[Info-vax] Maybe a bit OT, maybe not.. in any case an interesting article

[David Froble]

VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> In article <0rCdnXNUn4uPfTLSnZ2dnUVZ_qednZ2d at giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> writes:
>> On 5/13/2012 6:20 AM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
>>> Arne Vajhøj schrieb:
>>>
>>>> DEC/CPQ/HP did not ruin your career.
>>>>
>>>> The guy that told you 25 years ago that it was a good approach
>>>> in the IT business to learn one technology and stick to that for
>>>> life did.
>>> And what if he'd recommended Weendoze?
>>>
>>>> It is not the case. Technologies come and technologies go all
>>>> the time.
>>> So when can we expect M$ to go away?
>>>
>> When you write better software and charge a lot less for it!
> 
> Micro$oft: premium priced shite software.
> 
> There is much better software and, in many cases, it's free; so why _DO_ 
> people want to pay for Micro$oft crap?

There is a couple of things I can say about windoz ....

Pros:

It is a decent user interface for a desktop system.

Some of their software can be useful.  I've implemented several systems on Windoz using 
Visual Basic 6.  The systems work, they do what is needed, and the customers seem to be 
satisfied.  In at least one case they were bigots who seemed to have a dislike for VMS, 
VAX, and Compaq.  Their money spends as well as anyone elses.

Cons:

The pros list was short  :-)

I cannot express how much I missed a DLM and logical names.  Windows causes things to be 
much more labor intensive and much less flexible.  I even considered implementing a lock 
manager, but that would have been more work than just using the crude tools available.

If Microsoft would just let us have something and not keep changing it, I'd be much 
happier.  I'm still running Windows 2000 Pro on my primary user interface.  I've had to 
put XP on another because I needed some things that would not run on 2000.  But the total 
garbage that they call Vista, well, what worse can I call it than garbage.  Windoz 7 is a 
bit better, but not much.  One of the problems is, windoz thinks it knows better than the 
user does.  Perhaps in some cases, but not all, and MS doesn't seem to care about users 
who actually know what they need to do.  I'd prefer not having to learn a whole new user 
environment every couple of years.

Other:

There is a rather large number of offerings of tools for a windoz environment.  In some 
cases they are much better then their target environment.  One example is Socket Tools 
from Catalyst Software.  Easy to use, consistent, much better than the MS stuff, and makes 
the HP TCP/IP and SSL seem totally worthless.  With a larger market you can get some good 
tools.  With a smaller market, you don't.