The only Mac offering at Fry's was inexpensive, but dated - not Mac OS X native. So I picked up the best-looking Windows package, and figured I'd install Windows XP while I was at it alongside Red Hat Linux on on my new 'killer' homebrew AMD machine (the better to compare with OS X and Red Hat 7.1 - the other 2 OSes I'm running).

Well, the XP upgrade from Windows 2000 Professional, was $200 (and I paid $200 in the first place for Windows 2000 pro). XP Pro standalone was $400! Compare that to $129 for Mac OS X (which includes $89 Mac OS 9 as well) or $34 and $74 for Red Hat or SuSE Standard and Professional editions respectively.

I wasn't going to pay $200 to run a $69 application, so I figured I'd just put Win2K Pro on the AMD. I had a new bare HD in the machine, so I figure I'd just install it there and have a multi-boot machine.

But, the Win2K installer will only install on the first partition on the first IDE drive - it took about 10 runs through it's install prompts to figure that out. So I cancelled the install - only to learn that Win2K had killed the Linux boot block (even though the 'cancel' option promised to leave the disk untouched). Very annoying...

So now I had a machine that wouldn't boot at all... so I just reformatted drive 0, bus 0 (the fresh Linux install there had relatively little data on it yet). Win 2K took almost an hour to install - Red Hat had taken half that time. The Win 2K install screens provided very little help - like how big partitions should be - so I had to constantly go back, cut, try and redo stuff with no clue from the installer. The Red Hat installer had been far more helpful, as well as faster (and the Mac OS X installer was a dream compared to Windows).

When I finally got the machine up, Win 2K would only run my (relatively) hot 32MB ATI video card in VGA mode - 16 colors at 800 x 600! Red Hat had immediately identified the board and prompted me for my choice (1024 x 768 at 16 million colors).

Only a monopoly could get away with a crap experience like this, especially at prices that are 3 to 10 times what other makers charge. Red Hat and Apple, who have to strive mightily to woo customers, make products that are far easier to use, and well priced because they have to be responsive to survive. The fact that I am limited to Windows for almost any specialized consumer software, means MS doesn't have to be good, fair or affordable...
Comments 9:13:18 AM    

Chris Gulker's view from Silicon Valley - in words and pictures