[MrMoo]

Originally Posted by aussben

most people in my experience just want to press a button, get on the net, print sth, check theirs emails, they don't really care the os flavor, they don't want to spend hours setting it up, they just want it to work

Which is my point, just working is what Mac OS X and Ubuntu do better than Windows. The Microsoft option appears when you need to use say Photoshop, play games, fill up your iPod, etc.

What is your primary os?

Windows XP at home, Ubuntu at work.

My mother is the super star, she has two Windows XP laptops, one Ubuntu laptop, and a iMac running Mac OS 9/X. The Mac hardly works with any hardware and is a tad slow for OS X. The XP laptops have issues occasionally, poor software, or dubious hardware: low power USB ports, but they can be made to work with a digital camera, webcam, scanner, bluetooth pieces, etc. The Ubuntu laptop is very light and easy to travel, works very reliably: even gone through distribution upgrades with no fuss. Can you imagine your mother upgrading XP to Vista, or Mac OS Tiger to Leopard without asking?

[aussben]

Which is my point, just working is what Mac OS X and Ubuntu do better than Windows. The Microsoft option appears when you need to use say Photoshop, play games, fill up your iPod, etc.

Well I cannot argue with you there I am more favor of Linux or OS X I need a lot of tools and love to customize I can do for free what MS charges a bundle for. The only thing when buying new hardware you have to do your research and find yourself going to computer store not only looking for particular brand but particular versions in order to get the supported chipset you want.

but they can be made to work with a digital camera, webcam, scanner, bluetooth pieces, etc.

That is the sad fact I was talking about before, they most of the time just plug it in click setup.exe and they work. But disto's like Ubuntu are getting there and are bridging the gap. Ubuntu is a kick arse disto for laptops I also run it on my laptop as well, I used to admin debian and it was the best linux distro of it's time the first to have a really good package manager, unfortunately it slipped a bit, but has come back with Ubuntu.

Can you imagine your mother upgrading XP to Vista, or Mac OS Tiger to Leopard without asking?

Haha my mother is lucky to open up internet explorer she has not even got the internet. It would be fantastic if my mother could just upgrade without asking me.

Do you work in admin yourself?

[MrMoo]

Originally Posted by aussben

Do you work in admin yourself?

Its not what it says on the business card but I look after ~50 boxes. In NYC used to have another 200 (AIX, HP/UX, Solaris, various Windows, various Linux) for all of three people to use, challenging and tedious, I wouldn't recommend it if you have other things to do.

[aussben]

Cool sounds like admin work, I actually like it I know it can be tedious work sometimes but also rewarding when you get it all working and running smoothly. I am one of 3 admins that look after a platform of about 30 servers. Keeps us very busy, it is good. We have mainly Centos servers, but we also have Solaris and Unix. Plus Debian on some of the older gear.

I would like to continue working in admin when I get to HK but will see what happens.