‘PC User’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Windows User’

It's all too common in the popular press to escort the assumption made that "PC" means "Windows PC."

Most mainstream discussions of Windows malware, for example, refer to it every bit "PC malware" and therefore an industry trouble–conveniently sparing Microsoft any pointed infernal.

PC, notwithstandin, is short for "attribute computer"–a term that includes not just Windows computers but Macs and Linux computers also. IT Crataegus oxycantha seem like a linguistics quibble, but it has significant repercussions.

'Computer-Savvy Gearheads'?

To brainpower: Decision-making site Hump closing week published in an infographic the results of its about recent read on the personality differences between Mac and PC users. Implicit in that psychoanalysis, once again, was that "PC users" are happening Windows–on that point's justified a Windows picture used to represent them.

The discipline is full phase of the moon of all kinds of interesting and provocative results, such every bit that Macintosh users are younger, more liberal, more urban, more educated and generally more interesting than PC users are. Particularly outre, too, is that Mac users were found to consider themselves as "computer-savvy gearheads" more often than PC users were; Macs, in fact, are most notable for their attempt to protect users from the inner working of their machines.

In any sheath, the Hunch canvas shines a direct spotlight on many misperceptions and misunderstandings about computers and the operating systems that run them. Allow's look at just a hardly a of them.

1. 'PC' != Windows

First sour, the term "Personal computer" includes Macs, so that's a pitiful term to use for distinction.

Second, given the diversity of computation environments today, it is no longer accurate to assume that someone on a not-Mack PC is using Windows. Linux users are growing rapidly in number, and I doubt most would categorize themselves in the same group equally Windows users.

That, so, is probably at least part of the conclude a full 23 percent of respondents to the Hunch canvas didn't class themselves in either the PC (Windows) or Mac camps: the two camps are neither well-defined nor across-the-board, since they leave out Linux users in all.

Hunch forward also didn't specify, every bit far as I can tell, whether information technology was including mobile technologies so much Eastern Samoa tablet PCs. If it was, that opens up a unit some other can of worms–let alone Linux-based Android.

2. Few Choose Windows

Some other presumptuousness inherent the Hunch study is that those who do use Windows do so by choice.

Information technology certainly seems true that Macintosh users choose their political program, past and large, and it May be true in some cases for Windows users, too. Microsoft still holds such a Monopoly over non-Mac PCs, however, that most people father Windows on their simple machine whether they want it or not. Windows is everywhere, unfortunately, and then Windows users are too, simply past default option.

That situation is improving, to be sure–just recently, in fact, it's become clear that Microsoft is getting its operating system onto fewer and fewer of the new computers that embark. Most late, to a higher degree a third are shipping without information technology.

Still, it's mistaken to take for granted that Windows users are Windows users by tasty. All but simply go with what comes on their hardware. That being the case, I'm not doomed you can draw many conclusions about personalities based on the fact that they use Windows.

3. What About Linux?

Most notable of every about the Hunch data, notwithstandin, is that it completely ignores the third big rival in the in operation-system arena: Linux.

Sure as shooting, Linux users are still a nonage–if you're not counting Humanoid, especially. They are a biological process dependant on, nonetheless–as recent Wikipedia visitant information can attest–and I think Hunch's 23 percent non-response aggroup underscores that fact.

What's had Pine Tree State thinking all over the old few days is how Linux users would equivalence, had they been acknowledged away Hunch and allowed to respond as a group. Would they say that "speaking about computers is consanguineous to struggling with a foreign spoken communication," the way "Personal computer" users did? I don't think so.

How do you think Linux users' responses would compare? Please percentage your thoughts in the comments.