We were saddened to see that the
BeOS will not be. The company, which had some pretty impressive technology,
sold its assets to Palm and will liquidate.
They had some pretty hot stuff,
but it never caught on, and that's a shame. We say that for two reasons:
one for the obvious reason of coolness, and two because someone needs to scare
the bejesus out of Microsoft.
How can you possibly explain the mediocrity of
Windows? Here are some typical experiences for us: the Windows Explorer, a
key component, crashes regularly on bootup. This is a central part
of their program!
Reboot.
The Office Suite is such an immense resource hog
that it crashes regularly.
Reboot.
Despite having nearly 500 megs of ram,
on a regular basis Windows says it is low on available resource and ultimately
has to be rebooted. Then you get that infuriating message telling you
don't you dare shut the system down without closing things out! When they
screwed up!
We know we have some Microsoft readers, so please, if you see
Bill, tell him that out here in the provinces, we're getting sick of this.
Be didn't make it, and OS/2 didn't make it and Mac is viable but not necessarily
more stable, although the the new operating system may prove to be. Linux
is challenging to everyday users.
Someone needs to come up with a rugged,
powerful, multitasking system that can handle just about anything and which is
radically better than Windows, and uncomplicated to boot. That's what it
is going to take to either overthrow this tyranny of mediocrity or spur them
into some serious innovation.
Honest to God, when your own Office sucks all
the resources up like a wino under a tap, isn't it time to reassess?