Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> I just don't understand why people run windows.

There are many, many products that either run significantly better on windows (Office) or are completely unavailable on other OSs (many video games).

That's changing, for sure. But there's still a long tail of products that semi-necessitate windows.



or are completely unavailable on other OSs (many video games)

I get a chuckle whenever I realize how things have changed.

In the early to mid-80's, there was a popular mantra that the IBM PC ecosystem was for "serous work," and anything else was "just for games," which was a slap at Apple (then dominant for business, but rapidly slipping) and the other alternatives.

Today, it seems that for the majority of ordinary people, the only reason they stay in the Wintel ecosystem is for games.


Games back then weren't an important part of our culture. They are now. Consequently they are a requirement.

Seems simple enough to understand.


Games back then weren't an important part of our culture.

The mind boggles.

I think you've just outed yourself as someone who wasn't alive or awake back then.


I was writing games back then, thank you very much. :-P


> the only reason they stay in the Wintel ecosystem is for games.

Is it still "Wintel" when a lot of gamers are going AMD now?


It is until AMD goes mainstream with an instruction set not developed by Intel.


Such as AMD64? :)


Okay, or directly descended from an instruction set designed by Intel :P


How is office better than Google Docs?


Try using bi-directional text, or including equations in Docs. It is practically unusable.

Excel is so powerful that people are doing with it stupid things and than their businesses rely on them. That stuff will never work in Docs.

Office is a killer product, with extremely rich feature set that works very well. Sadly, there is nothing in the market that even close. It is the main (perhaps only) reason I still have to use a Windows VM.


For real document creation, Word and Latex are the best out there, bar none.

For detailed and powerful spreadsheet use there is nothing that compares to Excel. This coming from someone forced to use Google Sheets at a former company, after having Excel.


Advanced formatting. I could do things in Microsoft office that Google Docs can’t even dream about.

As much as it pains me to say it the power of excel is uncomparable, especially for people who can’t program and are never going to learn how.


Interoperability.

For me, a common use case is to receive a large document from someone using MS Office, make small alterations or comments, and send it back... while being certain that I have not changed anything else (including formatting and layout of included illustrations) that I did not want to change. Neither Google Docs nor OpenOffice currently support that, simply opening and saving a nontrivial Word document changes the layout.


OpenOffice doesn't exist anymore, and hasn't for a decade.


FWIW, I don't think it is necessarily.

But, a lot of people are forced to use office for various reasons - trying to edit a docx in Docs/Pages/LibreOffice, for example, can be really frustrating for any number of reasons (fonts, margins, etc. all sometimes break spectacularly).

So if you're using office quite frequently, windows can be very appealing.


Not to mention how just plain ugly LibreOffice’s page renderer is. The kerning and spacing and shapes just seem so off all the time.


Works completely offline?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: