"I've Had It With Windows" rant

[Gregory J.Neumann]

At work, I'm forced to run Win98.  I have the network server running 
Slackware Linux / Samba, but this workstation is Win98.  And I've had 
it!!  I run a lean machine.  I uninstall all the Win98 "enhancements" and 
every option that supposedly makes it "user friendly" but slows the 
machine 10-15% just to save a few keystrokes or minor brain usage. Bonus 
is that the less of the "incestuous intertwining" I have enabled, the 
longer I go between BSOD's!  Now I have a little program that wants 
"MAPI" services to do it's upload thingie.  Well, M$ support show NOTHING 
when searching for it, except the name mentioned in a couple of articles, 
"Windows Help" is (no surprise!) clueless on it, and even the 1400+ pages 
of the "Windows 98 Resource Kit" book only gives you the name!  The 
"best" advice I've gotten so far is "All you need is a MAPI enabled 
e-mail client."  Well, between StarOffice and Netscape, that's 2, and 
neither one of them help!!!

My rant is this:  In Linux, there's HOWTO's , man pages and great places 
like this.  I could be totally clueless about MAPI this morning and by 
afternoon know exactly what processes on my Linux box need it, how to start 
it, stop it and even what it does!  So, where in the <expletives deleted> 
is the vaunted M$ tech support that's so superior to Linux???  :-P

Guess I have to buy a new computer so I can get equivalent performance 
and have the problem "fixed" by XP? ;-)

Thanks for the rant time.
Greg

"The network is down!  But I feel better" -Dogbert