Smoothwall Firewall project

Sunday 5 July 2009

The total myth of Microsoft usability

While visiting my Brother this weekend, I had a laptop given to me to have a look at , as nothing would allow it to connect to the new Broadband wireless access point. Now as I only ever look at this one laptop for my brother as it has an ancient installed version of XP for a single application, they must use. If the machine was more powerful I would put Ubuntu on it , and run the app in a virtual machine, but it just doesn't have the grunt or virtual firmware support.

The truth is that the machine and the operating system are constantly fighting each other just to boot the machine. It is pathetic to watch a machine with 1GB of RAM take 5 minutes to boot. It is an old Dell Inspiron, but when I boot it with an Ubuntu live CD it flys along. I think in Microsoft's defence, a lot of the disk thrashing is down to the anti virus, anti spyware, download protection etc etc etc. Though you can reason a very goog case that if the OS was well built in the first place, you wouldn't need all this expensive software.

Well I have fought with it for a hour to get Firefox 3.5,Google chrome and flash player onto the machine, and we are there now. It would have taken me 5 minutes with Ubuntu, but still I hear the lie, and it is a lie, that Windows is just easier for the average person.

3 comments:

benthehen said...

SPELLING ERROR :)
You put mircosoft.

Just thought I'd let you know.

Codfather said...

I would like to say it was a play on words with mirth, but it might have more to do with the amount of alcohol in the blood stream when typing ;-)

Thanks for the heads up.

Nick

lingk said...

well I agree it's a like that windows is just easy to use. the truth is, that people are use to the UI. sure it has changed a little bit from xp to vista/7 but over all it's still the same.

People are use to it, they know it and they don't want to learn anything else.

yes, ubuntu and most other distrols are basically the same, but it doesn't look the same and I know for most people it's enough.