As Bill Gates Exits...

lol... just saw that, too. The first thought in my mind, was that you'd be interested in it :-)

The dramatic reading [nwsource.com] by the "radio personality" is even more awesome.

Hee hee!! What fun! I'm passing this gem on...

I didn't know Windows and Usability were even related. I boot my 81 year old neighbor's (Vista Ready) Windows XP machine and after the hour glass stops and I get a pointer I launch Firefox, and I kid you not, it take 3-5 minutes to launch. I miss 3.11. *resists urge to make this a Windows v. Mac thing*

I have a 5 year old XP-running Presario. After booting up, I click on the Firefox icon and in 4-5 seconds FF 3.0 is up and running and displaying my homepage.

Seriously, people; add some RAM (you should have at least 1GB), get rid of all the spyware/adware, go to msconfig once in a while and stop programs you don't NEED at startup from opening on startup, then DEFRAG YOUR DRIVES. Your machine will boot faster and open programs faster.

Maintenance-Maintenance-Maintenance!

I cannot comment on Vista as I have yet to use it. I am quite happy with the performance of XP (fully upgraded).

I thought Bill Gates was above all this and had a personal super computer. His rants sound so much like mine. I have so many things in Add/Remove Programs that don't make sense that I wonder, what if I uninstall this and the whole system crashes? And IE takes like 7 seconds to start up. And another 7 for opening a tab, and my computer is well maintained. Whoooo. Had to let that out.

But why would Gates want to download Movie Maker? Even he knows it's c***.

Thanks for posting this. It's made my day.

I once spent 6-7 hours cleaning up a machine at my cousin's house. It took 15-20 minutes to boot. After getting a good spy/adware scanner running first pass found 2500+ items, second pass found 1000+ third several hundred, fourth a few dozen. I would have done a clean wipe and install, but my cousin had no idea where the OS disc was, so I had to try and salvage it.

The best was when an IT guy told the story of a drive that Windows Defrag program said "This drive is 99% fragmented, it does not need defragmenting at this time." Exactly when does defrag decide it needs to be done? When it reaches 100% fragmented? In my department we typically ran defrag when it reached 2% fragmented.

As a friendly reminder, all caps isn't emphasis, it is considered yelling. Please don't yell. To add emphasis, do what the printed page has been doing for centuries, use italics.

Freedom of speech includes volume. ;-)

Yes, but often times the louder you speak, the less attention people will pay.

Back on topic, moving from 98 to XP was a bit of a shock at first. I got the feeling they assume every computer needs protection from the user. I didn't think that should be the default mode; as most people I know are too afraid to make changes to system settings. It does make it a bit more tedious when I troubleshoot other people's machines. Granted it takes me a few minutes to reorient myself to the Windows environment these days.

True, but yelling occasinally gets the point across.

I wait for Ubuntu to mature into a truly user-friendly, intuitive, desktop interface. I have an older Toshiba laptop running Linux that I use for writing and internet on the road.

Just as I expect my car to operate when I turn the key instead of having to do all the things that were necessary to start a car in 1914, I expect my computer to be very easy to operate without all the necessary steps in Linux, which is still very much a hobbyist's o/s. Macs just aren't worth the extra expense. Well-maintained XP is very reliable. I haven't had a crash or gotten a blue screen of death in forever. About the only truly annoying thing is having to reboot after downloading most updates. With he advantage that most programs are written for Windows, even when I use freeware I don't have to use the DOS-style versions from Linux.

Most folks don't care to change settings much in computers as they don't care to change the programming in their car computers, although it is just as easy. My car is optimized for gas mileage and longevity, not power. Just as my PC is optimized for internet usage and simple home photographic editing, not heavy game play and movie making.