[Grovenet] MACs for Christmas

[chuck]

Jeff,

Your industry and field of expertise, and mine are completely 
different.  Although we are both 'technical people', it appears you deal 
more with corporate customers, while I deal with the average mom and pop 
computer user, and sometimes small business owner.

It's not that we hate Windows.  I love WinXP and still use it.  But I 
can also share my customers frustrations with using Microsoft products.  
I have had women in tears when I told them their hard drive was gone, 
and all their grandbaby photos could not be retrieved.  I have seen 
sheer panic in business owners at the thought of recreating 3 years 
worth of Quickbooks databases, or the idea of having to do payroll by 
hand.  Or taxes, or entire music librarys, or important documents.  Why 
should they have to purchase yet 'another' copy of Windows to put on a 
different computer - they paid for the original - it should be theirs to 
do with whatever they wish.  Another copy of Office?  Why won't my old 
one work?  Where's the Parallel Port on this new printer?  Why do I need 
a new computer when the old one worked just fine?  And Vista?  Why do I  
have to have it in order to run the latest Quickbooks?  Why can't I just 
buy Vista and install it on my old P3, 700Mhz, 256M RAM Dell?  I just 
bought this new Vista machine, in order to run Quickbooks, and now my 
old Printer doesn't work anymore?  Why did I get a Virus - I had McAfee 
installed 5 years ago when I bought it?  I gotta go buy WHAT NOW? 

That is 'our' Microsoft frustrations. 

Upgrade, money, more upgrades, and even more money.

Macs won't fix all the problems out there with computers, neither will 
Linux.  But they seem to at least be addressing some of them.  Microsoft 
Vista was supposed to be a huge security upgrade - I just haven't seen 
it yet.  All I've heard about, read about, or experienced directly -  
are the headaches and nightmares.  I hope Microsoft gets their act 
together.  I really do.

All 'we' want - and by 'we' I mean a lot of computer users I have met - 
is a machine that does what it is supposed to - when we want it to - 
without spending a fortune in support calls or upgrades for years to 
come.  We don't want to have to be an expert to use the thing, or have 
to read 400 page manuals, or 'Dummy Books' to figure it out. 

We just want it to work. 

chuck