Author: Don Dailey
Date: 09:34:50 12/06/97
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On December 06, 1997 at 05:18:05, Jack Nerad wrote: >On December 04, 1997 at 19:44:31, Thorsten Czub wrote: > > >>But it remains the question: why are there no other competitors who try >>or sell a DIFFERENT and BETTER OS and stand against Microsoft ? There are several others who have sold a different and better OS. Even DOS had some far superior clones out there that no one payed to much attention too. There is no way it had anything to do with quality, almost no one disagree's that some of these DOS clones were far superior and extremely compatible. You need to realize that the average consumer makes his or her decision on many factors many of them not really rational at all. I don't exclude myself from this either. Some considerations are practical too, a lot of my "technie friends" have windows 95 and NT not because they believe it's "better" in any way, only because they want to develop marketable software, and have access to lot's of good software etc. I prefer to "cast my vote" in favor of technically superior stuff, because I believe in disouraging mediocrity (with a very tiny voice I admit but there are others out there too), and I want to encourage excellence. But I can only do this because there are not too many practical consideration stopping me. For instance if I had children, I would probably also have a windows 95 machine in the house. As I've said earlier, I usually tell my non-technical friends to just go with the flow (Windows 95.) I also have an 8MM VCR for recording stuff on TV. It was better than anything I could get with the VHS format. But I paid the price, it was much harder to rent tapes, buy blank tapes, record stuff for friends and swap etc. When I bought it (years ago) there was some hope that it would catch on and though I didn't really believe it would, I wanted to "cast my vote" in favor of the better thing. But for a while I had a great time with it and enjoyed the better quality I was getting. When the product finally needed repair I just went out and bought a Super VHS for practical reasons (not for quality although it's not that bad.) So this idea that the public will cast their vote with their money in true democratic fashion to decide what is really best is a ridiculous notion in my opinion. Also keep in mind that the public in this case is very heavily weighted in favor of newer computer users. In a real election would you give children the vote and exclude adults? I don't mean any disrespect here, many of these new users will become "adults" in the computer sense and become very proficient users and we all started as "children." But they will have grown up with Windows and always have a windows "bias", in the same way a lot of old timers have a unix bias or distaste for modern graphical user interfaces. But please, I really get tired of people trying to pretend that Windows is a "great" OS. It's simply not. There are plenty of great arguments in favor of using Windows, even for technical types so let's stay rational here. Most of the people posting here use Windows because it is the best practical OS for their needs and I fully respect this. >Whatever happened to OS/2 Warp? > Warp is around but not very popular compared to windows. In my opionion it is far superior to Windows and I like the look better although this is purely subjective and has little to do with the value of an OS from my point of view. I think IBM's heart was not in it so they did not agressively promote it until it was too late. They also believed all the microsoft hype and by doing so helped make it come true, just like the public did. >> >>Ok. Lets end this discussion here. >>Sorry that I talked about this off-topic stuff. >>PC & Microsoft is weak, but show me a better OS-System / computer. >>Democracy is weak, but show me a better system. > >I don't have it, but some techie friends of mine though it was *way* >better than Windoze. > >> >>Hm. >> >>Sometimes the "better" system cannot be born because there is illegal >>business behind the scene trying to STOP competitors to release their >>product. >>This is competition, or ? >>I hope so. But often I am not sure. Of course lot's of stuff went on behind the scenes. Microsoft was extremely aggressive in stomping out the competition. I continually am amazed that so many people come to their defense with things like "oh, they're just doing what every other company does", "They're just great businessmen" etc. There seems to be strong admiration for this kind of behavior and no one seems to believe in fairness or excellence any more. Don
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