5 ms·

I call bullshit. I've worked for a couple of printing outfits and Windows has by far been the most reliable bar some big ass Xerox machines with PostScript pro

by kryten 13y ago

I call bullshit. I've worked for a couple of printing outfits and Windows has by far been the most reliable bar some big ass Xerox machines with PostScript processing and a Sun workstation tied to it. Fuck, the most unreliable so far has been the PDF rendering engine inside OSX which sometimes just whacks the CPU at 100% and you have to kill the process. And don't give me the shitcrock of Ghostscript or CUPS as a better solution. Word and Excel have NEVER crashed on me and I've been using them since the '97 versions. Granted I don't upgrade straight away and leave it for an SP or two but you should do that if you want stability. I deal with 200+ page complex documents on a daily basis, some of which hit 100-200Mb. You can't open those in LibreOffice without it falling over. The only problems I've had with Office documents is where people don't know what they are doing, particularly when it comes to format-prats who don't know what styles and headings are for. Reimaging - rubbish. System restore is used these days. I've had to reinstall Windows 7 twice since 2009. Once was due to a disk failure and the other time was due to some shit code I wrote trashing system32. I do a sideline of decrapifying people's laptops as well and I haven't had to reinstall a thing. I just don't think you know what you are doing. Windows 8. Bar Metro which is a POS, everything just works. You sound like a rabid Linux fanboy. Note: I use both all the time. I've used Windows since 1993 and UNIX since about 1988. I can't stand fanboys spouting crap. If I had some karma I'd downvote this.

derleth 13y ago
> You sound like a rabid Linux fanboy. You sound like a rabid Windows fanboy. > I can't stand fanboys spouting crap. If I had some karma I'd downvote this. Ditto. Downvoted.
- kryten 13y ago
  Hardly. I use both. I write software for both. Each have flaws but the OP spouts pure shite.
taeric 13y ago
I think if you work for a printing outfit, your exposure is likely to be skewed towards the realm of working solutions. My negative experience was always in getting some random computer to work with a random printer. Lets say a friend comes over, or I am at a friends house. If a friend came over, we'll have the joy of trying to find the drivers for the printer for their windows box. If I was at a friend's, it was always "just give me the usb cable." That said, I don't have massive experience with crashes in Office. I do prefer plain text source files, though. To the point that I have begun using R for basic data analysis instead of excel. (Though, I make no claims that I can more quickly get a chart created than someone just clicking the chart button any any office application. I can more reliably reproduce my results, though.)
vacri 13y ago
Word and Excel have NEVER crashed on me and I've been using them since the '97 versions My anecdata has seen a bunch of crashes, at least in Word (I was never a heavy Excel user) and mostly in the earlier versions. If we steer away from application crash to merely screwing up the document, then you can probably double it. I, too, have been running win7 since 2009 without requiring a reboot, but despite having a 64GB SSD boot drive, it has somehow filled it (\programfiles is on d:) and every now and then I need to go in and clear crap out. 64GB! I can account for perhaps 20GB in user data (\users is 16, \progfiles is 6). Crazy. My one and only experience with Win8 was helping a neighbour install some older software that worked fine on XP and Vista, which pretty much defines my whole experience with it as doesn't 'just work'. Perhaps not a fair comparison, but when metro decides that I REALLY WANT the troubleshooting pdf to be fullscreen instead of having it side-by-side with the issue I'm dealing with, then screw being fair to it.
- kryten 13y ago
  Screwing up the documents is usually a human issue. That crap on your disk is probably system restore, swap file and hibernation file. You can delete the system restore checkpoints easily. The rest you have to live with. Windows 8: install start8. Problem solved.
  - vacri 13y ago
    The crap on my disk may be restore points. There's no hibernation file - that's off (it's only necessary if you hibernate; you don't have to live with it) How does start8 stop pdfs from fullscreening or older software from failing to install? Isn't it just a start menu replacement? I didn't have a problem with that. I had a problem with opening a pdf from the desktop, then win8 forcing me into fullscreen view - I couldn't fix the installation problem side-by-side with the tech notes.
    - kryten 13y ago
      Metro will never launch with start8 enabled. Install adobe reader on the machine and it will open pdfs on the desktop only as well even if they are launched from metro. Right click something that doesn't work or install on windows 8, go to properties, compatibility and select windows 7. Then run it again. It will work as before, unlike every other vendor out there. Hell it'll even run 32-bit stuff I compiled for NT4 on Visual C++ 4.2 with dynamic linking in 1997 without a problem! Cant really fault that since the same era Linux binaries or Solaris binaries won't work from back then.
ewzimm 13y ago
I'm no fanboy; I'm just telling you what I see. I'm not the one in charge fixing all this stuff at my office, but our Windows printer setups end up being redone every few weeks when things inevitably stop working. System restore is hardly ever used by our IT guys, and machines are often sent back to be re-imaged. Maybe they're just doing it wrong, but I'm definitely not imagining the problems. It's great to hear that you've had better luck, really. You would hate to see how many things I've seen gone wrong!

by kryten 13y ago

derleth 13y ago

> You sound like a rabid Linux fanboy. You sound like a rabid Windows fanboy. > I can't stand fanboys spouting crap. If I had some karma I'd downvote this. Ditto. Downvoted.

kryten 13y ago
Hardly. I use both. I write software for both. Each have flaws but the OP spouts pure shite.

taeric 13y ago

I think if you work for a printing outfit, your exposure is likely to be skewed towards the realm of working solutions. My negative experience was always in getting some random computer to work with a random printer. Lets say a friend comes over, or I am at a friends house. If a friend came over, we'll have the joy of trying to find the drivers for the printer for their windows box. If I was at a friend's, it was always "just give me the usb cable." That said, I don't have massive experience with crashes in Office. I do prefer plain text source files, though. To the point that I have begun using R for basic data analysis instead of excel. (Though, I make no claims that I can more quickly get a chart created than someone just clicking the chart button any any office application. I can more reliably reproduce my results, though.)

vacri 13y ago

Word and Excel have NEVER crashed on me and I've been using them since the '97 versions My anecdata has seen a bunch of crashes, at least in Word (I was never a heavy Excel user) and mostly in the earlier versions. If we steer away from application crash to merely screwing up the document, then you can probably double it. I, too, have been running win7 since 2009 without requiring a reboot, but despite having a 64GB SSD boot drive, it has somehow filled it (\programfiles is on d:) and every now and then I need to go in and clear crap out. 64GB! I can account for perhaps 20GB in user data (\users is 16, \progfiles is 6). Crazy. My one and only experience with Win8 was helping a neighbour install some older software that worked fine on XP and Vista, which pretty much defines my whole experience with it as doesn't 'just work'. Perhaps not a fair comparison, but when metro decides that I REALLY WANT the troubleshooting pdf to be fullscreen instead of having it side-by-side with the issue I'm dealing with, then screw being fair to it.

kryten 13y ago
Screwing up the documents is usually a human issue. That crap on your disk is probably system restore, swap file and hibernation file. You can delete the system restore checkpoints easily. The rest you have to live with. Windows 8: install start8. Problem solved.
- vacri 13y ago
  The crap on my disk may be restore points. There's no hibernation file - that's off (it's only necessary if you hibernate; you don't have to live with it) How does start8 stop pdfs from fullscreening or older software from failing to install? Isn't it just a start menu replacement? I didn't have a problem with that. I had a problem with opening a pdf from the desktop, then win8 forcing me into fullscreen view - I couldn't fix the installation problem side-by-side with the tech notes.
  - kryten 13y ago
    Metro will never launch with start8 enabled. Install adobe reader on the machine and it will open pdfs on the desktop only as well even if they are launched from metro. Right click something that doesn't work or install on windows 8, go to properties, compatibility and select windows 7. Then run it again. It will work as before, unlike every other vendor out there. Hell it'll even run 32-bit stuff I compiled for NT4 on Visual C++ 4.2 with dynamic linking in 1997 without a problem! Cant really fault that since the same era Linux binaries or Solaris binaries won't work from back then.

ewzimm 13y ago

I'm no fanboy; I'm just telling you what I see. I'm not the one in charge fixing all this stuff at my office, but our Windows printer setups end up being redone every few weeks when things inevitably stop working. System restore is hardly ever used by our IT guys, and machines are often sent back to be re-imaged. Maybe they're just doing it wrong, but I'm definitely not imagining the problems. It's great to hear that you've had better luck, really. You would hate to see how many things I've seen gone wrong!