User friendly? In whose reality?
Take a technologically unskilled user – like, any of the regular users in your accounts department (or whatever).
Hand them a new laptop running Windows which has 2 accounts configured on it – userA (administrator account) and userB (regular account). Ask the unskilled user to change both passwords.
Hey, Microsoft – why do different things happen depending on which account is logged in? On the admin account you get the security box when you press ctl-alt-del. On the non-admin account you get the task manager.
… what?!!?
User friendly?
One of the clubs used against Linux by the proprietary software camp is that it is not “user friendly”.
Let’s have a look at this.
So, you take your average Joe Sixpack (JS), and give him a PC with a blank hard disk, a Windows XP install CD, and an Ubuntu Dapper Drake (or similarly modern alternate distro).
Watch JS boot from the Windows install CD. Which file system. OK, what the hell does that mean? Where do you want it installed. How the heck do *I* know?!? Copying files…. installing… rebooting… copying files.. wait, weren’t we just here? OK, blah blah… eventually you get a GUI which looks horrible in VGA. Then JS gets bombarded by driver requests… what’s a driver? Why isn’t it working? And so on. Hang on, how about antivirus software? Windows patches? And then all you have is Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and Wordpad. Or notepad. Joy.
Boot from Ubuntu Dapper. Starts up with a nice GUI with a nice bug icon in the middle of the screen saying “install”. So, you hit install… asked a few questions… the installer asks you if you want to configure the hard disk or automagically do stuff…
When the install completes, you have a choice of web browsers and email clients and instant messenger. And you have a choice of office suites, including one that looks kinda like MS Office. And the hardware all works. And so on…
Yeah. User friendly Windows? My hairy white… bottom!
