> By the way, we have two main computers here (we have about 15 computers in > all). One runs Linux, one Windows 95. I use both and don't see any > philosophical contradiction. > > Bruce I've got the same setup here. I've got a full time Linux development server (on my right), and a full time Win95 workstation (on the left). I find running two systems allows one to keep in touch with reality (a bit). Most of the consulting I do is for MS Windows (3.1/95/NT) based environments, so I need it. Also, if you need to stay up to date with what people are using on the Internet, you really need Windows 95. It's got the market share, and certain applications are available only for it. Primarily, I use it for Microsoft Word, CorelDraw/PhotoPaint, Quicken, QuickTax (a Canadian tax software package from Intuit), and PC Banking (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce). It's going to be a while before all of these essential tools are available for Linux. I'm actually lying a bit, sometimes I reboot the Win95 system, into Linux, using the nfsroot package (to operate it as a diskless client). I do this since it has a 21" monitor vs. 17" on my development server. That being said, MS Windows really sucks. I just installed the pre-release version of Netscape, and it hosed Windows 95. Now, whenever I start the system up, I'm prompted that Explorer has "performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" several times (due to an invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL). I'm afraid that I may have to format c: /s, and do a complete re-install. I've had plenty of experience supporting Windows systems, and this is an all-to-common reoccurence. It's pretty important to watch what Microsoft is doing. They do have some extremely smart people on staff (check out http://www.research.microsoft.com/). I'll give them credit for betting the company on such experimental technologies such as COM, OLE, and ActiveX. They've been fairly quick to adapt to the web, and they are gambling again by converting their primary user interface to super-hyped up HTML with all sorts of ActiveX and Java doo-dads. Too bad much of the neat stuff they've put forward gets screwed up in the implementation. For example, I couldn't use their Windows 95 web page using the new Netscape, because they used some tricks that made it crash -- and I couldn't access it using Microsoft Internet Explorer, because then it would try to use an ActiveX navigation control that didn't work -- and Lynx is totally out of the question since they haven't optimized their website for it. So I had to start up an old version of Netscape to get some information out of it. Pretty funny when you think about it. Is this what Microsoft's vision of a totally web-based user interface looks like? Pretty funny. Enough for now. Cheers, - Jim
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