03-25-2005, 04:02 AM
LochnarITB,Mar 24 2005, 07:49 PM Wrote:AOL is more like... Microsoft Windows. Both are bloated, ill-mannered, overcomplicated garbage well marketed to the computer illiterate masses.
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I used to hate Microsoft operating systems in the pre-XP days. I always made it monthly ritual to completely format and re-install the OS just to get my computer to run decently without randomly locking up when I launched an application. I can sorta understand the hate for Windows, but I really think that XP made everything better.
My present installation of XP Home is over 2 years old, and it runs just as well now as it did 2 years ago. I can count the number of hard lockups on one hand, and every one of them were due to dodgy 3rd party applications. I've upgraded hardware numerous times and attached a multitude of various USB devices, and the only thing that ever gave XP a fit was a Lexmark X75 all-in-one printer/scanner (which still worked flawlessly even though XP thought it was two separate devices and insisted on telling me so every time I booted - the fault lies with Lexmark in this case for lousy drivers).
I agree that Windows is bloated. There's a lot of stuff there I'll never use and I have no way of removing. I don't know about the "ill-mannered" and "overcomplicated" part though. Windows XP behaves just swimmingly for me, and is a breeze to operate compared to previous Windows products.
Comparing AOL to Windows just seems wrong to me. Microsoft is heading in the right direction, while AOL always seems to make each "product upgrade" more and more frustrating.
Also, where I work we have the "Free AOL" stands that are packed with trial AOL CDs. I make it a point to throw a few of them out every day. One of these days I'm going to replace the AOL CDs with a batch of Ubuntu Linux CDs :shuriken: