Having been away from the Windows world for so long, I'm curious just how different it actually is. Sure, there are obvious choices for business use in many fields. Even Office is a somewhat obvious choice for most places. However, as a standard consumer, it is much too expensive to "just have." And, really, finding the correct software to just "make a greeting card" or something similar is terrible. Then there is the joy of trying to find software that organizes photos and such well.
Then there is printer support. I cringe when I think of trying to scan or print something in Windows, my last experiences being so terrible. Nowdays, though, in Linux this is something that really has "just worked" for a while now.
So, is it really that much more rosy in the application choice of other platforms? Or is it just more visible in the company you keep?
As a Windows and Linux user on a daily basis, I'll tell you that no-one bothers with Office unless they are running a business. Everyone else seems happy with ancient copies of OpenOffice that their cheap laptop came with or LibreOffice if they have to get involved in installing anything.
Also, people don't organise photos with additional software now. Windows Explorer itself is pretty damn good at it to be honest and does what 99% of people will need. If they need anything else they'll probably use what came with their digital camera. I use ViewNX2 which came with my camera.
Printing just works - plug in and go. Although to be honest I have a 8 year old Brother laser printer and send anything else away to be printed elsewhere.
It's all fine everywhere. The ages of "it just works" are pretty much here.
It's not the XP days any more :)
Linux however does like to poke me in the eye with power management and hibernation issues. That's not been resolved ever, even though I've got a 7 year old machine!
I know my wife wanted a windows computer specifically for Excel. She did not realize it costs a good deal extra, so was delighted when I installed LibreOffice. (Other computing devices are kindles. Had a chromebook for a time.) So, there is still some desire for the basic programs. I agree that LibreOffice is more than good enough for the task, though.
I don't think I could handle Explorer to support my workflow for managing photos. And it is a simple workflow. (First, copy everything over, then go through "flagging" all pictures I like, then go through flagged items and trim duplicates or ones that just aren't as good, finally basic color correction and upload somewhere for family.) I confess the shotwell program is not the best. Though I can not say what it is I don't care for on it.
Glad to hear the printer situation has improved. I just remember having more success with my Linux machines on just getting something printed. To the point that it was highly frustrating that it would not just print in Windows.
Sorry to hear you have power management issues. I don't think I have hit those. Though... I also do not make regular use of hibernating a computer. What is the main advantage of that?
I guess my question is what makes hibernate better than sleep? I mean, I realize for extended periods it makes sense, but I have not had a time when I would have needed the extra time a full hibernate would have afforded me.
Now, I have realized massive increases in battery life by choosing to not live life at full brightness. I have to confess I felt silly the first time I finally lowered the brightness and saw how much of a difference that made on battery life.
Printing on Windows is so bad that people are employed just to fix it. Office crashes a lot and has compatibility issues with certain formats, and I often just direct people to LibreOffice, which in every case has fixed the problem and run smoothly. Any minor Windows system problem usually results in sending the machine to be re-imaged. If you're on Windows 8, a lot of old stuff simply doesn't work, and in the absence of old versions, the most stable solution is often to run Wine. It's definitely still a mess.
I've worked for a couple of printing outfits and Windows has by far been the most reliable bar some big ass Xerox machines with PostScript processing and a Sun workstation tied to it. Fuck, the most unreliable so far has been the PDF rendering engine inside OSX which sometimes just whacks the CPU at 100% and you have to kill the process. And don't give me the shitcrock of Ghostscript or CUPS as a better solution.
Word and Excel have NEVER crashed on me and I've been using them since the '97 versions. Granted I don't upgrade straight away and leave it for an SP or two but you should do that if you want stability. I deal with 200+ page complex documents on a daily basis, some of which hit 100-200Mb. You can't open those in LibreOffice without it falling over.
The only problems I've had with Office documents is where people don't know what they are doing, particularly when it comes to format-prats who don't know what styles and headings are for.
Reimaging - rubbish. System restore is used these days. I've had to reinstall Windows 7 twice since 2009. Once was due to a disk failure and the other time was due to some shit code I wrote trashing system32. I do a sideline of decrapifying people's laptops as well and I haven't had to reinstall a thing. I just don't think you know what you are doing.
Windows 8. Bar Metro which is a POS, everything just works.
You sound like a rabid Linux fanboy.
Note: I use both all the time. I've used Windows since 1993 and UNIX since about 1988.
I can't stand fanboys spouting crap. If I had some karma I'd downvote this.
I think if you work for a printing outfit, your exposure is likely to be skewed towards the realm of working solutions. My negative experience was always in getting some random computer to work with a random printer. Lets say a friend comes over, or I am at a friends house. If a friend came over, we'll have the joy of trying to find the drivers for the printer for their windows box. If I was at a friend's, it was always "just give me the usb cable."
That said, I don't have massive experience with crashes in Office. I do prefer plain text source files, though. To the point that I have begun using R for basic data analysis instead of excel. (Though, I make no claims that I can more quickly get a chart created than someone just clicking the chart button any any office application. I can more reliably reproduce my results, though.)
Word and Excel have NEVER crashed on me and I've been using them since the '97 versions
My anecdata has seen a bunch of crashes, at least in Word (I was never a heavy Excel user) and mostly in the earlier versions. If we steer away from application crash to merely screwing up the document, then you can probably double it.
I, too, have been running win7 since 2009 without requiring a reboot, but despite having a 64GB SSD boot drive, it has somehow filled it (\programfiles is on d:) and every now and then I need to go in and clear crap out. 64GB! I can account for perhaps 20GB in user data (\users is 16, \progfiles is 6). Crazy.
My one and only experience with Win8 was helping a neighbour install some older software that worked fine on XP and Vista, which pretty much defines my whole experience with it as doesn't 'just work'. Perhaps not a fair comparison, but when metro decides that I REALLY WANT the troubleshooting pdf to be fullscreen instead of having it side-by-side with the issue I'm dealing with, then screw being fair to it.
Screwing up the documents is usually a human issue.
That crap on your disk is probably system restore, swap file and hibernation file. You can delete the system restore checkpoints easily. The rest you have to live with.
The crap on my disk may be restore points. There's no hibernation file - that's off (it's only necessary if you hibernate; you don't have to live with it)
How does start8 stop pdfs from fullscreening or older software from failing to install? Isn't it just a start menu replacement? I didn't have a problem with that. I had a problem with opening a pdf from the desktop, then win8 forcing me into fullscreen view - I couldn't fix the installation problem side-by-side with the tech notes.
Install adobe reader on the machine and it will open pdfs on the desktop only as well even if they are launched from metro.
Right click something that doesn't work or install on windows 8, go to properties, compatibility and select windows 7. Then run it again. It will work as before, unlike every other vendor out there.
Hell it'll even run 32-bit stuff I compiled for NT4 on Visual C++ 4.2 with dynamic linking in 1997 without a problem! Cant really fault that since the same era Linux binaries or Solaris binaries won't work from back then.
Fair enough on start8, but I will note that compatibility mode didn't work - that's the first thing I went for. I've always found compatability mode to be spotty - probably about half/half in terms of success.
As for linux binaries, I have a sysadmin friend that boasts that some stuff he wrote in '95 works without a hitch on modern linux, so it's not a cut-and-dried affair there either.
I'm no fanboy; I'm just telling you what I see. I'm not the one in charge fixing all this stuff at my office, but our Windows printer setups end up being redone every few weeks when things inevitably stop working. System restore is hardly ever used by our IT guys, and machines are often sent back to be re-imaged. Maybe they're just doing it wrong, but I'm definitely not imagining the problems.
It's great to hear that you've had better luck, really. You would hate to see how many things I've seen gone wrong!
Then there is printer support. I cringe when I think of trying to scan or print something in Windows, my last experiences being so terrible. Nowdays, though, in Linux this is something that really has "just worked" for a while now.
So, is it really that much more rosy in the application choice of other platforms? Or is it just more visible in the company you keep?