[TenTec] "Remember, it's a computer."

[Ron Notarius WN3VAW]

My apologies to those who're starting to get tired of this thread, so just a
"quickie:"

Micro$oft gets much of the blame for system crashes because:

(a) they have a long-standing reputation for releasing products before they
are ready -- as in "never buy a .0 release from Micro$oft" (why? to meet an
arbitrary deadline, or to beat someone else to market are two reasons)

(b) they have a long-standing reputation, going back to Windows 3.x and what
evolved into MS Office, of witholding software "hooks," hidden routines, and
other similar software engineering details not worth detailing here from
other application developers.  This means that the other guys have to guess
as to how some things work with Windows, and they may be wrong.

(c)  they often change specs on how certain .DLL and other code items work,
and fail to release these changes in a timely manner (if at all), so someone
else's program that relies on certain things working certain ways may not
work anymore following an upgrade

(d) they almost always blame problems on someone else (other apps, you the
user, etc.) instead of themselves

(e) bloat their applications with more features, ones you may not want or
need, often to prevent you from buying someone else's apps.

(f) write their stuff so that someone else's stuff won't work (for example,
Windows 3.1 was originally written to detect the OS, and if it was DR-DOS
not MS-DOS, refuse to run; and often their early Netware clients didn't
function or function well, which they always blamed on Netware, not their
client)

(g) lie.

It's not always their fault, or primarily their fault, but all things
considered, how would you know?

Fascinating thread by the way... not sure it belongs here though, so if it
gets moved to a more appropriate venue, someone let me know?

73, ron wn3vaw

"It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood... won't you be my neighbor?"
Fred Rodgers, "Mister Rogers Neighborhood," SK, 27 February 2003