Re: For Microsoft Haters


"Mike Burke" <mburke@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:fl6et3hkjrcpab0avdmkk7rpv2iou3av8g@xxxxxxxxxx

Further to my previous follow-on, back in the days of MS-DOS, Windows
3.1 and its earliest updates, there used to be a lovely little
shareware industry that fattened on the crumbs that Microsoft left on
the table, eg really useful desktop supplementary programs, and so on.
Some, like Norton, and the guys who invented Netscape, made a mint out
these things, while most others just made a comfortable. Some of the
people running these little companies were delightful to deal with,
and I bought many of their programs because they were cheap and very,
very good replacements for clunky MS stuff or just good ideas that MS
apparently hadn't thought of.

But starting about when MS introduced Internet Explorer, MS started to
trample these small operators to death. They either bought out the
shareware operators or just robbed them blind. While I have no
problems with the basic Windows operating systems (or DOS shells as
they originally were and may still be), I just hate things like
Windows Explorer which is simply BAD compared to, say, Total Commander
(a Norton Commander clone). I also hate Vista's (and most of its
predecessors' help system. Somebody must run a college course in
Geekese which seems to be an essential prerequisite for working at
Microsoft.

I'm not crazy about anyone's help system. Software companies don't spend enough money on documentation. Never have, probably never will. But there is still a considerable, thriving marketplace in small apps, shareware, open source, whatever. Serious geeks rely on these apps all the time. Some are quite powerful and dominate their market segments. Very few of them are designed for the consumer market, but a few are, Firefox included. I don't see them doing too badly even if they aren't putting IE out of business.

I'm teaching myself Blender, a 3-d modeling tool with almost all the power of commercial products costing thousands of dollars. It's open source. It also has the worst UI I've seen in many years, but I'll get over that if I can get it to do what I want it to do (which is build some complex dohickeys for Second Life). And GIMP is a perfectly adequate little photo editing/graphics app, also open source.

Mark Alan Miller

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Open Source Virus
    ... I want the open source movement to succeed and prosper, ... be the only viable alternative to Microsoft in my lifetime. ... make headway against the dominance of Win apps is compromised. ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)
  • Re: Market for graphical roguelike?
    ... There also is no real benefit in shareware, ... This perception is mostly wrong. ... troubled users and submit patches, ... concerned with an open source roguelike, ...
    (rec.games.roguelike.nethack)
  • Re: Ideas for offerings of Office line-up
    ... MIcrosoft doesn't "do" shareware. ... To vote for this suggestion, ... | Web-based Newsreader and then click "I Agree" in the message pane. ...
    (microsoft.public.office.misc)
  • Re: Market for graphical roguelike?
    ... relative) lack of responsiveness in support. ... There also is no real benefit in shareware, ... for those same users the benefit of open source is ...
    (rec.games.roguelike.nethack)
  • Re: How rreliable is the CLSID method of obtaining a file location?
    ... craze looks a lot like the shareware craze to me. ... If people weren't paying for the apps, ... difficulty in making money on iPhone: ... That sounds a lot like shareware to me. ...
    (microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion)