[cad-linux] Re: binary of lx viewer

Keith and David,

I hope Keith is right in stating that MS will just turn people off by this 
strategy, but I am not so sure.  I got stuck with XP when my family's W98 
machine bit the dust 36 months and 2 weeks after I bought it with a 36 month 
warranty.  I needed a box (quickly) which meant retail, and you cannot buy a 
machine retail without XP already loaded - I tried and no dice.  Kind of 
annoying because I now have a valid W98 license and no machine to run it on.  
 I paid $399 for a one point something or other gigahertz celron box and I 
figure 25% of the price was for the operating system which I did not want.  
It is just like throwing money down the drain, but you know what, once you 
are forced to spend the money you then don't pull the operating system off to 
load another one.

David also has a point in that it seems like XP is designed mainly to run MS 
applications.  I have not had the experience of unloading previously 
installed drivers, but the two primary non-MS applications in this machine 
cough a whole lot more that the native MS applications do.  I also agree that 
you can't (don't) want to mess with any settings.  I might fiddle with the 
registry in W98, but I would not touch it on this computer.  

I know, I could stop being so cheap and get an Internet connection that is 
not AOL and then connect using my LINUX box, but computers are supposed to 
make your life easier, not cost you more money because the dominant company 
decides not to interface with anyone else.  

This topic was actually started by accident.  I thought I was responding to 
an off-list E-mail from Keith,  I guess I need to read the headers more 
carefully.  I believe this discussion is not as off topic as it might seem.  
If the MS marketing succeeds, and since you pretty much have to buy a 
computer with XP installed how can it fail, the inability of XP to 
communicate with other OS's is not good news for LINUX.      

Andy

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