Regular users

Remember, I'm talking about typical everyday users here, not people that are going to go looking for ways to shoehorn Linux onto their desktop computers. I mentioned that there are ways to make most of these titles work, but that your average, everyday user simply isn't going to go through the effort.

Apps for the regular mom

A short list of apps:

* Quicken
* Money
* Bejeweled (yes, games are important!)
* World of Warcraft (arguably the most popular MMORPG out there)
* MS Office

Yes, there are Linux ports for some of these titles and ways to make them work on Linux; a regular user simply won't want to jump through those hoops, though. And yes, you can argue that things like WoW won't pertain to "regular" moms, but it is an example of what doesn't work on Linux.

Scott

Stats question

There was some concern about where the stats came from.

The stats were pulled from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

From each data source on the page, I pulled the closest information I could get to Q1 stats (i.e. the closest information to March) for both 2007 and 2008 and averaged them together to get the stats in the article. The Wikipedia stats are culled from a number of different sources, so averaging the stats provides a reasonable statistic to use for comparative purposes.

Scott

Public betas

Do you participate in public betas of Microsoft software? Why?

Tweaks, performance, perception

I use Vista at home and actually like it, but am looking very forward to Windows 7. Many have likened Windows 7 to Vista SP2, and, while I agree in part with that assessment, I think it's also a bit more. It's going to be a much more polished Vista than Vista with better performance and, rightly or wrongly, better market perception.