| Game_boy said: You are thinking of Linux 4 years ago. Seriously, Ubuntu download is 700MB from BitTorrent, similar to downloaded movies, and then you burn it to a CD (or order a free CD from the website), put the CD in the drive, install it (proven faster than Windows), it automatically and invisibly finds your hardware including graphics card, sound, wireless, everything. My computer took zero configuration and its a standard Intel-ATI build: the graphics drivers were even on the install CD. I didn't have to troubleshoot, everything just worked: music, videos, internet... Hard-drive space is practically free anyway and it needs 4GB including built-in office, internet, multimedia and graphics. How much easier could it be? |
I'm thinking of any system. I'm not the casual user who is happy with the default settings. I bought a new mac about a month ago and spent several days just installing, configuring, testing etc. And Mac OS X is supposed to be one of the most user friendly systems! In fact: it's all installed and ready to go as you unbox the mac. But that assumes you are happy with having the factory defaults and all the trial software and shit like that. Which I am not.Â
Installing any system is bound to take up considerable time - not because of the install itself but for all those small things you need to do after the install. Setting a system preference - say the default volume of your speakers - may be a matter of 3-4 clicks - but when you combine that with every other system and software setting and preference on your system it builds up to staggering proportions. Just calibrating my monitors took several hours even though I've done it many times in the past. Another perfect example of stuff that takes considerable amounts of time is setting up email accounts in Apples Mail.app. They've done a terific job at making it user friendly - but still I had to go thrue some pretty elaborate hoops just to get my email accounts working.
"Getting used to" is neither the problem (for me) as I have logged several hundred hours on Solaris OS and I even installed and tried BSD back in the 90'es.
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