b) No data loss is acceptable. Any data loss is simply "product doesn't work".
So Windows XP never worked for me because of all the blue screens of death where I lost data from time to time?
Consumer grade technology can and does lose data, too bad! but its the reality we have to live with for now until better hardware/software floods the consumer market that handles the data loss problem at an enterprise level.
In this day and age, if you lose data because you didn't take the necessary backup precautions, I don't see that as being Microsoft or Apple's fault, it's your fault!
There is a reasonable expectation that an application won't screw up your data and there is a reasonable expectation that the OS won't screw it up either.
Even "consumer grade" hardware has this expectation as after all it runs precisely the same enterprise grade operating system kernels. You don't get ECC, RAID and power redundancy - apart from that it's literally the same kit and software.
Backups I agree are a requirement, but you don't take a backup after every iCal entry you add do you in case iCal screws up your data do you?
Myself, I backup daily.
Regarding Windows XP, I was the fortunate overseer of 2500 corporate desktops for 5 years that ran XP on decent quality Dell Optiplex desktops. Not a single blue screen. Probably because they were all WHQL certified.
99.9% of the Windows reliability problems are related to buying trash hardware. Just pay some more.
"99.9% of the Windows reliability problems are related to buying trash hardware. Just pay some more."
Yes, because windows xp, windows vista, windows 7 and windows 8 are all equal to each other, and no matter what software is installed, as long as it is microsoft certified you will only have a 0.1% chance of windows crashing on you and losing data (blue screen, screen freeze, app crashes, take your pick).
A lot of people did consider Windows 9x unusable because of problems with stability and reliability. XP Mostly fixed those problems, though it did get off to a bit of a rough start.
I do remember those days, and 9x to XP was a big upgrade so I'm sure they fixed some of the issues however It was not until Vista that Microsoft finally fixed the memory management architecture that was a large source of the blue screens of death messages in XP.
I'm not sure how similar the architecture was in this respect between 9x and XP, so I'm not sure exactly what was and wasn't fixed during this upgrade.
I do know that in my own experiences across dozens and dozens of windows xp powered machines across many different companies who unfortunately still use XP, blue screens of death still run rampant, and if not a blue screen of death, then the screen randomly freezing or apps randomly crashing and taking your data with you.
It's not a memory management issue. It's because poorly written kernel mode drivers could piss all over memory at will. If the drivers were WHQL cert, they won't do that. Cheap ass kit with b-grade hardware (realtek, cheap gateway and no brand machines) will just bring you pain. Buy a Dell optiplex or precision series machine or a Lenovo laptop and it'd be bomb proof both software and hardware wise.
9x and XP are two completely different operating systems with different kernels and some shared userland.
You need to find someone to fix all that i.e. buy some decent hardware - it's not normal.
While I do agree with what your saying about WHQL licensed machines, it doesn't mean the problem goes away, it just means the problem is less likely to happen, your still at the whim of all the other weird and wonderful behaviour that can cause XP to crash.
The kernel pissing over your memory without it knowing any better is not the be all and end all of data loss problems in XP.
I've seen many "brand" name machines crash in many weird and wonderful ways, so the argument simply does not stand up when you extrapolate it across dozens of different configurations.
It doesn't make sense to me to base an opinion on a couple of brand name machines, instead of the actual reality, which is that XP as a piece of software (hardware aside) is just not that great and you should never trust your data with it.
Cheers for the clarification on the 9x vs XP though - that explains why XP was never as bad as 9x with data loss.
b) No data loss is acceptable. Any data loss is simply "product doesn't work".