On Sat, Jun 17, 2000 at 11:08:42AM -0400, Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
>
> I use Win 98, 95, and NT systems, and have little problems with them as
> operating systems. MY NT 4.0 systems run for weeks if I want them too.
> The problems I have with windows is not the OS, but the applications.
> Many applications do a very very poor job of memory management,
> resulting in memory leakage, and the filling of your RAM and swap file
> with garbage to the point that the application crashes, or it causes the
> OS to crash. Applications I've had the most difficulty with are: Word
> Perfect, Netscape, and Ventura. I now avoid WP like the plague, though I
> have to use Ventura for my work, and it has gotten better with version 8
> sp 2 than anything previous.
Quite so.
However, memory leakage and application crashes should not bring down
the entire OS. If they are capable of doing so, that is a critical
problem with the OS itself. There is no reason they should be able to do
this other than poor programming in the OS.
> I have found that most crashes on Win systems are not due to the OS, but
> because inexpensive hardware is used. I use intel chips and standard
> intel motherboards, matrox video cards (S3 Virge is satanspawn), etc.
> You do get what you pay for.
Michael, unless you are suggesting there is actual corruption of data
occuring in these devices this doesn't hold up. You misinterpret the
cause of the problem; it is not the hardware, but the drivers (though
there may be correlation with inexpensive hardware and poorly written
drivers). And we refer, of course, to the Windows drivers. S3 Virge
cards, as it happens, are some of the *most* stable under the latest
versions of XFree86 on Linux, whilst other cards (often, in fact, the
expensive ones, especially when the manufacturers refuse to release
specifications - see nVidia) have less solid drivers and are more prone
to crashes.
Martin
-- -----[ Martin J. Ling ]-----[ http://www.nodezero.org.uk ]-----
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:13:30 MDT