Mythbusters on MSVista

[davijordan]

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technol ... tml?page=3
Jamie:
Computer operating systems loaded with stuff I don't want and will never use.
In the tech world this phenomenon is known as “software bloat” or “feature bloat.” It's a well-documented problem and a frequent complaint about Windows OSs—Vista in particular. In addition to being buggy, the extra features tend to bog down your system by demanding more processing power and memory. Computer-makers: Don't load up operating systems with features and then make us sweat to figure out how to get rid of the fat.

Most features can be set up as options. Why not start with a computer loaded with basic stuff that works 100 percent of the time? Then, give us the option of adding the bells and whistles. There's another solution available to consumers: Switch to a Linux-based OS such as Ubuntu. Since most Linux OSs are free, there's no business reason to bloat up the system with feature frills.

And high-tech companies—stop messing with us on your treadmill of upgrades while making the old stuff obsolete. It may be that any software company that didn't routinely upgrade its product would go out of business. But what if the rest of the world worked this way? Oh, I lost a sock. I need to get a whole new wardrobe because the replacement sock is version 2.0.1, and the stores now only sell version 2.0.3.

[adam]

Sorry, but Ubuntu comes with more shit that I don't need than Windows(aside from being Windows, which I don't need ). That being said, the software in Ubuntu still is much more stable.

[davijordan]

When use ubuntu, I usually do a server install. I then can add things as I need them. I have a dell gx1 that I have used as a server for quite a bit of time. When I boosted the memory from 192m to 384m, i then finally added the gui so I could do things via nx. There is a gui tag editor, I like to use without sharing directories. No matter what distro you use, a surgical install can yield some surprising results. That is probably one of the reasons why so many people probably still love Slackware. I take the same attitude with other distros, osx, and mswindows also.

Save the code and re-purpose the machine.

[Philus]

That article touches on some issues that I personally find very frustrating.

Why make things reliable and serviceable if one can make them cheap and fragile, and have every customer buy them five times over? after all, they're really cheap..

I work at a consumer electronics store, and you won't believe the amount of stuff we throw away because it's not serviceable, it's not profitable to repair it, or it's so cheap nobody really cares.

So, your $9.99 power tool just went dead? No, we don't have replacement batteries, but we do have a special offer this week, a brand new power tool for just $8.99.

We're all going to hell.

[davijordan]

Years ago I worked in a family retail store. The owner had worked as a middle level manager in one of the major retail chains. He said when the old 8 bit apples were discontinued, all the stores were ordered to destroy all the machines not already sold. They put brand new apple II's in the dumpster and crushed them. He wanted to give them to the schools. Company policy said to destroy them so that the systems could not be returned for a refund. I can see why that chain is no longer in business. I worked for Sears for almost 5 years while they were still Sears. I hear where you are coming from.
My brother teaches computer science at a local college. His youngest daughter asked him if they could install MSVista on her computer. Out of his mouth came a resounding no. He said he would only install MSxp. I will say one thing, he is has added ubuntu to the operating systems students install in the hardware classes he teaches. Unfortunately they still use rh9 in the os classes everyone else teaches.