Blasphemy (I know, I know ...... but ?????)

[irishmike]

Wow Tonight seems to be my night for adding my .02 worth.

I am a lover of Macintosh and one of the Apple Faithful ... Apple ticked me off in 1995 when they didn't seem to care that Classic MacOS (that is OS 7.x -9.x) was just really a bunch of spaghetti code and it looked like they were in death throws much like Commodore went through.  I like to think that the Mac community would have pulled together like the AMI community did when C= went under.  

Anyhow, I switched to Windows and then came back to Macintosh in 2001 and do use OS X (10.4) on a first model Mini as well as my Dell GX-150 I bought to run Windows XP and hopefully soon Linux.

All that is to give background:  I think it would be great if MacOS was available for any Intel machine... I think that would be the best course for Apple.  They consistantly state that they wish to get out of the hardware business, yet they never do.  Mr. Steve Jobs is very much about doing things his way and darn the torpedoes if someone disagrees!  Apple has made a great comeback with the decision to develop OS X.  I believe Microsoft is losing favor amoung home users and I think that Amiga Inc perhaps should consider making OS 4 run on Intel processors and standard PC hardware, the main problem with this dream (and I admit it is a DREAM)... is that the reason MacOS classic and even the BSD based Darwin kernel MacOS X are so stable is the hardware is selected and it is not meant or even disirable to write drivers for all available hardware because there is just so many different variations you need to make that work.  Windows really is good at working with whatever hardware you would like to throw at it.  MacOS X is becoming better at this.  But Amiga  Inc would have a lot of driver writing to do to make this work, possibly even would have to trash all development and start over to accomplish OS 4 running on Intel based hardware... which would be way to costly.  There are plenty of PPC processors out there.  And lets not forget that what makes AmigaOS so cool is the fact that it is so small and is stable because it also has the kickstart ROMs to hold a lot of the OS.

This would be great to implement in a modern OS... IMHO.

Anyhow, I think Microsoft's heyday and stranglehold on the market is fading these days.

[irishmike]

Fransexy wrote: To run the current version of windows at happily speeds you need the processors of tomorrow and then you will be forced to run a new version of windows that need the next generation chip to run at reasonable speeds and then...........So what´s the point

I have been looking at "Vista" which is supposed to be the next great Windows.  It scares me that M$ is planning to implement an OS that has the power to change the Web on any computer running the new Windows.  This is all in the name of Digital Rights Management.  But consider:  If there is questionable content on my machine that someone (currently not defined who this would be) at Microsoft did not like they can delete it from every machine that runs Vista on the Internet.  Assuming that the originating owner of the machine you downloaded this "questionable content" from was on Vista, M$ with a keystroke could wipe the item from the face of the Internet.  Very Scary!

If this (one scenario I heard as outlined above) is true of Vista, then I will definitely NOT upgrade.  This would be a catalyst for me to make the permanent switch to Linux.  Despite my "hold out" programs.  I feel a lot of people are thinking the same way.

Mind you, right now (today) the Vista OS is still being developed (it is supposed to be a total departure from NT) and Vista is merely a nicer looking Windows -- if you check out M$.com and look at Vista you can decide for yourself ;-)

My only problems with Linux at this point are the lack of software for my Printers (I can get drivers yes, but example My Epson Stylus Photo R220 prints CDs with special software, not able to do it under Linux -- one feature gone that I use all the time unless I am on a Mac or Windows -- Same with my HP all-in-one).  And the two programs that I have found no Linux equivalent for. iTunes and TextPad(on Windows) or BBEDIT (on Mac) to do my coding.  The Linux software in these realms is just not there.

[irishmike]

But why even upgrade to headache 2.0?  I am not sure how integrated the system is.  You can't hack out kernel based encryption of the files put on the OS.  The buzz is that once you copy your files to the new OS, they are encrypted and can not be copied to any other machine.  I am not sure if that is true or not, but even if it is not... I have been convinced that Windows ends at XP for me.