Bad sectors... how bad?

[David Maynard]

Dude, linux is free, if MS want's to start giving away their OS's I'll
gladly stop complaining.

That Linux distributions are 'free' (except for the ones you have to buy)
is beside the point that all O.S.'s are, as you put it, 'defective'.

Besides, you can't seriously be suggesting that
Linux and Mac Os's are experiencing anywhere near the security problems
that MS does. Macs have always been way more stable.

'Experiencing' more? Depends on how one defines 'experiencing'. Per line of
code? Per 'feature'? Per size of installed base?

The fact of the matter is there's almost infinitely more people trying to
attack MS systems than anything else for the simple fact there's order's of
magnitude more of them. Or, put in simple terms, if you were a bank robber
would you rob the bank with 10 bucks in it or the one with a million?

I'm not asking for perfection, I'm just asking for a price that reflects
actual quality of the product.

Frankly, you have no way of making such a determination.

And don't talk to me about complexity,
they choose to build that complexity into the product, it's not required
or necessary.

That's your opinion. Why do you suppose they 'build that complexity'? Got
nothing better to do than throw their money away working on it?

You used to be able to go into your ten line auto exec
batch command and fix boot problems in two minutes.

By all means, go back to DOS then. No one is forcing you to use all that
'complexity'.

MS just keeps adding
bells and whistles, and every bell and whistle they add is another
potential problem.

That's true with anything. My father refused to buy cars with electric
windows because that was "just another thing to go wrong." My mother likes
cars with electric windows and is willing to put up with the potential
problem of having them repaired some day.

Again, if you don't like the 'bells and whistles' then run Win95, or DOS,
or a stripped, lean and mean, Linux distro.

They choose to integrate Explorer to a rediculous
extent, and Outlook etc. Obviously the Browser didn't need to be
integrated into the OS because other browsers work just fine without such
integration. On and on I could go.





Pay twice as much for the exact same disk.. yeah.

The 'disk' is irrelevant. It's the license you're buying and if you want a
"full" license then buy a full license.

Nope, I do not think it's nice of them. Look, I'm using their operating
system either way and they profit form that.

They could offer one license, the 200 dollar one and to hell with your
'upgrade'.

It's got nothing to do with
nice.

Of course not. They want people to continue using WIndows so they offer a
discount for 'repeat' users. Same kind of thing that insurance companies do
by giving folks who get both home and car insurance from the same company,
a discount when you have both with them

They keep producing crappy OS's with security bugs, which in turn
have to be replaced with the next generation crappy OS. This is their
marketing strategy, not mine.

Then don't buy it.

Frankly, you simply don't understand the basic point that all software is
'defective'.

I'm not gaming anything, I'm buying legitimate products that MS chooses
to sell.

Yes you are. You're gaming, apparently for 10 years, their offer for an
upgrade license and then bitching that it isn't a full license.

Dude, the only reason MS can charge these prices for a messed up OS is
that they have a monopoly that they established illegally.

Dude, they couldn't have established what you call a 'monopoly' if no one
bought it.

Dude it's the same disk they released a year ago, you still have to go
online to fully update all the patches.

Dude, same thing with Linux. And it's been the same way with all O.S.s ever
since the first one came out, except you used to not be able to get fixes
so easily.

No, you are vulnerable forever and always with MS products.

You're vulnerable forever with any O.S.. They're all 'defective'. All
software is 'defective'.

Again, the SP's are not released every six months, hence the SP "2"
instead of SP4 or 5.

Maybe you have a reading problem because I specifically said "With the
exception of your arbitrary '6 months' time table." There is no need to
repeat it.

The fact of the matter is that no one is going to adhere to your arbitrary
time table so you might as well learn how to deal with it.

Again, at this point, when you get SP2, you are already one year behind
in patches and upgrades. You have to go online to the last years worth
of patches, if you have a dial up connection your looking at hours and
hours of downloads. Remember, you don't leave dial ups connected all the
time unless you have a second line.

I've given you a number of ways to simplify your 'upgrade' installs and all
you want to do is bitch so at this point the only thing to say is "tough."

 

[David Maynard]

Whatever. I'm not complaining so much about
security, it the damn OS.

Win 98 literally eates itself. I had to wipe it three times and re-load
it. Not because it was infected, or because I changed some configeration
or something, it just became unstable and ate itself.

You must have bought the 'crappy' version because I've never had a single
Microsoft Win98 'eat itself' nor have I ever needed to reinstall one
because of an O.S. fault.

 

[JAD]

I paid $35.00 for a photo managing program once. It's alays worked
perfectly. I've got a buch of freeware that's never given me a problem.

Intentional or not you missed the point.

.

Again with the perfection stuff. No one said anything about wanting a
perfect OS, just a reaonably priced one that can be used safely by most
people.

Sure, people who exploit security holes are responsible for their
behavior, so what? I'm not talking about blaming anyone, I'm talking
about selling a decent product for a reasonable price.

so your saying that you simply can't get windows to run right? It not a
browser phobia or the like.
Well your in the minority DUDE. I rig machines for the handicapped, never
use ANY conventional HIDS or even monitors in some cases. Always works,
never gives me problems. Windows is the greatest thing (SO FAR) thats ever
happened to computers. Standardization BABY, that greases the wheel big
time.

By the way, your the one who's gone whacko over security issues here.
I'm not just talking about security issues. Being able to put an OS that
you've already paid for on your machine without having to go a bunch of
rigamarole. As far as security is concerned, MS could have doen
something simple like.. oh I don't know.. put a fire wall in the program.

OIC they didn't do it fast enough for you i guess

I've been using windows since the 80s, I did start with DOS, in fact, I
started with IBMs that had no HD at all. I've never gotten maybe one
virus in all this time. For one thing, I've never used Explorer as my
primary browser. Secondly, for the last five years or so, I've used
firewalls, free ones. Now I've got a router, firewall, anti virus stuff,
and anti spyware scans. Whatever. I'm not complaining so much about
security, it the damn OS.

Win 98 literally eates itself. I had to wipe it three times and re-load
it. Not because it was infected, or because I changed some configeration
or something, it just became unstable and ate itself. That's how I ended
up with XP, which is more stable, but it's got all this crap, you can
never really delete anything, and if you don't auto update you do so at
your risk.

Heh, you know if you do a search on 'windows 98 eats itself' , your post is
all that comes up

European and US courts have not found home centers, auto parts stores, or
food stores in violation of anti trust laws, they have found MS guilty.
That's just a fact dude. In a truly competitive market place MS would
never be able to charge $200.00 for this OS. Besides, they practically
give it away to large manufacterers. I'm not being rewarded when I get
an upgrade disk for $99.00, I'm being penalized for not buying a new
computer with a OS disk included.

Why do you think that is? Who exactly found MS guilty? Could it have been
all the whiners that didn't want any risk but still wanted a piece of the
pie? Could it have been the 'powers that be' trying to force MS and Intel
into adding some kind of tracking device to every machine (CPU ID ring a
bell?) All those other entities that I mentioned ONLY have what they have
because they were in business long before monopoly was a catch word.
Piggly wiggly is the same as A&P, Albertsons, Brackos, and about 30 other
names throughout the US, all owned by the same agricultural conglomerent

XP hinders piracy? Crazy man.

Only the most restrictive license evey produce on intellectual property

Anyways, as I've already said, we're not talking about a few minutes,
we're talking about hours. And again, yeah, I blame the product when I
pay suggested retail price of $99.00 and the minute I take it out of the
box I have to spend hours downloading patches and updates to make it work
the way it's supposed to in the first place. Actually, I don't spend
hours, I have high speed, but dial ups like my mother in law are in a
different boat. And when it eats itself, the only fix is to eventually
buy the new OS when it comes out because they never made the last one
work the way it was supposed to, and I'm not just talking about security.
To be fair, XP is pretty stable, but weird crap still happens out of the
blue.

Out of the blue..........technoogy changes every week. XP, as an OS, has to
adapt to those changes, what? a new OS for every video card interface or
chipset?
Stand out in front of the conveyer as the newest ones come off it. Your the
same guy who bitches when someone is out of stock, but at the same time
wants an up to date product and doesn't care that things change every day.

 

[Mxsmanic]

Dude, linux is free ...

In theory, but not in practice. And you get what you pay for.

... if MS want's to start giving away their OS's I'll
gladly stop complaining.

As soon as you start giving away your work without asking for a
salary.

Besides, you can't seriously be suggesting that
Linux and Mac Os's are experiencing anywhere near the security problems
that MS does.

They are far more rarely attacked, because they represent only about
five percent of the market (almost all of that being the Mac). They
do indeed have serious security problems, but nobody is exploiting
them right now.

Macs have always been way more stable.

Not true, for the older version of the Mac OS, which had the same
general architecture as 16-bit Windows, and the same fragility. Apple
managed to drag this archaic OS all the way into the 21st century,
since it had neither the resources nor the organization to write a new
one, but it finally compromised and borrowed a stable UNIX-like OS and
built its own shell on top to produce a stable desktop OS. UNIX isn't
really the best choice for that, but Apple couldn't afford to roll its
own from scratch and there wasn't much else around in terms of free
stuff. It's interesting that they still didn't choose Linux.

You used to be able to go into your ten line auto exec
batch command and fix boot problems in two minutes.

Now you simply don't have boot problems to begin with, so nothing
needs to be fixed.

MS just keeps adding
bells and whistles, and every bell and whistle they add is another
potential problem.

So does everyone else. Software bloat is hard to avoid.

On and on I could go.

But you'd be saying essentially the same thing over and over, and
repeating something doesn't make it true.

Pay twice as much for the exact same disk.. yeah.

You pay a lot more for the hardware. An OEM copy of XP Professional
is about half the cost of a mediocre video card.

Nope, I do not think it's nice of them. Look, I'm using their operating
system either way and they profit form that. It's got nothing to do with
nice. They keep producing crappy OS's with security bugs, which in turn
have to be replaced with the next generation crappy OS. This is their
marketing strategy, not mine.

Everyone is doing this, not just Microsoft.

Dude, the only reason MS can charge these prices for a messed up OS is
that they have a monopoly that they established illegally.

No, even companies that do not have monopolies charge similar prices
for their products. Some charge a lot more. I paid $2300 for a copy
of Quark XPress some years ago, which is about seven times what it is
worth.

Again, at this point, when you get SP2, you are already one year behind
in patches and upgrades. You have to go online to the last years worth
of patches, if you have a dial up connection your looking at hours and
hours of downloads. Remember, you don't leave dial ups connected all the
time unless you have a second line.

That's why God invented broadband. And if you're not continuously
online, you're far less vulnerable, anyway.

 

[Mxsmanic]

I paid $35.00 for a photo managing program once.

So you paid at least ten times more for the photo program than MS asks
for its operating system. If you can buy an entire OS for $89, then
logically a simple photo-managing program should cost about $3.

Again with the perfection stuff. No one said anything about wanting a
perfect OS, just a reaonably priced one that can be used safely by most
people.

Windows XP meets these criteria.

Being able to put an OS that you've already paid for on your machine
without having to go a bunch of rigamarole.

Buy the full product instead of buying endless upgrades.

As far as security is concerned, MS could have doen
something simple like.. oh I don't know.. put a fire wall in the program.

They have ... although the best firewall is a physically separate box.

Win 98 literally eates itself. I had to wipe it three times and re-load
it.

Windows 98 is obsolete. It was obsolete years ago. Worse yet, it was
a member of the Windows 95 family, which was all very poorly written
(an improvement over Windows 3.x, but vastly inferior to Windows NT).

European and US courts have not found home centers, auto parts stores, or
food stores in violation of anti trust laws, they have found MS guilty.

And the special version of Windows that the European courts required
MS to produce--one without Windows Media Player--hasn't sold at all.
People are still buying the full version. Stores don't even stock the
special version, even though the whole argument of the courts was that
consumers needed this special version so that they could "choose" a
different media player.

That's just a fact dude. In a truly competitive market place MS would
never be able to charge $200.00 for this OS.

It doesn't even charge that now. An OEM copy of XP is around $89 in
most markets.

Besides, they practically give it away to large manufacterers.

So nobody is really paying $200 for it. And you can get OEM prices,
too, if you are building your own machine.

XP hinders piracy? Crazy man.

The activation feature supposedly hinders piracy.

And again, yeah, I blame the product when I
pay suggested retail price of $99.00 and the minute I take it out of the
box I have to spend hours downloading patches and updates to make it work
the way it's supposed to in the first place.

I installed XP Pro SP2 from a CD in a few minutes. I didn't need
patches or updates to make it work.

You really just want something for nothing. You're doomed to be
disappointed.

 

[Mxsmanic]

I don't have to "borrow" anything, I've got a legit 98 disc, I paid for it.
I still have to install it before I can get XP on the system. As I said,
I've bought over $500 worth of Windows OS's starting with DOS 5 I think.

For $89 you can buy a full copy of XP that requires nothing else to be
installed before it.

How much have you spent on hardware and other software besides
operating systems?

 

[Pdigmking]

For $89 you can buy a full copy of XP that requires nothing else to be
installed before it.

How much have you spent on hardware and other software besides
operating systems?

Anyways,

Thanks for straightening me out regarding fresh XP installs using a win 98
disk for confirmation. That will make any fresh installs much faster and
easier in the future. Sorry it took me so long to understand what you all
were trying to tell me.

Paul.