On Saturday 16 June 2001 13:40, you wrote:
> Yet another war story that people think are far and few between.
I have to concur with Tim here, since we're all sharing scars and war stories.
I've installed Windows at least 300 times -- 3.x, 95, 98, 98SE, NT 4, and
2000 Professional--on everything from my first pentium to corporate destops
and Compaq servers. I have never had it perform like a Microsoft commercial.
I have never had a flawless install. There are always several tweaks
necessary in order to get the system working properly and I can't tell you
how many times a small change in one area can have huge and unexpected
consequences in another.
I've only installed Linux about 15 times and that on only three hardware
configs. The installations have usually gone smoothly, though I've had to
tweak and customize, edit config files, install packages, and generally mess
around. I've taken this in stride because I EXPECT to have to do those things
and I'm delighted when I can fix one problem without creating 6 more.
I guess the difference for me is that Microsoft will lie in order to create
the expectation that these vastly complicated aggregations of hardware and
software known as modern desktop computers "just work" without any planning,
knowledge and effort on the user's part. I don't think that their 20 year
contribution to the "dumbing down" of computer users is anything to be proud
of.
- Chris
