When the chips are down

People who know me also know that my computer and I might as well have been Siamese twins.

In essence this means that although I care for my family (wife and kids), but you will not have to go far to look for me when I happen to have disappeared. You will find me behind the keyboard in front of my screen.

It also means that I have a fair knowledge of computer and that is where today's gripe comes in.

Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, complains about Windows (XP/Vista/ 3.1/95/98/ME, etc). They also all complain about Microsoft and are at pains to tell the whole world how much better Apple in its various flavours is, or how much better Linux is.

Rubbish! Both Apple and Linus have a minute share of the computer market! 95% of all compuetsr are not Macs or normal computers with Linux.... no! They are normal, everyday, PCs with Windows!

Why? because it works.

APPLE: I appreciate the way that Apple fans are so absolutely loyal that they refuse to see that their system also has its faults. Just look at Leopard! It had hardly come out when the first updates started arriving en bloc And not minor updates at that! NO, major problems that were simply and mostly silently "updated" and fixed and everybody just kept quiet. Had that happened to Windows, the anti-Windows hounds would have bayed it from every dark corner of every dark wood.

LINUX: There are a million different distributions! Each one uses the same basis or "kernel", but each one wants to have its own little piece of Linux heaven. Excuse the comparison, but it does remind me of the Christian religion. There must be hundreds of thousands of different denominations - all praying to the same God, but all differing (sometimes every so slightly) with another church down the road. Thousands of pastors getting a pastor's salary and MB and building an edifice to their belief.

But, let's get back to operating systems and computers.

The Linux distributions (as they are called), such as SUSe, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mandriva and all the others all proclaims to be the latest and the greatest. But, unless, Ubuntu (of which I have the latest - 7.10) install on both my laptop and my desktop without growling at my MSI motherboard and the bios and at my Nvidia graphics card, I will not install it on any mission-critical computer!

Windows costs money and has and will continue to have many faults, but once you have put it on the hard disc and have gone through the rigmarole of registration, validation and what not ..... it works! Even the ankle-biters can work with it.

And there are hundreds and thousands of programmes that add to the enjoyment - freely downloadable from the 'net. You don't HAVE to use MS Office; there is Open Office - free, gratis and for nothing! You don't have to use Adobe Photoshop; there is the Gimp - free, gratis and for nothing. Etc., etc., etc!

I think you get the point!

You download, click on the "exe" file and the programme installs. No further worries about compiling and doing all kinds of crazy things. Yes, and I am aware that some of the above-mentioned programmes have been ported from another platform (Linux).

Apple software is as expensive as a Rolls-Royce and some times performs as well as a Chinese wannabe. There is little Apple share-ware of free-ware. There is, in fact, very little you can do to an Apple that does not come from Apple. Totally proprietory, exclusive and for APPLE only. Example: A floppy drive for a PC costs +- N$ 130; a floppy drive for an Apple Mac somewhere around a thousand N$.

There is a lot of Linux software on the market, freely available, but my objection above remains. It is just too much trouble to get it and install it ... and then having to pray that it will work the next time you switch the computer on!

Viruses, you say! Windows attracts them like the meat at our traditional butchers in the North. Maybe, but if you tend to navigate to questionable sites and you are dumb enough not to have a decent Virus checker on your computer which you keep updates, then you have nothing to complain about and deserve the viruses!

Some of these virus checkers are available free of charge for Windows (AVG, Avast!, PCTools, Avira, etc).

No excuse for not being properly armed!

So, unless Apple becomes more universally available (not only at Graphic Designers and Production Houses) and Linux decides that one or two distributions properly sorted out are better than 10 million each lacking something, I'll stick with Bill and his MS - even if it makes him richer still.