🚀 go-pugleaf

John Cartmell <jo...@cartmell.demon.co.uk> writes:
>In article <01bc109f$86d0b300$c45f...@VVM.vvm.com>, Robert J. Murphree
><URL:mailto:murp...@vvm.com> wrote:
>> 
>> It never ceases to amaze me.

>> If the MS hater's club really hates MS products so much, then why
>> don't they simply not use them.  Is someone putting a gun to their
>> heads?

>Yes.  If your employer insists on using an inferior product and you
>can't get another job.

Or, even more fun, if you are the "computer expert" in a university halls
of residence with about 200 students, and they all want to write their
reports and assignment in WinWord..... You wouldn't believe how many ways
there are in WinWord to completely lose your work of the last few hours.
Not to mention the "interesting" effects you can get when moving data from
one machine to another, especially if Win95 is involved somewhere (Hey,
that was really cool, when first half the included Excel graphs printed out
as big, black boxes (_not_ "black box(tm)", but simply black rectangles),
and 5 minutes later about 1/3 of the Greek symbols turned into hearts,
small black boxes and smiley faces...)

>> Other OS's and Applications are available so I fail to understand
>> what all the bitching is about.

Unfortunately, a lot of people who use those other OSs are in positions
like the one described above --- and especially _because_ other (and,
in these people's minds, better) solutions are around, dealing with
"the standard" is pretty painful.... Ever had a look at the hoops you
have to jump through to do some of the more unusual print setups under
Novell? Ever tried to keep a Novell print setup running? Believe me,
I swore "Let's convert this all to linux" under my breath more than once.

Don't get me wrong --- I just installed Windows 3.1 and WinWord on my
old 486, in preparation for giving it to a friend of mine. For what she
does, WinWord is acceptable, and it has the advantage that there are people
around who she can ask if something goes wrong. Also, she has already read
the hint sheet I created, telling everyone how to minimize the inevitable
data loss due to Windows (one of the points on that list is "if something
went wrong, and you don't know how to fix it --- DON'T TRY!". It's incredible
how many people ruin their last chance of getting their work back by pressing
more or less random keys, making it impossible to undo the fatal command).
If she is ever going to write a masters thesis, however, I will introduce
her to the marvels of LaTeX (or maybe LyX, as the WYSIWYG frontend). I did
that once before, to a dietitian, and at the end of her thesis, she was
a convert.

Windows et al have their place --- partly because they are idiot proof at
one level (though it seems they are pretty fragile and prone to data loss
at another level), and partly because they are ubiqious(sp?), meaning
that someone a little more knowledgeable than yourself is probably easy to
find. I'd say linux, OS/2 and the other alternatives might be able to
catch up in the first regard (and at least linux is a lot more error-proof
for me personally, given the kinds of errors that I seem to be making).
In the second regard, only a lot of time might bring a change. But you
start seeing Linux books on the same shelf as Win95 books, and linux CDs
right next to Office97 packs on the shelves; Even "Linux for dummies" is
out.... Maybe before the end of the millenium (i.e. before 1/1/2001) we
will be able to tell people to use linux without feeling a personal obligation
to help them out when they get stuck ;-)

Bernie

-- 
============================================================================
"It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy...
    	                                   ...let's go exploring"
Calvin's final words, on December 31st, 1995