But I need windows!

My wife had a small epiphany a minute ago. I was having her reboot her stupid XP machine yet again when she suddenly had a very puzzled look on her face:

"Wait a minute - you aren't running Windows.. how can you have different windows on your screen?"

I laughed, mostly because she's hardly the first person to ever say that. People may say 'I need Windows", but that may not be because they have some Microsoft only app they need to run. It may just mean that they think they need Windows to get windows.

"Why are you laughing? Didn't Microsoft invent windows?"

That's another commonly held misconception. I've had people tell me that Bill Gates must be incredibly brilliant to have invented all that he did.

Most of the time those people refuse to believe the reality that Bill Gates and Microsoft have never invented anything.

I do have to admit that calling their OS "Windows" was clever, though I doubt they realized that at the time. I'm not saying that a lot of possible Mac or Linux users have stayed with Microsoft because of this sort of belief, but I bet it's far more than a handful..

So the next time someone says "I need Windows", make sure they really said it with a capital "W". It may be that they just want "windows".

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Comments




Fri Apr 25 02:33:03 2008: Subject:   drag


They did it on purpose. They called Windows, windows. Office, office. Word, word.

The first 'windows' that they released.. that's all it did. Just give 'windows' and pointer to a DOS shell. Nothing more.
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/software/microsoft/windows10/page_02.htm





Fri Apr 25 02:49:22 2008: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Oh, I know they did it on purpose. I just don't think they realized how effective it would be - imagine my wife surprised that my Mac has "windows". I doubt they anticipated that!

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