16th Nov 2013 The Price of Windows

Ben Brooks brought this post by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes to my attention.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is a long-time Windows power user who now prefers OS X, iOS, and Android for their simplicity and reliability.

My primary work system is a MacBook Pro, and in the ten months I’ve had it it’s flawlessly done everything I’ve asked of it, from run Microsoft Word to render 4K video. I’ve lost count of the number of notebooks I’ve owned over the years, but this MacBook Pro is, by far, the most reliable system I’ve owned, and I put part of that down to the fact that it doesn’t run Windows.

And, on tablets:

My experience of Windows on tablets closely resembles that of my ZDNet colleague James Kendrick. Bottom line, they let me down too much to want to bother with them. Why would I trade a reliable iPad or Android tablet for an unreliable Windows 8.1 tablet? Why trade a tablet that just works for one that regularly sends me on quests, roaming the Internet looking for the right elixir to fix the system?

My question for Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is “WHY IS THIS NEWS TO YOU?” Despite your claims to have had some “rock solid” Windows NT 3.5/4.0/2000 systems in the past, you also say say “of all the desktop operating systems that I’ve used, the modern Windows operating system is by far the most fragile.”

You place the blame on Microsoft “for not putting enough effort into hardening the system, reducing the effect that fault – in particular software faults – have on the system, and providing better information when things go wrong.”

And you place the blame on “the vast ecosystem of hardware and software [Windows] has to support, and partly it is down to the years of legacy that each version drags behind it.”

I hate to tell you Adrian but WINDOWS HAS ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY!

When you plunk down your $199.99 for the latest Windows 8.1 Pro, Business, Core, or whatever Microsoft is calling it these days, WINDOWS IS WHAT YOU ARE PAYING FOR! You are paying for the hardware compatibility, the vendor ecosystem, and the legacy software support you want. But you are also paying for the troubleshooting, the frustration, the malware, the terrible battery life, and the ambiguous error messages that send you circling all over the internet. The only reason you are aware of it now, is because you have recently tried a closed systems like OS X and iOS where the software and the hardware are developed together to work for you.

I always laugh at Windows users who have problems with their computers. After all THIS IS WHAT THEY PAID FOR! If you are are not up for the challenge of tweaking the Registry, diagnosing bad drivers, removing spyware, or rebuilding your system to avoid bit rot then you bought the wrong operating system. After all there are less time-consuming options out there like OS X, and iOS with free in-person training, and free support.

I feel bad for Adrian, that after spending 10,000+ hours mastering Windows he finally found a platform that works for him. But at least he got what he paid for.