Monday, November 3, 2008

How user-friendly are Windows really?

A common thing we hear every now and then is that "my friends use Windows, so whenever i have a problem, they help me". Since 90% of the world are Windows users, the above must be correct, right?? Not quite in my way of thinking.

First of all, let's see the profile of advanced users: A very big portion of advanced IT users, such as sysadmins, programmers, web developers, network administrators, etc are Linux users as well. These are also the people who help others with their Windows problems. Most of those do not use Vista at all, nor do they plan to use "Windows 7". This means that they do not know Vista as well as they knew XP and their Windows skills are no longer honed, since they use Windows less and less each passing day. For example, i use Linux exclusively for 1,5 year and Windows only when i am forced to (when i forget to take my bootable Ubuntu usb with with me).
Getting help for Vista or Windows 7 is becoming increasing difficult since many advanced users simply slowly forget how to use it. On the other hand geting help for Linux gets increasingly easier, since more and more people use it and new distributions get a lot easier with each new version. The only thing that new Linux users need to be shown is how to install programs. After that, they can do almost anything; surf the web, write their documents get their emails, play some games, update their system and all this without having to worry about viruses, spyware, registry problems or defragmentation.

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