As to bashing MS or Apple, I personally do it NOT when talking about my own machines or choices, but that I have to deal with things I don’t want to when I help (grudgingly these days) family deal with the same problem again and again.

“The teacher told me we HAVE to buy Microsoft Word, all the documents have to be in Word format.” Grrrr…. OpenOffice makes .docs just fine and I can save that money for a better laptop for my daughter.

“Everyone tells me I HAVE to run anti-virus.” Really? So everyone thinks you are going to do illicit things constantly? So everyone is going to come a fix your machine when your anti-virus doesn’t work because you bypassed it?

“You can’t run linux as a desktop because you have to get licenses for all the software we use.” “Hmmm you mean all those documents I get with each app that say ‘This app has the xxx license’ aren’t licensed?” “Well we don’t want you printing all those documents, it’ll cost too much.” ” A one time printing will cost more than the thousands of dollars you are paying every year for the software you picked?”

I do blame the marketing “You can only get on the internet with IE” or “Only MACs are made with special hardware.” Marketing lies = more trouble for us on the street.

That being said linux is much better anyway. :)

on the other hand, i don’t know how harmful it is. does that kind of geeky techno-bashing really rise above the noise floor in popular culture? i don’t think most ordinary people choose their next computer based on what the teenager in the house next door thinks about Bill Gates.

it’s probably best not to take any of it very seriously.

Besides Microsoft, Mac and Linux all do the same thing in slightly different ways. Boot up your computer so that you can check your email, do your homework and surf the web.

From the number of similar threads I often wonder whether MS employees are encouraged to try and stir up circling debates on Linux forums every so often, just to muddy the waters :) Find the person whose system has just failed today (on whatever OS) losing all their work and they will be ready to rant about how bad it is!!
It all seems a bit childish but, like me, I expect you sometimes cannot help chipping in once in a while to try and post something sensible and deflamatory…. (blessed are the peacemakers… )
On the subject of OS wars though, I remember OS/2 being sold on new PCs a long time ago in the UK but they failed to last the distance against MS because Mr. Average was convinced that he may be PAYING for software that was incompatible/different from what ‘everyone else’ was using and was going to be restricted in the choice of software and would waste money.. so OS/2 went away.. a lot of home users were wary of Mac’s, too, due to the cost of the product..and the perception that there was a limited range of software for it..
Different game with Linux.. the software is free, so no financial burden in trying it out…