In your analysis you make the mistake of looking at technical issues. I
would suggest, my learned friend, that the facts of the matter are
!@#$%^&*()_ Sorry, I was possessed by a lawyer for a little while. You
focus on the technical issues and understand the problems. Tha amazing
thing is that an OS works anywhere. But, but, but, these are also used as
excuses. And they are excuses that allow MS to avoid responsibility.
Take that ford car in the US that kept burning people to death due to the
engineers doing a cost benefit study and concluding that it made sense to
accept a certain number of deaths rather than fixing the flaw. I agree
with their reasoning. Very smart and rational. But only engineering
background people (maybe accountants) will think it's smart.
Ford was unable to mould public opinion on what is reasonable in a car.
They suffered.
Microsoft has moulded public opinion. Everyone tends to accept that MS is
above the law (and parliments write laws for MS) because they deal with
those flakey computer things.
They don't provide the full product. I had to increase my internet
connection by 7.2 GB per year at an extra cost of $240 per year to make
Vista work (after giving MS $754.95 for it). I also keep offline as much
as possible to stop vista uselessly chewing up my 500 MB per month. This
month - I had to wait till the 10th before I had enough bandwidth to
attempt to download drivers. In the time I've had it I think I'm almost up
to a full gig of driver downloads. And it still doesn't work properly
(Nvidia).
I also bought an MS lazer mice and keyboard, a week later I bought a
logitech optical mouse. I can mostly point with the Logitech. Wireless
mouses, according to microsoft, are not designed to be used near RF
sources. But that's what computers are, RF sources.
PS the MS Wireless Mouse and Keyboard I was replacing was equally inept.
But I thought they had three years to fix it, I had heard, a few days
after I bought my first wireless mouse all these great improvments in the
product. The Lazer I bought in Jan wouldn't move the mouse pointer till
the mouse was being moved fast enough. It could take 5 minutes to get the
pointer over the close button of a window. Because it just overshoots
anyrthing one aims at. The logitech works perfectly 95% of the time then
starts chucking a fit which smashing into the table fixes it.
It's been three and a half years since I could type or point and click
properly. The logitech, while heaps better than all my MS mouses, isn't
perfect. The logitech works perfectly 95% of the time then starts chucking
a fit which smashing into the table fixes it (dunno if it's causal - I've
always talked to machines pleading and threatening - empirical evidence
says they listen). I still have to hover over things clicking, hoping it
will accept my click. I have to edit everything I type to replace all the
missing letters it missed (MS keyboard).
Take the web sites of newspapers. The two I read both refresh pages every
5 minutes. So I rarely get to read the end of a story. No one is
responsible for pages that disapper while you read them. I, and I've been
doing it for years, shut down all other windows on that site. Either my
fellow citezens are slime balls prepared to put up with abuse like this or
they never analyse their server logs (so much for the theory of consumer
choice - I'm a broadsheet reader - these are the only 2 available).
And here in the newsgroup we accept MS's assertion that it is difficult
and we can't expect better.
But the LAW is says different. But MS propaganda, the way the structured
the industry they control (OEM manufacturers), and the retailers lead to
all diffused responsibility. Not a single computer thing in the world
works properly and noone is responsible. And the people who administer,
make, and decide the law buy it and refuse to apply the law to MS.
There are benefits to all this. Hardware is cheap. The OEM, their industry
controlled by MS, make little profit. It is all about cheap hardware with
the price reduction shared between consumers and microsoft and paid for by
OEMs. The whole structure of the computer industry is a MS tax on
hardware.
The internet gives MS the excuse to ship shoddy product. "They can
download a patch" MS says gleefully thinking at how they can cost shift it
to the consumer (my case $240 per year).
Hmm... well... OK. I think these accusations of MS being in collusion with
hw vendors to sell more hw were also made back when XP was released and many
folks had to buy new hw to work with XP. Same thing now with the move from
XP to Vista. And I think the answer's pretty simple: don't buy Vista. Stick
with XP until one gets a new PC and then get Vista.
I installed Ubuntu in a VM a week or so ago... had tons of updates to
download right after initial install. I think Ubuntu is set up to check for
updates every week. Yesterday, after only a week of usage, up popped the
update manager and there were, uh, what? 140 updates? OK. MS isn't the only
company using the internet for patches and updates. Every anti-virus program
updates over the internet. Yeah, they may be smaller files but, they're
smaller applications. (Especially if one considers an OS to be an
application.)
I don't have any constraints on my data in/out with my DSL provider, so
that's not an issue for me. Obviously, it is an issue for you. Don't know
what to say except, gee, that sucks.
$754.95 for Vista? I must assume some exchange rate is involved with that
number.
I'm using an MS wireless mouse on this system. I have an MS wireless
kybd/mouse combo running on another system here. All work without issue
unless the internal battery has lost almost all of its juice. I've even used
the wireless mouse with a 2 port KVM without problems. I'm doing nothing
special to make them work, so I'm not sure what your issue is.
Lang
