According to my spies Bear of () writes
>In article , Lydia Dustbin says...
>>
>> "Bear"
gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:MPG.22f03717e2ce59989dc8@news.individual.de...>>> In article
binnsroad.demon.co.uk>, Geep says...
>>>>>>> but try and stick to Firefox, Turnpike, Open Office and as
>>>> much non MS stuff as possible.
>>>
I came very close to ditching Turnpike 6 in it's previous versions as
the connect part had an all-too-frequent tendency to go tits up and
disrupt Explorer, necessitating refreshing the XP desktop, exiting from
Connect and restarting it. Otherwise news and mail delivery would fail.
This was happening on 2 completely different machines, both using XP
Pro. Since XP-SP3 and Turnpike 6.07 were installed (at around the same
time) it seems to be working properly. I think it was a great mistake to
integrate TPv6 into explorer as they did.
I haven't tried Open Office for years. The original version was
distinctly unimpressive, I thought.
>> You are a very aggressive bear, aren;t you?
>
>A bit of joshing is hardly aggression ... if you think so, you must have
>led a very sheltered life.
>
Bears are supposed to be rufty-tufty, and anyway, he is -Bastard- Bear
after all.
>> I agree with Geep. Microsoft
>> stuff suffers from software bloat. Too, too large by a long chalk. Just
>> because a thing can be implemented in the software itshouldn;t mean that it
>> 'has' to be implemented and everyone has to install it. I know you can prune
>> a lot of programs, but not prune them half enough, I think.
>
Everything seems to be getting more bloated. Even Linux now.
Microsoft's apps still have a tendency to be very big, but they also
seem to be more efficient lately.
A good example of a non-Microsoft app that has gone bloaty recently is
Nero. I used to love it, now I won't have it on my machines because it
seems to be designed (like iTunes) to take the computer over entirely.
>So they should make their software as awful as other people's, in order
>to not confuse the easily bewildered?
>
>And Apple's software development is even worse ... never mind their OS,
>which is minging enough, they can't even port iTunes successfully.
>
Don't know what iTunes is like on a Mac as I have no experience of (or
any great interest in) using Macs, but iTunes on Windows is absolutely
horrible. Slow, buggy, clunky and ugly-looking. I use Media Monkey for
playing / burning / ripping my music files and for loading up my iPod
because it makes doing just about anything with a music library (even
with a really huge one (1)) really, really easy without using vast
amounts of memory or hogging the processor. It loads really fast, even
with 50,000+ files and is very stable. It also has a superb built-in tag
editor.
I still use Windows Media Player for playing video files though, because
it does the required job without much hassle and I've yet to find an
alternative worth getting to grips with.
I switched to Firefox for web browsing because the older versions of
Internet Explorer were so god-awful. IE7 seems a perfectly good browser
now but I've got used to using Firefox and it works very well, so why
should I bother changing back?
>Linux is nice and lean. But there's all the hassle of installing and
>configuring it. Then you have to add all the bolt-on bits to get it to
>look and operate like a decent OS that non-propeller heads can use.
>
I tried Linux a few times in the past but found installing and using it
too much like hard work.
>MS is far from perfect, but it's nowhere near as bad as so many people
>make out. The snobbery that leads to arrogant fools typing such things
>as "MicroShaft" and "M$" is all very well, but just because something is
>popular doesn't make it inherently wrong. I've used a *lot* of OS over
>the years, and the latter releases of XP are excellent, as just one
>example.
Really solid. I can't remember the last time I saw a BSOD. With Win98 it
was every few days.
>
>Ok, Vista's a steaming dog turd of an OS, true,
Not that bad, IMO. XP was pretty bad until the first service pack. SP1
has improved Vista no end. The hated UAC is easily disabled if you are
prepared to find out how and follow the instructions. Personally I don't
find it annoying. Ditto getting the command prompt elevated in
administrator accounts.
>but they'll get over
>that, in time. And the apps are superb - I use most of Office during my
>working day, and it does what it says on the tin, swiftly, intuitively
>and easily.
Office must be the most pirated piece of software in computing history.
There is a school of thought that Microsoft have deliberately priced it
on the high side but left it relatively easy to pirate in order to keep
it's install base up in the face of cheaper and free alternatives.
As it's very difficult for system manufacturers or company sysadmins to
get away with software piracy, Microsoft are pretty much guaranteed a
good revenue stream from commercial use of Office unless it stops being
the No.1 business suite.
(1) The newest upgrade version is capable of smoothly dealing with
100,000 file libraries, the makers claim.
--
Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are
putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
Mike Harrison
