Challenge for all you Microsoft haters!

[Dragonbite]

Dragonbite

I never need to work with VBA so I don't know what it can do. But on a thread on OOO someone who seemed to know MS Office and OpenOffice capabilities very well,--at least that is my impression as well as others',--said Basic (VBA and OO basic) is crap anyway and you run the risk of picking up real bad habits if that is your first exposure to programming. He said python is a lot faster, more powerful and flexible and OO.O supports that. What do you think?
Experienced or not, sounds like opinion to me.

"VBA runs the risk of picking up real bad habits..." is true of any programs you start getting into. Because it is so easily accessible (install Office, got VBA) there is a good chance that somebody develops bad habits, but making it more stringent just increases the chance they never get into programming in the first place!

Excel's VBA got me started before I moved to Access & VBA, then ASP and SQL Server and now to ASP.NET. So for me, VBA has been good (though I am in the process of trying to learn C# and to cross-pollinate with Mono).

[Nick_Jinn]

I just barely decided to really learn to use my computer....for the time being....I need my crutches. I prefer using a GUI when I can and I like things to be intuitive and easy to use.


There are other things about Microsoft I just dont like though....its not that they are lacking ease of use, but there is a lot of maintenance and cost involved, and I dont like how they corner the market sometimes using means I consider unethical....though others will just call it 'business'....I would be willing to take a hit in performance and ease of use in exchange for freedom and privacy and security....but thanks to advances in Linux, much of which is owed to Debian and Ubuntu and devs downstream from them, I actually feel like I am in many ways getting better performance...at least I have choice.

If I use Windows I cant just decide to download a light weight version if the default is a little heavy for my system.....one of my classes "upgraded" from XP to 7 with only 1gb of ram....not happy with the results....If that was Linux I could just swich to LXDE...With Windows they would have to redo the whole network.


But yes, there are in fact convenient things about Windows, but in my opinion its not worth the trade off.


I do still have a copy for old games, but more and more I just buy whats compatible with Linux and Wine and ignore the rest.

[lordhaworth]

Microsoft is good for what it is - an OS for the majority of people.

I use Linux, but don't really have a problem with MS. It can be cheap, easy and runs pretty much everything an everyday user needs.

I prefer it to mac. Lots.

[julio_cortez]

windows = plug and play
ubuntu = plug and look for a drivers u wont find it easy and u wont make everything work in less than few days esp on new high end machines.

windows = sound card no matter what mark will work without even installing drivers
ubuntu = unless u have old sound card it wont work out of the box u'll have to look for correct drivers install it download 200mb updates and than it maybe will work i tried intel acl1200 and it didnt work out of the box not on 10.04 nor on 9.10 nor on 10.10
ati hdmi is not supported
It works the other way round here: Windows 7 needed drivers for the sound card to be recognized correctly (only playback but no recording with the "default" W7 driver) and for the video card. Everything else was recognized correctly (even if I installed the latest drivers anyway). Ubuntu, on the other hand, needed just the video card driver to have compositing enabled, and offered me to download and install the proper one automatically.

windows = play HD clips from you tube or your desktop no problem cpu usage 5 to 8%
ubuntu = when play HD i think flash or java not sure use 65 to 85% of the cpu
Very strange. Here the CPU usage has never been above 15 or 20% in Ubuntu, even if in Windows it still is lower (between 7 and 10%)

this are just few things and everyone know that windows is more user frendly more stable so no one should say microsoft is bad cuz windows is just better.
but ubuntu have things windows doesnt have for example compiz or shell in ubunutu are things u cant do in windows.
So you eventually agree that Windows has several strength which Ubuntu hasn't, but it's true also the opposite.

I found Ubuntu easier to "use" than Windows. Maybe it's not as powerful as Windows but it's still a great OS for people that don't need particular software or play certain games (I still need SonicStage, and I'm a gamer aswell, so Windows is still way more than a simple option to me).

One thing that often keeps people from using Ubuntu, for example, is "reduced" support for wireless (which, in both the cases I had to deal with it, fortunately has turned into something I could manage) and lack of support for the latest games..

But in the end I must admit I've become so used to Ubuntu that I often look for the [X] button on the top left in Aero, wondering why it's not there, and I often look for gedit instead of notepad..

It almost made me cry to see people using Tab Tab Tab Tab to right-align textOh dear.

the space bar to center text LMAO

or Return Return Return to force a page break ROTFLMA.. Wait, I'm guilty here.. I've done it a lot of times before I knew how to insert a page break :P

[Thoric]

A positive.. Well my preferred audio sequencing & mastering software doesn't run well at all in any flavor of Linux I've tried. Be it wine or crossover. Anything other than VM falters to the point of unusability.

Hardware compatability is a little bit stronger. I've still yet to get my bluetooth mouse to function outside of XP/7. My cheap $30 MIDI keyboard also won't work at all in Ubuntu. Granted a fly by night sort of company manufactured it & it was never intended to function outside of a useless "learn to play" software suite.

I don't care about off console gaming so I've not experienced that side of the argument. So I'm just going to take word for it.. However this also falls into software compatibility.

So I managed to come up with 2 positives for the OS.

On the flip side, I couldn't get my new printer to network using XP. Took about an hour to get things working right with 7. But eventually did mostly work. Functioned flawlessly within 2 minutes using samba under Ubuntu.

I no longer have to make a near to daily backup of the hard disk my OS runs on. Although System Restore did seem to work fairly well in place of a full backup. I've yet to have a crash of any sort in Linux while using stable software releases. If there is a crash things are usually minimal and only affect the application & not the functionality of the entire OS.

In order to get any performance quality out of the machine. I don't need to waste time removing junk that you're forced during installation process.

I actually have control over everything within the OS. All be it that is also a con if you're not careful. Best analogy I can use for Winblows.. Well, would you buy a car with the hood welded shut? Sure you can tinker around underneath. But good luck changing your spark plugs..

Off the top of my head nothing else comes to mind that doesn't one way or another fall into those "categories". So 2-4.. 50/50.. That is to say without adding in the frequency of issue variable.

The company on the whole however. Well I almost feel obligated to respect them. Through smart business & fairly faulty software. Microsoft has not only managed there way to the top but remained there for a number of years now. One thing that may surprise you about this powerhouse. They actually have a department dedicated to redistribute the money they gorged out of their consumers back into the community. I've not heard of any other company actually having a depot for charitable outflow. Granted a good portion of their charitable donations consist of computers loaded with Winblows. But nevertheless that still brings computers to many schools & organizations that would likely otherwise go without.

Alright so now I'm babbling.. Point I want to get accross is that I don't hate Microsoft. I just really dislike the dependability of their OS's. Which almost isn't always unreliable.

[beew]

One One thing that may surprise you about this powerhouse. They actually having a depot for charitable outflow. Granted a good portion of their charitable donations consist of computers loaded with Winblows.

Not surprising to me at all. This is just brand promotion and a way to lock in users. It is very cheap as a marketing scheme to throw out a few crumbs to ensure there is an ongoing supply of users who know only how to use windows for their work and to sustain a computing environment (hardware and software) in the workplace that cannot function without windows. I bet all these "donations" are tax deductible too so it costs MS nothing and gets them some PR points to boot.

But nevertheless that still brings computers to many schools & organizations that would likely otherwise go without.

I don't buy that. Without MS dangling a carrot ahead of them these schools and organizations would likely consider other options which would be better for them (and bad for Ms) in the long run.

They could probably easily switch to Linux if not because of the fear of the unknown and human inertia. This would cost them no licensing fee at all and since Linux works so well with older hardwares it would also save them a lot of upgrading costs which would be required to run the latest windows.

In many jurisdictions outside the U.S. they are already making the switch because they can't afford the cost of relying on MS.

[Crempel]

Forgive me if I say something that has already been said, I tried to read as many of the contributions to this topic as possible, but maybe not all of them...
MS is outstanding as far as marketing goes, make a second rate OS the No 1 in the world, BUT is this really a topic for an Ubuntu (Linux) forum? I have not used Windows since 2000 and I really do not want to discuss this OS, if I wanted to, I'd still be using it. Why do this Microsoft topics surface so often on this forum?:lolflag:

[Nick_Jinn]

Microsoft is good for what it is - an OS for the majority of people.

I use Linux, but don't really have a problem with MS. It can be cheap, easy and runs pretty much everything an everyday user needs.

I prefer it to mac. Lots.


I disagree. Linux is better for the majority of the people....If due to nothing besides cost and licensing, unless you pirate windows which is what most of the third world has to do, Windows is simply out of reach. Linux is the only viable option for most of the worlds population....1.5 billion in China, another 1. something billion in India, east asia, the middle east, africa.....Linux is what there is for the common people. People have been under reporting the success of cheap linux netbooks in poor countries.

Windows requires tech support in its own way....viruses, registry, disk fragmentation, security exploits, the fact that it becomes less efficient over time....Windows was designed as a consumer product for the masses, but its also designed to suck money out of your pocket. I think the cost of owning windows in some cases is more than the cost of owning a mac due to the constant service requirements.

[lordhaworth]

I disagree. Linux is better for the majority of the people....If due to nothing besides cost and licensing, unless you pirate windows which is what most of the third world has to do, Windows is simply out of reach. Linux is the only viable option for most of the worlds population....1.5 billion in China, another 1. something billion in India, east asia, the middle east, africa.....Linux is what there is for the common people. People have been under reporting the success of cheap linux netbooks in poor countries.

Windows requires tech support in its own way....viruses, registry, disk fragmentation, security exploits, the fact that it becomes less efficient over time....Windows was designed as a consumer product for the masses, but its also designed to suck money out of your pocket. I think the cost of owning windows in some cases is more than the cost of owning a mac due to the constant service requirements.



I agree with you, but MS already has a strong foundation laid, even if it is a psychological comfort due to familiarity

Linux is the only viable option for most of the worlds population

It is this part of the population which will lay the same foundation for linux, but at the moment most people I know would struggle

[gerowen]

They've done an outstanding job at convincing the entire world that paying a few hundred every couple of years for a new version of their proprietary OS is better than using a free open source one.

The XBox 360's online network is in a league of its own. There's just some little features about XBox Live that make it so much more fun and easy to use than the networks for other consoles; being able to voice chat between games, the ability to report people, mark them as preferred or avoided to reduce or increase your chances of playing with them in the future, etc.

Starting with XP, Windows has generally been pretty stable, albeit expensive and vulnerable to attack, but nothing is without its flaws and exploits, including Ubuntu.

Bill Gates seems to be a pretty cool guy. Highly intelligent, successful, and charitable.

I guess I've never really been a Microsoft "hater", I just "prefer" Linux because I find it easier to do a lot of my common tasks in a Linux environment after I got used to it.

[KiwiNZ]

My position has always been that to advance Linux , Linux users need to stop moaning and gripping about the success of MS and Apple and concentrate on the short comings of Linux and fixing them.

Quite simple, want to beat Microsoft and Apple, develop a better product set, to date that has not been done. A progress to that goal has been made but the goal is still some way off.

In life I expect high standards of all things I involve myself with, I am the hardest on myself than anyone else, So I expect Linux and more importantly Ubuntu to look to the highest standards of perfection this is why I judge Ubuntu hard.Anything less is a let down to all concerned.

[erbeesr]

If Microsoft hadn't jumped in bed with the feds it would be OK. If someone wants to see what's on my computer they can knock on my door. I'll let them look all they want to. But being sneaky just doesn't cut it with me.

[Kixtosh]

Personally, I have no hate whatsoever for Microsoft. I have been a happy user of W2K and Win XP Pro of late. Both performed very well, were very secure, and very stable. I had no BSOD and never really had to reinstall. So, why am I even here then?

Well, firstly, I mostly use ultra-portable laptops, weighing less than 3 lbs. Until very recently, this meant slow processors and slow (4,200 rpm) hard drives, as well as limited RAM. This presents some challenges. Firstly, my Windows installs would gradually get slower and slower to start, eventually taking about five minutes to boot up. This would mean that I would never turn them off, unless a new update required me to do so. I would simply suspend them in standby mode, and resume from there. It worked pretty well on the whole.

I've been interested in Linux since 2004 because of this, when I first tried Knoppix 3.7. It worked fine, but my wireless card would not work back then, and I didn't know enough to fix it, so I held off until earlier this year again.

By then, support for W2K was ending, and I tried Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Puppy and some other stuff besides. My wireless worked in all of them, I got my boot times down to under one minute on my oldest machines (see signature), and they were usable again as "spares".

My main laptop, however, has since got infected, even though I never browse suspicious sites (porn, peer to peer downloads, ...) and I don't remember ever opening a suspicious e-mail attachment. It has been a pain to remove, however, and clean up. In the meantime, from trying Live CD's and Linux driven rescue disks, it looks as though one of the lightweight distros will work wonders on boot times and speed of operation for this newish laptop, so it's going to be re-installed soon, with dual boot XP Pro and Ubuntu. I'll only use XP when I have to probably (once bitten, twice shy, and all that sort of thing).

It was interesting to note, however, that Microsoft gave me fairly effective help for free because this was a security issue.

Actually, having recently purchased two cheap W7 laptops for my kids, I have to say that many issues seems to have been confronted. The modest laptops start fast, and seem to work well in general. Perhaps Microsoft have finally got the message!

[jjpcexpert]

They helped me start using computers and eventually their OS helped me find my way I went. To Ubuntu, then to Debian. Now using Debian full time except when I'm at my gran's house, where I use Windows due to lack of other options - & my Toshiba's internal-side power supply has died. So now going out to get a new one! Gonna be £700 pounds further away from Canada.