[elija]

I have over the past few months being having friendly discussions with one of my cousins regarding Windows vs Linux. He has persistently refused to even consider Linux as an alternative as Windows is easy and Linux is for geeks and therefore hard.

Well, his computer (exactly the same model as mine) has fallen prey to yet another batch of viruses and this time when he asked me to help sort it out, I said Windows is easy remember - you do it!

To cut a long story short he panicked and ended up formatting and re-installing Windows (he does take regular backups of his data) and is now sitting staring at his 22" wide screen monitor in all of it's 800x600 glory completely unable to access the internet to download the drivers he needs as Windows won't even tell him what is network card is.

I don't think he would be this upset with me if I didn't appear to be enjoying myself so much. I'm going to let him suffer until tomorrow and then take an Ubuntu live cd round and sort him out using Linux.

Good times. Good times. I haven't had this much fun in ages.

[techieMoe]

I feel for him. Over the years I've become pretty efficient at my restore regimen, which includes downloading, organizing, and backing up all the various drivers I need for this device or that device. It still takes me several hours to get a fresh Windows install to a working state.

[elija]

I feel for him too, but I haven't told him that. I'm enjoying his learning curve too much

[Freston]

Windows is renowned for it's very user friendly interface. It wont be a problem. I am sure the Microsoft helpdesk is able to provide whatever advice he needs.



Enjoy the show

[L4Linux]

Have you ever wondered why most PC users think windows are easy?
Because they have their more experienced friends that help them all the time to fix problems.
Yes, you guessed correctly; we are those friends!! It would be interesting to stop helping them
for a while and see their views about windows user friendliness:drown:

[Bemk]

My grandfather has a lot of trouble on his Vista notebook. After Christmas he's going to purchase a new PC and it will be a clean one. He got a bit used to Vista now, but guess what his administrator is going to put on his PC. WinXP+Ubuntu. Then he can learn to work with Ubuntu, while still having Windows if he can't sort something out. He messes up a lot on his PC, but to mess up Linux... If he manages to do so, I will put him back on Windows because there's no hope for him left then.

That's why I like the following statements so much(saw them somewhere on the forum)

Windows NT = Windows Nice Try
Windows ME = Windows Millennium Error

[Geeth]

HEHE I know what you mean.

IMO Let him stew for a bit. And if you want to be a prick 'accidently' leave a linux cd at his house.

With Windows, the re-install isn't easy until you have done a few or you have the driver disks you need.
Sometimes it isn't to bad when you have a computer with an image on it's own partition that does it all for you.

I was thinking about something similar last night, I am using windows less and less these days so I did a re-install last night to get rid of alot of crap thats bogging it down when I have to actually use it. The whole time I was thinking, "god damn Ubuntu is just so much easier to do and faster... Hmm need more borboun"

With Windows the only place I feel that it is actually easier then linux is program installation. Thats only because it's the same process with anything pretty much. run the .exe usually setup.exe. Though linux is getting a hell of alot easier due to package managers.

[wowbag1]

As I have a Windows machine still, over the years of similar experience I always create a backup disk with all the drivers, software, updates etc I need - but its stopped being fun, so I only go on the internet with Linux and use windows for just one program, which is only written for windows. Give it time and I will get rid of windows someday.

And I do not do Microsoft security updates - so many problems other people have had.

[ls354]

I just finished cleaning a brand new Laptop with Vista it had a lot of crapware and some user induced bloatware in total it was using over 900MB of RAM at any time. After having my ego destroyed I managed to bring down the whole business to 400 MB. Still this laptop should have never had Vista installed at the most Windows XP.

I am sure the laptop would run more efficiently under Ubuntu but I don't want to be seen as tech support, unless ($). In the mean time I laugh when asked if I'm interested in buying a security suite, ha ha ha.

[cousinlucky]

I tell people to go to the Ubuntu website and have a disk mailed to them or subscribe to mrmodem.net and get answers to their problems.

I tell them that I am too senile to remember back four years in time to when I used windows xp on the Internet and spent all of that money trying to protect that very porous operating system.

People who have paid for Windows are just repulsed by the realization that they wasted their money so freely.

Elija, your cousin is very lucky that you are so patient and understanding..