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What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine)
PC Magazine has some helpful
holiday shopping advice. "Don't buy: Linux.
The world's cheapest operating system is the darling of every
do-it-yourselfer and the potential bane of every cheapskate user. You'll
save money and, I bet, lose your mind if you switch to Linux. Note to
DIYers: This advice is intended for middle-of-the-road tech consumers. You,
with the screwdriver in your hand, please feel free to download as many
copies of Ubuntu as you want."
(Log in to post comments)
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 5, 2007 17:17 UTC (Wed) by alextingle (guest, #20593) [Link] Any publicity is good publicity. This article says "Linux will save you money". That's a positive message.
Says more about the magazine, actually. Posted Dec 6, 2007 17:49 UTC (Thu) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] The article says, "December is a big month for advertising but a slow month for IT Media traffic, so we needed to do some trolling." I thought the Linux people were over the "Linux Possibly Defamed Somewhere" effect by now. Guess not.
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 5, 2007 17:26 UTC (Wed) by mheily (guest, #27123) [Link] Don't buy: PC Magazine Maybe buy: Sysadmin Magazine Do buy: Linux Journal
Obligatory Posted Dec 5, 2007 17:31 UTC (Wed) by intgr (subscriber, #39733) [Link] Absolutely must buy:LWN.net
Obligatory Posted Dec 6, 2007 16:45 UTC (Thu) by moxfyre (subscriber, #13847) [Link] Hear, hear! An LWN gift subscription would be a great idea for some of my friends! You know what's funny about the article? He says "Don't buy Linux", but "Maybe buy the One Laptop Per Child." Guess what operating system it runs, and which is largely responsible for its flexible and innovative features? :-P
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 5, 2007 17:38 UTC (Wed) by thedude13 (guest, #29229) [Link] mheily: sorry to tell you, but no more Sysadmin =(They ceased publication back in July... I'm still looking for a replacement...
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 5, 2007 17:45 UTC (Wed) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link] I should have known Sysadmin was going under. They actually *stole* money from me. I stopped getting magazines from them and when I called they claim they couldn't find my subscription anywhere in their system.
Linux Journal Posted Dec 5, 2007 19:01 UTC (Wed) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] Or, not. I recommend Linux Magazine instead -- higher production values, more interesting interviews, generally better writing (although Linux Journal does score some interesting and talented guest writers sometimes). I kept my subscription for a while out of a sort of nostalgia, but eventually got tired of them piling up in a big unread stack.
Linux Magazine instead of Linux Journal Posted Dec 7, 2007 5:14 UTC (Fri) by csawtell (subscriber, #986) [Link] You can buy Linux Magazine as a .pdf file now. Cost is much reduced to somewhat less than half and you don't have either the dead trees. or the DVD cluttering up your living quarters. Unfortunately it's not reformatted to fit nicely on a 4:3 screen, but I expect they'll get around to that sometime.
Linux Journal Posted Dec 7, 2007 15:16 UTC (Fri) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link] Which linux magazine? There are two different linux magazines: http://www.linux-magazine.com http://www.linuxmagazine.com I rather like the former, having had a year's worth of issues as part of the aKademy award for Krita. The latter, I've never seen in the Netherlands.
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 6, 2007 19:21 UTC (Thu) by phip (guest, #1715) [Link] Do Buy: Byte Magazine Oops, sorry, wrong decade. Sigh... LWN is awesome, but it doesn't quite fill the same niche as Byte.
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 15, 2007 19:28 UTC (Sat) by anton (guest, #25547) [Link] LWN is awesome, but it doesn't quite fill the same niche as Byte.c't (in German) might fit the bill; at least it did originally, it has changed with the times, too, but is still the best in the world in its niche.
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 5, 2007 17:26 UTC (Wed) by IkeTo (subscriber, #2122) [Link] > It's a good operating system and does improve speeds, security, and access > to all files, ... This is one of the most positive Vista comment that I've yet to see! The article must be incredibly creditable!
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 5, 2007 17:27 UTC (Wed) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] Not _trying_ to troll, but I'm sure this'll come across that way... (omg he's saying bad things about Linux!~) He's right. Linux is still a huge pain in the ass for non-technical people. Even the most polished distributions still ship irritating bugs, crashy installers, or suffer problems with support for common 5 year old hardware. Add on to that the complete non-functionality of installing and using the apps that almost every home PC user wants to use at least a few of - proprietary Windows games - and you have an OS that is totally useless to most people. To be perfectly frank, my Ubuntu box has crashed and locked up at least 6 times in the last couple months, and my roommates Windows XP box has neither crashed nor locked up once in the year he's had it. What does that tell you? A copy of Windows XP in a VirtualBox VM books up from off to a working desktop faster than GNOME can reach a working desktop after I enter my password in GDM. The proprietary games out for Linux tend to break within a few years, despite all the promises of binary compatibility - usually it's the installers that fail. NWN's installer was broken the day the game was fucking released, and the only reason crap like that happens is because Linux distros refuse to support any kind of sane distro-neutral application installation framework, in favor of their bloated package management systems that add all kinds of artificial incompatibilities (making it impossible to install a binary that would work just fine due to invalid dependency assertions). I personally have no interest in using XP as my desktop OS, but I will not ever under any circumstance recommend Linux to someone who just wants to use a computer instead of dedicate their life to it. Linux is great for those of us who want/need a UNIX-like OS or want/need the source to things, but for regular people who don't care at all about source code they don't understand or UNIX features they won't ever use, it's still a useless piece of desktop crap.
Trolling Posted Dec 5, 2007 17:36 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] FWIW, I didn't post the article as a troll (even though it's a slow day and, no doubt, there will be a fair number of comments). There is a real point here: people who go for Linux for the purpose of saving money - especially at the single desktop level - are quite likely to be disappointed. Saving the MS tax on a single box is one of the smallest and least valid reasons to use Linux.
Trolling Posted Dec 5, 2007 18:19 UTC (Wed) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link] Exactly. Being free (as beer) actually does not help! I had someone prepare me for an interview with a big rich company that uses Linux on its servers tell me that it was because it was free. As if price mattered when you server 10000 transactions per second! Please make it very expensive, and Linux will sure be on everybody's desktop by the end of 2008 :D
Freedom... Posted Dec 5, 2007 18:51 UTC (Wed) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link] Maybe she meant free as in speech? =) Vendor independence does matter even to large companies.
Freedom... Posted Dec 6, 2007 7:52 UTC (Thu) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link] Good point. But actually, the interview was in French, so there was no ambiguity: 'gratuit' != 'libre'...
Price matters. Big deal. Posted Dec 5, 2007 20:18 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] For some companies, that is. Think about it: Google has 16'000 employees and probably 500'000 servers. That's over 30 servers per employee! And server version of OS is usually more expensive. So it can be "not a big deal" to pay for Windows on desktop but "quite a big deal" to pay for Windows (let alone more expensive Solaris or AIX) for servers!
Price matters. Big deal. Posted Dec 6, 2007 7:58 UTC (Thu) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link] Sorry I didn't want to make the other comment too long, but it is not the case here : a few servers and loads of Windows desktops, used to develop Linux applications. And they want me to use Cygwin/X and putty! Noooooo! After using Linux at home and work for 5 years, I now have to use Windows, and believe me, that's a pain in the a...
Trolling Posted Dec 7, 2007 8:16 UTC (Fri) by dberkholz (subscriber, #23346) [Link] The tax gets a little higher if you actually want a useful set of programs. Consider Windows, Office, Photoshop, Illustrator, your antivirus program, and you're already up to $1000 or more. Of course, there are free options for all of those, but a lot of people haven't even heard of them so they can't consider them.
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 5, 2007 17:47 UTC (Wed) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link] my Ubuntu box has crashed and locked up at least 6 times in the last couple months, and my roommates Windows XP box has neither crashed nor locked up once in the year he's had it. What does that tell you? Exactly nothing, being a sample of size two. I could give you equally useless numbers about how my Ubuntu laptop has never failed once, and my wife's XP laptop hung with about 75% frequency every time she closed and opened the lid (no joke). You could very well have bad hardware, or Ubuntu could be as bad as you think or worse. But you certainly don't know anything from your one box. Anecdotes are the enemy of truth.
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 5, 2007 19:28 UTC (Wed) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] I understand what you're trying to say, and I don't think it's a troll per se, but I do disagree with you on a few points. First, your "almost every" categorization is WAY off. There are a very wide class of users who do not give a crap about Windows games... people like my parents, my grandparents, etc. In fact, I don't think there's a single member of my extended family over the age of 15 that plays Windows games. Even myself, although I grew up on video games, don't own any (and not just because I don't have a Windows system: I have a wife, kids, work, etc. and I don't have time to spend on them anymore--I have things to do that I like better). My kids have a few Windows games for their computer, but they play GameCube mostly. My son actually likes to use my computer because he likes the free Linux games more than the Windows games he has (he's only 10 so he doesn't play FPS or super-complex games). Of course, that doesn't mean that those people don't have other Windows-only apps they need/want which makes Linux a non-starter for them. However, there is a smaller, but not insignificant, subset of that group that actually DOESN'T have any other Windows requirements. They want to do web surfing (where, thanks to FireFox, a very small and mostly ignorable subset of sites require IE, and most web content works fine on a properly-tuned Linux system). They want to do email, maybe IM, small word processing and spreadsheet jobs, monkey with pictures from their digital cameras, etc. All of these are simple to do on Linux.Second, your comments about package management are off. There IS and ALWAYS HAS BEEN a "sane distro-neutral application installation framework" for Linux, which is every bit as good as Windows packagers: tarballs. Tarballs are perfectly respectable and I still see lots of commercial packages using them. If companies want to create packages that install on any Linux system and they don't want to maintain or update it, just use a tarball. Also, even for packages which are not in your favorite format there's a simple program, "alien", which will convert RPMs or DEBs to tarballs (or vice versa, for what that's worth). I know Joe Average Newbie won't know anything about that, but if someone is trying to install a very old proprietary program and having problems there is a simple solution they can easily find out about... ever try to install and run a DOS or Windows95 game on a WindowsXP box?!?! But you're right: the price of Windows is not that big of a deal, and there are unquestionably extra headaches with Linux. So why would the normal user bother at all? Assuming you don't require Windows proprietary software, there are two MAJOR reasons, IMO. First, Linux can let you continue to use your existing hardware with good performance and using the latest applications, rather than throwing it out and buying a brand new one. If you add in the price of a new computer plus Windows plus Office, now you're talking some real money. Second, Linux is simple to secure and keep secure. You don't need to buy a subscription to Norton AV or whatever (more $$ saved!) You don't need to worry about opening mail in Outlook infecting your computer. You don't have to worry about visiting web sites installing malware on your system. Etc. Some people say that's just because Linux is not popular enough to make it worthwhile. Maybe so, but the "why" is irrelevant; it IS true. This is a real headache for everyone I know who uses Windows, and it's especially a problem for the less computer-savvy. The new Linux pre-loaded systems from Dell and being sold by Walmart are perfect for these people: the company takes care of the hardware compatibility issues (just like they do for people who buy a Windows-based PC) and that's really the only hard part, these days.
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 5, 2007 20:19 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] A copy of Windows XP in a VirtualBox VM books up from off to a working desktop faster than GNOME can reach a working desktop after I enter my password in GDM.You need to compare both in the same VM on the same host. It sounds like you are comparing Windows XP in VirtualBox to Linux on bare hardware. Emulation is quite good these days, and the emulator has an advantage of running on top of an OS with effective disk caching. It's also likely that the VM doesn't emulate any hardware that needs long probing. Perhaps you should also try to match the services. For instance, if Windows in not running an SMTP server, sendmail should not be run on the Linux side. This way, we could get some data that would be worth a deeper look regardless of the result.
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 5, 2007 20:56 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link] He's not comparing the boot time of Linux and Windows. He's comparing XP's boot to desktop time with Gnome's GDM to desktop time. Gnome *should* be faster. It's got less work to do and the OS is already running. But, unfortunately, Gnome suffers from some bad design decisions, speed-wise. It's got hundreds of little back-and-forth calls to daemons like vfs, bonobo, dbus, gconfd. It also reads many tiny files for themes and fonts. Linux disk caching gets hurt a lot by indexer programs like Beagle or tracker, too. Doing full directory recursions on tens of thousands of files (my home directory) blows away all the dir and inode caching of the many small files Gnome needs for loading programs. Linux swap hurts also. Memory use tends to force those idling daemon programs out to swap. Then it takes 20 seconds to start gedit, for example.
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 6, 2007 7:08 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] In MS-Windows, how exactly do you measure time "to desktop"? Even after you see the desktop, there's a period of time that the system is not yet usable, because various programs are started. In GNOME and KDE you still have a splash screen at that time.
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 5, 2007 20:58 UTC (Wed) by oak (subscriber, #2786) [Link] > To be perfectly frank, my Ubuntu box has crashed and locked up at least 6 times in the last couple months, and my roommates Windows XP box has neither crashed nor locked up once in the year he's had it. Let me guess, Windows XP is the stable version (why your roommate isn't using Vista?) and your Ubuntu is an unstable version (pun intended)? Or are you using Ubuntu Dapper?
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 6, 2007 5:57 UTC (Thu) by paragw (subscriber, #45306) [Link] I went through this recently - it boils down to choosing your distro+release carefully. I tried running Fedora 8 on my new dual core x64 Desktop with 8Gb RAM - runs dog slow, the nv driver literally shows each pixel that it is painting separately, Firefox refuses to start 2 in 3 times, ata exceptions all over the place in dmesg etc. Talk about unstable. Threw it off and downloaded Centos 5.1 as I absolutely need a stable machine - no problems whatsoever - it is fast, the same nv driver is acceptably fast, no crap. (Except that I get to use GNOME 2.16.1 - but thats not a big one).
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 6, 2007 7:26 UTC (Thu) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link] elanthis wrote:Linux is still a huge pain in the ass for non-technical people. There are non-technical people? Are you sure? I couldn't find a single one at my sysadmin group. Rick Moen
to be perfectly frank... Posted Dec 6, 2007 9:54 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link] > To be perfectly frank, my Ubuntu box has crashed and locked up at least > 6 times in the last couple months Well, my ALT Linux box didn't. :)
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 6, 2007 10:33 UTC (Thu) by krp (guest, #4866) [Link] Uh, your roommate must not use his computer very much... 8-P
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 7, 2007 16:09 UTC (Fri) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link] Oh, a nice comment stream to this granparent post. Let me add to it, by the bridge of gdm and slow startup being mentioned. I recently experienced the pain of GNOME on an ancient Celeron laptop with mere 128 MB RAM. The system churned for five minutes, and you wouldn't believe all the sort of non-essential crap that it started up: desktop search, fast user switcher, python cups-avahi-whatever components, etc. So my strategy: open top, sort by memory, and one by one eliminate all programs that show up near the head of the list and which are not absolutely essential. Getting rid of all of them helped to make the laptop quite usable in fact. But I did have to kill everything, including the trashcan applet which had 9 MB RSS and 7 MB shared. 2 MB (or more!) for just the fucking trashcan, which is virtually always useless? No way. Even after stripping every part away that wasn't bolted down, I found out that some of the actual applications are not acceptable, either. I'll shame one of them: gnome-terminal, which fresh at startup tends to have 20 MB memory footprint of which 9 MB is unique to it, and 11 MB is shared. (After a little bit of using, I saw it eat 30 MB. WTF? How can it waste so much?) I'm hoping enough GNOME guys can see this post here and put GNOME on diet. Especially that terminal emulator is unacceptably large, for being such a small part of the whole. And Ubuntu could definitely consider low-RAM systems a bit. Even GNOME is usable provided you strip it to bare essentials, there would not have to be need for radical replacement such as installing XFCE instead.
Direct link Posted Dec 5, 2007 17:33 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Direct link to the quoted page
Please don't even click on the article. Posted Dec 5, 2007 18:16 UTC (Wed) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link] Remember folks, these guys make money on every click.
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 5, 2007 18:40 UTC (Wed) by DusteD (guest, #49423) [Link] This article was sponsored by Microsoft Windows Vista.. Also, there's nothing cheapskate about using Free Sofware, my rig for example costs at the crazy side of $4k, and i donate more money to FSF and FSFE than the average user of non-free software spends a year.
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 5, 2007 19:34 UTC (Wed) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] Good for you. Sounds like you agree with the article.
Mac ~= "Desktop Linux" Posted Dec 5, 2007 21:29 UTC (Wed) by citibob (guest, #34285) [Link] I agree in general with the article. Most people think Linux is about saving a few pennies, and they're disappointed when they learn how small those pennies really are. Really, the reason to use Linux have to do with openness, freedom from lock-in, freedom from spyware, etc. Linux doesn't "just work", and neither does WIndows. I have dozens of friends whose Windows machines have slowed to a crawl, and I don't have time to rebuild them all. Running Mac OS X gives most users many of the freedom/openness advantages onf GNU/Linux, and in a package that "just works." In many ways, Mac OS X is what we've all been hoping for in a desktop Linux --- start wiht a solid UNIX-type kernel and all the standard open source packages, then put in a lot of effort to integrate it all nicely and stress-test it and produce something standardized that doesn't break. It takes a lot of $$ to develop such a system, $$ that for one reason or another the Linux community hasn't yet been able to put together and produce in an integrated fashion. I use Fedora on my desktop and Mac OS X on my laptop, and I couldn't do without both of them. I don't bother with any multimedia on my Linux, it's too much of a pain compared to clicking and watching it "just work" on my Mac. To the average user, I recommend getting a Mac because I know it will work well for them and not break. There's this big perception that Macs cost too much. But once users get over that hurdle and realize they can afford a Mac (and really, they all can), they end up being very very happy with their Macs. I don't have any Mac-using friends who are begging me to fix their computer, which makes me happy too.
Mac ~= "Desktop Linux" Posted Dec 6, 2007 19:05 UTC (Thu) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link] OS X isn't all that great, to me it is basically just the same as Windows XP with less of a need for virus scanners. It isn't open source, and it only runs on a tiny selection of hardware, making it even more proprietary than Windows. And for what it is worth, I have had no problems viewing multimedia content on my Linux laptop using mplayer with the right plugins. Of course, we can all thank Apple for making the situation more difficult by continuing to shun Linux desktop users.
Mac ~= "Desktop Linux" Posted Dec 8, 2007 12:44 UTC (Sat) by InnateTech (guest, #44362) [Link] That's ridiculous. Either you're blatantly overgeneralizing to dramatize your opposition to closed-source proprietary OSes in general, or you have no idea what the OS X system internals look like. http://developer.apple.com/macosx/architecture/index.html Here's a hint: BSD. http://developer.apple.com/opensource/ I too use OS X on my laptop, and Linux on my servers and workstations. I couldn't be happier. Having a terminal open in OS X isn't that different than having a terminal open in GNOME. How is it that Apple shuns Linux users? I support Apple clients on a Samba/LDAP based network, and I'm fairly sure a Linux box can authenticate against OpenDirectory w/o much trouble. Finally, and this is the real point, OS X is a *much* better choice than Windows for non-technical users. To say otherwise is just blind Linux zealotry. Not everyone out there is ready to use Linux even as it is today with all of its progress on the desktop; and a Linux 'tamed' enough for that set of users would not be a Linux most of us would want to use.
Mac ~= "Desktop Linux" Posted Dec 10, 2007 0:25 UTC (Mon) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] I agree in general with the article. Most people think Linux is about saving a few pennies, and they're disappointed when they learn how small those pennies really are. That's why I tell others that using Linux isn't about saving money, it's about saving total resources. For all the money I saved in software licensing after I kicked proprietary software (including Windows XP) off of my PC 3 1/2 years ago, I'm certain I spent an equivalent amount of time just trying to configure, learn, and understand Linux. In the end I have a well-functioning and powerful computer without the product activation issues or malware vulnerabilities. Plus, I learn a lot about the inner workings of the operating system and userspace applications. Like they say, time == money. The typical PC user John Dvorak is addressing in the article doesn't have the time to make such a radical paradigm shift like replacing Windows or Mac OS with Linux (and he even states that in the article).
He's right ;-) Posted Dec 5, 2007 22:42 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] After all, why would you _buy_ Linux, when you can download it for nothing :-)
He's right ;-) Posted Dec 6, 2007 0:24 UTC (Thu) by xorbe (subscriber, #3165) [Link] Yah I didn't get that either. "Don't buy" but download all you want?
He's right ;-) Posted Dec 6, 2007 0:56 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] I was actually being sarcastic. His advice is idiotic on many levels, particularly when one considers that people do different things with their computers, therefore needing different equipment and software. For instance, I have several systems with integrated Intel graphics. They work fine for what I do with them, they were easy to install (i.e. I didn't have to do anything - X11 just worked) and I saved a few bucks. So, his advice to spend another $200 on dedicated NVidia/ATI graphics would just cause me to keep chasing proprietary drivers and hope that the kernel isn't going to panic as a result - something I would not get support for. From my POV, his suggestion is rubbish. Horses for courses and all that...
"don't buy" integrated graphics Posted Dec 7, 2007 18:16 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I think you've misunderstood the advice. He's talking about graphics so integrated that it shares memory with the rest of the system. He's also talking about Windows, since that's what the vast majority of people considering buying a new desktop computer will use. So the discreet graphics, which is built into the machine and part of the product, will come with drivers tested in that configuration and will be supported by the manufacturer.
"don't buy" integrated graphics Posted Dec 9, 2007 8:41 UTC (Sun) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] > He's talking about graphics so integrated that it shares memory with the rest of the system. Yes, me too. > He's also talking about Windows Not true. He explicitly mentioned Linux in his article too. So, I guess it's fair game then. Unless in his arrogance he thinks that nobody should _ever_ disobey his advice. But, even if that were true, his advice does not apply to everyone. Windows runs just fine with integrated graphics, unless you're doing something really graphics intensive. > So the discreet graphics, which is built into the machine and part of the product, will come with drivers tested in that configuration and will be supported by the manufacturer. Which doesn't help me one bit. So, his advice is just pompous, patronising nonsense.
"don't buy" integrated graphics Posted Dec 10, 2007 1:02 UTC (Mon) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I think you've misread the whole article. When someone publishes a list of up-down recommendations with a one-paragraph explanation of each, you're supposed to understand that the advice applies only to the most mainstream of users and is subjective -- useful only to people who don't have a basis for their own opinions. So he's not being arrogant, pompous, or patronizing. He's being brief. But if you're right that integrated graphics work fine for typical computer users, then that piece of his advice happens to be wrong.
Beware of widescreens Posted Dec 5, 2007 23:59 UTC (Wed) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link] A wide screen has LESS screen real estate than a regular screen of the same diagonal. The author's opinion of Linux is debatable, but his promotion of Vista is laughable. If you wander around any computer store and try the laptops a sales droid will sneak up behind you and whisper that for a small sum he can upgrade it to XP Pro so it will run faster. In any event, if the clueless stay away that leaves more copies of Linux for rest of us!
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 6, 2007 0:19 UTC (Thu) by heksys (guest, #41569) [Link] Umm, I wonder how much did Microsoft pay this dude? Wow thats how low they will go to try and sell Viscrap!
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 6, 2007 1:35 UTC (Thu) by Mithrandir (subscriber, #3031) [Link] I stopped reading when I got to this line: Maybe buy: A Zune.
What Not to Buy in 2007 (PC Magazine) Posted Dec 6, 2007 7:45 UTC (Thu) by tallcedars (guest, #49434) [Link] I canceled my subscription to PC Magazine after they ran a 30+ page "security special" and didn't mention Linux once. That was a few years back. It sounds like nothing has changed.
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