The biggest problem that most people have with running Windows on a laptop
is the absolute lack of interest most people have in learning or using
something new.
The person who has to deal with people who run word & powerpoint - Try
StarOffice. It works a treat, and it is a heck of a lot smaller than
Microsoft Office which is the microsoft alternatiive. I have been using
this for many years, and none of my clients or collegues have ever noticed
the difference.
With the Electrical contracting detail - recently my boyfriend has had to
set out the layout for a computer server room. The graphics packages that
the manufacturers of the electrical components (connectors, racks,
sockets, plugs, etc) give away are all mutually incompatible, and the
layouts they give away for Visio are of a completely incorrect layout
style (He was building a floorplan, and the layouts where for
side-layouts). Therefore he wound up having to create his own templates
anyhow. He could have easly done his development with GIMP instead of
using Visio - which he went to the trouble of installing the 4Gb program
because the builders recommended that he use it. (Luckily he was given it
free from a previous company he worked at).
There is no task ever developed for the PC that requires windows. Those
people who complain about having to do development on windows for
processors and things because there is not a version of GCC for it... well
you might have a problem there - most of the tools used to program those
processors initially are created using GCC... the only thing is that those
versions of GCC are propriety, not public domain software. Mainly it
works out cheaper to use windows instead of GCC, not that windows is the
only method to use.
Mainly what it comes down to in the end is the use you put the laptop to -
for me as a Systems Administrator, a Unix-like variant on my laptop is a
bonus. I have to deal with many OS's (ranging from SCO, through Win2K,
through Linux, etc), and in all cases, having a "unix" machine that
functions 100% with me when I am attempting to clarify problems and fix
them is amazingling helpful. However, I had to search for a laptop that
was useable with Linux - there are less of these out there than there are
wireless cards that function with Linux....
All in all, your average salesperson wants to use Windows on their laptop
because they are too lazy to have to work with something other than what
they know. The average person who needs to deal with computer diagnostics
wants to use what they are familiar with - again lazyness...
It boils down to this - what can people afford to use, and what are they
willing to learn. In my case when I first got my laptop, I had about a
$2000USD budget - since then that has improved, but I still use my old
laptop - as it has never let me down while I have seen many "higher-end"
machines die on people.
Regards,
Cassandra
PS - Can we leave this topic alone now? People either want to run linux
on their laptop or not, and if you are unsure about it, then I would
suggest you figure out what you need from your laptop and get the best
system for _that_, not for the OS.
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