Analysis: Five ways Google spits on Microsoft

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If that sounds familiar, it should: Apple's used that argument to slam Windows in several TV commercials, including this classic. Google's dig may have been especially potent this week, when Microsoft was accused of sitting on a known bug for over a year, the same bug that hackers have been using since June 11 to infect people browsing with older editions of Internet Explorer.

Not everyone's buying Google's claim that it will be able to pull off a more-secure-than-Windows OS, however. John Pescatore, Gartner's go-to analyst on security, questioned Google's promise that Chrome OS will be ultra-safe, ultra-secure. "A lightweight 'cloud' OS that later tries to tack on the features needed to be a huskier 'real' OS would likely have just as many and likely more security issues as an OS that was built from the start assuming local processing and storage as major requirements," said Pescatore in a blog entry today. "Where Chrome [OS] should have a security advantage, just like iPhone: not having to deal with years of legacy apps and an infinite number of hardware platforms."

Google says: "They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them."

Translation: A Windows PC may run spritely at first, but over time it starts to crawl, like an old dog in the hot sun seeking porch shade. In Alabama. In July.

Long-time Windows users even have a term for this: "Windows rot."

After numerous application installs and uninstalls, after update after update, after installing drivers for that new printer, after, after, after,..., Windows' performance begins to degrade. Some swear that the only way to recover from rot is to wipe the drive clean, reinstall Windows, then restore all the applications. Others say users can recover some of that lost speed by tweaking the OS.

Google says: "...they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates."

Translation: Windows is a headache, plain and simple, and getting it to work right takes the patience of Job and requires that users discard any leisure time and instead dedicate hours every week to the chore.

Windows users, to greater and lesser extents, recognize this as a truth, and plan accordingly by taking the estimated time to, say, add a new printer, then doubling it for a real timetable.

Configuring a Windows PC is an art form all its own, as evidenced by the constant stream of tips, tricks and tweaks stories that publications and sites publish and post. Like this 2007 oldie-but-goodie from Computerworld's Preston Gralla, "The ultimate tweaker's guide to Windows." (And no, Gralla's not talking about a crystal meth addict's guide to Windows.)

The excellent Lifehacker site even has an entire section dedicated to nothing but Windows.

Read more about operating systems in Computerworld's Operating Systems Knowledge Center.