from slashdot:
Microsoft's Sacred Cash Cow
A former Microsoftie says addiction to Windows revenue, mediocre products, and missed opportunities could doom Seattle’s most successful company.
Why are Microsoft products so endlessly frustrating to use? Even techno-geeks like me get annoyed by Windows. I’m tired of spending the first 10 minutes of my day rebooting just so I can get to work. Microsoft Outlook 2003, the latest version of the company’s e-mail and calendar software, hangs for me about once a day, requiring me to restart my PC. I also have a problem with Word 2003: Whenever I bullet a line of text, every line in the document gets a bullet. Asking Windows to shut down is more of a request than a command—it might, it might not. And recently, Internet Explorer stopped opening for me.
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the article really is a fascinating glimpse into the corporate culture of microsoft. i do often find windows frustrating to use, and since i don't own a mac, i can't comment on OS X's ease of use. i have installed a couple of varieties of linux. i said before and will say again that linux is not an operating system meant for a casual user. it's difficult to install and uninstall software. in windows, you can usually just download a program and click its self-installing executable. i often have to compile the source code for linux software to install it. this is not something that grandma and grandpa are going to be able to do unless they have studied c programming and the mechanics of makefiles.
however, to be fair to linux, this is probably just a characteristic of the OSS community. nevertheless, i'd really like a standard installation procedure myself. it's crucial for average pc users. the other problem i have with adding new software to my linux machine is the unpredictable nature of dependencies. i've been burned more than once trying to locate all the necessary components just to get a program to run on my linux partition. it's a real pain in the ass.
the article is written from the perspective of a software professional who finds it difficult to get windows to do what he wants. i do agree that windows' closed nature doesn't allow an advanced user to modify the OS the way one can modify linux. however, when my former company upgraded to new verisons of outlook and windows, no one complained that they were hard to use.
i also don't agree that using open source software in windows means that other companies will be able to sell windows without paying royalties to microsoft. the license under which most OSS is released only requires that any changes or modifications made to the source code covered under the license be made freely available to all. it does not affect the license terms for any commercially developed code that works with the open source components. no one is selling OS X without paying royalties to apple even though OS X is partly based on open source components.
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