Today I think I finally understood why Windows is so expensive. A few people have suggested that it is superior to other operating systems, and well worth the price.
So for some stuff at work, I needed my windows logon to be something other than "Administrator," and so I created a new user "nsmith" with administrator priveleges. Here's what Windows did in response:
1. The Administrator user disappeared. I can no longer log on as Administrator.
2. I lost all the stuff that was on my desktop. I could see the desktop folder from the Administrator, but not access it.
3. Every file the Administrator user ever created has become read only. So, all the code I was writing cannot be modified. Yes, I could copy everything into a different part of the hard drive, but by then I would be wasting 100+ GB of space.
Here was my solution:
1. Uncheck the read-only box on all folders in my entire hard drive. As soon as you close the properties dialog and open it again, they are read only again. If you have the properties window open and the box unchecked, you can delete files, but only if you do so one by one. You cannot modify them.
2. Attempt to access my hard drive using cygwin. I could not start cygwin because I was not allowed to write into the folder where the logs are stored!
3. Ask everyone at the lab if they know how to fix the problem. They don't.
4. Dig around in microsoft's documentation for an hour or two. No luck.
5. Dig around in the properties folders for a few hours of various folders. No luck.
And finally,
6. Open the properties page for my hard drive, find a place in the securities tab where I can change the owner of the files, and change it to my new user.
7. Wait for twenty minutes while windows changes the permissions of every file.
8. Attempt to access files. Files are read only and belong to Administrator.
hmm...
9. Insert Suse, Ubuntu, or any other Linux CD
10. Move on with my life!
So, that's probably why Windows costs so much. The same thing could have been fixed quickly and easily with a few calls to chmod and chown, but that has to be done in a terminal. Windows is so expensive because it's so easy to use!
