Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 19:24:44 +0100 From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com> To: "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org> Cc: "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org>, <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Message-ID: <00e601c17b5e$a3af1ff0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <000301c17a40$8fc78dc0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com><010d01c17a44$98b491e0$0a00000a@atkielski.com><3C08A204.3CA7014C@mindspring.com><002e01c17a5f$f2b34040$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com><000c01c17a7c$4de06710$0a00000a@atkielski.com><15369.53.739857.967952@guru.mired.org><000a01c17ab0$266fabd0$0a00000a@atkielski.com><15369.20345.689585.495352@guru.mired.org><002501c17ab3$07f0f0d0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15370.26355.292711.525268@guru.mired.org>
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Mike writes: > I've priced name brand hardware both with > and without MS software, and the identical > hardware was more expensive without the > MS software - and involved me doing more > work to use it. So why didn't you just buy it with the MS software, and then remove the MS software? You say that the hardware was identical, after all. I bought my FreeBSD with Windows Me preinstalled. The first thing I did was format the disk, erasing all trace of Windows Me, and I threw the CDs and "official Microsoft certificate" away, since I had no plans to use them. I don't know if the identical hardware was available without Windows Me--I suspect not--but it really doesn't matter, as Windows Me is only worth a small fraction of the overall price of the system. > Worse yet, I couldn't get it without an MS > mouse, even though I'd hate to use the thing. I put the mouse and keyboad in a closet, with all the other mice and keyboards I've collected over the years. I use a switch to move keyboard and mouse between my two systems (I have two separate monitors, though, as I like to keep an eye on both machines). > In the MS case, *nothing* from MS was in the > system - and it cost more money. Then buy the system _with_ the MS stuff, and then remove it. That's the logical solution. > Windows may have been a completely different > environment from MS-DOS, but it would run MS-DOS > software. That's made it "good enough" to be > worth using for MS-DOS users, whereas options > that didn't do that weren't. That's the proprietary > trap again. Didn't OS/2 run MS-DOS programs? > However, none of those were acceptable to the > IT industry, as they came from "fly-by-night" > companies that you couldn't depend on being > around next year. That is also what hurts open-source software. Large corporations are usually extremely chary of betting millions on software written by volunteers, unless they have an in-house staff that can maintain the software if necessary. > If they didn't own what IBM was going to turn into > the defacto standard desktop OS for business, they'd > still be a small company turning out mediocre (aka > "good enough") language processors. I seriously doubt that. They would have followed the money in any case. That's what made them successful. And the fact that they are no longer doing that to the same extent will be part of their downfall, too. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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