First of all, I myself am not a huge fan of M$, but...

(1) Windows 2000 is an *excellent* product. Stability up the wazoo while retaining very good compatibility with Win9x programs. I actually bought Windows 2000.
(2) Office is another *excellent* product. Need I say more - if you've used it extensively, as I have since 1994 - you already know this.
(3) Internet Explorer - yet another excellent product. Nothing matches it pure power vs. resource usage. I tried Netscape 6 and immediately uninstalled it when I saw it's resource usage. Not only memory but the processor time - it took up so many processor cycles just to display a standard web page that it actually caused Winamp to skip once in a while - a feat no other program has been able to accomplish on my machine.

And I must even praise the Win9x line. Not for me (a power user) but for the average Joe who knows little to nothing about computers. My mother does e-mail, surfs the net, scans in photos with the scanner, e-mails and prints them, *all* without knowing a directory from a hard drive. Pretty damn impressive for a system to be so user-friendly that a person with very little knowledge can get so much done. At work she even uses Office to create newsletters and calendars - using clip-art and everything. Yet you even mention the term "directory" or "folder" or "USB port", you may as well be talking to a wall. With all the bashing that goes on in here (any everywhere else) I felt that, given it's plusses and minuses, Windows is still the best and easiest to use PC platform. It's no wonder why it has become so dominant - cuz for every power user, like most of us in this forum, there exists many more people who don't know crap about their computer, yet are still able to use it productively.

For the record - I have 3 OS's on my computer - WinMe, Win2k, and I just installed Linux. I'm looking forward to learning Linux, and given my computer expertise, I'm sure I will have no problem. But I can say that given my limited exposure to Linux, that Windows is still far more friendlier, not to mention the software support, which far outweighs Linux. However, I am very happy to see another OS gaining popularity and support - maybe it'll make M$ work a little harder at providing stable, user-friendly software and OSs.

And for the record, I *hate* WMP7. Good thing is that Win2k came with 6.4, not 7, so I don't even have it installed. I think M$ should just stick to OSs and core programs (such as Office) and leave the rest to people who actually are capable of coding decent software (such as Nullsoft).

So waddaya think? :)

very curious..
 

Ok Gates, I know it's you. You can try to throw us all off, by mentioning Winamp, but it won't work. oh yea, Merry Christmas everybody :)

How does she like the kernel32 crashes and the BSODs and all th other crap?

Amen to that!! And to some other stuff you stated.

true.. true...
 

Although I'm kinda pissed of with IE now. It's been completely evil for the past few months (since I upgraded to 5.5 and then 5.5 sp1). Horribly slow.. all kinds of weird things happening. Ugh...

The folks behind Opera definitely have Microsoft beat on that front. IE is of course more than adequate for the audience of people you described while talking about Win9x; Opera's better, but I suppose it could be too complicated for some.

Ummm, Opera is not better than Internet Explorer.

IE has really been giving me problems lately. Whenver I use a form (searches etc), it hangs for about half a minute or so but then comes back.

So I downloaded Opera to check it out and I must say this product is excellent. It's the fastest browser I've seen. The ads are, well, a bit annoying, but I guess I can live with them

You think win 2k is good? Huh, that's funny!! NT4sp6 is actually better...

Anyone remember Windows 3.1?

That was pretty damn stable... :)

How 'bout DOS? :D

uhh... yes it is.
 

And talha: you could live without them if you do a little looking around....

speaking of ms has anyone been able to get to their site recently or is it just me?

It's just you. We wouldn't try.

Back to about the 1970s - Microsoft was, at this tim, a scabby little bungalow in the middle of the desert and Bill Gates, CEO of the Microsoft, wears jeans, wakes up late in the morning with a bad hairdo and gets busted speeding on avarage of 3 times a week.

Legendary: Bill Gates decides to deal business with IBM, where he claimed on his first meeting with them that he has an operating system to counter Steve Jobs's Apple Computers. It's called "DOS".

The thing is, THEY LIED! THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO SELL!

So where did "DOS" came from? A local buncha Seatle losers who called themselves the "Seatle Software Company" made this crappy OS, but couldn't sell it.

So Bill Gates sent one of his mates to take a Taxi, and go buy that Operating System. He bought it for $20,000.

Classy, eh?

And where did Bill Gates get the Graphic User Inteface for Windows 3.1 from? He made a fake alliance with Apple computers to create the Macintosh but instead stole the prototype Macintosh and duplicated it with the name "Windows".

Whe Steve Jobs went to test out Windows, his roared "This is the same!"

But Bill Gates calmly said "Well, it's similar."

Then there was an argument, after which Steve Jobs said "You can never beat us, we have better stuffs! (which, people, is true, Macintosh IS better than PCs)"

"Doesn't matter!" Bill Gates replied.

Ah, those were the days...

talha:

I was having the same problem... It was a real pain in the ass, but I finally found the solution.

If you're using Win9x go to:
http://support.microsoft.com/support.../q251/7/87.asp

If you're using Win2k make sure that you have the Protected Storage service running.

office? a good program? do you know how many megs of space that thing wastes?

Wastes? I can get the install size very small. Can't you? But anywayz. I hardly think it's wasting any space. By far, it's fairly easy (to me) and it's quite useful. I'm sure there would be several people that agree.

Microsoft makes good software overall. I'm not saying it's perfect and bugfree. But obviously a lot of people choose to use it. I run windows along side linux, but I use windows more often. If you don't want to run MsSoft then learn how to make an OS and software of your own that perfect and then use it.

Apple's only HUGE downfall is that they don't allow 'clones' of their arcitecture. If they did and their prices dropped to the same level as PC's, they would easily, without a doubt, crush the PC market. Almost every single program that is available on both the PC and Mac runs faster and more reliably on a Mac.

you can get it small (still to big if it takes more than 50 megs), but for average users, they just do a standard install.. that installs more shit than anyone could ever use...

god i remember tha good old days when windows could fit on a few 5.25 floppies and youre good to go! now they only add onto their software and never have actually replaced the old 16 bit programs... they just tweaked them a bit... you would be surprised what crap they left in the windows me cd. go ahead go to run.. type winfile.... its still there from 3.1 u can even type in progman and it will launch the old shit that we used to have. damn if i think about it now. i had been running on win 3.1 doing a website with an aol prog and on a 28.8 on a 486/33 with 16 megs of ram until november 97. now all i got is a pentium 166 overclocked at 200 and 64 megs of ram but win me is on it so i guess thats a plus.

speaking of useless crap,
 

Netascape 6 is the biggest piece of shit to come from anyone this year. they try to pack so much useless crap in there so they can brag about their crap.
The most useless part of it is the Instant Messaging. That's what AIM/ICQ is for, duh! Also that thing on the side with the IM has all this shitI'll never use.

heh

I still have Win3.0 on about 7 floppies. Ah, the good old days :rolleyes:

[QUOTE]Originally posted by phisherman

Quote:

heh I still have Win3.0 on about 7 floppies. Ah, the good old days :rolleyes:

man i still have the 3.0 disks too from my old gateway... still remember when 3.0 fucked up my bios and shit... good job bill gates!

I absoulutly agree to bjay125 !
Windows 2000 is a realy good OS...okay it eats to much RAM but its the most stable OS i ever seen (ok Linux is very stable too but user unfriendly...u must study 10 Linux books to use Linux efficently)
IE is, compared to Netscape, the best browser aviable...
Office is cool too...and Visual Studio is the best aviable Software Developement Package...

MS product like the Instant Messenger or the Media Player are useless....

lol... opened progman! has a shortcut to file manager! lol... a "Program Item", actuallly.

[edit]lol... it can't even read the size of my hard drive partitions![/edit]

lol.... shortcut... nope its a program item...shit even the sound recorder program was only adjusted for long file names and thats all! thats too funny... if microsoft got rid of all the old programs and made new ones it would justify the price of an upgrade from older windows versions. windows needs to be re-written totally. maybe then it will be more stable

Actually, Mr. Gates is a businessman. Like it or not. He is not in the business to make friends or make Linus Torvalds ph33r h15 733t c0d1ng ski775--he's in it to make money.

Stealing happens alot in business, as does buying things and selling them at a profit.

Why do you think he's the richest man in the world? His Assembly skill? Nope, he can get a product, do something to it, and make billions from it.

It really isn't fair.

Im surprised nobody's mentioned one of Microsoft's(& Bill Gates') biggest bloopers, DirectX. This is, simply, a piece of pure crap compared to its competition. If Bill Gates hadn't been so money hungry, He would have signed with Open GL and would have had a great graphics and audio manager for his OS.

Then again, I wouldn't exactly call DirectX a failure. Its one of the widest used API's in gaming today (and will be for a long time).

wow.. im a MS-Lovin mood tonight :)

But still, he coulda made a better decison if his didnt ego got in the way.

Actually, DirectX was a fantastic idea. It saves millions of programming hours for game (et al) developers, which means they can spend more time making the games actually *play* well. I just wish it hadn't been Microsoft that created it. But in all fairness, I much prefer OpenGL to Direct3D. As far as audio goes, though, that's not my department.

netscape 6 does suck M$ a$$
 

i agree about netscape 6 - takes up a shit load of resources, is slow as they come and has over 30 links built in with the installed version (before you start closing all those annoying pullouts). man, i remember netscape 0.6 beta - when it didn't even have a mail program attached - but it ran better then this shit does. ie is and is going to stay the best browser out there. opera is good - but lack the money and marketing power to get anywhere.

don't get me wrong, MS hater here, but, in my life time, i've used (count em)
windows 3.0
3.1
3.11
windows 95 (betas up the ass, when it was still windows 94 and code named memphis)
win 98, win 98 rsc 2 (much better)
win 2k pro
win 2k advnaced server
os 2 warp (rocked!! IBM, your marketing is the worse ever)
red hat linux
macs from 7.6 +

and win2k advanced in the best combination of all the factors that i find important (stability, good UI, compatability). linux has a way to go in the UI departemnt - because as much as i like writing my own OS - i doubt many people out there do too.

having said that, i'll rant alittle about micorsoft. if it weren't for this company setting the standards for coding these days - i believe that we would have allot LESS bugs in today's software. when the world's biggest software company releases software that's really buggy (win95 anyone?), what are the little guys to do?
here's an exapmle (like you need a bug example if you've ever used a computer):
i'm driving my car. suddenly, at 90 MPH (i like to drive fast), my car dies. oh no. i pull over, and turn it back on. oh - it works. i guess i don't need to think about it ever again. this simply won't fly, but if your computer crashes - that's what you do...

office is good for what it's built. HD space is cheap - i'm not here to tell them to write smaller code - as long as it works (and let's admit it, 90% of the time it does work), i don't care if they write 1 million or 1 billion lines of code.

so, to close things up, MS does suck, but macs are too expansive, have a better UI but a much slower (and non-exist multitasking) OS. so for now, it's win2k AS for me.

Um, DirectX goes way beyond graphics. And yes, with a few simple API calls you can do things that were impossible to do in less than 3,000 lines of code.

And to those of you who complained about programs that had high memory usage: Ram is cheap. Dirt cheap. Go to http://www.pricewatch.com and do a quick search. $71 for 256MB PC133?? C'mon folks...

IE runs fast... be sure to keep your temporary internet file settings low (seeking through huge temp files consumes a lot a cpu time. And to those of you who do not defrag on a regular basis will suffer the most. You can see up to a 300% performance boost after a defrag)
Oh, and Opera sucks. It's the underdog. If you look into its DHTML support and STILL claim it's the best then you're
a braver person than I am.

AND... to those who complained about HD space... $128MB for a 45GB drive? Geesh... at that price buy 4. Spend your real money on a fast drive and install your OS on it.

Lastly, when win3.1 was mentioned I was reminded of when I spent my youngest teenage years as a BBS junkie. (this was actually before win3.1) Those days were great. (but it started my lifelong daze of antisocial behaivor.) Ever spend days in front of your pc and then remember that you haven't spoken a single word in days? Scary.

Hmmm, you people are saying Netscape sucks now, but at the beginning of this decade 90% of all computer users use Netscape as their main browser. It wasn't until Microsoft's inclusion of IE4 in their Windows 98 launch release that they really made an impact.

Although lawsuits were filed against Microsoft, the fact remains that today 70% of all computer users use IE as their main browser.

The best browser, however, is Opera - yet you say IE is better. My programmer friends ran test on both Opera and IE and found Opera to be WAY faster and much more efficient than IE. Then why aren't you wise enough to use Opera instead?

1. There's IE, and most people can't be bothered to download any more browsers, so they just uses it without looking for anything better.

2. Opera is not free.

Which is a shame, cos Opera is certainly a great browser. And to whoever it was that said Opera is NOT better than IE: you sickens me (pukes on the floor) you know nothing about the truth about Microsoft (pukes again, then gets up, wipe his mouth, and pukes a little more), you know nothing about Bill Gates...

Kevin, I didn't say if I liked it or not, I'm just telling you a very interesting but true story, that's all.

erm, *raises his hand* :)

Anyone here tried Staroffice(developed by Sun Microsystems)? A pretty good Office replacement, and its free :D

Its slick, its small, its stable. AND it does everything office does, and more. However, i'm forced to run both on my system, as it sometimes messes up formatting when you use the "Save as word document" option, and my college only uses Office.

Staroffice works well for me - never crashed.

Netscape is bad NOW. It used to be good when it used the Mozilla engine (before they were bought by AOL). Now they've developed their own engine and it is slow as hell. Pure trash!! Way to go AOL...The only good thing about AOL is NullSoft and winAMP. 'nough said.

Umm...I don't know if you knew this or not, but Navigator is developed by the same people who made Netscape 4. It does use the Mozilla engine and is also called Seamonkey. Netscape/AOL just brands it and adds extra junk into it. It also isn't done. Netscape/AOL wanted it out now so it could complete with IE 5.5. Mozilla is still developing Seamonkey and "their" final release is slated for next year.

Ummm. Without a doubt, IE is better than Opera. The reason people don't go looking for another browser is cuz IE is great, it's not very buggy and pretty stable and secure. Opera on the other hand, has problems rendering complex tables and frames, you don't need to be a programmer to do tests, you just have to know HTML. The actual engine used by Opera is still being developed, Microsoft's Internal Canvas (used in IE) hasn't been developed for a couple years now... the last version came with 4.0... So what are 5.0? 5.5? and 5.5 SP1 you ask? Additions to the browser, but not the rendering engine itself, like in 5.5 SP1 one of the big new features is the new renovated Print Preview screen, scure it's cool... But it has nothing to do with rendering capabilities. And the patches located at Windows Update? Those are applied to the browser itself...

Another thing, all browsers are secruity hazards to a certain extent, but MS actually provides patches so you'll be safe. Opera and Netscape have 0 patches... If you use either of those browsers and a secruity hazard arises, you have to wait till the next official relase. Sucks for you, huh? I like Opera myself, but IE is just damn better. Netscape/Mozilla/Gecko/Seamonkey whatever you wanna call it, is just pure crap.

I don't think I understand. Are you saying that we should give Netscape a break because it used to be the most popular?? How would Netscape's past reflect on the quality of their products today?

Re: netscape 6 does suck M$ a$$
 

Ouch. That musta hurt... :D

So what was it like? Unfortunately there's NO software for it, the only other OS I use (or TRY to use, I don't have a controller-based modem) besides windows is linux.

Mozilla, by itself, is great. Try it. k-meleon also runs on it as well.

xephyris: I've heard of that, but never tried it. Rest assured I'll be getting it soon - anything to get the hell away from MS office...