(note: this diverges starkly from my usual cultural/political posts...at first, towards the end it will be obvious that it does not.  I typically reserve this type of thing for theabstractexponent.com, which is an awesome website, btw.)

Consider: A Windows PC is brought in to the shop where I work with the following message appearing after every boot, just as the desktop appears:

"Xprcedrtfsc.exe cannot be found.   The result of 000x21eag325 was returned from the session" 

This message appears just above a big 'Ok' button every time you log on, which you must click even though the message is clearly telling you that something is not Ok.

Recently, in the course of my work I have run across many, many such windows error dialogues.   In resolving them, I have noticed some patterns specific to the set of information available for solving Microsoft resolutions.  These patterns stand to be compared to Mac and Linux issues, which systems now openly contend for superiority in the post-vista world.

1.  When you search for a specific error, Microsoft's own knowledgebases will seldom be in the first page of results.  Rather, you will have one highly ranked pay-for-resolution site, ten sites advertising software with suspicious names that claim to magically solve whichever issue it is you searched for and then some forums.

When I have problems with Mac and Linux, the Apple, Fedora and Ubuntu(or whichever distro) sites appear highly ranked in the listing.  There are also a small handful of well reputable sites which appear on the first listing, like Macrumors and Linuxquestions.

2.   When you do search Microsoft's own knowledgebase, you are likely to find instructions like reinstall the driver or reboot your computer.  Other times, you may find gems like this:

"If these methods did not resolved your issue, you may want to ask someone you know for help, or you may want to contact your ISP service or network administrator for help. You can also use the Microsoft Customer Support Services Web site to find other solutions to your problem."

Ask someone I know for help?   Like, what kind of person that I know?  My karate instructor?  The mayor?  I mean, the list goes on!  I know a lot of people!  Microsoft could at least give me a hint, "Someone you know who likes Duran Duran" or "Someone you know who can solve the Rubiks Cube."

Further, considering that this was found in knowledge base article 950720, which is in regards to PCI wireless network adapters whose drivers were summarily broken by microsoft itself with their spectacular Service Pack 3, it is laughably incorrect to assume that your ISP service center is going to be happy to figure out how to help you relocate wlanapi.dll because your drivers will neither install or uninstall.   Nor is it safe to assume that everyone will have a network administrator on call or that "some other part" of the Microsoft Website, who knows which part(not Microsoft!), will have a "solution to your problem."

In comparison, the worst you will find in the Mac and linux world are issues that Mac will not address for PR reasons, which exist, though rare, and issues that the Linux world has not yet address because the volunteers who are writing the software just haven't gotten around to it yet.  The number of issues like these has decreased from year to year, while with Microsoft it's the same old same old.

3.   The irony is, it would be so easy for Microsoft to figure this out.  They clearly spend billions on their support website and billions on their software.  The event logs that every Microsoft operating system keep even list codes and names for every kind of error that happens.   Instead of hitting "Ok" so that you can go on about your business wondering what gave you the error message or when it will return again, why can't windows even tell you which process caused the error?  It has to know which process was running, because it was running it!

But what happens is that processes in Windows get named irrelevant, non-descriptive names.   Then what happens is those errors get associated with arbitrary numbers.  Then when someone is smart enough to go through the maze to get to Computer Management->Event Viewer->System->9:41(<-when the error happened) all they get rewarded with is: "shtfst.exe exited with an unspecified error."  In the 'Code' column, the error is specified as 9132.  If you search for "shtfst.exe 9132" on the innerweb, you are then taken to Microsofts website, where the billion dollars have paid countless indian software developers to meticulously catalog every possible combination of applications and errors that all 20 versions of Windows could possible generate.

PSYCHE!

No, what you get when you search for your specific shtfst.exe 9132 error is several result pages of cheapo websites who have THEMSELVES on a LOW BUDGET kept track of every possible combination of applications and errors that all 20 versions of windows could possibly generate so that they can try and sell you a twenty dollar piece of software that will solve all of your problems.  (and silently install a piece of spyware that will redirect your homepage to FavoritFiles.com.hk if you happen to still be using Internet Explorer)

For some reason(and it isn't chance), this does not happen with Mac and Linux.  Searches for specific error messages take you to vendor websites or user generated forums where users are ranked based on how many questions they have answered.

4.  This is the one that is not like the other three reasons.  Let's say you did learn how to fix your PCI driver by changing the permissions of the .dll file in the C:documents and settings/drivers/identity/crme3s3kdskc/windows/drivers/drivers directory so that you can delete it finally, which allows you to reinstall the software that came with the card, successfully installing all but the one file, which you then have to specifically copy off of the cd into c:windows/windows32/system32/services/upyourbutt/cheese/ministryofsillywalks directory just after you use a jackhammer to destroy the file that service pack 3 put there.  Say this took you three hours to figure out because you have an IQ of 185 and your 16 core computer with 8 gigs of ram restarts in 5 seconds and you can retry every possible order and combination of actions to scientifically deduce what works before you are institutionalized.

Next, you dutifully post this to the internet at www.techsupportdudeawesomenumberone.com and over the course of the next three years 10,000 people visit this site and use your advice to solve this exact same issue they've been having.

Here's the question now...what has anyone learned?  How are any of these people more or less likely to be able to solve the next Windows issue they encounter?   Did you or anyone learn anything about the nature of these drivers, the operation of Windows, the reason Service Pack 3 did what it did or anything at all?

No, you didn't and neither did anyone else.

However, if you search the forums for Mac and Linux, you will find plenty of answers like this, 'Just do chmod -223 on ~/barn/cat/monkey.lpd and that will fix it.'  But you know, that person who posted there really knew what was going on.  And if you ask them, they will be able to explain to you and if you don't your issue will still be resolved.

That's because Mac's BSD kernel and Linux's kernel both rely on a huge set of development principles that go back to the very beginnings of computers.  You can say that Windows development goes (almost) back to the very beginning of computers, but you can't say that the development principles have been the same.   The structure of Millenium Edition and Vista are not related to each other because the branches of windows are chaotic.  And if they did, it's illegal for you to really know much about it unless you once worked as a programmer for Microsoft who will prosecute you if your reveal too much because, you guessed it, we all might want to steeeeeal this great wisdom.   

Why is the Windows kernel so different from the Mac and Linux kernels?  Because the structure of Windows has more to do with who was hired and who was fired, who was promoted and demoted, and who was assigned to each committee than it does with any consistent set of principles.  This lack of consistency flows through Microsoft products and services like a thousand tiny, confused rivers who can't tell if they're flowing uphill or downhill or pooling into a puddle.

In linux or mac, understanding and knowing something gets you real credit, it means you know something about these principles.

In windows, knowing how to fix some error, by contrast, proves nothing other than your ability to memorize a few steps whose value goes no further than the next release.  No one at Microsoft wants to take over responsibility for some issue thousands of users are having.  They want to get promoted, not be demoted to bug tracking or vendor relations.  They're not going to be around answering forums, they don't buy into the idea of windows, they buy in to their careers.  There are C++ programmers with 12 Microsoft certifications saying, 'hey, stop making fun of my career' right now, definitely.

But why don't their forum postings rise to the top of the listings then?

By contrast, the community of Mac and Linux users have a lot to gain by knowing how to solve issues because it is well known that same set of knowledge will be underlying future technologies.  The distros fight for users so the distro developers watch the forums.  It makes their software and themselves better.

I hammer this home because a lot of people I run across think Windows and other operating systems are just piles of code, types of computers, will Exchange calendar work or won't it.

But it's much more.  There are two completely different ways of thinking in competition and it's up to you to make an educated choice, not be a mindless conformist, locked in to the cheapest (upfront) option because you don't want to exert your mind to learn where the buttons are in something new. 

AGP