Upscale wrote:
"JR-jred" wrote in message

And if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle. What is YOUR point?

My point is that I'm thoroughly tired of the elitist bull**** that
Mac users spout whenever problems with Microsoft come up.

Why not look at it as if someone was saying there maybe something that makes
a better dado than a wobble?

Microsoft DID make decisions years ago that continue to negatively affect
the reliability and security of their products. Security at MS is job 1.1.

I use Windows and I even admit to using Outlook. So what? I use
whatever program is appropriate for me at that moment of time. Those
programs as well as a few dozen others do what I want them to do,
when I want them to. A decent firewall and virus checker and I'm good
to whenever I want.


In some important ways, Microsoft is the "Craftsman" brand of software,
complete with "features" analogus to the notorious C*man router random
height adjustment.

They're getting better with some products. A year and a half ago I bought
two new Dell desktops. The computers are almost identical. WinXP Pro is on
one and Windows Server 2003 is on the other. The server box has run
flawlessly. It boots nearly as quick as my TV. I'm quite impressed with
WinServer 2003. The WinXP box, OTOH, has required a lot of my time to keep
functional as the "family" PC. For example Windows Update no longer works
automatically; I have muck around a bit to make it work.

I got interested in programming in 1976 and have more or less grown up with
the PC industry. Here's my really short version of why much MS software has
problems: MS PC software started as a "toy" or "hobbiest" level product.
PC-DOS 1.0 and MS-DOS 1.0 were for single user, unsecured computers. Most
early PCs only had 2 floppies, but I spent about $2k to get a 10 MB hard
drive. ("10 Megabytes? My god, what will you do with all that space?")
There was no security in MSDOS 1.0. I could access any bit of memory
anytime.

By contrast, the mainframe and minicomputers of the area were designed with
security in mind. Multiple people used them at the same time, and problems
like making sure one person's printout was finished before starting the next
person's job had been solved for years.

As MSDOS and later Windows needed to do more and more, like security and
networking, these features were "bolted on." To use the Craftsman analogy,
they started with a bare-bones 1/2 HP direct-drive bench saw and added cast
iron wings, 1.5" dado capability, both left and right tilt, and a sliding
cutoff table. They also hung a 2 HP motor below the 1/2 motor and rigged
some belts to help the 1/2 HP motor spin the blade. (Not far from the
literal truth. g)

Win NT 4.0, Win 2000 and Win Server 2003 I've had good results with. But
Win 3.x, 95, 95B, 98, 98 SR2, ME and to some extent XP I've had problems
with. Before .NET, it was really, really, *really* hard to write install
programs for non-trivial software that would work on Win 95 to 2000.
*Really* difficult, nearing impossibility, if you had to mess with MDAC
(Microsoft Data Access Confusion.)

I like MS's .NET. It's a whale of a product. Security was designed in, not
bolted on.


I'm glad MS works for you. Be sure to keep the patches & virus definitions
current. I've started running spyware/malware protection as well as hosts
file blocking on all my machines. If that's a "Huh?" for anyone I recommend
setting your newsreader to news.grc.com and have a look, especially in
grc.security, grc.security.software and grc.spyware. That's where I learned
what to do and what to avoid.

-- Mark