I think I still have that SuSE 6.0 box I bought from a local retail shelve way back when. (I had bought several other distros before, the first being an Yggdrasil Linux 0.99whatever.) Today I could just buy some magazine with a Linux DVD in it – heck, in fact my favorite IT magazine had another Linux distro on it’s DVD just recently, must be somewhere …

But apart from some geeks, nobody gives a youknowwhat.

Someone was obviously locked in a cryogenic chamber in the late 90s.

So will you, Mr. Pogson, so will you.”

Not likely. The Pogson clan is evolving. We are on multiple continents. Short of a global calamity we will outlive M$. This site has backups and multiple individuals involved. Of course, bad things happen, but I expect to live long enough to see GNU/Linux on local retail shelves. I expect that will happen in a year or two. The stagnation of the PC market has inclined retailers to see what better use they can make of their shelves. The local Walmart already has ~25% of shelf-space for Android/Linux. It is a small step to supply GNU/Linux.

So will you, Mr. Pogson, so will you.

Yes. DOS 2 was the second product of M$ that I used. The first was BASIC on an Ohio Superboard II.

In those days, M$ was about providing software at an affordable price. It was an ordinary business, not a blood-sucking monopoly. A decade later and M$ was a monster, killing IT. Two decades later it was a partner of the malware artists using people’s IT against them globally. Fortunately dinosaurs cannot adapt to rapid change well and die out.

Not just cheap. Easy. Users going from XP to XFCE4 and GNU/Linux require very little training once they can find the icons/applications. Within applications, there’s very little difference. The directory layout and logging in are the only strangenesses users find. M$ told the world that transparency and rounded corners and DRM were important and left the world wondering what they were going on about. Now M$’s going to “8″ and very few care at all. Certainly OEMs, retailers and consumers are not interested. “7″ is now a deprecated OS. M$ and “partners” are telling folks that “8″ is the next big thing.

It was an anecdote and clearly marked as such.

… now try doing that with a large customer base or a SMB with countless variable iterations.

So this is basically admittance on your part that you’re unqualified to handle such things.

Or how else did you get from a very general statement, which implied that Windows’ upgrading mechanism is somehow faulty, to large customer bases and SMBs? You’re telling me that you’re running from computer to computer with a Windows install medium and manually upgrading the OS? No wonder you can’t get work done.

BTW, if you have a SMB “with countless variable iterations”, you’ve done something very wrong in the first place.

Wait, let me think… how about nothing at all!? Antivirus software is pretty much useless as it can only detect known threats with any kind of certainty. Once it has to rely purely on heuristics you’re SOL. And let’s not forget that antivirus software can itself be insecure:

http://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/Sophail.pdf

As for Hitman Pro, you only need to read the description on their web page to realize that it’s snake oil.

- Questionable analogy (“second opinion”)? Check.
- Using “Research shows …” without citing any such research? Check.
- Claiming to fix what went undetected by all other security measures that came before it? Check.

Honestly, if you willingly sell your customers this stuff, they should seek out a new computer professional.

Antivirus software is software designed to make the clueless user feel safe, but it wasn’t actually designed to make the user’s computer safe.

Few older printers and scanner drivers will not work. Interface dialogues dependant on the old interface that windows 8 has stripped.

So please don’t state same drivers as Win7 its not true. Most windows 7 drivers work there are some that don’t due to being dependant on the old GUI design.

ch
“4. XP and 7 Market Domination

For now, right. What’s the problem for MS?”

Problem here a lot of company programs are dependant XP in fact. They work in 7. They don’t work correctly in 8. Why a lot of them use embed IE and other things that have been changed.

So due to the cost to migrate forward to windows 8 it might be just as cheap to go sideways to Linux and never pay MS again.

ch
“5. Windws 8 Tablet Pricing

Depends on OEMs.”
Part depends on Microsoft. Android is just the cost of Patent licenses. I don’t see MS doing that cheep. OEM has to recover the Microsoft OS price.

ch
“7. Locked BIOS Disallow’s Repairs

No, it doesn’t.”

On the arm devices o yes it does. Same problem with some android devices. You wish to perform a memory diagnostic or limits OS hardware diagnostic and you cannot because the bootloader is locked.

ch
“8. Competition with OEM’s”
Is how the OEM have taken it. Since they were hoping to release high end devices as well.

I could go on but most of them are valid when you understand why.