5 Things Windows Does Better Than Linux (Or Apple!)

To begin a quote use [quote] To end a quote use [/qu ote] but without a space between the u and o.

Yup. For the rest, basic HTML is allowed (bold, italics, etcetera). URLs are automatically converted so just paste it in. No need for markup.

>>For the rest, basic HTML is allowed (bold, italics, etcetera). URLs are automatically converted so just paste it in. No need for markup.

gus3's question has been asked before. Would it not make sense to put this summary at the bottom of the reply box, for reference?

I only found out by accident that the that [ ] notation worked. I used it out of force of habit from using it elsewhere.

So an some help text explaining what can be used would be good.

Quoting: Would it not make sense to put this summary at the bottom of the reply box, for reference?

Come on, now! You do that and many of us won't be able to authoritatively answer anything!

Quoting:Come on, now! You do that and many of us won't be able to authoritatively answer anything!

How would that change anything? This is teh Intar-Web.

Hey, that quote thingy works! ;-)

Thanks for the tips, I'll remember those.

>How would that change anything? This is teh Intar-Web.

I meant that some of us don't know very much. Explaining quotes is about our only chance to be heros. Take that away, and what's left?

This morning I went to the dentist for a checkup.

They have a relatively new computer system, no more paper "paperwork", everything is recorded in computer forms. Ok, nothing surprising about that.

However, while I'm sitting there getting my gum-depth measured, the hygenist says, "What's that? What am I supposed to do with that? Wait a moment." and she goes out to find someone who can tell her what to do.

They came back, and the other hygenist says, "Just cancel those. They come up constantly telling you about software updates and such, just cancel."

Turns out, sure enough, Windows XP is getting in the way.

So there is one thing Windows does far, far better than Linux: It gets in the way.

I started laughing, and gave them my "Linux" business card on the way out.

Quoting:They come up constantly telling you about software updates and such, just cancel."

And if auto update is set on, and it does an update, it will nag you to reboot, and the reboot message is very insistent.

> the reboot message is very insistent.

Oh yeah. Windows has a version of cron that uses artificial intelligence to know when you're working on deadline for one of your largest customers. Then it slows the processor down to half speed while it "updates", and it escalates to giving you these incessant popup messages to reboot. It's like a video game... you can hardly close them as fast as they pop up again.

It wouldn't be so bad, having to reboot, if you got your applications back as you had them before you rebooted, but MS Windows forgets what you were doing and you have to reload all your applications.

On my KDE desktop I can have KDE remember what applications I had open, and many of them will reload the files they had open at the time I shut the system down. Linux never requires a reboot, but if it did, I'd have most of my work back without having to lift a finger... or click a mouse button.

On a Windows OS I have to reload avery application, then reload the files I had open, and hope I remembered to save before the reboot.

and every time you start up windoze you get the herds of systray nags that never shut up and keep coming back even after you dismiss them. I HATE that. I also hate all the junk that installs itself in the systray, and how the red carpet is rolled out for crapware and malware, and everyone but the owner of the PC has control.

jrm, you may be kidding, but I think you are 100% true.

No, I wasn't kidding except the part about cron with AI. The real genius of Microsoft was convincing people that things are supposed to be like this.

Yes that was real marketing genius.

As an add-on to my Jul 17, 2007 2:25 AM comment:

Quoting:Windows users are notorious for clicking on things they shouldn't, whether in email or in a "This requires admin privileges" dialog box.

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=129122&WT.svl...

From the article's last paragraph:

Quoting:Don't rely on the users to protect themselves. And never forget, "whenever a box pops up on the screen, a user will click 'OK' because the makes the box goes away," he added. It's this kind of mentality that ensures security pros will always have a job.

Eh, it's not fair to blame users for the giant steaming pile of crud that is Windows. If houses were built as shoddily as Windows we would sleep outside by choice.

tuxchick: I concur, to a certain extent. "If architects built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization."

However, there are some things you just don't click, but sadly Windows promotes the mentality that "do the right thing" means "clicking." Remember the ILOVEYOU email?

> but sadly Windows promotes the mentality that "do the right thing" means "clicking."

You had it right in your earlier post:

Too many pointless annoyances = click on it so that I can keep working. It's why the Vista security doesn't work, and, as I understand it, gets disabled by anybody who actually cares to do a little computing.

Most people don't know how to disable UAC on Vista. I'm guessing MS made that difficult on purpose. The worst thing about it is, wehn you disable UAC, Vista still throws clickety-click nag screens at you, telling you that UAC is off and that you should enable it.