Microsoft's Dumbest And Smartest Moves Of 2011

[Iggy]

Mac is BSD.  Why is that funny?

Because Mac IS BSD NOW.
Its kind of like jacking up a car and driving a new one underneath it.
Exactly what about Macs has any relationship to its origins?
Three ISAs, multiple radical OS changes, definitely your Grandfathers axe.

[TheBilgeRat]

Because Mac IS BSD NOW.
Its kind of like jacking up a car and driving a new one underneath it.
Exactly what about Macs has any relationship to its origins?
Three ISAs, multiple radical OS changes, definitely your Grandfathers axe.

Well, I'd say that "it just works" is still pretty solid.

They codified their end user experience and continued to deliver that solidly across multiple OS revisions, hardware revisions, and staff "revisions".  I sure wish Amiga had figured that one out.

[Duce]

OSX has Windows beat in the command line front, hands down.  If you like to tinker around in shell/terminal, modern Windows versions aren't the best bet.

They are now merely MS-DOS emulations when you enter that CMD command.

Then again, any terminal junkie is already running a *nix or BSD variant and doesn't give 2 ****s about Windows or OS X.  

[stefcep2]

Vista worked, and worked well enough to use on my daily driver PC's after SP's arrived.  Entirely usable for the most part, but in comparison to 7 still a complete pig to me.  If all a person had ever used was Vista, one would be none the wiser.  

I've got Win 7 on my work laptop, a HP C2D with 4 gig (but its only 32 bit).  Yes it boots faster than Vista Business, shut down is about the same, by about 5-7 seconds and in general use, Win 7 feels "snappier".  Stability is the same.  But here's the thingOver time Vista has actually got FASTER and more stable, but I have Vista Business fully up to date, and applied some of the registry tweeks, and this has sped it up significantly.  

I think on release, Vista was half baked with its driver support, and  many people that bought it had gigs of crapware installed like my HP laptop did.  So when people got their PC, Vista would rummage through the hard drive building its index.  Now if you had just come from XP, the constant indexing would have made the machine seem unusable.  MS should have just told people turn on your Vista PC, leave it alone for a day or two, and then it will be much faster.  Yep, I know, pretty crappy thing to say, but better than people downgrading to XP without giving Vista a chance.

Used all variations of it, 32 and 64 bit.  Tbh, not sure I ever used the search functions of Vista or 7 much.  I'm a bit particular about how I do things I suppose, and fell into habits 20 years ago I still use today, heh.  I use the Start Menu and quick launch functions almost exclusively when mousing around, but for the most part I just have programs bound to G keys on my systems.

I don't know and no longer want to know where everything is kept, so I too now just use the search.  Most of the people I work with are Gen Y and they all work with the search.  Its fast, and I don't have to think "Now where is xyz?"

[commodorejohn]

I don't know and no longer want to know where everything is kept, so I too now just use the search.  Most of the people I work with are Gen Y and they all work with the search.  Its fast, and I don't have to think "Now where is xyz?"

Lately I've been using this cool new thing they just invented in the 1970s called a hierarchical file system, it's kind of like searching to find what I want, only there's no delays while the search happens and I can organize everything to my exact preference instead of having to rely on the computer to do it for me!

[psxphill]

They are now merely MS-DOS emulations when you enter that CMD command.
 
Then again, any terminal junkie is already running a *nix or BSD variant and doesn't give 2 ****s about Windows or OS X.

CMD is nothing like DOS and Power Shell is the new hotness, I also use jpsoft's TCCLE as I've been using their shells for years.
 
Or you could slum it and use one of the *ix shells on Windows.

[stefcep2]

Lately I've been using this cool new thing they just invented in the 1970s called a hierarchical file system, it's kind of like searching to find what I want, only there's no delays while the search happens and I can organize everything to my exact preference instead of having to rely on the computer to do it for me!

But thats the point: a user doesn't have to know anything about the file system to use it just as effectively

Also, there are files eg system files/preferences that you can't organise wherever you want but need to delve deep to find, sometimes several folders deep. Sometimes you know what it does, what might be its name, but not sure where it lives.  In that situation, I bet an indexed Vista/Win7 will get me there faster than you will clicking through folder, guessing where the file might be.

For your own files, sure you can be anal and organise every file into specific folders, and you can have short cuts and pin them here and there, like I once did, but now i can't be arsed.

Indexed search is an incredibly useful too, the most useful thing that happened going from XP to Vista IMO.

[Duce]

I realize CMD is no replacement for DOS, but it's what you get for command line out of the box these days on modern Windows.  DOS was phased out some time ago in Windows, and you have a valid point with the fact there's a lot of good add ons to get some of that back, but none come packaged with Windows, where OS X has a much more robust command line system by default without downloading addons.

[commodorejohn]

Also, there are files eg system files/preferences that you can't organise wherever you want but need to delve deep to find, sometimes several folders deep. Sometimes you know what it does, what might be its name, but not sure where it lives.  In that situation, I bet an indexed Vista/Win7 will get me there faster than you will clicking through folder, guessing where the file might be.

I expect not; the important arcane-wizardry files are really not that hard to find in Windows. System components in (Windows directory)\system32, application preferences in Documents and Settings\(user | All Users)\Application Data, etc. The few that are really hidden deep are corner-cases; I'd imagine the time saved on finding everything else in a well-organized system more than pays off against waiting for the search routine to do heuristically what you could have done intelligently from the get-go.

[stefcep2]

I expect not; the important arcane-wizardry files are really not that hard to find in Windows. System components in (Windows directory)\system32, application preferences in Documents and Settings\(user | All Users)\Application Data, etc. The few that are really hidden deep are corner-cases; I'd imagine the time saved on finding everything else in a well-organized system more than pays off against waiting for the search routine to do heuristically what you could have done intelligently from the get-go.

What wait?   A few hours after installation letting the OS index everything, and the odd hard drive light blink to keep the index up to date is all there is and everything is indexed. finding things after that is virtually instantaneous. And I don't need to know a damn about where any of it is kept, ever.  Why should I remember where defrag is, or where computer management lives, when I can just type up defra in search and its there instantly?

Sure i'll save my stuff in documents/photos/videos/music, but these folders get too big and so I'll go and create subfolders for letters, bill receipts, pdf's, but then I might want to keep documents from a particular source eg bank statements, school newsletters, government taxes, and then it would be helpful to separate then into years...but accessing them later?  Why rummage through folder after folder, or keep a mess of shortcuts, or pinned files when all I need to do is Start-->search?

Anyway thats my view if you're happy with the old way, more power to you.

[Iggy]

Fascinating how a thread that was introduced to denigrate Microsoft has provoked so many defensive responses.

I was using OS9 on 68000 based computers before Linux existed.
Minix was around, BSD existed on college servers, and Microsoft was still pushing Xenix.
But the Mac crowd was using a graphic based OS with no command line (on a black and white display) and X86 machines were running a criude CLI based OS that was basically a copy of CPM.

So now, two decades later, you young punks think you can educate ME?

You're just using systems that have finally caught up to ideas I was advocating in the 80's.

[TheBilgeRat]

Fascinating how a thread that was introduced to denigrate Microsoft has provoked so many defensive responses.

I was using OS9 on 68000 based computers before Linux existed.
Minix was around, BSD existed on college servers, and Microsoft was still pushing Xenix.
But the Mac crowd was using a graphic based OS with no command line (on a black and white display) and X86 machines were running a criude CLI based OS that was basically a copy of CPM.

So now, two decades later, you young punks think you can educate ME?

You're just using systems that have finally caught up to ideas I was advocating in the 80's.

You tell 'em! :lol:

[Iggy]

You tell 'em! :lol:

In a way, all older Amiga users ought to feel the same way.

Using a colorful multi-media, multi-tasking computer before anyone else caught on?

Why be apologetic? Everything else looks like our machines now.