On the PC gaming issue, *real* gamers know that gaming sucks on any machine that has less than $1000 of components in it anyway. This isn’t aimed at gamers, but neither is a $400 machine running Vista Basic – your gaming experience would be the same on both machines – zero

Obviously an OS needs a GUI and like a car, it needs a hood so advanced users, IT pros, me, etc, can get under the hood… But yes, I agree that users shouldn’t have to be aware of the OS…

However, as an aside, when I ask people, “what kind of computer do you have?” I get several answers…

1. Windows
2. Office
3. AOL
4. It’s black and silver.
5. Media Player

So maybe people aren’t really aware of the OS now

#40 – Dude… It’s hardly a scam. It just isn’t a really powerful machine and I worry that non-standardized software complicates support issues for the very people who are most vexed by support issues.

But $200 is not a bad price for what it is. It just isn’t for us.

what a scam, it should be illegal for companies like google and walmart to prey on unsuspecting consumers. Lets see Take about $80 worth of hardware, install some “free” software and sell it for $200 + what ever the extended warranty and service plan cost.

This is a strong opinion of mine and I get surprising flac for this. In my opinion, all the main OSs have completely got the paradigm wrong.

An OS should be like what’s under the hood in your car — the less you think about it and less it breaks down, the better. The average driver never wants to pop the hood and only wants to focus on the driving experience.

In the computing experience, this means the applications.

I want to play music, write letters, or chat on-line — I have no desire to even THINK about the underlying OS.

I haven’t owned a game machine since my Play Station One but — to me — that is the ideal OS model.

I’m sure there is some sort of OS in the Play Station but the PS experience is all about the game — as it should be. And, I might add, the PS1 almost never crashed — as it should be.

YES!!!!!

I agree.

I regularly use Linux, Mac and XP and I’ll say that XP pretty good.

But I’ll say it again: I think all the main OSs have totally gone on the wrong track.

An OS should be completely transparent to the user, so we can focus on the applications.

While I assume you’re not the REAL Steve Balmer, you raise a good point about how this might affect Microsoft, if the computer actually succeeds.

While Microsoft may not need to feat this specific $200 computer, they’d better have a plan for how to deal with whole computers that cost less than MS Windows alone.

But that doesn’t change the fact that your opinions about Microsoft are just loony ravings with no rational thought behind them.

#28 – There are many times that they get to wear the Ass Hat. Microsoft Genuine Advantage is one. The way they they strong armed OEM dealers for so many years is another. Releasing Vista with broken support for 5.1 audio (and so many other problems) is a third.

When these guys do wrong, they do it big. But that said, XP is a solid OS. Meeting the demands of so fickle and disagreeable a consumer base as we are isn’t easy. Balancing the needs of an enterprise with the needs of a million households is no small task. Managing 40 million lines of code will never be a perfectly executed task.

MS has strengths and weaknesses. Criticism is fair. But the broad sweep of “MS sucks and is evil” is just boneheaded and wrong.