Funny isnt it

[Guest TANKERx]

Take Symbian. You can do many many things with it. But that's as far as it goes. It follows the route from A to D via B and C. In windows you can rearrange ABCD and get it to work in a way you want. As long as you know how to that is. Symbian cannot be 'pushed' in any way. The core product is what it is and it can only do ABCD. Yes you can buy E and F and it will extend functionality, but that can be done for SmartPhone too.

I agree with much of what you said also (which kind of doesn't make sense since I agreed with the chap before my previous reply), but I find the above paragraph fascinating (assuming that by 'Windows', you mean the Smartphone flavour of Windows, since it wouldn't be fair to compare Symbian with Windows on a PC).

I don't understand what you mean by Symbian not being able to rearrange ABC and D. Having used Symbian and currently using an SPV, I am finding that I have to purchase stuff to make the SPV do what my Symbian 7650 could do natively (eg. GPRS volume counting).

Also, Symbian have opened up the opportunity of development to the hobbyist by releasing OPL as Open Source for the platform. This is a simple (similar to BASIC) but very powerful (has access to the hardware and provides database tools etc) programming language which is easy for the ammateur to get into. Heck, on some devices, there's even an IDE so that someone can develop on the go. So theoretically, anything is possible.

While I am sticking with my SPV and love it for its multimedia capabilities, I'm finding it incredibly inflexible at the moment in regard with things I took for granted on the 7650, such as Messaging storage and processing, image categorising, application access and so on, so I really am finding it difficult to see where your comparison is being drawn.

I'm not flaming you (honest) or looking to cause offence, just curious to see what you mean.

[Guest madu]

@Tanker

I have personally never used a Symbian phone [feels ashamed] so I made my point on assumptions I had. And I stand corrected, though I still feel that my point is somewhat valid. Symbian is specifically designed *phone* OS, whereas SmartPhone is not yet. It is really a port of PPC which was specifically *ported* for a phone. It is maybe like Win95 as Ron said above. But I do believe that Symbian is good at what it does and it may do many things in out-of-the-box state that MS SP would not, so no arguments there. But the only fact that it is a "compact" version of what you have on PC makes it rather more acceptable as a device than a phone. Take DivX compatibility as an example.

@Big Ron

I agree that Win95 was sh*t. It is. It will be. You can also make a point on IE/Netscape competition and incorrect tactics from MS. And yes, Windows XP is the most stable *and* user friendly MS OS, but I can say that 2000 was a very good stable OC, though it was a pain when it came to drivers and some games. Nevertheless it was very good indeed. Win ME - is total cr*p, especially when it comes to networks, but Windows as a platform a good platform.

But then again, SmartPhone is probably like Win95 - the first of its kind, buggy, sluggish, unfinished product and that I appreciate and voiced my oppinion on that before.

Re ABCD - I know it's a not_good_at_all example, but the whole point was to say - look, Symbian is designed to do ABCD and it does it very well. SP is supposed to do so, but can be modified to do otherwise which maybe will make it even better.

At the end of the day it comes to 1 question: what OS you use and what OS you will use next. And if you truly believe OS/2 or Linux is better than you should use it. If you don't than obviously there's more to 'better' than you want to see.

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

"Symbian is specifically designed *phone* OS, whereas SmartPhone is not yet."

WOW! Where on EARTH did you get THAT strange idea? Symbian (back in the days BEFORE it was called Symbian) was written specifically for PDAs, by a successful maker of PDAs. THEN it got licensed as an OS for phones, and THEN more and more stuff got bolted on - like Opera. Whereas Windows started out designed as an O/S intended for desktop computers. In other words. one is still running on the kind of CPU it was designed for, and the other has had to be "cut down to fit". Not once... but TWICE. Windows ->Windows CE -> Windows for Smartphones.

"Windows is a good platform". "Good" is a comparative term Windows compared with - for example - what "Pink" might have turned out to be, or OS/2? We'll never get the chance to find out.... which was the whole idea. You can either be "the fastest runner in the world" through a combination of natural ability and determined training, or through SOME natural ability, coupled with breaking the legs of anyone who looks like they might be faster, and a little judicious cheating. My point is, Microsoft chose the latter path. The result is, they're "the fastest runner". But faster than the fastest man MIGHT have been, had they not intervened? Probably not. There were some superb ideas a few years back - modular software written to a common, platform-independent standard. It was backed by IBM, Motorola and Apple. It would have reduced "bloat" drastically, and allowed you to (for example) use the spell-checker from one piece of software with a different program. (rather than having several different ones for your browser, wordprocessor, DTP software... ) You could have split each progrm down into modules and recombined them to produce "bespoke" software. Microsoft invited itself to the party and demanded access to the group that would define "the common standard". Then they made more and more demands (that the standard be compatible with Microsoft's existing ones, rather than vice versa which was the pretext they'd used to get invited) Eventually - as doubtless had been intended - the project foundered. Another typical day in the life of Microsoft - leaving their (totally inferior) "OLE" as the ONLY remaining software "interoperability" standard.

Have you taken a look at the WinXP SP1 changes? Choice! Because it was FORCED onto Microsoft to allow people to (for example) use a browser other than IE as the default. Have you checked to see what "services" XP is running on your PC by default? I'd bet more than half of them are irrelevant to your needs - AND waste resources, AND slow the system down. It's that "if you don't like how slow our stuff runs, then buy a faster PC!" attitude again. Without THAT kind of arrogance in the driver's seat, you can bet your software would be running twice as fast on a system with half the power.

I repeat my earlier claim - the general trend in software prices is DOWNWARDS. Except that Microsoft's prices rise year on year (although I hear XP's price is being cut because of market share losses to Linux) The ability to dictate prices demonstrates an effective monopoly. And monopolies seldom produce the best goods - competition is what's supposed to drive innovation. Or rather, FAIR competition, without cheating.

(edited, because for some reason the message got sent twice!)

[Guest HelloDave]

I'm not the biggest M$ fan out there but I do like SP 2002, simply because it's the most customizable phone OS i've used (although I haven't played with Symbian that much). It's a first gen product so I'm not that surprised it's got bugs; unfortunately any remotely complex software seems to these days, M$ or not, but I do feel that a lot of people who haven't even touched an SPV slate it, simply becuase it runs M$ software. The thread someone on here highlighted on slashdot a few weeks ago is a good example - a load of people slating the SPV on the basis of things they'd heard about it. A lot of comments about the SPV are simply due to brand perception IMO; if it had been released with a Nokia badge and had changeable covers it probably would have shifted a lot more units and wouldn't have been slagged off as much by the likes of the Register et al. Most people on the high street probably think Nokias are "the best" becuase they are known as the phone brand to have - a lot of people have asked me if the SPV is a Nokia, and then look very confused when I tell them it isn't! Personally I think the 3650 is a hideous looking brick, but people will still buy it because a) it's a Nokia and :lol: they think it's the most advanced thing on the market. If Nokia released a turd with an aerial it would sell, but stick any other badge on it and no one would take any notice :D I'm not trying to slate Nokia here, as they do make some solid, reliable phones but they are the best example because they are probably the most popular phone brand in the UK.

My point here is that people have different perceptions of something depending on who makes it - a lot of people will think the SPV is crap because it runs M$ software, whereas IMO it's no worse than any comparable smart phone. As with most things IT related, if you don't mess about with the SPV then it will work reliably 99.9% of the time.

If you buy a new car, unscrew a few bits of the engine and then put them back randomly you probably don't expect it to work because most people think of a car as a complex machine that needs to be worked on by a mechanic. If you took the car back to the garage after messing around with the engine, you wouldn't expect them to fix it under guarantee because it was your fault. However, if you drove the car around as normal and it broke down you would expect the garage to fix it, because it should work reliably during everyday use. In the same way, the SPV is a complex device, which will work reliably if you use it as designed (as a phone, installing software etc, akin to driving the car). However, if you start changing registry values and then it doesn't work you can't really blame M$ or Orange because it was your fault in the first place, similar to if you'd ripped bits out of your car engine. Just because you can mess with the SPV's internal settings doesn't mean you should do if you don't know what you're doing, but becuase it's easier than pulling an engine to bits, some people will have a go, and then blame Orange/M$ if things don't work out! Again it's perception; for most people a car engine is "off limits" if you don't know what you're doing, but people are used to phones being simple devices that can't be messed up, and if they do go wrong then Orange are there to fix it. Because the SPV is sold as a phone, people also expect it to work no matter what they do to it, and are quite happy to blame O if it doesn't. I know that in theory devices like phones should be foolproof, but in reality it's almost impossible to make a device that gives the user full control over it yet remains immune to them changing something they shouldn't. It's a tradeoff IMO - you either get something that's basic, does what it says on the tin and can't be messed up, or you get an all singing all dancing device that makes the tea but will break if you don't know what you're doing. The only other option is to have a fully customizable device, but one that only "big brother" can change will approved methods, and then you end up with somthing like certification. Personally I'd rather stick with the SPV how it is and accept I f**ked up if it goes wrong! :lol:

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

If you buy a new car, unscrew a few bits of the engine and then put them back randomly you probably don't expect it to work because most people think of a car as a complex machine that needs to be worked on by a mechanic. If you took the car back to the garage after messing around with the engine, you wouldn't expect them to fix it under guarantee because it was your fault. However, if you drove the car around as normal and it broke down you would expect the garage to fix it, because it should work reliably during everyday use. In the same way....

In the same way, If Microsoft made cars, NOBODY else would still be in the business, aside from a small co-operative selling "build your own car" kits, and a vegetarian co-operative selling fantastic cars that run on environmentally-friendly methane produced from chicken-droppings. The Microsoft car would regularly break down for no obvious reason - and the mechanics back at the dealership would explain that this wasn't a PROBLEM as such, but was because you were using the wrong kind of ROAD - Microsoft cars were built specifically to run on roads developed in their Redmond office, which cost five times as much to build as the regular kind of road, and the "old" roads (on which previous makes of cars had run quite happily) weren't expected to be converted until at least 2010 (although that MIGHT slip to 2015) A sample of Smartcar 2003 had been running with 100% reliability on the 200 yards of test track near Seattle, so clearly the fault lays not with the product but the unreasonable and irresponsible way you're driving it. (And by the way bub - check out the license agreement if you've got any arguments. You thought you'd bought a car? What a dope! Read the small print - it clearly states that what you bought was a limited right to USE a car.) Unfortunately, by 2010 there would be a NEW model Microsoft "Smartcar", which was incompatible with the 2010 "Smartroad", and support for the older "Smartcar 2003" would have been discontinued.

I have a reasonable expectation that the above may find its way to winging around the web, and I'll be getting it back through "humour" forums inside a month. It fits one of those "patterns" - like web hoaxes. :roll:

[Guest HelloDave]

That sounds very similar to most of the M$ bashing funnies i've read over the past few years :lol: I think the problem is where to draw the line between what is reasonable for the user to attempt and what they should leave unless they know what they're doing. A car engine is harder to f**k up becuase you have to open the bonnet and get out a spanner, so a normal driver won't bother. Software on the other hand is simple to mess around with and takes virtually no effort so users are more tempted to try.

The Microsoft car would regularly break down for no obvious reason

I take it you don't own a French car then Big Ron? :wink:

On a more serious note...cars generally either go or they don't, and there isn't a lot the driver can tweak to change things - that has to be done by the garage. Car manufacturers have started sealing away more and more things under the bonnet to stop users being tempted to get the socket set out, rather like Orange certified the SPV. My car manual actually states if you add anything electrical to the car that draws more than 10mA (equal to one dim LED) the warranty is void (pity I've got a stereo that draws >60A really :D) - ie "if you screw with it we reserve the right to show you the door". To be fair, out of the box the SPV works as advertised; it's only when you start changing things you don't know about that it starts to go wrong.

I really have flogged this car analogy to death now haven't I? :roll:

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

Cars... Phones.... Microsoft.... sounds like a drivers problem!

[Guest nickcornaglia]

I like cheese and pie!

(Just wanted to type a short message in this thread!) :lol:

[Guest Martin@Home]

Yes, but if m$ sold cheese and pie, then you wouldn't be able to buy cathedral city cheese or ginsters pies anymore, beacuse they would be made bankrupt within 12 months despite having a superior product. M$ cheese would also be incompatible with your standard cheese grater and to cook with it you would have to buy the latest firmware updates for your cooker and the pies ................................................ ZZZZZzZzzzzzzzz

:lol:

My 2pence worth :-

Personally I think microsoft products rock ! To produce an operating system that runs at all given the enormous diversity of 3rd party software , games, hardware setup, drivers etc etc etc is something of an amazing achievment IMO ! Some of their marketting teqniques are maybe dodgy to say the least, but that is an entirely different topic. 99% of people throw software at their machine and it works 99% of the time even though it has got to co-exist with any one of potentially millions of different set ups !!!

My favourite part of Windblows XP is the compatability settings. By including this, microsoft have given users the choice. (1) You can either buy bigger and better software to take advantage of the latest cutting edge developments, or (2) you can carry on using the same software that you've been running for years and you will be given the best opportunity of getting it to work with the various OS compatibility settings. That doesn't sound like a company screwing users into always having to shell out for the latest software just to keep up !

As far as the nokia / smartphone war going on, I would draw parallels with the console / PC games market. People who buy nokias are people who buy games consoles and want their thrills straight out of the box but cant be doing with messing about with settings and tweaking things to get it to look and play better. PC gamers / smartphone users are of the same mentality, sure, it will work pretty well out of the box but the potential for tweaking and fiddling to find 10 more frames per second or run bigger and better ringtones from the storage card etc etc etc is, for me, certainly most of the point in buying one in the first place.

[Guest morpheus2702]

Ron, sticking with your car analogy, you sound like the worse kind of motoring hack that is forever ranting on about '9 tenths handling on the limit' and 'on-edge levels of understeer and oversteer' - i.e. things that no-one but the seasoned motoring hack cares about.

I couldn't care less WHO makes the software, along with probably 98% of the software (and car) using public. We only care it does what it was made to do, do it well and be reliable.

Please don't come back with a litany of 'Windows can't do this, can't do that' etc because for the average user, it makes absolutely NO difference to their using experience. For the 2% that it does make a difference to, then other OSs fill that niche.

If I recall, the success of the 7650 and 3650 are down primarily to the way they have been marketed, rather than the superiority of Symbian. The 7650 was touted as the first integrated camera phone, and the 3650 the first video phone - not as Symbian devices first and foremost.

People vote with their feet and if MS's products were as unusable as you make out, they would migrate to other platforms, end of. Instead of an endless tirade of anti-MS/corporate rhetoric, how about some original comments? As opposed to the stuff you come out with that we have all heard from a thousand IT journalists before...

[Guest HelloDave]

Ron, sticking with your car analogy

who's car analogy? :wink:

I agree with you Morpheus - Nokia's are successful because they have massive marketing campaigns and so make the public believe they are the best. IMO video on the 3650's pretty pointless bearing in mind only other 3650 users can watch them, unless you're prepared to download Nokia's 3gp video player or whatever it's called for the PC. Also both the 7650 and SPV (kinda) are video capable ish, although not out of the box, but the public don't know that. Bearing in mind the SPV had one advert in a few computer magazines back in December it's amazing it's sold at all; that's certainly no match for Nokia's limitless marketing budget! If M$ screened some ads showing you could watch "The Office" on your SPV anywhere you liked I reckon they'd steal a fair few potential 3650 customers, but since they haven't the public will obliviously continue to buy Nokias...

I've said it before but i'll say it again - the 3650 is an ugly brick, but becuase Nokia throw millions at marketing it, it will still sell. Like Betamax vs VHS the superior (IMO) SPV will lose out to Nokias simply becuase more people have heard of them, and feel they "know what they're buying". M$ of all people should know better than to underestimate the power of marketing.

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

Ron, sticking with your car analogy, you sound like the worse kind of motoring hack that is forever ranting on about '9 tenths handling on the limit' and 'on-edge levels of understeer and oversteer' - i.e. things that no-one but the seasoned motoring hack cares about.

I couldn't care less WHO makes the software, along with probably 98% of the software (and car) using public.  We only care it does what it was made to do, do it well and be reliable.  

Please don't come back with a litany of 'Windows can't do this, can't do that' etc because for the average user, it makes absolutely NO difference to their using experience.  For the 2% that it does make a difference to, then other OSs fill that niche.

People vote with their feet and if MS's products were as unusable as you make out, they would migrate to other platforms, end of.  Instead of an endless tirade of anti-MS/corporate rhetoric, how about some original comments?  As opposed to the stuff you come out with that we have all heard from a thousand IT journalists before...

I've owned a PC since Microsoft DOS 3.0 was "cutting edge" - so I've been around long enough to remember DR DOS being (re-) launched. MSDOS 4 was a truly dreadful piece of software, so buggy that it had reached 4.11 before it reached retail! As a bespoke operating system for multi-lingual translators, it was probably very popular - it loaded EVERY language into memory by default (leaving remarkably little RAM free to do anything else) So DR DOS was a breath of fresh air. Not just because it worked - and worked very well - but because of the underlying attitude. The company had done something totally radical - they ASKED users what they liked and disliked about DOS, then went away and tried to turn those likes and dislikes into a product. Type "Setup", and you got a menu-driven setup page, with (good) context-sensitive help. It rewrote your config.sys and autoexec.bat files for you in response to what you'd entered into the (fairly idiot-proof) menu. Type "Help" and that's what you got - the online (hypertext) manual, in jargon free English, and with worked-through examples. Quite a contrast to MS DOS. The editor was about a thousand times better than EDLIN too - but then, what wasn't? So the "look and feel", the "usability" was considerably better than the Microsoft product. If you typed a command, you could add "/?" to the end, and get the manual open at the correct page. Hit F3 (to bring back what you'd typed, after reassuring yourself that it WAS the right combination of switches) hit "backspace" twice, and you'd removed the "/?" and could just hit enter. Whereas MS DOS gave you about 350k of the first 640k of RAM to load software, DR DOS gave you about 620k if you "tweaked" it... or about 560k if you didn't feel that brave. There were a few other differences too - MSDOS wrote new data to "the first available space nearest the edge of the drive" - which meant that any recently deleted files were overwritten and REALLY deleted. DR DOS gave the option tp write to the first space that doesn't hold a deleted file - unless you run out of space, in which case overwrite the oldest one". It made data recover a joy, rather than a nightmare. In head-to-head magazine reviews DR DOS got better marks than MSDOS as a matter of routine. MS scrabbled to catch up with MSDOS5. Not only wasn't it as good as DR DOS (it copied many of the same features, but they'd just been chucked in - it lacked the user-friendly interface of DRDOS) but DR released a new product - DR DOS 6.0 - almost immediately. This gave even MORE free memory, and DOS multi-tasking. (The ability to run TWO copies of the same wordprocessor, and cut and paste text between them) And it included drive-compression software. (+Which got a bad name because of misuse by idiots - if you partitioned your drive and kept the compression software on the UNcompressed partition, it was problem free) At THAT point we see Microsoft in its true colours. THEY released a new MS DOS 6.0 - which incorporated code pirated from a company with whom they'd set up a "joint development" project (an oversight that cost them a $120m settlement, and almost weekly upgrades to remove the offending code and replace it) Having rushed the product to market (they'd already lost 25% of the market to DR, and didn't plan on losing any more) MSDOS 6.0 included a few unpleasant bugs - like the habit of wiping 200 megabvte hard drives. (Not admitted by Microsoft until years later) STILL they ost market share - DR now owned 28% of the market, as Microsoft users flocked to the considerably better rival product. Not a situation that Microsoft could allow to continue - scare stories about "incompatibility" hadn't worked (Windows 3.0 ran BETTER under DR DOS than under MSDOS - Windows 3.1 wouldn't run under DR DOS until a "patch" was released. Mine arrived by post 48 hours after Win31 was released. Like I said - a whole different attitude. Remember the SPV "upgrade 1"?) So, Microsoft "simplified the way OEM manufacturers paid for MSDOS". That, at least, was how Microsoft described it. The reality was that system builders could pay slightly LESS than before, but get a FREE copy of MS DOS for every copy of DR DOS they'd sold previously. In short, they PAID manufacturers NOT to install DR DOS. It was a tough time for makers at that point - continual price wars - and simply to survive a little longer, many took Microsoft's 30 pieces of silver. It worked - they starved DR of income, and the company folded. A process known in Microsoft circles as "cutting off the air supply". Novell came to their rescue, and formed a consortium of products designed to network together well - thereby fighting off for a while Microsoft's incursion into the area they dominated. Novell's "DR DOS 7.0" included all the old enhancements... and peer-to-peer DOS-level networking too, as standard. Microsoft backed off, dropped the networking idea for a while, and Novell ditched DR DOS - which is now "freeware".

So, there we have it - "People vote with their feet" you said. And that's EXACTLY what they did.... as long as they were able to, because there was an alternative to Microsoft that was BETTER. Because it WAS better - and Microsoft were now getting into the "applications" market - it simply couldn't be allowed to exist. If you;re going to sell applications, then knowing what changes you plan to make to the operating system six months ahead of the competition gives you a MASSIVE advantage. And having well and truly shafted the competition... Microsoft lost no time in abusing that advantage.

All drawn from personal memory - as opposed to those tired old Microsoft apologies that we've all heard before. Did you know that Redmond's PR department assigns their own personal "spin doctors" to troublesome journalists - whose job it is to carefully scan the press for stories by their charges, and immediately issue blanket denials? (and check the facts later!) Microsoft has a "criminal record" as long as your arm - yet manages to protest EVERY time that they're innocent, misunderstood... And it sounds even LESS plausible every time they wind up in the dock.

By the way... I don't own a car - and never have done. Never wanted to own one either. If I WAS in the market for one, I'd try to avoid a manufacturer with a long record of dishonesty.

[Guest morpheus2702]

Please don't come back with a litany of 'Windows can't do this, can't do that' etc

Kind of missed that, eh Ron? Along with the bit about having an original thought...

[Guest Rob.P]

If I WAS in the market for one, I'd try to avoid a manufacturer with a long record of dishonesty.

Good luck, the whole economy is dishonest, every corporation has something to hide, it's just some are worse than others.

[Guest madu]

LOL

Ron, you've got your point. And it's all over the place. Agreeed on many points, but seeing your attitude I assume you don't use MS OS on your PC, do ya?

I made my point before. To sum it up: Agreed that MS hasn't got a good policy re promoting their product; MS make a great product and I like it. And I like using it. And I hate reinstalling Win every few month because it becomes unusable. But with all the grief I get from it, I still think it is the best alternative and to be honest I don't give a monkeys if MS DOS 4 was crap.

It is not reasonable saying that 2x86 was crap coz it was slow so I will not use other Intel processors, because AMD was better at that point. And don't start another essay on Intel vs AMD. I don't know what happened to it at that point. It is just an example.

I am sure this is not the first rant you (and others) post re MS product, nothing wrong with it, I had my grief with it starting MSDOS 5. If you go round saying you hate milk (and have great supporting arguments) and then drink it every other day - what does it say? Not really an arm twisted is it? There's always some water availible for drinking.

Glad you so dislike MS, you people make them think of this and provide us with a better product :lol:

Now before it all goes wrong (with all that attitude) I shall resign from this topic.LOL

Ron, you've got your point. And it's all over the place. Agreeed on many points, but seeing your attitude I assume you don't use MS OS on your PC, do ya?

I made my point before. To sum it up: Agreed that MS hasn't got a good policy re promoting their product; MS make a great product and I like it. And I like using it. And I hate reinstalling Win every few month because it becomes unusable. But with all the grief I get from it, I still think it is the best alternative and to be honest I don't give a monkeys if MS DOS 4 was crap.

It is not reasonable saying that 2x86 was crap coz it was slow so I will not use other Intel processors, because AMD was better at that point. And don't start another essay on Intel vs AMD. I don't know what happened to it at that point. It is just an example.

I am sure this is not the first rant you (and others) post re MS product, nothing wrong with it, I had my grief with it starting MSDOS 5. If you go round saying you hate milk (and have great supporting arguments) and then drink it every other day - what does it say? Not really an arm twisted is it? There's always some water availible for drinking.

Glad you so dislike MS, you people make them think of this and provide us with a better product :D

Now before it all goes wrong (with all that attitude) I shall resign from this topic.

Good day!

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

Kind of missed that, eh Ron? Along with the bit about having an original thought...

So what's so "original" about "poor little misunderstoof Microsoft, they're just doing their best?"

And who says YOU make the rules? "You're allowed to compare Microsoft products with rivals, but you're NOT allowed to point out that Microsoft's products couldn't do half the stuff the other product could?" You were pretty specific (albeit absurdly unreasonable) with "don't come back with a litany of 'WINDOWS can't do this" - SO I didn't. I talked about DOS instead, and thereby demonstrated that Microsoft's crookedness predates the primacy of Windows by several years. (A track record that goes back even further - with Lotus-killing DOS 2.0 rather than DOS 4.0, which is where my story began. If you can't produce a spreadsheet that's reliable or does half what Lotus 1-2-3 can do... then make sure that the new version of the operating system isn't Lotus-compatible. )

Your main (and almost only) point seemed to be that we're all "free agents" and capable of switching to non-Microsoft products if they really ARE better. I demonstrated (I think fairly conclusively) what happens when a smaller company DOES produce a better product. If Microsoft can't match it for quality... they kill the company. If you haven't understoof what Microsoft is about by now, then there's little point in my tryi g to explain it yet again. Microsoft understands that if you control a big enough market share, then you ALSO control the "standard" to which other doftware has to conform. That gives you POWER - power to make a LOT of money by exploiting an unfair advantage. It also allows you to create an effective monopoly, and (when you've wiped out the competition) charge whatever you want.

[Guest morpheus2702]

Ron, you have COMPLETELY missed the point of what I was saying:

a) I don't make the rules. I suggested that your response was something other than predictable MS baiting that we have all read a thousand times before. It belittles other people on the forum who I think are wise enough to know MS aren't saints.

:lol: If you took my comments about a 'litany of Windows doesn't do this etc' quite literally applying to Windows only, fair enough. But your tirade over MS DOS/DR DOS hints at what I have suspected - you repertoire is limited purely all things anti-MS/anti-corporate and you don't have a lot else to say. Sorry Ron - that's my own personal view, it is not what this forum is about and if it were, other people do it a lot better.

c) I'm not apologising for MS in any way, and to label anyone that disagrees with you as such is a weak retort at best. I prefer the term 'free thinking' and 'open minded', two things you seem to have great difficulty with.

d) The only relevance your discourse has to Smartphones is the monopoly effect MS has had in other software areas. At the moment, I don't think we need to be running for cover as Smartphone obliterates Smartphone into submission.

[Guest morpheus2702]

Whoops. Should read Smartphone obliterates SYMBIAN into submission. You're right - those Microsoft agents get to you in the end!

[Guest madu]

Hehehe :lol:

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

On the day that I read on Scholar "The SPV... which Orange co-developed with Microsoft..." My immediate thoughts were "Christ, how can they [Orange] have been so STUPID?" It was like reading that your aunt had married Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. Only two obvious outcomes - either they BOTH wind up in the dock as co-conspirators, or her funeral will shortly follow her wedding, when she's found stabbed to death with a screwdriver. Your admission that Microsoft's track record in these matters is indeed well-known only serves to emphasise the point: STUPID. And lo! Eight months later... Orange IS in the dock, charged as a co-conspirator. What a shock? Not exactly as if Microsoft were predictable - all it takes is a little temptation. They can't HELP themselves. I've posited elsewhere that it's because if the driving force behind Microsoft DOESN'T suffer from Asperger's Syndrome, they certainly display all the symptoms of it - including a sociopathic inability to tell right from wrong.

The forum proudly boasts 8,000+ members - SOME of whom will be experts, but several thousand (including those who email me off forum for help) clearly won't be. And experts in WHAT? 8,000+ members all of whom are authorities on Microsoft's track record? Now THAT is funny. For every "poster" who IS an expert, there will be several hundred others who NEVER post - they're just here to learn, in the absence of adequate support from Orange. While there's certainly little point in preaching to the handful of experts, there's excellent reason to explain the situation to the thousands who AREN'T experts.

As to "Microsoft battering Symbian into submission"... that's almost as absurd an idea as Internet Explorer taking the top position from Netscape Navigator - with a decidedly inferior product. Or pushing "Wings" off of it's perch, or WordPerfect. Not ALL of us have been around log enough to remember that Microsoft "Access" started life not as a database but as a Comms package.

[Guest morpheus2702]

Ron, as fun as chatting with you is, you sound like one of Bin Laden's chums in that you can rant, decry, moan and predispose about the evils of MS without a having a single original thought.

Of those 8000 forum members, I think most are a cut above the Nokia using Starbucks 'kewl' crowd. Selecting the SPV is a choice since most mobile outlets would MUCH rather you take a Nokia or Samsung - those are an easy sale with no comeback. The SPV is a pain in the arse. Finding and participating in this forum is indicative of a degree of IT familiarity - rather than just downloading the lastest Eminem ringtone.

I'll leave it here because one of us repeating ourselves is quite enough. Cheers again! :lol:

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

"Ron, as fun as chatting with you is, you sound like one of Bin Laden's chums in that you can rant, decry, moan and predispose about the evils of MS without a having a single original thought. "

Strange. Truth isn't enough for this guy... it has to be "ORIGINAL" too.

One would think also that answering tech support queries from SPV owners (via 156) would be a reasonable qualification for judging if they're a "cross section of the public" or a self-selecting group of Einsteins. But then... one forgets. YOU deal with PAYG customers - another "self-selecting set" and a I'd imagine one that's a distinct minority amongst SPV users. Was GPRS even AVAILABLE to PAYG when the SPV launched?

Looks like we've found out by what you meant by "original thought". Wild guesses - and made-up profiles of typical SPV owners. How many posters on this forum have boasted "I showed it around the office, and colleagues said "That's neat - where do I get one?" Clearly not a SINGLE fashion victim amongst those "I want one too!" wannabes?

Orange, when they signed up to market the SPV, were clearly BURSTING with "original thought" - "Maybe the guys who run Microsoft have become reformed characters!" (now that IS an original thought) My boring old UNoriginal thought was (as I've said before) "Jesus, how can they have been so STUPID? Doing co-development deals with MICROSOFT?" The fact that Orange are now facing a court case (not an original thought - just another boring fact) demonstrates that sometimes (in fact MOST of the time) originality gets its arse kicked kicked by boring old un-original reality. Interestingly original thought of yours though - the guys who run Orange are too stupid to own SPVs (because THEY seemingly weren't suffciently aware of Redmond's abysmal track record, or why would they have DONE it?) , but NOT too stupid to run the UK's second biggest Mobile carrier.

[Guest midnight]

man, this place is gettings as bad as the newsgroup (oh please god, no!)

[Guest madu]

Ron, I think we all agree now that you've been trying to prove your point of view. There is no need. It is your point. It is there to share (as others tend to do), not nail it in ppls minds.. We appreciate your position and oppinion, but read this thread again and maybe you'll see where it goes wrong.

Let's just agree to disagree.

Topic locked.