[rescue] Wooohhhooo XP -> 0 to BSOD in 12min23sec

[Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez]

On Fri, 26 Oct 2001, Kurt Huhn wrote:
> I had a load of fun arguing exactly the opposite of what he said - which was
> that GUIs make the learning curve much shorter, and result in higher
> productivity.  Bullshit, I said.  GUIs like XP are a crutch, and don't
> result in *any* type of performance or productivity enhancements.

The problem is that people have tried to "infantilize" computers during
the last decade or so. A computer is a tool, not a toy and tools must be
learned! Jeezzzz

XP is the latest expression of this, it does not add ANY important feature
to W2K, maybe a few etra utilities but overall it seems to be the same as
our w2k machines. XP's gui is just a toy-like pastel coloured mess... the
only argument I have seen against Unix GUIs is their lack of consistency.
Specially under linux, since you have several toolkits for graphical apps. 
Funny thing is that under XP, half of the apps I have used so far employ
the "classic" look, the other use the new widget look. So why would I
bother with XP? A company that spends billions developing an OS can not
even get the widgets consistent?

 
> I don't know whether or not that's actually true, as I'm not a research
> scientist by any stretch, but I have a suspicion that *any* GUI will allow
> you to do exactly the same thing - Windowmaker, XP, CDE, GNOME, KDE,
> whatever...  If you take the time to learn it, you can do exactly the same
> thing in any GUI.


What I like about linux is that I have choices. I can use whatever window
manager I like, I can make it look whatever way I like. And I am very
picky about the looks of my desktop... XP looks like an insult to good
taste. And does not look "professional" at all. Just my 2cents. Having
worked with aqua (and fallen in love with it), all that I can say is that
"luna" is not even that good of a gui. In fact it looks like a really bad
gnome theme.... :-) And I was a Mac hater for a long time....

My opinion is that luna is to aqua what Windows 3.0 was to System7. Once
again M$ will be able to get away with the inferior product, this is what
I find disgusting.... plus the M$ rep quoted us the academic price
for XP (not the professional version mind you) of around $200.00. I am
sorry but I can get *BSD/QNX/linux/solaris almost for free, and their
academic value is orders of magnitude larger than this piece of garbage.


I still think that MacOSX's got it right, has a consistent GUI for 1st
time users, and a powerful OS under it. My recommendation is that if
you are a 1st time computer user get MacOS, if you know what you are doing
get Linux/BSD/Solaris etc, if you just want to make Billy boy ritcher then
by all means but this piece of garbage. It took the M$ tech 2 days to get
it running, thus at this point I don't think that XP is any easier to set
up than a Linux box. Oh, and there is a $200 difference, so for that money
I recommend novices buy a $50.0 book to get them started in Linux, and
then the advantage of XP is gone (plus you saved $150 in the switch!). It
seemed that M$ wants to push XP hard into academia, so they can force
students to learn .NET, and they want you to pay them 200 buckaroos for
the privilege. Scary thing is that some of our undergrads were excited
about it, jackasses!
 
> He was, of course, trying to convince me to put XP on my system.  The
> argument started out with him claiming that XP is the current pinnacle of
> usability for OSs.  I did, of course, disagree...

Where does M$ find these people? Our M$ rep seemed to be brainwashed or
something, it was like he had some kind of personal infactuation w. Billy
boy it was pretty scary..... Then he tried to convince us to switch from
LaTeX to Office XP. At that point I stopped listened and I left in the
middle of his sentence, what a waste of my time!