|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Windows 95Appeared in volume 8/4, November 1995Windows 95 is being advertised in a wonderfully soothing style. Pastel-coloured squares cavort about the TV screen, replacing computers and image-threatening jargon.
Microsoft is playing a dangerous game: by portraying Windows as cuddly and full of fun, they are alienating vast cohorts of systems administrators, computer gurus and social-skill-impaired students. These groups want complexity, they demand archaic installation incantations, they need hard-boiled hardware/software incompatibilities. Instead, Microsoft is bypassing these hardy breeds and selling its product direct to managers and other suited individuals. The computer geeks are left to invest their time in more suitable software, like linux, perl and tcl, but they never forget how they have been cast aside.
Comes the day when the 47 disks that are Windows 95 are to be loaded onto a real-like computer. The suited user is confronted with the ugly reality that Windows really is complex, really does demand archaic incantations, and as for incompatibilities - they're a major feature! What does the executive do? He takes a long, relaxing lunch, followed by a phone call to the computer guru who dwells in the bowels of the building. The system administrator's moment has come, its time to pay back the infidelity in trumps. Never mind that the problem is caused by the user putting installation disk 3 into the machine before disk 2, or that the monitor is switched off. The guru furrows his brow, shakes his head, and explains that Windows' neural network-based AI software is sadly not fully reliable as yet, and why not try using the more reliable combination of linux and tcl?
Andrew Davison
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|