What is Happening to Windows 7? - my reponse

Please read the Article named "What is Happening to Windows 7?" at PC Mag. What follows here is my response. I would have responded there but hey, 8 pages of other peoples responses AND I would have had to register at one more website that could send me spam... In the middle of his article he mentions "If programs were self contained within a single folder that could be transported from machine to machine without the need to re-install the entire program, none of this upgrade malaise would be a problem." and that caught my attention and prompted this response..

My Response...

Hmmm, an OS that you can carry from computer to computer and have all your needed programs and no worries about a registry???? Sounds like PUPPY LINUX to me. Super fast and runs on anything from a USB stick. Wonder why a big company like MS cannot make an OS that runs as fast as Puppy? Why must I use over 5 gigabytes just for the "base" that programs are supposed to run in? Puppy runs in the RAM!!! Yes, the RAM, not the hard drive. So, wise readers of this article, if Puppy can do that and it ships with web browser, email clients, and a whole office suite PLUS cd/dvd/blueray burners, games, networking, etc... in just over 100 meg, why does Win7 need 6 gig to do the same thing... Oh wait, it does not do the same thing does it? I still have to buy Office to make it do the same thing. Did I mention Puppy is free??? With all the stuff in it. Ubuntu,,, is Free!! with the same stuff. Why are people spending all this money in a recession for something that is designed worse then the free stuff???

Take off the blinders people... Linux works and works FREE. AND you can add programs that allow you to still use your old Windows programs inside Linux. MS would not do that for you, it makes you use Win stuff or nothing else.

p.s. There ARE programs out there that can be taken from computer to computer without the registry issues. Check out PortableApps.com for more free programs that do NOT post to the registry. It is not all a Windows problem, it looks to be a programming problem and more people need to think small instead of bloat, thin portable instead of fixed, and think multi platform instead of monopoly.

College Book Scam - ongoing

The internet is a great place to find just about anything. Even what you are NOT looking for. I happened across a page that talked about the College book scam that every text book publisher pulls and dramatically increases college costs. When you hear about tuitions going up and the rising costs of higher learning, think about the simple things... BOOKS. It was not so bad when I was going after my associates degree but when I was studying for my MBA I had a very hard time buying used books because they kept changing the revision and you HAD to buy the new one. I was working during the day, going to school at night, trying to support my wife and child on anything that was left after college costs and then these yahoos want me to buy all new books at $100 a pop???? I actually almost failed one course as I could not afford the book so I tried to get by on my notes. That would have worked IF the instructor had actually showed up once in awhile. Stupid law class instructor kept going to court during class periods - nice ethics study there... get paid for teaching and do not show up. I digress....
I am NOT a minority, I am NOT "poor", I am NOT going to get any help with my tuition or books. I had to pay for the whole shot out of my pocket and yet this seems fair to the college that I cannot buy used books to help take the edge off my costs. I really wonder what other places colleges are not helping to cut corners...

The very very sad part of my poor little tale is that I went to Northwood University and I know for a fact that Northwood does everything it can to keep expenses down unlike Government funded Universities that cost 4 times more (MSU, UofM, etc...). Northwood even uses a co-op health insurance program that it designed itself that saves the instructors on health care. Wish I could buy into it... :'(

Anyway, I wish I could do more but I did what every college student does,,, pay the fees and complain about it later... College students, complain NOW. It is your money, and technically the college is selling a service NOT doing you a favor. The government and the colleges have forgotten this but COLLEGE IS A BUSINESS and is SELLING education. That is the way it should be, they just need to be reminded of it.

Ed