scott wrote:

> The CAD software and CFD software we use only works on Windows.  The 
> games I want to play are only for Windows.

Another big part of why everybody [including me] is still using Windows.

>> (And even Linux isn't that hard to work these days. Damn hard to set 
>> up, but not that hard to operate once you eventually get it working.)
> 
> And when my mum tries to plug in her new camera...?  I was actually very 
> impressed that my mum managed to install the software for her camera and 
> get it working without even a single phone call to me :-)

50% chance it will just do the right thing.
25% chance it will do nothing at all unless you type in some Geek gibberish.
25% chance it's impossible to make it work at all.

>> True story: One of our users was working on a vital report. She hit 
>> "Save", and Word crashed. From that point onwards, any attempt to 
>> access this file caused Word to instantly crash.
> 
> Did you try using "Open and Repair" from the open dialog box of Word?

And how do you do that?

[FWIW, I did spend quite a lot of time researching the options. There's 
a Word experts website that tells you all the little tricks for fixing 
corrupted documents. Sadly, none of them work for a document so broken 
it won't even open at all...]

> Also, tell her to save more often than every few hours.

As I'm sure you know very well, the number one time for Word to crash is 
exactly when you hit Save.

And yes, she saves much more than every few hours. But once the file is 
corrupted, the only resort is to restore from last night's backup - if 
it's there at all. So the whole day's work is gone. Users tend not to be 
amused by that stuff.

I mean, sure, I could use Recover Text. But the formatting is the part 
she's just spent 3 hours adjusting. We've already got the *text*!

>> Any idea how many people are switching away from IE? Enough to provoke 
>> M$ to start development work on it again.
> 
> And yet funnily enough since Vista/IE7, I've seen people who previously 
> were using FF now going back to IE - "well it has tabbed browsing 
> already doesn't it?"

Yes. Because the only difference between IE and FF is tabbed browsing. 
It's not like FF is 98% more efficient or secure or standards-compliant 
or anything like that...

>> Sadly, it seems we are stuck with M$ Windows forever. I mean, M$ is 
>> too powerful to beat. They're unstoppable. We're all doomed...
> 
> Get a life away from computers :-)

And that is an entire *other* story...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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