Re: XP Professional: Not as bad as I expected, but still VERY primitive

On Fri, 30 Jun 2006 04:47:03 +0000, George Graves wrote:

In article <1151637810.838049.186090@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"James Davis" <mcleanzep@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

George Graves wrote:
After a week of using XP Pro at my newest client's place of business, I
have to be honest and say that I was wrong. XP is nowhere near as
unusable as my previous brief encounters with it had led me to believe.
It is, in fact, very usable. It is also, compared to OSX, very
primitive.

See, that's the thing. Windows XP IS usable, AFTER you've gone to go
through all the trouble to figure out how it works. With the Mac, you
don't have this annoying period. I am studying for my MCSE right now.
When you first look at the GUI, you really can't decipher where
anything will be. It's not intuitive at all, just a mess. But then
AFTER you have figured out how the area you are dealing with is
structured, then it becomes at least a little consistent. This is
different from OS X where you can look at the interface and figure out
how the pieces fit together.

I'd love to see what OS X Server's GUI looks like, since it has all the
settings you configure for a server, but I can't spend $500 just to see
it. With Windows, to learn a specific console for an area like setting
up the PC as a router, at first everything is just scattered all over
the place. Eventually, when you work your way through it, it becomes
OK. But I'm sure Apple provides a much more top down approach to
things.

I also find networking STILL unnecessirily complex and hard to set-up.
There is a seemingly endless merry-go-round of set-up windows which if
followed take you round and round and round the same set of windows over
and over. I kept hoping that one of them would yield a brass ring, but
no such luck

Apple has one control panel for networking: Network

Since Windows 98, Microsoft has had:
Network control panel, Network Connections, Dial-up Connections,
Network and Dial-up Connections, Network Neighborhood, My Network
Places, Add Network Place, properties of each network connection, tabs
and buttons popping out all over the place, Add New Connection Wizard,
Phone and Modem options on a separate control panel, Internet
Connection Wizard, XP Network Setup Wizard, and separate proxy settings
in Internet Explorer.


Exactly!

No, not *exactly*. It's dishonest, and inaccurate. XP doesn't have all of
those (many were phased out), and OS X has some of those functions in
places other than the network preference pane (like Network
Neighborhood/My Network Places, and the connection wizards).


All the stuff above is all contained in Apple's one Network control
panel, except that Apple doesn't provide wizards for settings things up.

Because they're not needed. OSX is THAT straightforward and obvious.

They *are* needed, that's why OS X includes most of what XP does.
.

Quantcast