I know I am going to get a bunch of responses for this one... but it seems like every where on the internet.. (especially Yahoo chat rooms) people tend to bash Bill Gates and his products.. can someone please tell me (no sarcastic replies please) why this is so.. and give me your opinions on BIll Gates and Microsoft... thanx

Everyone roots for the underdog. Seriously, windows is not a bad OS, especially XP Pro. Linux has crashed on me several times, but XP has NEVER quit unexpectadly. Most people's hatred (too strong a word?) of Gates stems from Microsofts marketing practices, ie Windows ME. Win98 costs 100 bux, 98's upgrade, ME, costs 100 bucks, they're the same damn thing. In fact, 98se is more stable. People don't like being ripped off like that

yeah same here...lots of their programs are good...but their marketing practices suck...now that they have tons of money they should slow down their development of the next windows version and make it really good insted of pretty and crappy

GNU/Linux: never crash for me. My only complaint would be that my USB chipset sucks and my mouse has issues (I have to unplug it and replug it in after I boot two or three times before it powers on). But that is a hardware issue and did the same thing with Windows and fBSD for the guy that gave the board to me (he gave it to be me for a reason).

I frankly don't know Bill Gates and could care less too (although hogging billions of dollars from those who truly need it suggests things...), but Microsoft has some SERIOUS issues with compatability and standardization. Many of the products they create are intended NOT to operate under different OS's and under different programs. One example is in the MS Office documents. In the beginning of Office's era, the formats were purposely bloated and discombobulated to keep others' programs from being compatible with it. In otherwords, you had to buy office or be screwed. Personally, I favor Linux/Unix and such over Windows because it's open source/open community software that's constantly being revised. Open source software is smart because it allows others to see a working contemporary example and improve upon it. It encourages education and improvement. Also, Windows is for the average user and tries to hide a lot of the interesting OS features from you. Linux will let you do pretty much anything you need/want to do from a pretty little bash shell, lol.

norman hit it on the head. compatability, Microsoft have x% of the desktop market and y% of the server market (where x > 50 and y is less than 30). Now, hey dont want there desktop dominence to change, so they will, and have done anything in there power to stop people using alternatives. This means standardisation and compatablity. Dont get me wrong, MS do have standards, but they set them and can change them when they want. Then they expect everyone else to follow suit. Then when they do change, they expect a ridiculus amount of money off everyone to keep current. not to mention that you may even need new hardware (CPU, MB, HD) to be able to use the new software. A great example of MS doing all this at once:

Visual Basic .net

MS want ?90/$110 for this so people can keep current. Now also it requires you have a modern windows OS (ME,2K or xp) and also requires a huge amount of HD space and a good CPU (i have heard ppl say you need at least a 533MHz to get anything done). so you may have to upgrade. On top of that, VB.net is a new language, so all the VB programmers who have bought this now need to invest many many hours relearning what they thought they new.

Then there is windows. I have had many minor problems with windows in the past, as has everyone that uses it. It sometimes does unpredictable and strage things. Such as changing the font size on my desktop, the quickbar stops responding for 30 seconds. minor little things that are not major bugs, just minor annoyances. Windows also assumes you are a complete idiot. Many people (my parents included) are idiots when it comes to computers. But about 35% of users are confident when using a PC. MS exclude these people in favour of the lemmings. then we have the routinely 10 hour, 43 minute and 29 second crash barrier (joke, im using ME). Many people today do not realise that a computer should never crash. never never ever crash. If it crashes, something has gone very seriously wrong. the lemmings do not realise this however and becasue of MS they think crashing is a normal process that happens when you ask the computer to do too much. And as said above: office. One thing that really pisses me off is MS keep saying: consider the total cost of ownership. yep thats right bill. your os to actually allow the PC to do something costs me ?200 for the full thing. then plus i would need office to actually do some work. Theres another ?1100. Add that to a faily decent ?750 PC and you get an initial cost of ?2050 they you have maintinence ect to add on. So yeah i hate it when MS go on and on about there products cost less in the long and short run. because they dont. period.

I like Microsofts products, well most of them anyway.. They work the way they're supposed to (the software from the newer eras of MS, the old just plain sucked).

My Win2k Pro has never failed on me. Last month I had some serious issues, that I thought was Windows problems, but it turned out to be erroneous RAM, which I discovered when my Linux started coredumping and freezing up, seemingly for no apparent reason.

Bottom line is, that I like Windows and a lot of the software running on it, but I like Linux for it's ability to boost my creativity and will to work.

I've come to a sad realization though. "Unintellegent" people in large groups are where the REAL power is, rather than with the programmers themselves. A programmer can't make a living off programs that the "average public user" won't buy, and the "average public user" uses Windows because they can't handle the Linux Bash shell. This is how Microsoft survives...by brain-washing the computer-illiterate into wasting money on their buggy products. Then us programmers have to follow suit if we want to make a living for ourselves, and thus the vicious loop reiterates.

"A programmer can't make a living off programs that the "average public user" won't buy"

I assume you mean the 5% of programmers that write the off-the-shelf software? Most programmers work in embedded systems or custom programming for a company. However, yes. When making a comercial product, companies always target the lowest life-form that will use the program. Unfortunatly for people like us, these sorts of apps offer little power.

Personally, I went for the "Free" software movement (eg. the Free Software Foundation, GNU etc). I just found Stallman so much more charismatic that the Open source initiative guy.

I (heart) Free Software. ESR ("that open source guy") is nothing more than a gun toting hic (no, he really is--he has a large rifle collection). RMS OTOH is just a crazy old hippy that will never sell out.

Wasnt XENIX a Microsoft Product ? I dunno does someone know ...

-The dodo called Vlad

Yep, Xenix was Microsoft's UNIX.

Im so happy to see that my thread is still going... but ne way... u guys are basically trying to say that we (or should i say most people) have no choice but to use microsoft due to peoples Lack of knowledge in computers?? If this is so... what can we do to change that?... so that we may give Bill Gate competition......

Spread the GNU/FSF message!

I have no problem with things the way they are. XP works great for me, and I haven't given MS a dollar in 2 years

Its not the home users that keep MS going... Its business. Selling win2K and office. Thats where MS revienue comes from. Oh and from developers. Remember an OS, like a games console, is only ever as good as the programs that run it. Unfortunatly, many people dont know what linux is.

Ofcourse. A company buys several hundred copies (actually they buy licenses for using it on several hundred PCs) of office, while the home user buys one copy (and usualy a cheaper flavor of the program too).

RedX