This is a quite ancient post from the days when this blog was run by Serendipity. It is being displayed here for historical purposes only.

This started out as an assignment for my English Composition class but I figured since it was a techno-rant that I might as well post it. It is based on the article (http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/09/13/gates/index.php)

Microsoft is finally getting their act together with their products, Office and Windows that is, and starting to show semi-finished version of each upcoming release. The most striking thing about them is that it seems to all be nice fancy graphical stuff that really doesn't do too much in the way of making people more productive or helping them do things it only serves to slow down their computers even more with the extra layer of eye-candy and makes them have to upgrade their hardware just to run the more "advanced" features. The heck is up with this, it's ludicrous that consumers should be expected to upgrade their entire computer every time Microsoft wants to release a new product. No other operating system on the market does this to their users. But perhaps the most troubling part of it all is that the extra bloat is actually celebrated by the developer and hardware community because it encourages people to go out and spend not only the $300 for the new Microsoft software but also $500+ for a new computer and then countless extra dollars on new, fancy, software to run on that hardware.

How long is it going to take people to realize that Microsoft is not their friend and that perhaps its time to turn to alternatives? If you add up the cost of a Microsoft upgrade, assuming you only get a low-end computer, the cost still comes out to be about $700 compared to the cost of an Apple OS X upgrade which is $70 (for students and teachers) or Linux which is free and runs on almost any hardware platform in the world. Plus the cost of jumping wholesale to the Macintosh platform, assuming you buy a Mac mini, is only $600 a whole $100 less than the equivalent Windows upgrade. Crazy you say? How will the public react when they realize what all is entailed in their windows upgrade? If history is to believed they will just suck it up and take it. However, traditionally Macintosh has been too expensive and Linux too hard to use. Now that there are other alternatives out there perhaps people will see the light. Let's hope Microsoft's millions of dollars of marketing don't overshadow everything.