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Why do Windows users put up with this crap?

Giordano said:
Oh good! Another Mac vs Windows contest. I primarily use and enjoy Mac; you primarily use and enjoy Windows. We each probably have used both. Okay, let's leave it at that.
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It was a jokey reference to such discussions - hence the smiley...
 
xtifr said:
While that's quite true, it's also true that switching to a BSD Unix base in Mac OSX has made Macs far more appealing to savvy users. A whole lot of old Unix gurus have switched from Linux to Mac because they're both *NIX, and Mac has (if nothing else) better warranties on the software. Jamie ZawinskiWP, who helped create Netscape and XEmacs, runs Macs these days, and he's far from alone....
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Fair point - though my experience suggests 'fashion' still plays a bigger part than anything and even techies are not immune to that. As I say though, fair point.
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
New thing. For the new tab that populates with shortcuts to your most visited sites, there will be "promoted websites" until you have enough history. This is because they get the vast majority of their funding from Google, and since there is Chrome this deal will be ending.
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Never seen that either, and you can tell it not to display any shortcuts on the new tab.
 
The answer is very simple - greed. People like free stuff. But the people who make stuff still need to eat, so they find other ways of making money that doesn't require the people downloading free stuff to pay up front. Bundled software is just one of those ways. It doesn't matter how secure you make the OS or how well educated the users are, as long as they want free stuff they're going to have to accept that.

On the plus side, as long as the majority of users don't really know what they're doing, they effectively subsidise those of us who do. The day everyone stops installing bundled crapware is the day free software either stops being free, or finds an even more irritating way to fund its production.
 
Cuddles said:
It doesn't matter how secure you make the OS or how well educated the users are, as long as they want free stuff they're going to have to accept that.
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They can get free/open source sofware, which doesn't have crap bundled with it.

The day everyone stops installing bundled crapware is the day free software either stops being free, or finds an even more irritating way to fund its production.
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As I and other posters have noted, there's plenty of software that doesn't do this, so it's far from being a necessity. Freeware != free software.
 
Axiom_Blade said:
They can get free/open source sofware, which doesn't have crap bundled with it.

As I and other posters have noted, there's plenty of software that doesn't do this, so it's far from being a necessity. Freeware != free software.
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I know this, and I'm pretty sure Cuddles does too. Most users do not know the difference, and in many senses freeware=free software, so the difference is not as clear as you make out. The entire problem is users who neither know nor care about free software ideals, and just want a program that does what they want, or that sounds appealing, and that they can download for nothing and install. Those users are not using Linux, and as things stand they never will. Indeed it's probably best if they don't, at least en masse; it would destroy the reputation of Linux if they did.
 
For myself, I found a virus on a machine at work today. It is, as far as I recall, the third actual infection we've had in the 13 or 14 years that I've been there. The user is very worried that he's going to lose his job, although he won't. I haven't yet identified what it was or where he got it from. I've wiped the machine, but I wrote a sample of the virus .exe to a CD first, just out of interest.

The funniest thing about it is that the user in question called my boss, the IT manager, about a week ago to say that his machine was running slowly and crashing a lot. I showed the user today (my boss was off today) a copy of the virus, just because he was interested in where it was and what it might have done. It turns out that my boss, a week ago, had looked at the machine, had seen the executable (randomly named, but the same name as today) in Task Manager, commented that it was taking all the processor power but he didn't know what it was, and walked away after forcing it to quit. It's slightly annoying that if I had done the same my job would be on the line, but it's going to be enjoyable tomorrow mocking him mercilessly for it all day. And then mocking him some more.
 
Rat said:
The entire problem is users who neither know nor care about free software ideals, and just want a program that does what they want, or that sounds appealing, and that they can download for nothing and install.
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Yes, but the issue is malware, which most users can understand. Also, I think that if you explain free software to most people, they can appreciate what you're telling them. It's not a complicated subject, it's just a foreign one (at least, as far as software is concerned).

Those users are not using Linux, and as things stand they never will.
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I don't know about that. Android seems to be pretty popular, for example.

Indeed it's probably best if they don't, at least en masse; it would destroy the reputation of Linux if they did.
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Huh? Popularity would destroy it's reputation? The most common misconceptions I hear are that Linux is hard to use and it's always breaking. That's a reputation we could afford to lose.
 
Axiom_Blade said:
They can get free/open source sofware, which doesn't have crap bundled with it.

As I and other posters have noted, there's plenty of software that doesn't do this, so it's far from being a necessity. Freeware != free software.
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As I said, programmers need to eat. From the very Wiki article you cite:
Wiki said:
A report by Standish Group estimates that adoption of free software has caused a drop in revenue to the proprietary software industry by about $60 billion per year.
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Some people may be willing to do some work for free, and some companies may be willing to provide funding for some projects, but it would be naive in the extreme to expect this ever to become a de facto standard for all software. If you want people to work full-time jobs creating software, the money for them to do so needs to come from somewhere.

Axiom_Blade said:
Yes, but the issue is malware, which most users can understand.
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Obviously not, since the issue is not, in fact, malware. Take a look at the OP again. AVG is not malware, in fact it's the exact opposite. McAfee, while it doesn't exactly have the best reputation these days, is the same. Websteroids is a game. Just because a program comes bundled with something else does not mean it must be in some way malicious or dangerous.

Also, I think that if you explain free software to most people, they can appreciate what you're telling them. It's not a complicated subject, it's just a foreign one
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And yet once again from the same Wiki article:
Wiki said:
Eric S. Raymond argues that the term free software is too ambiguous and intimidating for the business community. Raymond promotes the term open-source software as a friendlier alternative for the business and corporate world.
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One of the most prominent advocates of open source software explicitly says that the concept is ambiguous and intimidating for businesses who pay people specifically to understand this sort of thing. The general public contains a lot of people who know far less about computers and software in the first place.

And of course, that "if you explain it to them" part is a pretty big "if". Who exactly is going to do this explaining? Anyone actually interested in learning about this sort of thing can already do so, and probably already has. Short of accosting random people on the street and shouting programming lessons at them, how do you get this information to the people who actually need it? There are no lessons or licensing needed to use a computer, so there isn't even a list of people who need the information, let alone any way of forcing it into them. Even if open source software were the solution to everything, that doesn't help if you don't have a way of letting the majority of users actually know about it.
 
Nobody works for free.

What you see is that business is pushing open source because that drop in software sales is a increase in the bottom line of businesses which use the software.

It's more or less a return to what we had in the 70s where the user group magtape would arrive once every six months, and it was full of contributed software you could use on your platform.
 
Rat said:
I would be, too. What version was that with? It didn't come with 6, 7, 8, or 10.
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IIRC it's an opt-out check box option. I can't recall if that's in the install dialog or from their web page DL options. I know I accidently installed it with Reader on a machine that I did an OS reinstall on fairly recently (within the last year).
 
BazBear said:
IIRC it's an opt-out check box option. I can't recall if that's in the install dialog or from their web page DL options. I know I accidently installed it with Reader on a machine that I did an OS reinstall on fairly recently (within the last year).
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I was being disingenuous. What I really meant was "Are you sure you don't mean Adobe Reader? Because that's a different product from Adobe Acrobat."

Actually, even with Reader I never see the bundled crap, since I download it from the enterprise thingy, as well as Flash Player and whatnot, and it doesn't come with any bundled stuff there.
 
Rat said:
I was being disingenuous. What I really meant was "Are you sure you don't mean Adobe Reader? Because that's a different product from Adobe Acrobat."
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I get you now; maybe we should all just refer to it as The App Formerly Known As Acrobat Reader?;)
 
sophia8 said:
You've clearly not tried installing uTorrent lately.
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uTorrent does not fit the definition of "Free Software." When a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) advocate uses the term "free software," the meaning is "free as in speech," not "free as in beer." uTorrent is not FOSS because they do not make their source code available for download.
 
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