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

[Robert Heller]

At Mon, 15 Sep 2014 10:54:09 -0400 "Ubuntu user technical support,  not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> > -----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.

For me, the phone interface is *worse* than the on-line banking interface. In 
person is also hard, given the distance to the bank (I don't into the larger 
town where the bank(s) have offices very often).

> 
> 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.

+1

> 
> < /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.
> 

-- 
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