Google| Subject | Re: How do I do this on Windows? |
| From | Jeffery Priddy |
| Date | 04/29/2004 04:07 (04/29/2004 02:07) |
| Message-ID | <c6po1l$505$2@gargoyle.oit.duke.edu> |
| Client | |
| Newsgroups | comp.sys.mac.advocacy |
| Follows | Jim Polaski |
Jim-- I missed your original reply, so I'm using this thread with Nashton to reply to both:
In news:jpolaski-E68F43.00425526042004@netnews.comcast.net, Jim Polaski <jpolaski@NOync.net>wrote:
Jim PolaskiJim Polaski <jpolaski@NOync.net>wrote:
In article <ltCic.27443$Np3.1010150@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>, Nash*ton <Nash@nash.com>wrote:Nash*ton
Jeffery Priddy wrote:Jeffery Priddy
In news:jpolaski-EB3E4E.03510723042004@netnews.comcast.net, Jim Polaski <jpolaski@NOync.net>wrote:Jim PolaskiJeffery Priddy
Considering that W2K is NT in a new coat of paint, this may just be not too far off even today.
No, Jim, you're completely wrong about that. Believe me, I have a lot of experience with NT4 and W2k, and W2k was a BIG improvement. Almost as big as OS 9 to OS X. NT was *extremely* picky about hardware and drivers, had a more limited HCL than 9x and W2k, and had no built-in support for USB or power management. W2k is very good IME WRT plug and play-- not perfect, but orders of magnitude better than NT for adding new hardware. I wouldn't be surprised if just the PnP and USB alone could push W2k's TCO way lower than NT's. And don't get me started about Active Directory and Group Policy-- anybody who knows how to leverage those well in a corporate environment can really improve their TCO, and the policy model for W2k is vastly richer than for NT4. At the risk of being blunt, I don't really think you know what you're talking about here.
Now, if you said that XP was W2k with a new coat of paint, I'd say that's not too far from the truth. But NT? No way, no how.
Jim PolaskiThe problem isn't the metaphor, it's the underlying sentiment which is fundementally inaccurate, the idea that W2k is really the same as NT4 with just a few cosmetic changes. That's just not true, regardless of the metaphor used to convey the idea.
Jeff, you can fault me for a bad metaphor if you will, but yes, W2k is an improvement, etc ...
That said, I've also never said I was an expert on NT or W2k in the same manner that the Windiots claim to be experts in the Mac.That's not really relevant. I don't know that these guys do claim to be experts on the Mac; if they say things that are wrong about the Mac, that's bad. But two wrongs don't make a right and it's bad to perpetuate inaccuracies, whether you've claimed to be an expert or not. You obviously considered yourself enough of an expert to express the opinion that you did. Or maybe you got mixed up between the NT4->W2k transition and the W2k->XP transition. The former was huge; the latter, not so much.
While XP is better, if you will, it's still Windows. There is a legion of support folks who make their living fixing what's wrong with it. Fixing the layered silliness that keeps many average users from getting two machines to exchange files. So many folks have unforseen problems. The radio show in Chicago wouldn't exist if it were not for the difficulties folks have with XP and other flavors of Windows.Jim, I hate to say it, but that argument is intellectually equivalent to Winman's "macfixit" posts-- pointing to a self-selecting sample of people looking to fix what's broken about their system. It's fallacious when he does it; it's fallacious when you do it. Think about it-- other than in *.advocacy, who takes the time to call-in or post that their system is working fine? No one. But everyone's got something to say when there's a problem, and there's plenty of noise about problems on every platform. The amount of traffic does not seem to me to be disproportionate with the percentage of people running Windows, and the mere *existence* of a call-in show doesn't prove anything.
04/21/2004-
