I used my brother's XP machine a few times this weekend
such such horrors
the biggest downside 256MB of ram
which means that IE loading itself at boot is bad enough
but they use AOL and AOL9 loads itself at boot as well
I geuss that's since AOL9 installs a spyware scanner, a computer check up program and a search bar/quick launch in the task bar
about 1/3rd of their task bar was for actual window buttons
those AOL quick launch buttons of course weren't installed in the section of the task bar designed for it, nope they were in the main window button area just eating up valuable space
my least favorite part is the system tray
the part of the task bar where the clock is
every program feels the need to install a control widget down there
imagine if Apple opened up the API for the menu bar extras and everything you install feels the need to place something there of debatable value
now imagine it wasn't easy to remove, having to navigate a myriad of arcane menus or dialogs
OR
even worse
having to launch the program and finding where they hid the option
IF they even made it an option
Furthermore XPSP2 didn't seem to have a native driver for the GeForce MX 2 card in their Dell.
So I installed the driver and got smooth scrolling goodness.
But the driver install installed something into the system tray!

even with the nice strict file structure OS X tries to make you use there's so much more freedom
like only n00bs download directly to the desktop
but that seems standard on Windows

If I used Windows full time I'm sure I could work around some fundamental design flaws but the Mac OS is infinitely more friendly and usable. Which I guess means converts are over using the Mac and making it more difficult than it really is.

Tags: windows xp, windows, xp