Ranting to /dev/null

Frustrations, or why I hate Microsoft

In the course of getting from Edinburgh to Dublin, the screen on my laptop was damaged, i.e. cracked and completely unpowered. This is somewhat less than ideal. As the warranty has expired, I didn't shell out $250 for the accidental damage plan, and the facts are such that I can't prove that RyanAir actually broke it--not that they'd be likely to give me anything anyways--that's pretty much just a cost I have to eat.

So I bought a laptop today. Looked around online first, starting with Dell, but abandoned them for two reasons. First, configuring a system was starting to look like the $600-700 range before protection plans--I'm transferring that risk elsewhere from now on--even with an educational discount. Second, even if I'd configured a system I liked, it wasn't going to ship for two weeks, and I kind of need it before then.

So I hit the retail outlets. A local parts shop I frequent had a few Acer models, but after a little shopping around they turned out to be overpriced. BestBuy had a model I quite liked, but they wanted $550 before protection. I wound up at CircuitCity, which had a great Acer Aspire model for $500. But the staff there was so unhelpful--I stood around for almost ten minutes before someone even said hi--that I walked out.

I tried to buy that model online, but not only did no one else seem to have it, similar models were at least $650 and CircuitCity wasn't selling it online, only in stores. So I grudgingly went back to them and bought it. Again, the sales staff were dramatically unhelpful, and if I hadn't been in a bind I'd have gone to a different store. But one thing I did figure out online that the sales staff didn't even mention--what kind of sales job is that?--is that they were having a promotion for a printer, router, and Internet security suite for 100% mail-in rebates with the purchase of that laptop. I'll never touch the software, and probably only use the printer a few times in the next nine months, but I could kind of use a new router and hey, it winds up being free, right?

Turns out that there are actually six rebates here, one from each manufacturer and one from CircuitCity for each product. Whatever, it's still $200 in rebates. I sit down to fill them out, and what do I find? One of the forms has two addresses to which I'm to mail that form in its entirety. This isn't particularly helpful. To make matters worse, neither seems to be for that rebate program, as both addresses are on other forms, and every other form has a unique address. So I'm going to have to go back to that blasted place and have them figure it out, because they hadn't a clue when I called them.

Then we come to software. The computer came with a single disk. No system disks, no driver disks, nothing. The one disk? A Windows Vista Anytime Upgrade disk with a nasty seal saying, and I quote, "Attention! Separate Purchase Required. Do not insert and run this software until you have purchased a separate upgrade license. See instructions inside." Great. Perfect. Let's see what's in it.

It's a list of features, comparing Vista Home Basic, which comes with my computer, to the other three versions of Vista. Home Basic doesn't include the "Complete Backup and Restore" feature, doesn't include multilingual interfaces, and doesn't include file system encryption. It doesn't even include freaking Remote Desktop! This has fewer features than WinXP!! Bastards! The first thing I'm doing is burning the backup image that's bound to be on the hard drive to a DVD, just in case the second thing doesn't work. The second thing I'm doing is reformatting the hard drive and installing XP. But seriously, this is just awful. If I weren't so pressed for time...

The way things are going I'm making my next computer either OSS or MacOS, probably the former. This laptop is insured until Aug. 2009, after I graduate from law school, so I'm good until then, but then I'll have a real job and will be able to afford a Mac or to have someone else set up a Linux system for me.