Are you forced to buy windows in order to solve certain tasks on the internet e.g. like certain banktasks and to update garmin gps maps and other

[Coll-Barth, Michael]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com [mailto:ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Gene Heskett
> 
> I won't name the bank, but they use ActiveX on the front page And they
> have about 5 digits worth of my money.  Clicking on the login button
> didn't work, so I demanded and got a link that goes straight to the
> login page.  And I was doing it all that way, but they could not seem
> to maintain my ability to print a statement with dates, so I blew up
> and went back to paper statements until they could do that.  You could
> see the dates on screen, but they would not print.  What the hell good
> is a statement with no dates?
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett

< rant >

I have to ask, why on earth would anyone do any on-line banking?  I do everything by phone, in person or snail mail and haven't had any issues.  Maybe because I'm a programmer, I can spot the cr*p that gets written and pushed out there.  Do you want your money and info spread around out there?  And it seems, I'm vindicated every couple of weeks with this or that system being compromised.

The other day, I wanted to sign up for an on-line newspaper.  It was free, but you could only get the content if you were logged in with your Facebook account.  Seriously?  When I complained, the girl on the phone told me that a lot of people hate this.  They are now working on changes.

If people complained about and refused to use this garbage software, maybe companies would stop using things like Flash and ActiveX.  They don't even work very well on iOS or Android phones and tablets.  And that's where the big, all important, demo hangs out.

< /rant >

Whew.  The two biggest obstacles I had to being Windows-free were Turbo Tax and Netflix.  One is now web-based and the other works on Linux.  As for Garmin, I don't need it or want it.  I had it and it was great, but being tied to Windows killed it.  I have several decent phone apps that are continuously updated and the one in the car is taken care of by the dealer on a regular basis.