Cameron, I can appreciate your severe frustration with a ridiculous situation. However, don't you think if the millions of other users had experiences similar to yours that they would have switched just as you did? The fact that Wintel is still the dominant (by leaps and bounds) system gives one the thought that perhaps the norm is not nearly as bad as your situation.
It's much like saying that because Bruce Reubenstein had a bad experience with the ZX-5n and Pentax support that everything about Pentax is CRAP!!!!!!!!!!! Especially the ZX-5n. Yet there are many other users who are satisfied. I am glad that you do have the choice to go with a Mac instead of a PC. Some competition is very healthy for both sides. My best analogy is that the Mac is like Communism - closed, controlled and little variance. In many respects, when it comes to computers, this is a good thing. It leads to less compatibility problems and a set of expectations that the manufacturers must meet. The PC is much like Capitalism - running rampant all over the map and much out of control. Hence many of the issues that seem to plague it. But like Capitalism, it invites price competitiveness and change (innovation?). The free spirit seems to survive and even thrive when it should need to be controlled. The whole trick to controlling is to do it perfectly. Had Apple done it perfectly, we would all be using Macs now. Bruce Friday, August 2, 2002, 10:59:50 AM, you wrote: CH> I'm sorry to get so enraged. When I think of the hundreds and hundreds of CH> hours I spent in Windoze trying to fix stupid errors that should not have CH> happened and that I now know were only the result of bad software, I have a CH> tendency to get furious. CH> I recall when I first got my new Windoze 95 Pentium 166 machine back in CH> 1995. Upon having my first (of thousands of) 'fatal error(s)' after CH> innocently starting the machine up (it had been working fine hours earlier), CH> I got onto the Microsoft helpline (after a few hours on hold) and the CH> conversation went something like this: CH> "My computer just crashed, and I have a blue screen that says 'fatal error CH> at winsoc 386.95200115993.231.2223 stack dump CH> 0000100011110010111001101000000010100100010100101001 CH> 1100001000111100101110000001101001010010001010010100 CH> 1111 00001000111100101110011010010100100010100101001 CH> 0011001000111100101000110011010010100100010100101001 CH> 0000100011100000100101110011010010100100010100101001 CH> 0011111001000111100101110011010010100100010100101001 CH> 0000100110111100000101110011010010100100010100101001 CH> 0000101111100111100101110011010010100100010100101001. CH> What should I do?" CH> "You must reboot from your startup CD" CH> "But I'll Lose everything. Isn't there anything else I can do" CH> "No." CH> "I have hundreds of hours of work on this machine. Is there any way of CH> retrieving it?" CH> "No." CH> "Where can I get a book listing the error messages in Windoze 95?" CH> "A book?" CH> "Yeah, you know, a book explaining what the error messages mean and how to CH> fix them." CH> "There is no book." CH> "Well how do you fix your machines?" CH> "You must reinstall Windoze 95 from your startup CD." CH> "Surely to God there must be a listing somewhere of all the possible error CH> messages and what to do to fix them. What does winsoc 386.95200.... mean" CH> "We can't tell you that." CH> "Why not?" CH> It's SOURCE CODE! You must reboot your machine from the startup CD." CH> And so on. Dozens and dozens of times. Most of the time with absolutely no CH> warning. And everytime I was led to believe that I had done something wrong, CH> and that I was somehow an idiot for not knowing what 'illegal function at CH> vdx.586.0010245673472.23459723592365.001001001001111101001'.... means. CH> I remember then the absolute NIGHTMARE upgrade to Windoze 98 that cost me CH> hundreds and hundreds of hours of lost productivity and frustration. I CH> remember simply trying to add a new video card to that pile of crap, and the CH> hundreds of hours searching for little driver bits here and there, crossing CH> and uncrossing jumpers, uninstalling this and disabling that and piddling CH> around with stupid shit for STUFF THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE COMPATIBLE! PLUG CH> AND PLAY! IT SAID SO RIGHT ON THE BOX! AND SO DID THE MICROCRAP WEBSITE! CH> I don't buy the argument about many platforms. It is all predominantly the CH> same chip. The general unsuspecting public has been sold a pile of crap. If CH> we had bought a refrigerator with this kind of reliability, the company CH> would have been out of business years ago. How about a car that just dies CH> without warning five or six times a week, and they won't tell you how to fix CH> it, just to reinstall an engine (at your expense). There would be rioting in CH> the streets. But somehow, Gates and his band of bandits have got away with CH> this by making us feel stupid and inept. And people continue to buy it. It CH> is uncanny to me. CH> The little bit extra you pay for a Mac will be more than made up for in lost CH> production time, frustration, aggravation, etc. Any little problem that CH> crops up is dealt with on the Macfixit website, or Apple comes out with a CH> fix before I even know there is a problem. I have had two crashes on this CH> machine in a year and a half. Both were early on before I knew what i was CH> doing, and neither time did I lose any data. On a Mac, you can reinstall the CH> operating system 'in place' without losing any data. You have a choice of CH> 'in place', reinstall 'in place' and move everything else to a separate CH> file, or to wipe the hard drives clean and totally restart. Makes perfect CH> sense to me. Mac has long been the innovator: look at where the Palm Pilot CH> came from (remember the Mac 'Lisa', and the 'Newton'?). CH> And incidentally, Mr. McRae, Mac was given permission to use the graphic CH> interface from Xerox; Gates, however, stole it from Mac, and pretended it CH> was some great innovation of his making and got us all to believe it! I was CH> fooled, too. And don't forget there were lawsuits, many of them, and CH> continues to be lawsuits, as you know. Unfortunately, Mr. Gates now has so CH> much money he can out manoevre even the US Government. CH> It is a sad commentary on the state of our society that someone can get so CH> rich on the basis of such an awful product that was initially stolen. CH> Windoze and its descendants are the product of deceipt and thievery, and the CH> company that makes it is driven only by out and out greed. The American CH> Dream at its absolute worst. CH> End of rant. CH> Cameron Hood CH> PS: The Digibino is great! I can forsee many many thousands of bootleg CH> photos from concerts, plays, festivals, etc., as people will be bringing CH> them in as they just look like binoculars! It's like something Bill Gates CH> himself would build, and then innocently state "They're for bird watching!" CH> - CH> This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, CH> go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to CH> visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org . - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. 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