As one who daily monitors the various OS issues, I had seen both of the articles beforehand. The PCMag article gave you a comparison of sorts. I think they were a bit light on Vista. They need to discuss the invasive issues of DRM which some claim is taking up a lot of computer resources, among other things such as "phoning home". I don't know what it is doing for sure, but the hard drive is rarely not doing a read or write every second or so. XP does not do this.
The problem with these kinds of reviews as they are looking at the overall usability of the OS for the average users who need basic e-mail, web browsing, media software, etc. And all of the OS's have that for the most part. The problem is that if you run ham programs, and that includes most of us on this group, you are mostly going to want to run MS Windows programs since they are overwhelmingly better than anything available on Linux or Mac. Windows development is perhaps 95% of the ham market from what I can see. And by that I mean freeware and open source software as well as commercial software. There just are no programs on Linux or Mac that are remotely equal to HRD/DM780, the DXLab suite, Multiipsk, and many others. Looking at things long term will can expect more Linux programs and improvements. Many countries are moving toward Linux, particularly the developing world, but software development of this type could take a decade or two. Consider that there were built in ham radio capabilities early in Linux and yet the programming efforts actually decreased for many years and are only recently becoming more active again with programs such as PSKmail and fldigi. While I do enjoy reading Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols articles (sometimes several per week) it would not be fair to claim that he has a balanced view since he is very pro-Linux and has mostly used Linux for quite a few years. Without question, he is more balanced than some of the comments made by the typical Linux zealots who are truly misunderstanding what it is that most of us want for an OS. The question we might ask outselves is whether a given OS does the things we want it to do and not do the things we don't want it to do? No OS can fulfill those requirements, but at this time MS Windows does it the best for much of ham radio needs. 73, Rick, KV9U Howard Brown wrote: > Did you read it? Does it seem slanted or just reporting? > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Tooner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com > Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 2:00:07 PM > Subject: [digitalradio] Re: Vista > > --- In digitalradio@ yahoogroups. com > <mailto:digitalradio%40yahoogroups.com>, Howard Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > > > It appears your opinion is shared by others: > > > > http://www.desktopl inux.com/ news/NS854183741 2.html?kc= > EWKNLNAV032408ST R4 > <http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8541837412.html?kc=EWKNLNAV032408STR4> > > > > One can hardly consider a Linux site to be fair-and-balanced towards > it's slant on Windows. > > >
