Tuesday, August 15, 2006

RoughlyDrafted just went up in flames

A few days ago I recommended Daniel Eran's RoughlyDrafted Magazine as one of my favorite writers on the interweb. Today Daniel posted Windows 5x More Expensive than Mac OS X and the site has basically gone up in flames because of the article. Daniel makes some good points on maintenance costs for Windows due to antivirus programs and updates for normal users (i.e. those that aren't geeks). I know multiple family and friends that are on the yearly subscription plan for Norton AntiVirus because it is the easiest thing for them to do. I just recently learned of free antivirus, so I will probably start switching people over after I have looked into how good or not this stuff is. I think Daniel's point still stands, a lot of Windows users are paying Norton or McAfee an annual fee for antivirus. Daniel goes off the rails when he suggest that Windows user's are paying BestBuy's Geek Squad $200 a year, $1400 since XP came out, for spyware and security cleaning. I don't know anyone that has used that service, they usually find a geek like me to clean up their machines or live with the infestation. I did recently find out my parents paid someone $90 to do a secure wipe of the hard drive on an old Windows 98 computer before getting rid of the machine (which was replaced by an iMac), so maybe there is something to it after all. But Daniel can't pin the Geek Squad fee on the annual costs of Windows with no supporting evidence, that's just bad reporting. Daniel I expect better.