Stock Market...

[Warren Togami]

----- Original Message -----
From: "W. Wayne Liauh" <LiauhW001 at Hawaii.rr.com>
To: "Linux & Unix Advocates & Users" <luau at list.luau.hi.net>
Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2001 3:38 PM
Subject: [luau] Re: Stock Market...


> I have heard a lot of good things about Windows XP; however, we may begin
to
> see cracks in Windows just when it finally becomes stable.  This is an
ironic
> but true aspect of human nature.  Remember when WinCE was a lousy junk it
was
> considered to have so much potential?  Now WinCE has ridded essentially
all
> its kinks, but who cares about it any more?  Ditto its big brothers.

Unfortunately, the truth is that Microsoft is winning on the PDA operating
system market by a large margin.  Have you tried the latest WinCE
incarnations?  They are now being sold as "Pocket PC" operating system,
running on the latest HP Jornada, Compaq iPaq and a similar device from
Sharp.  They are considered the top of the line in the PDA market.  The
interface in Pocket PC is greatly improved, and I'm afraid greatly superior
to the Linux based PDA products on/coming to the market.  The only complaint
I hear is from Palm users, who say that PalmOS is more intuitive albeit with
fewer features.

Fortunately, with Palm's recent acquisition of Be, we should see very
interesting competing products based on BeOS in future, more powerful
incarnations of the Palm brand name.  Unfortunately, the market has not
embraced the Linux based PDA platforms, and they severely lag behind in
functionality and useful software.

>
> OTOH, with Win2K, which is the system I am running, my experience is that
you
> almost have to upgrade every application software.  Cost of upgrades is a
> major concern. But more importantly, there are a lot of legacy software
> programs which either don't have upgrade versions, or their upgrades
simply
> suck.  I expect the same to be true for Windows XP.
>

This is only true with certain rare applications, none of which I have used
in the past 4 years.  Yeah, initially there were many programs that were
never designed for NT that were broken on Windows 2000, but now almost every
Windows software company makes it run on 2000 just fine.

XP will actually support MORE old application software than Windows 2000,
working fine with many previously broken Win98 packages.  However, Microsoft
specifically broke certain competing software.... Quicktime and Java plugins
(no old plugins work with IE 6), 3rd party CD burning software, and several
others.  This is the same kind of anti-competitive abuse that existed in the
past, like fake error messages in Win95 that destroyed DR-DOS.

> Another problem with Windows XP is that it has become a massive and almost
> unmanageable slob,  and is extremely inflexible.  What we need is a
> transparent, appliance type OS for our desktops.  Windows XP, though as
good
> as it has appeared, may not be the right system.

I beg you differ.  Have you actually tried XP?  It is exactly the opposite
of what you describe here... and that is why it is a serious threat to
everything we stand for...
* It is very flexible.
* It is very compatible (with the exception of software that Microsoft
wanted to break)
* Even easier to manage than earlier versions of Windows.
* Arguably more secure than earlier versions of Windows.

All of this SCARES ME.  All of these ease of use improvements will make
users too content and happy.  They will happily use Microsoft Passport and
other software because of convenience.