[LennonCook]

Originally posted by Melcheor: [QB] As soon as another OS comes along that is as easy to use as windows and is compatible with everything windows is, i will be the first to convert.

This is already doable. See: various Linux distros, primarily Ubuntu GNU/Linux, and GoboLinux. Some people also recommend Mandriva and SuSE, and occasionally Fedora Core. I like the look of Gobo over most of the others (I've only used Ubuntu from this list, and now use Linux From Scratch), because it doesn't try to hide the filesystem from you or dumb things down to the level that a slightly advanced user can't function. Also, you might like the various non-linux Unixen, such as FreeBSD. The "compatible with everything Windows is" is a little hard, since MS refuses to publish alot of these details (and backward engineering attempts have to emulate the bugs aswell), but you can achieve the same tasks on *nix as you can on Windows - just not with the same programs.

Should the EU hence impose fines? IMHO, yes. Microsoft is too dominant, and that is not good for competitors or consumers.

The problem isn't so much that MS is too dominant, as that MS behaves anticompetitively. For example, they make it as hard and expensive as possible for people to switch away from their products. That they are so dominant is a result primarily of this (and that, 10 years ago, their product was better marketed than the competition). Don't mix up cause and effect: if Microsoft weren't anti-competitive, the Unixen would be much better know, and more widely used. /This/ is why the EU should fine them, and this is why the EU is fining them. And this is why MS is complaining, and trying not to comply with the order ('shifting the goalposts'? Umm, no, more like 'enforcing an order').

It is only good for Microsoft. Microsoft should be forcibly crippled/split up, for the general good. Until it is though, I'll be using the best and most convenient product I can.

That's something bug-ridden, full of holes big enough to drive trucks through, and crash-happy? You speak like someone who hasn't ever looked at the competition with a non-critical eye. I recommend you do it sometime - games are about the only problem area, these days (not because games don't exist on Unix, but because most Windows games hook into Microsoft-proprietry APIs).. and games could easily become less of a problem with the Playstation 3, which is apparently going to run Linux and use various open technologies, which will mean it's games should be trivially portable to a desktop machine.

Alternatives are too much of a pain in the arse for me to take the moral high ground.

Alternatives are a pain only if you choose to make them so.


Timber: Apple might have been non-innovative (and, indeed, still is - basically all of their products can be traced back to the Free Software communities at some level), but MS hasn't ever been any better. MS copied the GUI from Apple, who copied it from others. And it *is* MS general who is the problem - Outlook and Outlook Express have as many holes as IE (*and* lack features compared to the competition - neither of them can thread emails, and nor do they set the headers that allow it), and Windows is such a monolithic system that it's impossible to avoid the problem apps (IE *is* Windows Explorer, and it provides your task bar and start menu). Switch to the competition, you don't even need a 'good firewall' - you may need to filter inbound traffic, but never outbound. A firewall like the Windows XP one would be ample, and alot of people use routers instead. This also stops any virus attempts clean in the tracks (not that they'd have much luck, anyway). Have you ever tried to deal with the Windows registry? And don't get me started on the memory management... the competition is, in general, Better.