes the hard drive every time you leave the computer idling so if are you burning a dvd or a blu-ray it's going to cause continuous buffer underruns ruining the burned discs. Not to mention all the memory it uses that forces everything else to swap.

2. OneDrive clogs all the upload bandwidth on DSLs and makes browsing the most annoying experience ever for all the hours that the files are loading.

Those same power users are also the most CLOSED to new ideas (or new software) among all users - of ANY operating system.  (Doesn't matter what OS is being referred to, either - if it doesn't support their workarounds - or worse, obviates them - they will roast the offending OS at a barbecue and dismiss it and anyone that recommends it.)

 

The OneDrive issue is NOT the fault of OneDrive - it's that bloody-awful slow DSL connection (the same would apply to even older-school ISDN, for that matter).  What's the REAL issue - faster connections too pricey or not available?  I have Comcast's second-SLOWEST broadband and OneDrive (I also have iCloud) and have no issues on any of the now-four OSes I run on my daily driver.

 

What do I store on OneDrive?  Documents (Word, PDFs, and plain-text files) - that's it.  None of which are porky - therefore, syncage is a snap.  Same applies to iCloud.  Connection speeds are either full-tilt gigabit (desktop) or wireless N (notebook and iPad).  Since I don't use cloud storage for pork, I have no issues.

[PGHammer]

Don't be too hard on it.. you're bad-mouthing Linux's roots (most of the ideas the Linux OS incorporated came from Unix..), never mind it's not all proprietary any more, you got open source and free options too.

 

Oh lord no, XP was a total dog. Inefficient and extremely unstable, can make it crash just by looking at it funny. A few seconds of tweakery and 7 or 8 will run circles around XP in both usability and stability. User dumbassery aside, it's solid as a rock.

 

Except that you totally can? There's tons of ways you can customize it, even replacing the entire shell is trivial settings change. Not that there's a lot of full-blown shell replacements out there of course, but that's a fault on the community if anything. (Apparently not that many people are actually interested in something like that.. a few came and went.) The guts themselves however, lots of options. That's what I love about people who push a single OS agenda down people's throats.. "oh it's all about customization".. except when it comes to the "bad" choice, then they totally refuse to exercise that right and claim it's impossible.

 

When the majority of the world uses a particular standard, doesn't help by going with a different one "just because", especially when you actually have to work with those other people.

I'm not hard on UNIX per se - to be honest, I'd rather run Solaris (practically despite Oracle) than most Linux distributions - including RedHat Linux (which was my first Linux distribution ever) or Mageia (the old Mandriva, which replaced RedHat).

 

Why?  Solaris has been everything Linux distributions - including RedHat non-Enterprise Linux OR Fedora - hasn't been; if you stay within the known working hardware, it's not only crash-proof, but darn near idiot-proof.  The crappy CDE was replaced with GNOME, and it remained just as crash-proof (and as nearly idiot-proof) as ever.  However, Sun - and Oracle - have steadfastly refused to even allow Solaris to get close to competing heads-up against Windows, even AFTER 9x had been killed.  (What drove me nuts then - and still does now - is that Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd have even LESS excuse than Sun did for not going after Windows - they gave the OS away - and still do.  It's not like Oracle has a hardware division (unlike Apple).  There's a TON of cross-compatibility hardware-wise between Solaris and Windows - even today.  The Solaris installer CAN be cleaned up and made friendlier - if the Debian installer can be made friendly - as it was for SteamOS - what is Oracle's excuse?)

 

The Solaris issues are why I said that Windows retains its dominance partly because of what the nascent competition - including Solaris - has failed to do, if not outright refused to do.

[francescob]

Those same power users are also the most CLOSED to new ideas (or new software) among all users - of ANY operating system.  (Doesn't matter what OS is being referred to, either - if it doesn't support their workarounds - or worse, obviates them - they will roast the offending OS at a barbecue and dismiss it and anyone that recommends it.)

When the new ideas are just getting rid of perfectly working software/features (Windows Live Mail, Windows Photo Gallery, shadow copies for user files etc.) to replace it with an half-baked start screen with apps on the same feature level as Microsoft Bob's, when the "new ideas" are on that level of retardedness sure, there's no way I would recommend it. You can't even call those "ideas", those are just "let's throw it against a wall and see if it sticks" material, nor call that being "closed minded", it's just being realist or just plain rational.

 

The OneDrive issue is NOT the fault of OneDrive - it's that bloody-awful slow DSL connection (the same would apply to even older-school ISDN, for that matter).  What's the REAL issue - faster connections too pricey or not available?  I have Comcast's second-SLOWEST broadband and OneDrive (I also have iCloud) and have no issues on any of the now-four OSes I run on my daily driver.

No, it's the fault of Microsoft employees with fiber and SSDs that think all the rest of the world has their same hardware. And don't say it isn't because Vista was the absolute proof that Microsoft was completely out of touch with the hardware market. Removing an upload limit that even FolderShare had because their programmers weren't so clueless was the most retarded thing in online storage history. There are lots of countries where all you get is DSL connection, and the same also applies to some USA states as well where some people barely get 512kbit. And this also can cause trouble no matter what the connection speed, you could have bufferbloat on any kind of connection or it could just mess with online games or any other software where latency is important.

 

What do I store on OneDrive?  Documents (Word, PDFs, and plain-text files) - that's it.  None of which are porky - therefore, syncage is a snap.  Same applies to iCloud.  Connection speeds are either full-tilt gigabit (desktop) or wireless N (notebook and iPad).  Since I don't use cloud storage for pork, I have no issues.

Ohhhhhhhhh and I wonder why OneDrive kindly offers to sync photos and videos then? And why the folders for these contents are all present and used as default storage on Windows 8.1? Apparently you're the one closed-minded to all those awesome "new ideas" then. Or you just like twisting every argument to defend the undefendable, like when you were praising Office 2013 limiting the installs to 1 PC (from 3) because it "added value to Office 365".

[simonlang]

got my first computer back in 95/96 just a few moments after the release of windows 95. intel pentium 120mhz, 1.3gb hd, i think the graphics card had about 4mb of ram and the system itself 8mg. i better dont lose any word about the screen, which really might have attributed to my bad eyes.

anyway i still remember it a lot because it was my first computer and i started to discover and learn things by myself. i remember using ms paint a lot and saving all images right on the desktop and due to its low resolution of only 640x480dpi soon the desk was covered with mspaint files. now i did not know about folders, so i thought the space was full and to store more i would have first to delete the old files. that was the way i started.

over time i ended up buying more and more pc magazines and reading as much as i could. because i loved to just try things out it often ended bad and i still remember using that 

attrib -h -r -s

command quite often. even as i came more advanced and knowledgeable the win95 registry just broke every week. no matter what. 

got to know a friend who also got his first pc and he had win 95b already. however that version would not even install on my computer. always ended up with a cryptic error message. these days i had no internet to fix my problems yet. i remember using that nice blue picture of a computer what was displayed during win95 setup as my wallpaper.

i really liked the ms plus pack but the themes were too heavy for my sys specs and again often the installation of the plus pack alone broke my whole windows system. regedit failure again.

read about bios and its tweaks and i overclocked my p120 to 133mhz successfully.

i once grabbed a win nt 4 installation cd and gave it a try. i really liked it. except the very long boot procedure this thing actually was very stable and not slower than win95 on my pc which surprised me.

 

later on i upgraded to 32mb ram afair and replaced the graphics card with a matrox millennium but cant remember the exact model number anymore. i remember using a beta of win98 but again, lots of problems, bluescreens and other issues.

 

my 2nd pc was a pIII 450mhz with 64mb ram and it came with win98 which i replaced with win98 2nd edition. this was finally quite stable, however the graphics card was an onboard chip and did not let me play any good games. i somehow entered a time where windows started to feel just boring. 

on one of these many cds i got via pc magazines there was a suse linux on it i think it was 6.4. its installation went well and i immediately liked the package manager system and it somehow felt different in a nice way compared to windows.

these days i did not know about dual boot yet and went back to windows, where my next stop has been windows me and windows 2000. the internet connection sharing feature which i already used in win98se was much better and more reliable in these versions and since i had internet now i used it to make internet connection also possible on the pc of my sister.

i tried and played arround with many software and most of it was still only for win9x, so i ditched win2000 soon.

 

winxp came for me in a time where using napstar and several dark sites was what everyone arround me did. i still remember that famous FCKGW installation key. have to say windows xp so far has all in all for me been the most convincing windows. i liked the theming options, and the remote desktop feature. it was finally stable and i never really had any bad experience with it.

 

windows vista has not seen me installing it on any pc because at that time i got a notebook and bought me win vista ultimate. especially because i got it via a cheap oem deal and buying it was the intention to get many of those ultimate extras. i thought it would be great to have hundreds of these to chose from and finally customizing your desktop the way you want. however, ms really felt short there and i felt robbed of my money.

win vista looked nice with its style however and i never understood all that bashing it got. sure, it needed newer hardware than xp but besides that that was it.

 

win 7 was the os where i chose to start with beta testing again. it went not bad but for me this os lacked the wow effect. it was just basically win vista 2nd edition. for an advanced user i was by now it felt even more annoying by day. installation, ok, udpates taking long and countless reboots, then having go into explorer settings check show hidden files check show file extensions, etc. 

i somehow felt i had reached a point where i could not progress anymore with windows. it was ok, stable and it did its job but i had no fascination anymore.

due to a hardware deffect i ended up having to use my notebook only and started to think about linux.  read that ubuntu was the distro to have back in 2009 and i gave it a go and was impressed. its installation and configuration was as easy as with windows plus the community was better. also it helped me to start from more or less zero again and start learning things. what was there from day 1 and never changed was what i liked and still like the most. stability, performance, adaptibility, no need for an anti virus, you can customize it finally again like i last time could with win xp.

what can i say? i have never ever looked back to windows. over the years when i had to install windows for someone again i just could not believe how long i used it and for what ridiculous stuff like driver installation and so on i wasted my time.

 

at the end i would say that windows has helped me learning at the beginning. but i have grown up, got more experienced and it was time for a change. a change i did not regret and i am still happy to have made. probably would still use windows if it had not been for that hardware defect. sometimes bad things lead to something very good  :D

 

should also mention that i had the luck to use an imac 27inch for half a year, so i know that side as well.

[PGHammer]

When the new ideas are just getting rid of perfectly working software/features (Windows Live Mail, Windows Photo Gallery, shadow copies for user files etc.) to replace it with an half-baked start screen with apps on the same feature level as Microsoft Bob's, when the "new ideas" are on that level of retardedness sure, there's no way I would recommend it. You can't even call those "ideas", those are just "let's throw it against a wall and see if it sticks" material, nor call that being "closed minded", it's just being realist or just plain rational.

 

No, it's the fault of Microsoft employees with fiber and SSDs that think all the rest of the world has their same hardware. And don't say it isn't because Vista was the absolute proof that Microsoft was completely out of touch with the hardware market. Removing an upload limit that even FolderShare had because their programmers weren't so clueless was the most retarded thing in online storage history. There are lots of countries where all you get is DSL connection, and the same also applies to some USA states as well where some people barely get 512kbit. And this also can cause trouble no matter what the connection speed, you could have bufferbloat on any kind of connection or it could just mess with online games or any other software where latency is important.

 

Ohhhhhhhhh and I wonder why OneDrive kindly offers to sync photos and videos then? And why the folders for these contents are all present and used as default storage on Windows 8.1? Apparently you're the one closed-minded to all those awesome "new ideas" then. Or you just like twisting every argument to defend the undefendable, like when you were praising Office 2013 limiting the installs to 1 PC (from 3) because it "added value to Office 365".

Those "perfectly working features" (I'm specifically referring to Windows Live Mail) often STILL weren't enough to displace existing software folks were using, especially when it came to IMAP4 (which WLM didn't support) - worse, don't even THINK about comparing WLM to Outlook.  While WLM (and even ModernUI's Mail) may be fine if you have only a single mail account, if you have multiple accounts, then you need a more capable e-mail client.  (For example, how many folks STILL have no clue that Outlook supports IMAP4 - even though it has since 2010?  How many folks are blissfully aware that a fully x64 version of Office is even available? [This came with Office 2010 as well.])

 

As to why OneDrive offers to sync photos and video, it is because the OTHER cloud services offer those same features - if it didn't, it would be dismissed.  Regardless of capacity, I have never - as in ever - recommended - or used - a cloud-based storage space for any sort of large files; this is regardless of OS.  Instead, I would recommend (and use) local storage (such as a NAS, or even a dedicated internal drive or partition).  The issue isn't the last mile (from the provider to you), but the FIRST mile (from the server holding the files to the Internet) - I don't see any cloud service killing THAT bottleneck anytime soon - even in the US.

 

"Feature-itis" is a software problem that has been around since mainframes - why did anyone expect the invention of the GUI to make it go away?

[spaceelf]

While WLM (and even ModernUI's Mail) may be fine if you have only a single mail account, if you have multiple accounts, then you need a more capable e-mail client.

I use the 'Modern' email client for four email addresses (actually three, but one has my ISPs email tied to it.)  I don't see why I would need anything else.

[vcfan]

I swear sometimes Microsoft changes things around just to ###### power users off:

1. Win8 automatic maintenance cannot be turned off, you can disable the tasks and everything but it reinstalls itself as soon as it's manually launched. That "awesome" feature trashes the hard drive every time you leave the computer idling so if are you burning a dvd or a blu-ray it's going to cause continuous buffer underruns ruining the burned discs. Not to mention all the memory it uses that forces everything else to swap.

just how old are your burners? no burnproof/smartburn?

 

2. OneDrive clogs all the upload bandwidth on DSLs and makes browsing the most annoying experience ever for all the hours that the files are loading.

isn't that what its supposed to be doing? if you have a QoS setting in your router, you can manage packet priorities and don't have to have this issue. you just have to configure it properly.

[T3X4S]

:|

[+Anarkii Subscriber²]

Ive used it since version 1 and its always been 'it just works'. 
I've tried all the Apple "OS's and even dabbled in Linux, but that was a nightmare downloading and installing drivers that rarely even had support. 
For Windows its always been a case of install it, and it just works. 
Sure the early days were pretty bad such as ME and 98, even Vista, but Windows always just seemed to work with all my devices and got the job done.
For that reason alone, I don't think ill ever change.