A "backbencher's" account

I liked this article more because of its narrative style, which resembles five point someone. Its about a self-confessed "75%" person's view of the "toppers". Nice ending though. :)

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2947772,prtpage-1.cms

The Hyderabad Airport - review

First up, the background. I went to hyd in may, and returned a couple of days back. I flew by lufthansa, and there wasn't any other airline flying around the same time as I was. So the airport was relatively empty. That said, the number of people on the plane was in excess of 250, and begumpet was really bad at handling the same schedule.

Now, the airport looks pretty modern. Its not a mix of concrete without any ventilation. Its a futuristic, steel-and-glass structure. It gives you the feeling that you can see through it, from one side to the other. If you have passed through IAD (Washington Dulles), you will know what I am saying. The immigration and emigration is a breeze. It took me about two and a half hours to go through begumpet, last time round. It took me about fifteen to twenty min to do the same here. So, on that count, its ammmaazzzing! Its got all the duty-free shops you would see in any other airport, and the prices. I am not kidding. An idli would cost you 80rs, and a vada, 100. So, its not all hunky-dowry, but thats how it is. And without your knowing, you are paying 25$ more than you would've paid had you flown to begumpet. Thats thanks to the UDF (User Development Fee).

Next up, the approach road. The airport manager, GMR, owns 4000 acres, and only a small part of it is the airport. There's already a new novotel right next to the airport. A few more hotels and malls are set to come up in the next couple of years. And the airport is at the other end of the 4000 acres, so the airport is about 7 kms from the time you enter the GMR compound. The drive is a pleasure on the bangalore highway, and inside the GMR compound. Until there, its a bit of a hassle, but beyond 10 in the night, its not that much of a problem.

I love exploring new airports, and I have this special place for some of them. Its not just because this airport is in my home town, I really think this airport is one of the really nice ones. The staff, the layout, the hassle-free setup, all of it adds up. And its just 20% of the total planned. Its got that charm. Its got that feeling which makes you feel really happy when you land there. There's no other airport that I would want to land in, to welcome me home.

I love it... and I am sure you will... until... ?

Whats wrong with xp?

Lets start with the most popular ones and move onto more deep stuff. First, XP takes a little bit of time, no.. it takes a lot of time to start. By the way, thats because of the number of items on the critical path... believe it or not, it waits to connect to wifi before you see the desktop... and until it connects, or tries and fails, you won't see the desktop. Even after the prolonged bootup, it still takes a while to load the apps. And it needs about 256 MB to do stuff, which linux manages in half as much. Although that isn't much of an issue in today's age of 4GB RAM chips, it weighs in when you want to run memory intensive apps. And almost every security app, starting from a firewall, to the anti-spyware stuff like spysweeper, to norton antivirus... the last one's notorious at it... slow down the system. And it seems quite obvious that these should be in the startup list. Whats not so obvious is why acrobat reader is put in the startup list, along with all sorts of junk third party applications. The applications have the same layouts, absolutely bland, and utilitarian. And the X-window system is just about working, on the best of days.

So, XP has a lot not going for it. But then, isn't there something we are missing here? Sure, the XP starts slow, and doesn't have the best looks around. But... once it up and running, do you ever have a crib against it?... Ten mins into its running... Is there anything lacking?... no!.. Its an absolutely joy to work with once you get it going. Its easily the fastest OS around on most laptops. It even trumps ubuntu once in a while, in terms of app loading speeds. Now, i am not saying all this speed comes with MS apps... mostly its with apps like firefox and gtalk. But its ridiculously stable, dependable, and probably, the best OS MS will debut in a long time.

So, why are most of the critics in the tech world upto MS bashing? MS screwed up vista. Sure! But thats one failure, after five successes. Thats allowed, isn't it? I mean, they went after the apple interface (which is brilliant), and they screwed up while they were doing it. But still, that doesn't justify classifying MS OSes as bad, and useless. I am refering to a blog on arstechnica, which started blasting MS and compared it with the Apple OS. Now, first up, MS has a lot more audience to cater to. Second, it has a lot of backward compatibility issues it has to deal with when it comes out with an OS. Mac is just now gaining prominence. Its not as if Apple has been going high all the time. Its with the ipod that the resurgence started. So, obviously, there's something going wrong here. Why would the critics want to bash up MS?

I think its because its now the in-thing. To bash MS, is now a fashion statement among the critics. Whether or not it is correct, they take the line that Apple has the best OS in the world, and Windows sucks. I am sorry, but I beg to disagree. You cannot be MS Windows XP... Its better than any other OS on the market. Its cheaper, more compatible, and portable (Apple should learn that word)... and it runs like a charm on my laptop. I have no cribs against it, and I have been using it for donkey's years now. Its as dependable today, as it will ever be. I may be the only soul in the world saying this... but... MS Windows XP ROCKS!