Executives love the Windows operating system and can't understand why techs and engineers want to use Mac OS X or Linux. It just doesn't make sense to them. After all, Windows is consistent and standard and reliable. So to even suggest something else, some kind of alternative, is crazy. After all, with all the money they have invested, they don't want to lose compatibility by switching to some niche operating system or science experiment.
Consider the backwards compatibility with Windows. It has had the same base name... Windows... as the previous distros... I mean versions... for years. Oh sure, nearly all device drivers had to be rewritten, and a lot of applications, but they needed to evolve anyway. And so with enough versions of the drivers and applications, they are backwards compatible in name. However, don't mention the problem that Win 7 home groups are only designed to work with other Win 7 machines and cannot communicate with any other systems, not even Windows XP. After all, if Microsoft decided a change was needed, then of course its for the better. This is a point where it was decided you don't really need all that much backwards compability.
And let us not forget browser compatibility. Internet Explorer has kept the same name and most of the same bugs for years now. And all those security problems, they are just "issues" that are being addressed in the next version of Internet Explorer. After all, when web sites are coded for IE6, I mean IE 7, I mean IE 8 in compatibility mode (or are they doing IE 9 now?) you have amazing... compatibility of a sort. They can render HTML all the same, mostly. And after the next releases of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, then you will see what features will be in Internet Explorer in its next release.
Oh let's talk ease of use. Let us not forget ease of use. Microsoft products are well known for their ease of use and consistent user interfaces. In fact, on any Windows distro... I mean version... you have numerous examples of their consistent look and feel.
Consider Wordpad and Paint in Windows 7. They have a very useful UI ribbon. And the Task Manager and Notepad, two venerable applications well known to Windows users for killing stuck processes and reading security notes, use the same menu bar that has been around for years. And we can't forget the ribbon bar of Office 2010, a Microsoft self-proclaimed amazing invention, that has so many features, they don't even know them all. Of course, its a different UI ribbon than what is used in Wordpad and Paint of course. Can't have too many good things you know.
And then there is good old Internet Explorer in all its many incarnations of web support. It does not use a ribbon because it has its own special, well thought out, and different UI menu bar because it needed its own consistency. Its not the same as the old menu bar in Task Manager and Notepad as their menubars were getting old... I mean retro... I mean... they were... different, so a consistent one was needed.
And let us not forget file system interoperability. Windows can read and write ntfs, fat32, fat16, ISO 9660 and old MS-DOS format file systems. And with those file systems available, there is no need to be able to read and write any others. Who needs ext2, ext3, ext4, udf, ufs, hfs, hfs+, reiser, or any of the other 50+ file system formats? And really, who needs to mount a CD or disk image file as a device anyway? No one really would need to do that. Just burn the image to CD and then mount the CD like we have been doing for years. Why mount it virtually when you can make yet another coaster for your home from the temporary CD?
And security. You know Windows must be the most secure operating system. After all, there are at least a dozen major anti-virus software vendors out there. And you can find all the anti-spyware software you need, if you look for it, on the Internet. It must be the most secure operating system because all those vendors went out of their way to write security software for Windows. You can't argue with numbers. Windows anti-virus tools have databasesd over 287,000 Windows viruses. While Macs and Linux tools only have a few dozen in their databases. They are so far behind.
And standards? Where do I start? Windows is totally about standards. After all, they are compatible with MS OFfice. And they can connect to the Internet. Now that is standards compliance.
Of course, there are some web sites out there that use so called "international standards" that were specified and voted on by international committees, but really, can they know more than Microsoft? They are meant to be ignored. And since most... I mean a lot... I mean a third... I mean almost 25% of all web sites out there run Microsoft web server, those standards really don't mean much anyway do they?
And in the end, Windows is the least common denominator. Most people don't have the time to go and learn a new operating system when all they want to do is browse the web, read email, post on social networking sites, write some documents, print some things, and play Solitaire and Mine Sweeper. And you can do all that with the modern features of Windows 7 using only a 1 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB hard disk space (minimum), and a DirectX 9 graphics card with 128 MB (if you want the pretty Aero interface).
I mean really, who has the time to switch to a different browser? They would have to learn a whole new menu bar when the IE menu bar is so ... available. And sure there are other word processors out there like Abiword and OpenOffice, but really, don't you just love the unique... yet consistent... somehow... UI ribbon of MS Office? And why would you ever want to do this on limited hardware? Everyone should upgrade their hardware with every Windows and Windows SP release so they have fewer reasons to complain. And if they can't afford upgrade, why do they have a computer in the first place?
So just forget about any alternative operating systems. The executives know best. Buy the $600 PCs with Windows 7 and MS Office and you will be compliant.
Just don't tell any of those "regular users" on tight budgets that they can run Ubuntu Linux with OpenOffice for free on a machine that costs less then $200, or even one of those older machines that you still have somewhere that used to run the Windows XP or Windows 98 distros... I mean versions.
Choice will just confuse people.
Use Windows. Be compliant.
Copyright 2011, Kevin Farley (a.k.a. sixdrift, a.k.a. neuronstatic)
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