Thursday, January 28, 2010

What Would Life Be Like Without Windows?

Today I read a blog titled the same as what I titled my blog post, from PC World, and giving full credit, were credit is due, by Randall C. Kennedy of InfoWorld.  Now, I don't know Randall, but I have to say, it was the most lopsided view of the world I have ever read.

Basically, it was an article claiming that the monopoly of Microsoft on the desktop is a good thing.  I used to work in telecommunications, and I used to hear the same argument about AT&T.

The fact of the matter is, monopolies are never good, but competition is very good for everyone.  It brings prices down, improves quality, and expands the market.

Besides, I know what life is like without Windows.  I haven't run any version of Windows since Windows 3.1!  I can tell you from my experience, that it wasn't always peaches and creme, but today I couldn't be happier.

I'm currently running Fedora 12 on the laptop that I'm am using to write this blog post.  I have all the software I need for everything I do, and it works great.  I can interoperate with anyone out there, even people using Microsoft products.  Besides that, I have the most stable environment I can imagine.

I don't spend countless hours fixing my system, but spend countless hours getting work done.  No viruses, crashes, hangs, or interoperability issues here.  I even have Mac's in my home, and my Linux system and the Mac's interoperate just fine.  We share drives across the network, e-mail and IM (including video) between the systems, share documents, you name it, and it all works.

Randall's vision of a future without Windows is simply not based on reality.