One more reason to buy an Apple...

[Lord ZOG Profile]

Did you know that Vista gives your Temporary Internet Files folder a "System Folder" flag?

What does this mean? It means finding and deleting your Temporary Internet Files is that much more difficult.

Nearly 75% of all viruses I find on my client's machines are found in that folder, and now Microsoft has given these files a nice, cozy, secure place to hide.

Between hiding file extensions by default, and now this I'm beginning to wonder if the powers at Microsoft have breathed in too much of their own marketing ganja.

Nice going Microsoft...do you get kick backs for Apple's soaring stock value?

[smikey Profile]

I haven't had much problems in deleteing things, but that doesn't say much since I may not be getting everything either, but still it seems to say that my machine is clean when I delete stuff.

[gowhitesox99 Profile]

zog you got your own indenpendant consult business? You talk about your "customers" is it your company or do you just work for it?

Do you do business support or just in home support?

You work for geek squad in that little beetle?

[Lord ZOG Profile]

Yes, very small though (almost more than I can handle at times). I wish I had the time to make things more thorough (decent web site, more timely phone support, etc) but I'm doing OK.

I'm nothing compared to serious Enterprise-level IT companies, but I have my fair share of work. I have 1 60-40% mix of Residential to commercial clients. I work on the road mostly, but I'm getting tired of that (frikin traffic here is impossible). I have a small shop, but since I'm working on the road mostly I end up working late into the night to handle the walk-in traffic and other PC drop-offs.

I have a good 300+ customers here locally, and I'd say easily 40% of them have switched to Mac (at my prodding, actually). I'm a Windows guy from way back, but I'm just plain tired of stupidity and strong-arm marketing by Microsoft. I have three Macs myself (all low-end machines, but I might spring for a Mac Pro soon).

Funny thing about the Geek Squad (IMO the Burger King of IT) is that I actually did work for Best Buy about a year before they bought "The Geek Squad". I was their best technician, but I couldn't follow their crazy antics or BS sales techniques. I walked out after two weeks.

[CodeRed68 Profile]

I am getting the new iMac (brushed metal) once the new OS Leopard is released this fall.
I am pretty sick of Windows... and hell, you can switch between windows and the Mac os with a mac now anyway..

[gowhitesox99 Profile]

ok cool well good luck to you! Sounds like you are a busy guy.

Yeah that best buy prices are crazy. Its funny to walk up and look at the prices. $80 for a hard drive defrag? sure ok...

[Lord ZOG Profile]

The Geek Squad is a complete and utter farce., Sure, they might have a few knowledgable technicians working for them, but they soon realize they're better than the crap The Geek Squad represents, and they're off doing what I'm doing in a heart-beat.

I'm going to get one of the new iMac's when the newest OS X comes out, too. I'm using a Mac Mini (not even the Intel CPU edition) and an ancient Power Mac G3 (both with OS X on them) and although they both work it's tedious getting around on them.

I'd love to get a Mac Pro, but I can't justify spending $3000.00+ on my fifth computer.

[cavalierlwt Profile]

I'm a windows user, but I also have a G4 Mac Mini, and will grab a new intel Mac Mini this Fall. One thing I love about OSX, it seems to stay the way you leave it a little better. I don't know what it is about Windows, but things just *change* over time. One day you turn the thing on and suddenly, overnight, something is different, a different default application, or some small detail. I'm not talking about something you installed that changed something either, wierd things just go on under the hood sometimes.

[SavageParrot Profile]

I just inherited my sisters old ibook. My sister had done her best to destroy it but after a day's tlc with norton it's as good as new. It was reconditioned second hand when she bought it and she abused it probably as much as it is possible for a person to abuse a laptop and yet it's still in one piece, still functioning and as soon as I can scrub the stickers off, still as pretty as ever.

You are right about way windows constantly changes. I haven't really noticed my mac software automatically making itself default in the way almost everything I get for the pc does. They are low maintenance. To be honest if it wasn't for the gaming I'd still be on a mac when they sort that I can't see a single reason for a home user (offices are a bit different) to choose pc over a mac.

[Lord ZOG Profile]

There are way too many "outside influences" with a Windows machine. It seems to me that Microsoft gives more control to people beyond your keyboard, which leads to all the conflicts and corruption. If one vendor thinks his set of .DLLs are better than the originals, they'll just replace the original .DLLs with theirs, not considering that the files they're replacing might work fine with 3 or 4 other applications.

Apple programs are self-contained, not scattered all over the disk like Windows installs. You can literally drag an Apple application from one machine to another and it will still work. Try that with a Windows app.

I think this stems from Microsoft's early campaign of claiming that more software is available on a Windows machine. That was true because Microsoft allowed vendors to write any code, dump any file in any location they wanted. As computers matured, this philosophy of "more available software" on a Windows machine has backfired. Just because there's more software available isn't necessarily a good thing. There might be less software for a Mac, but at least the software that's available is better written.

Microsoft is losing this battle, and Vista is a stake in the heart of Microsoft's marketshare.

What's Apple stock priced at now? $150.00? It's only a matter of time before Microsoft sees a significantly lower marketshare than what they're used to.

[Darknut Profile]

The .DLL files shouldn't be getting replaced unless they belong to that particular application. Writing a self-contained application in the sense that it only places files in the install directory is pretty easy. However many applications don't want to append data to the path-environment variable and just place their files in the same location as the default OS paths. It also has to do with the way the program is written as many programs choose to simply have some of its resources in the same directory as the OS resources it will be sharing.

It's not entirely the fault of the OS although if Microsoft really wanted to make people produce clean applications then they could restrict how you make your software and where those programs can put its files.

As form the temporary internet files folder in Vista, you should still be able to issue delete commands to the contents of that folder.

[Lord ZOG Profile]

The .DLL problem is Microsoft's legacy for grabbing marketshare in the early years by allowing software developers to do what they wanted. They could tighten the screws (and they have been slowly) and really limiting access to certain files, but it's taken them too long. The virus developers have more rights to a Windows machine than the end users.

SOme hard-ass computer users (Linux freaks, really) bitch and moan about Apple not giving you a real Admninistrative account to work with, but 99% of most users don't NEED Administrative rights to work with their machines.

As for the temporary internet files folder in Vista, you should still be able to issue delete commands to the contents of that folder.

That isn't happeing. I'm already struggling to teach my clients other things, why should they have to go out of their way to get around one OS's blatantly obvious lack of foresight?

In any universe where commons sense and logic prevail placing temporary Internet files in a system folder makes zero sense. Period.

Sorry, I'm not buying the excuses anymore. While Apple's marketshare grows by the bajillions, Microsoft will be steadfastly adhering to their flawed logic and narrow-sighted marketing.

Vista is this year's RAMBUS. Windows ME II.

[Darknut Profile]

I haven't been impressed with Vista. I'm waiting for any of the following to happen: a service pack to solve many the problems and dislikes I have with Vista, Microsoft's next OS, or some improvements in Ubuntu.

Although with my decline in time spent gaming and Ubuntu's steady progress forward I'm betting on the last one. My main gripe with Vista is the UI design. I'm not talking about Aero, I'm talking about how the laid out the dialogs, placed the non-customizable toolbars/buttons, and the over-all flow certain processes. While they made some tasks easier they made others more difficult. If something that the OS wants to manage itself lays outside of its auto-whatever wizard it becomes more difficult to configure it than in XP. I just want instant access to the manual control panels without having to jump through a bunch of dialogs to get there.

As for Linux users who whine about other OSes... they always seem to forget that the vast majority of users have no need or desire to use their computer in the same manner as them.

[SavageParrot Profile]

I still find it funny that microsoft actually charges for office. I mean there's nothing on office that inspiring and 90 percent of what it has was on claris works when I first started using it on my mac 17-18 years ago. It's just hillarious that not only do they ask for money in exchange for this second hand pedestrian product but that people actually pay.

It's kind of like selling hub caps you find on the side of the road after they fall off people's cars. They really ought to stop pretending that the default word processor (whatever the hell it is I haven't found it yet ) is worth a damn and just start handing out office for free. Or just forget office and go open source. Open office ftw!

By contrast my sister just got her new mac and it came equipped with every piece of software she might need and a whole raft of stuff that was unecessary but really quite cool. The whole thing was literally plug an play. There was 5 minutes of registration and setting up her wireless internet connection and that was it. Everything was pre-installed, pre-tested and included in the price. In fact the only thing she needed to buy (*insert chuckle here) was office for mac because while iwork has no problem understanding anything written on a pc, pcs are far too retarded to speak mac.

Actually the funniest part of the whole thing was that even though her iwork could read .doc easily enough it didn't seem able to read old apple works documents, she had to use office for mac to do that.

So basically she could use an apple program to read pc documents but to read old apple documents she had to use the apple version of a pc program ported for mac which when it's on a pc can no more read an apple document than squirrels can play Bach. Weird huh?

[Darknut Profile]

Microsoft Office is one of their largest revenue generating products. They'd be stupid to give it up. While there are plenty of alternatives out there for the home user, Office has become the de facto standard for business. For home users, Office is generally much more than they need. About 90% of what Office can do the home user never uses.

What Microsoft should really do is update Wordpad and make it a decent word processor for the home user.

As far as not liking Office, that is irrelevant, if people are willing to buy then the smart thing to do is sell.