WauloK’s BangRocks Blog

There are just too many applications I want to use which only have a Windows executable.

Eg: Dialup modem driver (Conexant), all the online poker clients I have.  There’s no comparable mail checker like Mailwasher for Linux.  VNC is so simple and easy.  iTunes is too good to give up.. it’s my main media player now.  Funky functions of MSN Messenger.  Last.FM rocks.   Can’t easily synchronise my Sony Ericsson mobile phone, nor explore it easily from Linux.

It makes me wonder at news articles with headlines like this: Linux desktop domination “just a matter of time”.  I don’t think so.  I also don’t think so in my lifetime.  Prove me wrong, if you can. I just don’t see it ever happening.  There’s some people who get benefit from using only Linux but for the majority it’s going to be either Windows XP or Windows Vista.  No contest.

I’m even willing to start saving money now so I’ll have enough to buy a copy of Vista the day it hits the shelves.  I’m actually looking forward to it now.  I cleared all the data off the 200Gb hard drive in my Linux server and when I buy Vista I’ll install that into my PC and partition it to be my main hard drive.  I suppose I could use the 80Gb drive in there now for Windows Vista and the 200Gb for everything else.  I dunno.  We’ll see.  I shall have to compare access times, etc for it.  I want a nice fast machine.

I wish Microsoft would have a ’save to flash memory’ feature people have been speculating about coming in Macintosh OSX one day in the future.  It’d be nice.  Then, when you shut down Windows could save the current state of Windows to flash memory.  When you boot up next, you turn the PC on and Windows is running instantly.  Although, with Windows needing reboots all the time, perhaps it’s not that good an idea after all hehe.

I really would have liked to see Linux do better and get to use it instead of Windows, but the convenience of Windows wins hands-down.  Don’t get me wrong.  Linux has come a very long way since I first confused myself trying to install Slackware from source and find all those dependencies.  Now, you don’t have to do that so it’s getting easier to install software, like Windows is, but it’ll never get to be as easy.

I might even invest in Office 2003.  I don’t need a full version though.  I just need Word for file editing (mainly documents, resumes etc) and Outlook for synchronising contacts, etc from my phone.  There isn’t any freeware (or commercial software that I’ve found) which does it as well.  I even downloaded the Thunderbird ‘Lightning’ extension but it doesn’t synchronise with anything at all.  It just imports Outlook data.  Perhaps once it hits version 1.0 it might?  I don’t know.  I didn’t read the roadmap, but there’s nothing in there now and I need backups now.

So, at the over-expensive cost of Windows Vista, I’ll start saving and buy the darn thing.  It’s annoying, though.  I bet you could buy a brand new PC for $300 if Windows wasn’t pre-installed on it.  No matter how much we complain, that’s how it’s run so we just have to put up with it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 19th, 2006 at 11:24 am and is filed under 1st Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.