WHAT DRIVING TO THE STORE WOULD BE LIKE IF OPERATING SYSTEMS RAN YOUR CAR

MS-DOS: You get in the car and try to remember where you put your keys.
Not only that but once you hire someone to find them, but you can't use
more than one of the steering wheel, gear shift, blinkers, brakes,
windshield wipers, clutch, accelarator, seat controls, lights, mirrors,
or cigarette lighter at the same time.  However, Microsoft has included
some state of the art technology (tm), with which you might be able to
convince a friend to hold the wheel while you fiddle with one of the
other things though.  You probably won't crash either.  Really.

Windows: You get in the car and drive to the store very slowly, because
attached to the back of the car is a freight train.  Using the
technology mentioned above, at least two of your four friends in the car
are holding onto your wheel at any given time, though they keep passing
it off between them, and two of them are drunk.

Macintosh System 7: You get in the car to go to the store, and the car
drives you to church, at 8 miles an hour.  On the way, the brakes refuse
to work because of a "type 1 error".  You try typing "1" but nothing
happens.  Oh by the way, your gas may not work with the current release.

UNIX SysV: You get in the car and type "grep store".  After reaching
speeds of 200 miles per hour en route, you arrive at the barber shop.

Unixware: You pay through the nose for your car, which only takes super
unleaded premium gas.  Then the chauffeur lets you in the car, which
takes you to the store at speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour.

UNIX BSD: You get in the car, whereupon AT+T slaps you with a lawsuit,
and you get to sit in your garage for a year or two.

afs unix:  You get in the car, and are able to look at everyone else's
dashboard in the universe.  You can't touch their controls though.  You
try to drive somewhere and your car has to get gas from mit first.  When
you finally get going your car tries to get to the store without using
highways because your makefile can't understand distributed volumes.
Halfway there you stop cold and have to wait in traffic while the file
servers clean up their callbacks.  Meanwhile, people keep walking in to
your car and looking around.  On the plus side, you only need one car
and all your friends can use it at the same time.

Linux:  You start to get in the car, but the door is being replaced.
After waiting for that, you sit down, and wait for the key to be
implemented.  You turn the key, and the car starts up.  Then someone
goes and replaces all the fuel linkages.  Now you have to get back out
of the car, so it doesn't blow up.  Not that blowing up is a problem,
because you're never in the car long enough to actually get anywhere.

Y-Cos: You try six times to get in the car.  Eventually the door
actually opens, and you sit down and type "grep store".  This takes 6
tries because the tty driver won't interface with the gear shift.
Finally, you get the clutch and accelarator to sync correctly, and you
get shot to the barber shop before it has opened for the day.  You
realize your mistake and readjust so you wind up at the store, but by
the time you get there your temp space has been reallocated and your car
just drives in circles until the queue manager shoots your wheels out.

A/UX: You get in the car but it only takes leaded gas.  As SysV above,
it takes you to the barber shop instead of the store, but as Sys7 above,
it won't go faster than 8 mph.

A/IX: You get in the car and your seat never fits you.  It never will,
so don't worry about replacing it.  The steering wheel only turns left.

Mach:  The car is really really fast, unless you're trying to corner, in
which case it's really really slow.  You can pick any body and
suspension you want, but none of them are useful except the one that you
have to have a truck to be allowed to use.

NeXTMach: As Mach above, but you're not allowed any choices.  You can go
just about anywhere you want, but you'd better be prepared to find it
yourself.  Once you've found it the first time, it becomes amazingly
easy to find it and anything similar.  Your car looks really cool, but
there's no tradein.

OSF/1:  You get in the car, whereupon everyone starts arguing over who
gets to drive.  After three years of sitting around in the garage, you
give up and start using a macintosh.

PowerOPEN: This isn't really an OS, it's a broken suspension with a slow
engine and one of two snappy looking steering wheels - one only turns
left, the other only turns right.  Pick any body you want.  The parts
have been in your garage for years, but the guy who's supposed to put
them together keeps blowing you off.

OS/2: After fueling up with 6000 gallons of gas, you get in the car and
drive to the store with a motercycle escort and a marching band in
procession.  Halfway there, the car blows up, killing everybody in town.
New wheels will be out to correct that problem, real soon now.

VMS: You get in the car, only to discover that it's only a large box
with wheels painted on.  You can't touch anyone else's seat.  If you try
to drive anywhere, it makes a new copy of the car, and sends you there
in it.  When you try to get out of the box, it collapses.

Amiga: You get in the car and click the store icon.  The car goes
nowhere, but at least the radio of the car is in perfect quadrophonic
sound and you can play "Auto-Bingo" in 16.8 million colors.  In two
weeks there will be a new radio which will play different songs, and use
a different dial system so your old maps don't get you anywhere.

Atari ST: You get in your car, but people dont recognize it as a car, as
they all thought that the maker only made go-carts, and everyone thought
they went out of business years ago.  The new model of your car will be
out Very Soon Now (tm) but you won't be able to buy it.

TI 99/4a:  You get in your car and realize that it was made by a defense
contractor contractor and that you can't do a simple "dir" function on
the 50 lbs. radio that you added on as a $500.00 option.

Timex Sinclair: You get in your car and realize that it's made by
SWATCH.

MiNT: You get in the car, which looks really fast.  If your friends try
to get in the car the car blows up, this will be fixed Very Soon Now
(tm).  Once you manage to get your car out of your driveway, it can't go
anywhere.

SNES: You get on a bike, and ride around your lawn.  In 34 days, a
neighboor's lawn will be released.

HP 48sx: You get on a tricicle, and use lambda calculus to teleport
yourself to the store.  None of your friends can understand how the hell
you did this, but it doesn't matter, because who actually got to the
store, right?

Slide rule: You walk to the store.  It may take you a bit longer, but at
least your car won't go crashing into a tree and exploding in a
thunderstorm.