Longhorn to feature rival to Adobe PDF.

[DJGM]

many oem's do it with the works suite, i'm just thinking something
like the worksuite should be a standard option in the windows os.

There's a world of difference between the Microsoft Works suite and the full Microsoft Office suite. If MS wish to bundle a office
productivity suite with their OS, it should be as an option within the installer, so users can choose whether to install it or not.
Choice is good. Being forced to install something whether you want it or not, is not good. Apple do the same thing with
the Windows version of iTunes. They bundle QuickTime with it, and it get's installed with iTunes, even if you already
have a copy of QuickTime installed. IMO, Apple should offer a version of iTunes that doesn't rely on QuickTime.

I currently work at a shop in Bolton where we build PC's to order. Although I usually install OEM copy of Windows XP Home,
(which effectively makes us an OEM for MS) if any customers choose to install their own OS, be that Windows or something
else, we can offer a computer without an OS pre-installed. If anyone asks about Linux, we'll install that as well, even if it
isn't nearly as well supported as Windows. Anyone that's interested in giving Linux a test drive, but has never used it
before, I always recommend having it setup as a dual boot, with Windows as the primary OS.

We also repair PC's with various problems, ranging from spyware/malware infestations, to replacing knackered components.
If anyone comes in with a PC wanting a system upgrade, and that PC is running Windows 9x/ME, guess which OS I always
recommend? Although I like Linux, it ain't that. It starts with Windows and ends with XP! I'll also bundle a chioce of 3rd
party extras such as iTunes, Firefox, and let the customer decide which software they stick with. I'll also install the latest
versions of all three instant messaging programs, including MSN Messenger. At the end of the day, I feel it's up to the
customer to decide what's best for them, not commercial organisations. Like I said, choice is good.

this is the one thing that really pisses me off with the "anti-microsoft" brigade is those who
come out with crap like 'abusing their position'; it is their operating system, their product,
why the hell can't they bundle whatever they want with it? i find it obscene that an eu
ruling made ms bundle windows xp without media player.

The simple and undeniable fact that Microsoft have abused their monopoly position. It isn't crap, it's a FACT. Any corporation
with the market share that Microsoft has would do exactly the same. If Apple had over 90% share of the PC market, and there
were Macintosh computers in as many homes all over the world, like there are x86 based PC's running Windows, Apple would
be in the exact same position as Microsoft is in now. Anti-trust rulings left right and centre, and an "Anti-Mac" brigade as big
as (or possibly bigger than) the so-called "Anti-Microsoft" brigade to which you refer.

people use ms products because they are mature, stable, easy to use and easy to support.
they have their problems, but i can't think of any other company which has consistantly
innovated and brought the pc into almost every home in the developed world.

Consistantly innovated . . . yer having a larf aintcha? The only MS innovation that I can think of is the scrollwheel mouse!
Pretty much every other MS "innovation" did not originate from Redmond. MS-DOS, VirtualPC, Internet Explorer, the point
and click GUI . . . etc. The main (probably only) thing that has made Microsoft as successful as they are today, is that they
have an excellent marketing department. That's worked to ensure that most computer users think there is no other choice.
And Microsoft want to do absolutely everything they can to make sure it stays that way. While it's true that Microsoft
products have helped make computers easy enough for your granny to use, if consumers find something that may
just do the job better than that of the market leader, the fact is that MS do not want them to have the freedom
to choose something that may be better for them.

Mind you, to be fair, there is one recent example where Apple have ripped off someone else's idea. Dashboard is a feature
in the newly released Mac OS X 10.5, which is pretty much a direct rip off of Konfabulator. So much so, the makers
of Konfabulator have had to port the (once Mac OS X only) program to Windows.

And although OpenOffice is good alternative to Microsoft Office, I generally only recommend it to those who can't afford
to buy the full MS package. I always point out that, functionality wise, OpenOffice is currently at least on par with what's
on offer in MS Office 2000, albeit without an MS Access style database component. (Mind you, OpenOffice 2.0 will put
this right, and include it's own database app called Base) IMHO, MS Office is by a fairly wide margin, the best office
productivity suite available. The only bad things about it is the over inflated price, and the fact that it mollycoddles
you just a little bit too much. At least the infuriatingly childish Office Assistant, (aka "that f**kin' paperclip") is an
optional part of the installation. Trouble is, most people click "Typical" instead of "Custom" in the installation
program, so they end up getting saddled with "that f**kin' paperclip" anyway!

I'll end this post by saying that I am not a member of the so-called anti-MS brigade. If I was, then my main PC would not
have any MS products on it. Although it does have SUSE Linux 9.2 installed, the primary OS is Windows XP. Even the
two Apple Macintosh computers I use, have Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer installed. My testbed PC currently
has a HDD with an official eval copy of Windows Server 2003 installed on it. Heck, even my SUSE Linux install
has MS Office 97, Windows Media Player 6.4 and Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1 installed on it!

[Chris]

Being forced to install something whether you want it or not, is not good. Apple do the same thing with
the Windows version of iTunes. They bundle QuickTime with it, and it get's installed with iTunes, even if you already
have a copy of QuickTime installed. IMO, Apple should offer a version of iTunes that doesn't rely on QuickTime.

Unfortunately I doubt if it will be possible, due to the digital restrictions management placed upon the files bought within the iTunes music store.

When I moved up to XP on my new computer, I found it a pain in the rear end to try and download the stand alone version of Quicktime without the bulky iTunes app which I don't want. They used to hide the link for the standalone player deep within the download pages, and it took quite a few clicks to download the damn thing.

I'll also bundle a chioce of 3rd
party extras such as iTunes, Firefox, and let the customer decide which software they stick with. I'll also install the latest
versions of all three instant messaging programs, including MSN Messenger. At the end of the day, I feel it's up to the
customer to decide what's best for them, not commercial organisations. Like I said, choice is good.

Personally I think that is just as bad as off the shelf OEMs sticking added crap like AOL onto machines - it takes up disk space, and if you leave it all enabled you get three IM programs starting up when someone logs in and so more wasted memory and disk space.

Fair enough, tell them about it, but don't clog their machine up with what they don't want. I would certainly be a bit peed off if I sent my computer off for an upgrade or repair only to have it come back with more unwanted crap loaded on that I have to deinstall/delete/remove.

At least the infuriatingly childish Office Assistant, (aka "that f**kin' paperclip") is an
optional part of the installation. Trouble is, most people click "Typical" instead of "Custom" in the installation
program, so they end up getting saddled with "that f**kin' paperclip" anyway!

Who do so many people have it in for the office assistant?

I'm not the paperclip's best fan, but I always change mine to something different - like the dog, cat or earth. And switch off the "it looks you're writing a letter ... would you like help" crap so it only offers help when I want help.

The office assistant is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to M$ product annoyances.

My top Office and XP hates are as follows, 'scuse me whist I vent my speen: -

Automatic hyperlinking of emails/web addresses in Office. What's the point? It makes it even worse when the link appears as blue, underlined and in Times New Roman.

Surely they should be a bit more subtle with the links - such as making the link match with the colour/font/size of the current document rather than in bright blue, underlined and in Times New Roman.

The whole zip handling crap in XP. It's a pain in the arse to get rid of - you have to go typing loads of unregistering commands and deleting specific files to get rid of the built in handling and the ever so annoying search within zipped files option in XP. Surely a "don't search within zip files and don't associate zip files with Windows" tickbox in folder options would have been better?

The dumbed down searching in XP. Why oh why do I have to go through the whole wizardy step by step crap by default - why can't they just do what they did in Windows 2000 and have the options there.

The "My" stuff. Surely "My Documents" is more than enough - there's no need to have "My Pictures" etc under the "My Documents" folder - it looks stupid - i.e. c:\documents and settings\user\my documents\my pictures. Why not just have it is "pictures" or "images" ?

Having seen some screenshots of Longhorn, it seems that they're doing away with the sticking of my in front of everything. Let's hope it sticks until the final version.

The automatic customisation of folders in XP based on what's in them. Again, this is a pet peeve, as it changes all the arrange by menus to ones that are related to the media - why did MS never think of people like me who want to arrange their music by the date in which it was modified? Plus, what makes it more annoying is that even if I customise the menus to what I want them to be, they revert back to the defaults.

The habit Windows XP has of resetting window sizes at will.

The desktop cleanup wizard. Fuck off you irritating piece of shit.

I'm sure I've got more, but I can't think of them right now.

[Pete]

I do like the folders that change according to what is in them but sometimes they just all change back to normal at random. I want every folder under My Pictures to be thumbnails but I can't do that easily. It's very annoying.

[DJGM]

I'll also bundle a chioce of third party extras such as iTunes, Firefox, and let the customer
decide which software they stick with. I also install the latest versions of all three instant
messaging programs, including MSN Messenger. At the end of the day, I feel it's up to
the customer to decide what's best for them, not commercial organisations.

Personally I think that is just as bad as off the shelf OEMs sticking added crap like AOL onto
machines - it takes up disk space, and if you leave it all enabled you get three IM programs
starting up when someone logs in and so more wasted memory and disk space.

Fair enough, tell them about it, but don't clog their machine up with what they don't want.
I would certainly be a bit peed off if I sent my computer off for an upgrade or repair only to
have it come back with more unwanted crap loaded on that I have to deinstall/delete/remove.

It's just as well Windows has a useful tool called which I'm sure you're aware of, called msconfig, which I set to ensure
they don't all startup automatically when Windows loads up. These extra apps may take up some disk space, but when
all the newly built PC's that are bought from the shop have a minimum HDD of 80GB, so disk space is rarely an issue.

Eitherway, we usually explain to the customers that we offer these third party apps as a courtesy before we go about
actually installing them. If from the outset they say that they don't want any extras installed, fair enough, we won't
install them. The only exception to this is the installation of security apps like Ad-Aware, Spybot and AVG. If they
agree to having the other third party apps installed, we always explain the quickest and easiest methods of how
to remove the apps once they've decided which ones to keep, and which ones to ditch.

Most of our customers don't have a great deal of computer knowledge, and some of them know next to nothing
about computers, but they're happy once they know they have a good choice of apps, and how to easily get rid
of the ones they don't want. The only things that sometimes displeases customers is when we explain that some
apps are pre-built (and almost irrevocably integrated) into the core of the operating system, and cannot easily
be removed (if at all) without potentially damaging the OS to the extent of requiring a complete reinstall.

(And we certainly won't install AOL, unless the customer has specifically requested it!)

[cdd]

Frankly I'm with the lobster on this one... Windows Media Player is a very good piece of software, and frankly if you don't like it Microsoft doesn't make your life difficult in removing it. EVEN IF it did, Lobster is still correct that people would choose another piece of software. Frankly if, in the future, when I install Windows XP, I have to go through the additional hasle of finding a media player, I think I'll go mad.

[Neil Jones]

I currently work at a shop in Bolton where we build PC's to order. Although I usually install OEM copy of Windows XP Home,
(which effectively makes us an OEM for MS) if any customers choose to install their own OS, be that Windows or something
else, we can offer a computer without an OS pre-installed. If anyone asks about Linux, we'll install that as well, even if it
isn't nearly as well supported as Windows. Anyone that's interested in giving Linux a test drive, but has never used it
before, I always recommend having it setup as a dual boot, with Windows as the primary OS.

The shop where I work, it usually gets no further than Windows XP, end of discussion as any mention of Linux, etc usually ends up with blank looks and a two hour explanation. Just as quick not to bother.

We also repair PC's with various problems, ranging from spyware/malware infestations, to replacing knackered components.
If anyone comes in with a PC wanting a system upgrade, and that PC is running Windows 9x/ME, guess which OS I always
recommend? Although I like Linux, it ain't that. It starts with Windows and ends with XP!

I trust you do look at the current specs of the system and recommend from there? Generally if it's running Windows 98 now, it's usually running Windows 98 for a reason, probably because it wouldn't be able to cope with any newer version of Windows.

I'll also bundle a chioce of 3rd
party extras such as iTunes, Firefox, and let the customer decide which software they stick with. I'll also install the latest
versions of all three instant messaging programs, including MSN Messenger. At the end of the day, I feel it's up to the
customer to decide what's best for them, not commercial organisations. Like I said, choice is good.

And what if said customers aren't interested in instant messaging full stop? ICQ in particular has become very bloated in recent years, though Messenger is still quite light.

And although OpenOffice is good alternative to Microsoft Office, I generally only recommend it to those who can't afford
to buy the full MS package.

We don't bother, just start recommending OpenOffice, most people are very interested when the work "free" comes up. But Office is available if they want it.

If they
agree to having the other third party apps installed, we always explain the quickest and easiest methods of how
to remove the apps once they've decided which ones to keep, and which ones to ditch.

Ah but how many times do you have to tell them this or do you write it down?

We've started writing instructions for how to register an internet security program (for the updates) as we got fed up with telling people in the shop, then twice on the phone and another three times when the PC comes back because said software was never registered and picked up something nasty because it was out of date... :roll:

The only things that sometimes displeases customers is when we explain that some
apps are pre-built (and almost irrevocably integrated) into the core of the operating system,

Oh don't bother. We don't so no complaints.

(And we certainly won't install AOL, unless the customer has specifically requested it!)

We don't install AOL, full stop. In fact we refuse to have anything to do with AOL if we can help it.

[DJGM]

Anyone that's interested in giving Linux a test drive, but has never used it before, I always
recommend having it setup as a dual boot, with Windows as the primary OS . . .

The shop where I work, it usually gets no further than Windows XP, end of discussion as any mention
of Linux, etc usually ends up with blank looks and a two hour explanation. Just as quick not to bother.

It's just as well that I have a LiveCD distro called Mepis, which can easily be demo'd in the presence of a customer.
Most of the customers I've done this with have commented on how the layout looks very similar to Windows, bar
a few extra icons and buttons on the (KDE) taskbar. And they usually show a great deal of interest when I say
that while Windows may cost quite a few bob for each PC on which it is installed, Linux is free, and can be
installed on any number of PC's without the worry of licensing or other legal issues.

The only customer question that's usually not so easy to explain, is about how Linux makers can afford to put
out a complete and functional OS free of charge. They also sometimes tend to ask why Linux comes with at
a complete office suite (OpenOffice) that's almost identical to MS Office, while Windows does not.

And although OpenOffice is good alternative to Microsoft Office, I generally
only recommend it to those who can't afford to buy the full MS package.

. . . most people are very interested when the work "free" comes up.

Same here, as with Linux . . .

The only things that sometimes displeases customers is when we explain that some
apps are pre-built (almost irrevocably integrated) into the core of the operating system,

Oh don't bother. We don't so no complaints.

It rarely comes up anyway. I only explain about this if the customer raises the issue. After two customers gave us
the green light to install Firefox, they asked if it's possible to uninstall IE. Because of it being tied to the OS, I've
explained the best method for ordinary (read non-techie) end users, is to use "Set Program Access and Defaults"
in order to make Windows remove all the shortcuts to IE, and that it's just as easy to bring IE back if needed.

We also repair PC's with various problems, ranging from spyware/malware infestations, to
replacing knackered components. If anyone comes in with a PC wanting a system upgrade,
and that PC is running Windows 9x/ME, guess which OS I always recommend?
Although I like Linux, it ain't that. It starts with Windows and ends with XP!

I trust you do look at the current specs of the system and recommend from there?

Of course we do. A number of customers have come along asking us to upgrade their installation Windows ME/9x
to Windows XP. The first thing I always point out is that a memory upgrade is likely to be needed first, and that I
wouldn't recommend running Windows XP on any less than 256MB RAM for most machines.

If any WindowsME/9x machine brought in for an OS upgrade, and has a CPU of less than 500Mhz, then I would
recommend to the customer to upgrade his/her RAM to at least 512MB. They think it's as easy as putting a CD
into the PC and just installing Windows XP over the existing OS installation. So, I then have to explain that
upgrading from WindowsME/9x to XP usually has better results if we do a clean install.

If there's enough space on the HDD, I would then sugggest setting up a dual boot system, so that they can still
have the new OS, while the original OS remains intact. If not, I'll point out that we'll need to reformat the HDD.
That's where the Mepis Linux LiveCD, and a temporary second HDD (or a USB pen drive) comes in useful if the
customer hasn't backed up any of their data. If they have a CD-RW drive installed, even better, since we can
burn the backups to CD-R's, and the customer can take them home when the upgrade is completed.

If they agree to having the other third party apps installed, we always explain
the quickest and easiest methods of how to remove the apps once they've
decided which ones to keep, and which ones to ditch.

Ah, but how many times do you have to tell them this or do you write it down?

We've started writing instructions for how to register an internet security program (for the
updates) as we got fed up with telling people in the shop, then twice on the phone and
another three times when the PC comes back because said software was never
registered and picked up something nasty because it was out of date... :roll:

So far, none of our PC upgrade/repair customers have had any problems with the Add/Remove Programs feature.
Not yet anyway. And as for registering internet security program, there's rarely any need. If a customers PC has
no security protection installed, we give them Ad-Aware, Spybot S+D and AVG (all free) installed and fully
configured as standard. Updating these programs is easy enough for most, and doesn't require much
explanation, except to show them that updates can be done in just a few clicks on each app.

(And we certainly won't install AOL, unless the customer has specifically requested it!)

We don't install AOL, full stop. In fact we refuse to have anything to do with AOL if we can help it.

The only times I've had to install AOL is, as I've said, when the customer has specifically requested it, and even
then, only from a CD supplied to us by the customer. Although I usually point out (in simple but no uncertain
terms) that although AOL may a decent internet service for novices, it's notoriously bloated, and has a very
unwelcome tendency to get into almost every nook and cranny on the system. I also recommend trying
another ISP, preferably one that doesn't invade the PC with crap! If it was up to me, I would also point
blank refuse to have anything to do with installing AOL's atrocious online access software!

[Pete]

Apart from Winamp there is no media player than - in terms of interface and sound quality - is as good as WMP which is a shame. If WMP's library was more like iTunes and it supported AAC and it had the better crossfading and instant play like winamp has i's use it without doubt.

[Neil Jones]

Ah, but how many times do you have to tell them this or do you write it down?

We've started writing instructions for how to register an internet security program (for the
updates) as we got fed up with telling people in the shop, then twice on the phone and
another three times when the PC comes back because said software was never
registered and picked up something nasty because it was out of date... :roll: ...

... And as for registering internet security program, there's rarely any need. If a customers PC has
no security protection installed, we give them Ad-Aware, Spybot S+D and AVG (all free) installed and fully
configured as standard.

Fascinating but it didn't answer the original question.

I was referring to full blown Internet Security software such as Norton and McAfee, programs which require registration, not stuff like Ad-aware, Spybot and AVG.

I would also point
blank refuse to have anything to do with installing AOL's atrocious online access software!

Amen to that.

[DJGM]

There was one customer recently who had the full Norton Internet Security 2004 suite installed, but had not
been updated in a while. This was due to the fact that his year of free updates had expired, and he wasn't
willing to pay out any more money (IIRC £21) to renew his Norton update subscription for another year.

We tried to take advantage of the loophole that gives you an extra year's worth of free Nortoin updates, by
completely uninstalling and re-installing the entire package. Unfortunately, we found thatSymantec seem
to have closed this particular loophole from their 2004 series of security products onwards.

Eventually, we removed NIS2004 altogether, and replaced it with AVG, Ad-Aware/Spybot and ZoneAlarm.

It seems (to me at least) that although Norton security programs have automatic updating facilities,
not many people are willing to pay extra for updates after the initial 1 year free subs have expired.


(One can't help noticing that this thread has veered wildly off topic!)