Why Do Large Computer Manufacturers Make us Use Operating Systems We Don't Want

Well I have made it clear I hate Windows 8, to me the worst operating system ever produced by Microsoft. I gave my wife a nice Asus K55VD to replace her ageing Dell, she took one quick go of Windows 8 and demanded that I replace it with Windows 7. I can't blame her, I just paid £1,300 on a nice new Asus G750JX with very high specifications, which I immediately customised by adding another 8GB of ram and bigger and faster hard drives, (for a laptop its amazing it has room for 2!).

Unfortunately Asus insist that Windows 8 is the way forward so do not give me a choice of operating system its a take it or leave it attitude, which has spoilt my computing experience with their wonderful machine. They are not alone, it seems all the major computer makers have been instructed by Microsoft to use Windows 8, whether you have touch screen or not.

Windows 8 might have some good points, but for me the bad points far outweigh the good points. I hate all those screens that suddenly jump out at you, I hate all those tiles, and most of all I hate the lack of start button and the menu that came with it. As a result I had to purchase a small program called RetroUI to stop all those flying menus and to give me back my much loved start button with menu's I could customise.

If Microsoft had been run by sensible people, they might have made different flavours of Windows 8, one for tablets, one for touch screen computers and one for ordinary computer users, but they are brash and lazy and believe in the one size fits all approach.

My favourite operating system is Ubuntu, simple fast, effective, but I have to use Windows to be compatible with work computers and to be able to play Skyrim, but getting my new super duper laptop to accept dual boot with Ubuntu and Windows 8 was a nightmare, because Windows put in security checks to make this sort of thing difficult so that unless you are a bit of a computer nerd and willing to keep restoring from a backup, each time your attempt went pear shaped, it would defeat most would be Ubuntu or Linux people who want to learn and try this amazing free operating system.

It took me several attempts over two weeks to finally get both working perfectly. As usual for most of the things I do, I use Ubuntu, for work back to Windows 8, to play Skyrim, back to Windows 8. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft have produced some great operating systems, Windows XP was superb and still loved by many. Windows 7 was a worthy replacement and I came to love this just as much as XP, but in between what rubbish have we had to endure!

Almost everyday I have to download new updates for Windows 8, it is slow, laborious and getting a tad tedious, then you often have to reboot, then wait again whilst Windows configures the updates, then finally you might be able to use the computer. Ubuntu boots in under 10seconds from choosing from the menu to being able to use the program. If there are updates it is swift and runs in the background, rarely do you have to reboot and wait for it to configure itself. When I finally got the dual boot working I chose Ubuntu 12.04 because this has Long Term Support - 5 years, and they produce a Long Term Support version every two years like clockwork with other releases to try every 6 months. I had initially 335 updates to do for Ubuntu, it took no longer than 6 minutes from start to finish, with only one reboot!

When I buy a computer I buy a computer, I want to have choice over what operating system I want ON MY COMPUTER,  my computer doesn't belong to Microsoft, it belongs to me, I paid my hard earned cash for it, so let me choose what operating system I want to use.

These computer companies have to stop Microsoft from telling them what to do and they should grow a pair of balls. Microsoft want to dominate the world of computers, but until they produce good, stable, reliable software, they can kiss my ass.

12/09/13

After writing this, I got home after work and decided to have a little play on Skyrim, yet another prolonged update, which meant yet another restart, then about half an hour into the game Windows reported a fault, closed down Skyrim loosing all gameplay and all the items I had acquired. Yet another restart and more time wasted waiting for Windows to configure itself, and they sell this rubbish?

People wonder why hackers target Microsoft products, maybe its due to frustration at the inept coding of their products and to show the numerous flaws in this so called 'ready to use out of the box' product that stinks.

Windows, Apple and Linux

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were genius's, but both had their flaws. Bill Gates made Windows, a wonderful graphical interface for computers, which opened the way for ordinary people to use computers without having to learn some basic commands to type in to get the computer running the programme they wanted to work. His flaw was that although the human race had gone from no flight to space flight in 60 years and from computers that took up a whole room, to one that could site on your desk, he did not have the foresight to realise that computer internal memory would not be restricted as he allowed for, which in later versions of Windows did cause some problems. Microsoft build some great interfaces for normal users, 3.11, XP, were two great examples of stable clear systems, then we had 95 and Vista, which to me were absolute crap. We now have Windows 7 a good replacement for XP, relatively stable, but then we now have Windows 8, to me this is what I call 'prettyware' no better than Windows 7, just made to appease. I have no intention of going touch screen as long as possible, the skin produces oil to protect itself, hence smudges on your screen, I do not want to have to clean my screen every few minutes because the light has caught fingerprints all over my screen.

Steve Jobs, the other genius made another glaring error which is being continued by his company. He could have made his Operating System available to ordinary PC users, instead it could only be supplied for those who had an Apple computer. When Apple changed to the Intel chipset this was the ideal opportunity to come into direct competition with Microsoft, but for some reason they have stuck with their policy. There was a second mistake, they have priced Apple computers beyond the reach of ordinary users. Yes they are pieces of art to look at, but I can get three laptops with high specifications for one Apple Airbook!

I used to use Windows as my main operating system, but over the past 6 weeks I have been using Ubuntu a Linux based Operating System almost exclusively. 12.04.02 has five year support and is extremely stable and extremely fast, loading in about 30 seconds compared to Windows taking up to two minutes. Almost all the software is free of charge and I have found only one thing I can do in Windows that I cannot do in Linux, and that is a real thought provoker. Tom Tom use Linux on their devices, but only provide Tom Tom Home for Windows or Mac's, how about that!

I am finding that more and more people are trying Linux and loving the experience. If you need help just type in your problem to your search engine and there are huge amounts of forums to help you out. It does take a bit of an effort to get used to certain things, like using the terminal, but you can get the help with the right syntax which you can copy and paste.

I predict that like the UKIP party in the UK people are fed up with bloatware in software, just as much as they are fed up with politicians who are full of bloatware, hence UKIP is growing in popularity at an extraordinary rate, so to is Linux. Itunes is a very good example of bloatware to me, I have an Ipod classic 160GB I just want to be able to drag and drop files onto the ipod, and I hate Itunes. I have found there are several lightweight programs such as Media Monkey or Winamp which are free, small and do what I want easily.

You do not have to load Ubuntu to try it, get a live cd from Ubuntu by downloading the Iso file, burn the cd then boot with the cd in the drive, you can use Ubuntu or many other Linux systems without making changes to your computer, just to get a feel of it. If you want both Linux and Windows it will also allow for a dual boot called a Grub loader to be installed which gives the option of which OS to boot into.