I'm no Windows fan (I can't imagine ever going back to Windows), but you've got to be kidding me if you think people only use it because they already use it. How about because it's far easier to use and less fiddly than Linux? How about because the software selection is vastly superior to both Linux and OS X? How about because almost any computer (including Apple's) can run Windows AND all your hardware will work just fine with it, while if you want to run OS X, you'll have to buy an expensive machine from Apple, and if you want to run Linux, you better pray there's decent driver support for your peripherals.
The situation has gotten a lot better over the last decade for OS X and Linux users (though Windows has also improved a lot), but we're a FAR cry from a world in which the only valid reason to use Windows is momentum.
I won't even bother trying to list all the reasons to use Word and Excel (especially Excel) over Libre and Google Docs. Google Docs is a child's toy compared to Excel.
Really, they use it because that's what they are used to. Or mainly that's what was forced at work.
For example for years we've used Outlook Express, then people moved to Outlook. Everyone uses Excel, Word, etc. - because the company provides it, and people if they want to finish their work at home, would use whatever they learned.
I for example learned so much P4Win (the discontinued Perforce client from years), that even if it's less performant (syncing for example, because it's done by 4096 bytes), I still use it more than P4V (the new client), because I simply know it all, so much that I feel P4V as step-back (it's not, but because of slower redraw it feels that way. P4V is way faster than P4Win, and multithreaded).
So color me stupid, but since then, I'm using P4V for heavy tasks (after carefully, and consciously clicking here and there), and then for day to day things - changelists mainly - I'm with P4Win...
Sorry for dragging into this, but I'm just showing an example. And at home for my projects I don't even consider perforce, never use it. (But if it was like office app, I might've).
So why would I want for my productivity tools (which I don't have much fun, but more work) a change?
> How about because it's far easier to use and less fiddly than Linux?
It really isn't. Unless you cherry pick the wrong hardware, it just works. And keeps working for ages.
> How about because the software selection is vastly superior to both Linux and OS X?
I'll agree the selection is larger. As for its superiority, that is debatable. In fact, I consider OSX's experience less confusing. And the package managers you find on Linux are vastly superior to the Googpe-browse-download-run-next-next-finish experience most Windows users have to endure.
> How about because almost any computer (including Apple's) can run Windows AND all your hardware will work just fine with it, while if you want to run OS X, you'll have to buy an expensive machine from Apple, and if you want to run Linux, you better pray there's decent driver support for your peripherals.
It's hard these days to buy a computer that won't run Linux properly. You really need to plan your mistake. As for Macs being more expen
sive, they are also better built. There is no Mac competing with the US$300 HP notebook, of course, but the US$1000 MacBook has feature parity with US$1000 machines from Dell, Acer and Lenovo. Plus, it's pretty.
It's true that the computer components themselves have good support, but that doesn't yet extend to many printers, smartphones, gps devices or suchlike.
It's been a long time since I last met an unsupported printer. Multifunction devices are a sore spot, but they are the epitome of amateur equipment in any case. Any half-decent printer has very good support from CUPS. And what smartphone are you talking about? I don't have much experience with iPhones, but my iPod works just fine (as much as the lack of iTunes allows) and my Android phones work perfectly. I wouldn't be surprised if Windows Phone has problems, but I woulnd't call Blackberries and Symbian devices smartphones by current standards.
I'll admit that I was mainly reminescing about hardware from the previous decade when writing that. But the general point of "windows officially, linux maybe" remains.
How about because almost any computer (including Apple's) can run Windows AND all your hardware will work just fine with it
Ah, no. Having been a windows support/user for nearly 20 years, I am all too familiar with the 'find-the-drivers' dance, in particular, find-the-network-drivers, from which you can manually search the internet and find the rest. Then you get the fun of having a series of different things keeping themselves updated. A friend of mine even when so far as to make a 'golden XP installer', which was a standard XP install disk slipstreamed with 686 different network card drivers.
And boy it's fun trying to find the right Windows drivers. Easy for us experienced folk, because we know what scam sites look like. But to naives, it can be hard to tell the difference between what might work and scam sites, let alone actually trying to find the name of the chipset you're hunting for.
So if the argument is 'ease of installing', Windows most definitely does not get a free pass.
Windows, Linux, and OSX are about equal in terms of ease of driver install. That is, it either has the driver or uses a fall-back driver while it goes online and grabs a new one. Only difference is, most Windows drivers work this way because companies make drivers for Windows. There are a few too many Linux exceptions because companies don't make drivers for Linux.
If you're bringing 20 years of experience into the driver discussion, you're not giving enough weight to Windows 7, where drivers are rarely a problem. For the naive, there's generally a restore DVD/partition with all the drivers included. If you can't hunt for drivers, chances are you didn't built your PC yourself.
The argument of 'but drivers are hard on linux' is a throwback to the days when drivers were also hard on windows, it's just that we were used to the Windows way of doing things so it was familiar. I'm just saying that Windows doesn't get the free pass that the OP was implying.
The situation has gotten a lot better over the last decade for OS X and Linux users (though Windows has also improved a lot), but we're a FAR cry from a world in which the only valid reason to use Windows is momentum.
I won't even bother trying to list all the reasons to use Word and Excel (especially Excel) over Libre and Google Docs. Google Docs is a child's toy compared to Excel.