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Linux loyalists brand Microsoft as efficient copycats

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CIOL Bureau
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Eric Auchard and Duncan Martell

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NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO: To hear Microsoft Corp. tell it, the official

unveiling of Windows XP is the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel.

But users of other operating systems -- even earlier versions of Microsoft's --

aren't nearly as excited.

As the world's largest software company dispatched chairman Bill Gates to New

York and chief executive Steve Ballmer to London for lavish XP launch events,

there are those who remain Linux loyalists and believers that Microsoft is still

little more than a highly efficient copycat of existing technology.

"I truly believe Apple is the innovator and the creative force behind

almost all the technology that comes out, and Microsoft is the big copier,"

said diehard Apple Computer Inc. loyalist Dan Doerner, a musician in San

Francisco and owner of two Macintoshes.

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Of course, it's no secret in high technology that having the best 'mousetrap'

doesn't translate to the biggest sales and market share. After all, it's

Microsoft that's been ruled a monopoly and whose Windows operating system runs

90 per cent of the world's personal computers.

And the complaint that Microsoft borrows much of the innovation of others,

and then incorporates that innovation and functionality into Windows, isn't

anything new.

But many of the XP bells and whistles touted by Microsoft -- improved

streaming media, CD burning, online photo processing and video instant

messaging, among others -- strike some as just that: bells and whistles.

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"Do I get off on whether or not the logo spins or the flames flicker?

No," said Ed Cray, a professor of journalism at the Annenberg School for

Communication at the University of Southern California. "It's (Windows and

XP) bloatware. It just gets bigger and I use less of it."

Cray said he bought his first computer, an International Business Machines

Corp. 8088 with two 5-1/4-inch floppy drives, in September, 1983. Sure, he has

succumbed to Windows for purposes of surfing the Web, but he has two icons on

his desktop that he clicks on and that take him straight to DOS or to XyWrite,

his word-processing program that runs on DOS.

"I literally set the margins and all the formatting in 1987 and I've

never changed it," Cray said. "I've written six books since 1987, and

that's a lot of words."

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Some disappointment is inevitable, perhaps even unavoidable. Microsoft, makes

the basic operating software used on so many of the world's personal computers,

and must satisfy a vast audience of tens of millions of potential customers.

By trying to be all things to most computer people, Microsoft is bound to

encounter criticism for some of the choices it makes, said David Coursey, a

long-time computer industry analyst, commentator and, sometimes, a Microsoft

critic too.

While Coursey has a list of unresolved issues that concern him about XP

software, he said he congratulates Microsoft on its willingness to admit the

program's limitations up-front.

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Some of the loudest criticism heard online centers on Microsoft's new

licensing limitations that force users to buy a copy of XP for each PC they own.

Yet much of the online controversy reflects genuine concerns among PC owners

about how to upgrade their computers and whether older versions of software used

to link PCs to printers and other peripheral devices will work with XP.

From the outset, Microsoft has acknowledged, like never before, the

complexities of upgrading older PCs to the new operating system, seeking to live

down criticism over the complexity and data loss caused by its past releases.

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Now, XP automatically sends tracking reports to Microsoft on which so-called

"driver" software conflicts with XP. Makers of offending software are

being contacted by Microsoft to resolve conflicts early and save users the

trouble.

Like each major new release of Microsoft, XP puts major new demands on the

hardware, with the company saying that users need a minimum of 64 megabytes of

memory. Analysts beg to differ, saying 256 megabytes, an uncommon amount on

computers more than a year old, are necessary.

In an immediate sense, Windows XP is a non-event for users of Linux software,

an alternative operating system popular among technical users, many of whom cite

the program's greater stability and advantages for running Internet software.

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But the old complaint among Linux users about how frequently Microsoft

programs "crash", or breakdown, when non-Microsoft software is

introduced on a Windows machine will be muted by Micrsoft's push to make XP far

more reliable than its past consumer software.

"XP is largely a non-event for Linux users. But presumably at some point

they will stop saying Windows crashes all the time," Coursey said.

"They'll have to think of new gripes."

(C) Reuters Limited.

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