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Operating System Upstarts Challenge Windows

Considering something other than Windows? Linux, BeOS, Java, and the Mac may be marketplace midgets beside the Microsoft juggernaut, but each offers innovative technology you won't find on Windows.

  

Limited Solutions

But what if you hate Microsoft and you're fed up with Windows' notorious instability? Such sore points are leading some users to seek out alternatives. Vicki Reeves, a system administrator for the Beauregard Parish Public Library in DeRidder, Louisiana, was writing a grant in a hotel room last year when she went online to check something. "When I tried to close the modem connection," she says, "Windows froze. I lost 2 hours of editing." Soon thereafter, she bought a new notebook that uses Linux.

But Linux is too difficult for all but the most technically savvy. Other solutions have their own limitations: The Mac is too expensive, the JavaOS is more convenient for IS departments than for users, and the BeOS is still too new to judge.

Though flawed, operating systems from Apple, Be, Sun, and others bring innovation to market. The best of those innovations can wind up in the mainstream.

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