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

[David Rouse]

On Friday, October 26, 2001, at 10:43  PM, Kurt Huhn wrote:

> I submit that, for all the supposed benefits of XP, you could setup a 
> Linux
> box with StarOffice and your average business user wouldn't be any worse
> off.

Sorry for the length and non-topicness, but I've been thinking about 
work...

I really agree with you, but I've shown my boss (a busness user) 
StarOffice and let him know that Unix/StarOffice could mean *hundreds* 
of dollars off the cost of a new PC. You know what he said? That won't 
work -- it isn't MS Office. The business users don't *care* that it is 
MS Windows, really, what they care about is MS Office. I imagine that a 
lot of them would be happy to use 98se *forever* ... if MS let them.

Again, I don't agree with all that, but that does seem to be the way 
business users think, and graphics people think the same way about Adobe 
Photoshop, etc. It doesn't really matter what the OS is (although the 
user might not be concious of that), what the user cares about is the 
app.

As far as the whole GUI/command line thing goes, I think both command 
line tinkering and GUI tinkering are going down the wrong path, at least 
for most users. People who are Doctors, Accountants, Salespeople, etc. 
really need computers that get the heck out of the way and just aid them 
as they do thier job -- the computers need to be invisible, and for them 
the GUI and command line don't really do that.

The right path? Heck, a curses based system that starts the one 
application for a normal user -- and that's it -- would be great for 
most business users. Add the ability for the systems admin to get behind 
the scenes and add scripted functionality and scheduled automation (a 
sales report that runs every month? Why should a person have to bother 
doing that?) and you have a great system. If you could get rid of the 
VT100 and have non-generalzed real-world interfaces ... okay then this 
stuff will never get built, but it would help.

Problem is that sort of thing is expensive and difficult to implement 
well. It is easier in the short run to buy MS Office or QuickBooks and 
have to work around the limitations and generalizations. That and curses 
and VT100s aren't modern enough.

Gaahhh! I tell folks at work over and over ... any report we can print 
we can save in machine readable form and do stuff to them automatically, 
or stuff them into spreadsheets. But folks still print everything out 
and type it back into a PC.

If it helps to get back on topic, we do all our billing and accounting 
on a Sun Ultra 1 (100 employee company, 20K+ customers). We've been 
thinking about upgrading, maybe to an Ultra 2.

--
drouse