4 ms·
I agree, when you consider when products were released and compare it to similar offerings at those times, many Microsoft products are (or were) "decent". I wo
by walkon 16y ago
I agree, when you consider when products were released and compare it to similar offerings at those times, many Microsoft products are (or were) "decent". I would add these:
- Windows 95: Not perfectly stable or technically very groundbreaking, but a good enough combination of usability and features to be considered decent in my mind and millions of others at the time.
- IE6: great at the time. Some of the standards it doesn't support didn't exist when it came out. Also, IE5 introduced the Microsoft.XMLHTTP ActiveX control, which was the foundation for XMLHttpRequest. If that wasn’t created by Microsoft at the time, AJAX almost certainly wouldn’t be as ubiquitous as it is today.
- SQL Server 20xx: Perhaps RDMS's aren't your thing, but they're very much needed for now, and Microsoft's can certainly handle most relational db needs.
- .NET 3.5+ and C# 3+: If you want a statically typed language and platform, anything .NET 3.5 or greater are at least ok.
- ASP.NET MVC 2+: Not quit the same as a dynamically-based ROR or Django and they also don’t give you a default ORM; you pick it, but its solid and improving. Source code is available; contribs aren’t.
- Visual Studio 2008+: Again, not some crazy vim/emacs setup, although plugins can somewhat help simulate that, but these definitely don’t suck at all.
- IIS7+: Just because it’s not Apache doesn't mean it isn't decent. It is quite powerful and secure.
- Windows Server 2003+: Never had bad experiences with these.
- Microsoft Security Essentials: Very good and free antivirus.
I’m sure there’s more, but it is an exaggeration to say Microsoft hasn’t made any decent products. Certainly some of these don’t seem as good overall when accounting for the licensing costs and associated culture/stigma that comes with working in Microsoft shops, but many of products in and of themselves are decent.
- mcosta 16y ago"decent" is the perfect name. Better than the crap the anterior version was is a better description. Perfect for milking the cash cow. -Windows 95? Come on, your memory fails. It was utterly usable and crashed hard everyday. Any other OS of the time was better. It was so basic... paint? notepad? a big pile of shit. And they have been budling the same crap more than 10 years until Windows 7. -IE6 was good at the time. It's sad it was so many time without new versions. -The first usable SQLS was the 2000, and sincerely, until 2003 oracle ran circles around it. -.NET and C# is OK, fine lenguage. -ASP.NET I do not know. -Visual Studio is OK, but almost because it has no competition. -IIS7+: I do not remember the last version I touched, but I had to clean my hands with bleach after. Oh! and it came with W2000, and obligatory for some SQL Server stuff, for no aparent reason. -Windows Server 2003, better than the 2000, yes. And grey. -Microsoft Security Essentials: no please.
- TeHCrAzY 16y agoMicrosoft Security Essentials: Not sure what you have against this. I happily suggest it for all my friends and family when they ask for anti virus. Its free, and effective, and doesn't cause headaches (ala Norton, etc).
- shadowsun7 16y agoI'm not sure what his beef is with Microsoft Security Essentials, but I just tell my friends and family to get a Mac. It's too tiring keeping up with antivirus offerings, and constantly needing to clean up after their messes. I'd recommend Linux, to be honest, because it's a cheaper alternative. But because there's still no good way of using it without needing to open Terminal at some point - the Mac is, I suppose, a good compromise.
- wwortiz 16y agoYou can use ubuntu without opening the terminal, and have been able to for a while, the problem with linux is not the terminal it is whether or not the hardware is supported and software people need is supported.
- malnourish 16y agoThe most difficult thing with Ubuntu that I have noticed is properly configuring and using a scanner.
- shadowsun7 16y agoI recommend that you sit behind a non-technical relative or friend, and watch them use Ubuntu without offering them any help. There are quite a number of things that they'd like to do that isn't clearly expressed - or even easily findable! - though Ubuntu's GUI. They will struggle with it for a bit. Plus: even if we set that aside, there will be certain bits of hardware you'll want to use that would require opening the Terminal to configure/install. Because my objective is to minimize my time spent on helping my friends/relatives with their computers, Ubuntu simply isn't a good enough alternative to Windows. You merely trade the time spent on making the computer virus-proof with time spent teaching them where to find things (which is funny, because most of the time I'm finding things for the first time myself, seeing as I prefer the Terminal). As opposed to the Mac - I send them away to buy one, and they never come back to me for help. PS: Why the downvotes? I expressed a justified assertion, backed up with some evidence, and people react to the fact that I'm dissing Linux? Tsk, HN, I expected more of you.
- plnewman 16y agoI always bring up Flight Simulator whenever there's some MS bashing going on. I miss the Microsoft of my youth,
- rbanffy 16y agoSublogic made Flight Simulator. Microsoft later bought Sublogic.
- plnewman 16y agoI didn't know that. Still kudos to them for keeping the product going, and keeping it good.
- watmough 16y agoMS Access 1.0 was fantastic when it came out. I can almost taste that box arriving in my office. 23 freakin' floppies though! Awesome piece of software.
- dfox 16y agoI view all 32bit PM versions of non-NT windows (ie. 386, 3.1, 9x...) as amazing technical feat, because they do something that almost should not be possible. Like ability to transparently use realmode DOS drivers from windows programs and vice versa (althought at huge performance and stability penalty).