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Re:Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 ... by riffraff on Thursday October 24, 2013 @08:03PM (#6608946)
> Valve's push for Linux gaming is one of key factors which will reduce MS grip on the desktop.

My wife uses windows because I can't convince her that google docs or openoffice are ok. She just prefers MS Office.

Valve's push may get us better graphic card drivers, but I don't know anyone who uses windows over linux because of that (I know a few people who stubbornly use linux notwithstanding crappy drivers though)

Re:Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 ... by clarky07 on Friday October 25, 2013 @01:34AM (#6609954)
> My wife uses windows because I can't convince her that google docs or openoffice are ok. She just prefers MS Office.

Depends on what you are using them for. I've tried to convince a lot of people that that is the case, and then I wrote a book and found out it isn't actually the case. They are good enough for casual use, they aren't actually good enough for more serious work. Editing in particular is far far superior with Word.

Re:Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 ... by waps on Friday October 25, 2013 @09:52AM (#6611564)
Until you have to cooperate on writing. Then google docs becomes massively superior.
Re:Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 ... by clarky07 on Saturday October 26, 2013 @10:12AM (#6617442)
Actually no. Without the editing tools it doesn't matter.
Re:Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 ... by brownbat on Friday October 25, 2013 @12:19AM (#6609730)
MS has a lot of user inertia, people can't make lateral shifts, they have to make clearly stupendously better shifts, because they don't have time to learn a new mode of doing things.

That's why it kind of surprises me that MS sticks its neck out on UX redesigns like the ribbon or eliminating the desktop, since every change gives the core userbase another excuse to try something new. (Even if there are a few good underlying UX ideas, like larger buttons, more prominent placement of common commands, and saving me a Win key before I just start typing to search...)

Re:Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 ... by shmerl on Thursday October 24, 2013 @11:37PM (#6609610)
I know quite a number of people who were hesitant to dump Windows completely because they couldn't run some games on Linux. Surely that's not the vast majority of Windows users probably, but it's a significant amount still. Lately, with all these new Linux releases and Wine improving greatly, many of them dumped Windows for good.
Re:Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 ... by CmonDev on Friday October 25, 2013 @04:28AM (#6610405)
I would safely assume those people are mostly geeks/hackers.
Re:Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 ... by shmerl on Friday October 25, 2013 @11:13AM (#6612089)
Certainly some of them, but not all. Some are just gamers who are upset with Windows and want to move to better systems (for example those who care about DRM free gaming and so on). In general PC gamers are more willing to experiment with new things than the regular crowd it seems.
Re:Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 ... by phaus on Thursday October 24, 2013 @08:49PM (#6609103)
Now you know one person. I use Windows solely because my game of choice isn't available for Linux (Until Valve finishes it), and I find the solution provided by WINE to be insufficient.

Granted, I'm not a good representative of the average user.

Re:Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 ... by brdrak on Thursday October 24, 2013 @10:45PM (#6609476)
I gave up on gaming for a while because I got tired of booting into Windows. Lately have been playing way too much on Steam. :-) In fact for my new desktop decided to go with Ubuntu 12.04 because it makes it easy to run Steam. Otherwise I would have gone with Debian proper.
Re:Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 ... by CmonDev on Friday October 25, 2013 @04:27AM (#6610404)
She obviously prefers a great product to the "OK" one. There is an obvious UX difference between Web and native.