I think my girlfriend would disagree with you about the "great memory". In any case, patio11 said that the end goal was to make it possible to get work done better and faster, and I pointed out that, if that's the case, MS Windows failed -- because it really is an obstacle to getting work done better and faster. Whether it's an obstacle to getting work done at all for certain limited classes of people (even if they're numerous), how those classes of people differ meaningfully from others, and whether they're self-selecting doesn't change that, and is a separate argument (or perhaps several separate arguments).
> Compare hot keys and menus.
I agree with your entire point about hotkeys. On the other hand, compare systems that allow both (to any desired, configurable degree) with those that focus on menus (and other "user friendly" stuff) to the extent that good and/or configurable hotkey capabilities suffer (e.g., MS Windows or KDE 4).
> There are actually a lot of things you can do with Microsoft from the command prompt or power shell. Microsoft systems are quite flexible in this way, similar to *nix. You can do scripting and batch files and all that too. It's just not as popular to hack on microsoft like that.
It's also more of a pain in the fourth point of contact to do that kind of thing on MS Windows, though, and it really is recognizably less flexible than on Unix -- in part because so little of the software on a given system is reasonably scriptable in that manner.
> Compare hot keys and menus.
I agree with your entire point about hotkeys. On the other hand, compare systems that allow both (to any desired, configurable degree) with those that focus on menus (and other "user friendly" stuff) to the extent that good and/or configurable hotkey capabilities suffer (e.g., MS Windows or KDE 4).
> There are actually a lot of things you can do with Microsoft from the command prompt or power shell. Microsoft systems are quite flexible in this way, similar to *nix. You can do scripting and batch files and all that too. It's just not as popular to hack on microsoft like that.
It's also more of a pain in the fourth point of contact to do that kind of thing on MS Windows, though, and it really is recognizably less flexible than on Unix -- in part because so little of the software on a given system is reasonably scriptable in that manner.