mian wrote:I always hear people saying that Windows (XP) is horrible, Explorer is horrible, Outlook Express is horrible, Black Ice Firewall is horrible.
never used blackice. heard good and bad things about it. it depends on level of functionality of user -- remember, most of the time computer problems lie with the obstacle between chair and keyboard.
I'm not saying these things are perfect and I'm not saying I know more than those who say they suck (trust me, I don't
) I just want to know why. Because I don't get it.
<i>why internet explorer sucks</i>
smeagol brought up a good point: webpage desighn. if you desighn webpages, ie is more of an occupational hazard than not. especially for those of use who don't use standard HTML or use HTML with addons.
security issues. ie has more holes than swiss cheese. I don't like having to update my browser once a day because there's a new exploit. that's frightening to me and majorly, majorly irritating. popups and spyware are another huge major nono. i used to have hugemajor issues with spyware and virii.
lack of customizable features. with firefox, i have my nice adblock extension, tabbed browsing, bookmarks toolbar so i don't have to go fishing around my bookmarks folder to get to the things i always read, otherwise i'd spend eons traveling through my addressbar history and bookmarks.
IT SLOWS MY FRIGGING LAPTOP TO A CRAWL. IE crashes my laptop horrifically because it eats up so much system resources that there's nothing else to allocate to other things that, um, might be necessary.
<i>why outlook sucks</i>
again. lack of customizable features. lack of ability to view blocked addresses. default rich text mode when sending email, which makes email reading a horrific experience (and migraine inducing when some bint decides to use 24-point pink comic sans MS to write an email), no default filtering. I have to drag and drop individual mail messages to other folders if I want to be able to view them. emark highlighted about 99% of the other things I was going to say.
<i>why xp sucks</i>
...Because it's prone to virii, more security holes than swiss cheese, hogs RAM and is too dumbed-down for those of us with any technological capability to use it effectively. XP Home is the bane of my existence. I do more tech support for users with XP Home than I ever did with Pro.
XP also has this annoying tendency to kill your system. I've gone through 2 of them thanks to the wondrous non-achievement of XP. If XP decides to PMS, you better buy yourself a new system, because it will kill it irrecovably.
Program installation / uninstallation. NOTHING IS EVER COMPLETELY UNINSTALLED. Unlike on my mac where I just have to drag it to the Trash along with its associated plist files and MAYBE a log or three, on Windows, things stay in the registry forever, and even when you think you've got it all gone, *bam!* there's another file. Installation is also a farce which requires memory, harddrive and temp file sucking of insane proportions.
I will say this though: XP Pro is a TON better than Home, especially with the addition of SP1 (SP2 won't work with my puter.) It's less crash-prone, handles system resources better, and is generally less of a pain in the ass to run than Home is.
<i>other MS OS'es</i>
NT just SUCKS. I would go into reasons why NT sucks, but I'd be here a while and it's already 2am.
ME eats harddrives. ME is also a flaming peice of shit. I've never seen anything crash so fast, so hard, and so stupidly in my life.
2000 Pro is a fairly decent peice of software.
You know Laura, I didn't even think about web designers! 
