[Leaplist] Linux Advocasy: What they'll miss

[Damien McKenna]

On May 7, 2008, at 1:49 PM, patrick wrote:
>> However, I have *never*, I repeat, *never*, had those problems on  
>> *any*
>> of the Windows machines I've regularly used.
>
> The 'average' Microsoft user has no clue to defrag their disk, so, two
> years later, they are being presented with a bill from the local PC
> repair shop for $180 (from a "nice" shop) or more, just to clean it  
> all
> up and possibly get it running again.

A need to defrag a drive doesn't quite have the same effect on Windows  
XP as it did back in the Windows 9x days with slower machines and  
smaller drives, these days with seemingly the smallest drive on the  
market being 80gb I doubt people would need to defrag before the  
system physically fails.

> Many shops my clients have visited saw them as easy marks for the  
> huge, bloated,
> new system off the shelf. Some paid up to $1000 for a system on  
> trade, and saw their
> old system up for sale for $500, a week later.

If they never changed the oil in their car and it ground to a halt  
after two years, would they trade it in for a new one?  Would they  
then get upset if the people they traded it to turned around and sold  
it again after fixing it?

> That left a very bad feeling, and they started going for Mac or Linux,
> as a result.  The culture of monopolistic Microsoft strikes again.

That's a lack of knowledge, people buy computers and never thing they  
have to perform any maintenance on them, nothing to do with Windows or  
Microsoft's monopolistic tendencies.

-- 
Damien McKenna - Husband, father, geek.
damien at mc-kenna.com - http://www.mc-kenna.com/