Picture the effects of this single-user problem on your own computing productivity .... (this is not for extrapolation to real systems, it's just for fun, okay?)

BITR -- Windoze crashes several times a day.

Yardeni Recession -- Windoze crashes once an hour and you lose data twice a day, severity depending on timing and quality of backups.

Yourdon Depression -- Windoze crashes every fifteen minutes. An important application needs to be reinstalled once each day (not always the same one). You lose some data every day despite best efforts to backup. Your hard disk is trashed about once a month.

Milne Meltdown -- Windoze crashes every fifteen minutes and entire system locks up every other day for an entire day. You get it going by swapping boards, reinstalling Windoze repeatedly and writing weird custom monitoring routines. You can't do that? Then you can't use your system at all.

Infomagic -- Windoze? What's that? We've been using that abacus that Fred built a decade ago.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), July 30, 1999

Answers

Big Dog,

What you describe is NOT Y2K!

It is my unfortunate experience with

Compaq.

Seriously, that year of HARDWARE HELL is the reason for my 'getting it'!

If a manufacturer can screw up TWO YEARS of production, stiff the customers and refuse to make good, be the brunt of a CLASS ACTION suit representing all customers who bought machines in 1996-1997 (unfortunately I bought mine January 1998) and STILL remain one of the largest computer companies, what the HELL are the odds that everyone will act responsibly during this technological Pearl Harbor??

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@It's ALL going away in January.com), July 30, 1999.

Well, normally I would take the time to interject the word

Macintosh

but I've had my share of strange lock-ups, freezes and frustration. Even so, it seems I've never had an experience above a Yardeni Recession : ) Thanks BD!!! Mike ==================================================================

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), July 30, 1999.

Mike

So true eh? By a Mac folks. 8.6 is a very stable system and the new machines are fast. You can even use windoze on them. My 180 rarely crashes, the one thing that does kill it is real video for some reason. It may be a Netscape glich though.

I would go with their power books if you have the cash.

Funny post BD :o)

-- Brian (imager@home.com), July 30, 1999.

I hate Windows. I've had more crashes and messes with that sloppy piece of junk than I can remember. And people just blather and suck up to Bill Gates as if he their savior. Yuck!

-- gilda (jess@listbot.com), July 30, 1999.

You think Winblows is a bad dream, you should try writing apps for it. (I develop DoD 5220.22-M compliant data destruction software.) The Win32 API implementation weirdnesses across NT and 95 and 98 alone is enough to drive a sober man to drink.

Be glad you only -use- 'em...

Mad psycho coder fiend known as...

-- OddOne (mocklamer_1999@yahoo.com), July 30, 1999.

We don't want *anything* bad to happen because of Y2K. However, we do have fantasies of the world's computer users waking up to the strong fact that the Macintosh is better all the way around. Go test-drive a brand new G3, iMac or PowerBook :-) ?

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), July 30, 1999.