handyfloss

Today I’ve overheard a short conversation two workmates have had in front of me. One of them told the other: “Can you get me a [pirated] copy of Windows, plus Nero, plus OpenOffice…? I need them because this weekend I’m going to some friends’ and they want me to install Windows on their laptop.”

This made me wonder… Isn’t Windows for dummies? Isn’t it straightforward? Isn’t it easy to find, cheap to pay for and fool-proof to install? What the hell do my workmate’s friends need her for? Ahhh!, now I get it: Windows is easy because there’s always someone who will install/fix/troubleshoot it for you. My workmate could install Linux for them just as well!

Second thought: Windows has a lot of software available… yeah, right! But you need third party software like Nero or OpenOffice (BTW, at least my workmate didn’t ask for MS Office), often times pirated. Hell!, with Linux (e.g. Debian) you download a complete OS, hassle-free and legally, you burn it into a CD, and you have burning software to substitute Nero (e.g. K3B), e-mail client to substitute Outlook (e.g. Thunderbird, KMail), ofimatic soft to substitute MS Office (e.g. OpenOffice, KOffice, Abiword, Gnumeric)… everything. And installable with a click.

Linux is EASIER.

I read in El País that the next MS browser, IE7, will sport a couple of new features, namely tabbed browsing and RSS support.

I knew of the lack of tabbed browsing in that poor excuse of a browser that IE6 is, but… they didn’t have RSS?. What kind of sh*t is this? IE6 users have to open another program to read RSS feeds? That’s pathetic, man!

Firefox and all the Open Source browser lot surely have had them (both tabs and RSS) for a long time!

Go, MS “innovation”, go!!