My recent laptop purchase: Windows revisited...

(This will be the first in a series of rants/posts about my latest laptop adventure.)

So I recently bought a new laptop. I don't really need one so I bought a cheap Acer model. The laptop came with WinXP Home edition.

I have to confess, I don't use Windows on a daily or even weekly basis. I'm lucky that way. :-) In fact, I've avoided XP almost totally. Sure, I've played with it, but it's not like I know it well. So with the new laptop I figured I'd partition it as a dual-boot machine just so I could keep and play around with XP.

The first thing that hit me when I booted XP was how bad the initial Windows graphic is. It sucks. It's grainy and shitty looking! Com'on, this isn't the video hardware. If Microsoft has to run in VGA or some lo-res screen, they should use a graphic that doesn't show how grainy the screen is. But I'm being picky.

I was amazed that despite me owning a legal copy of XP there was no way I could generate a Windows CD/DVD. It's amazing that the licensing bullshit has gotten this bad. Why do people put up with such abuse? I seriously thought about going to some site and downloading a bogus copy of XP Home just so I could have a CD of the software I'm legally licensed to use. Amazing!

Instead, I opted for Acer's system backup routine. That worked to create a DVD image of the machine, but it includes all of Acer's software and the install options aren't as flexible as they should be. But either way, I have an image.

My next step was the most amazing of all -- updating Windows.

Believe it or not, Acer includes the "wrong" video driver with this machine! (And for the record, no, that isn't why the Windows boot logo looks so grainy.) So I had to go to Acer's web site and download new drivers. Lots of new drivers.

This was a tedious, mindless, but time-consuming process.

Step A. Download driver.
Step B. Open the zip file and extract the driver.
Step C. Run the driver's install program -- mindlessly click "next" on any prompt.
Step D. Possibly reboot!
Step D 1/2. Clean up the newly-installed driver's zip and other files.
Step E. Goto Step A and repeat the process for the next driver. Repeat lots of times.

I could not frigging believe it! I killed way over an hour doing this stupidity!

And reboot?!?! Every time I watched the BIOS count its memory on a reboot, I had an immediate, strong memory: THIS WAS WHY I HATED WINDOWS 95! And then every time that memory was followed by the question: Why haven't they fixed this?!

My XP adventure was off to a rocky start.

Updating Windows itself was a dream in comparison. Windows Update almost has the functionality of apt-get or Linspire's Click-N-Run.

But since I've happily forgotten more about Windows than I care to remember, the next issue was my big mistake.

During the Windows Update Microsoft told me that I should upgrade to .NET version 2. No problem, I thought. This partition is already shit, so we might as well install more shit into it.

But looking at the Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs dialog, I noticed that I now had .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0 installed. Why do I need both, I wondered? So I uninstalled .NET 1.1 thinking I would keep only the "latest greatest" privacy-raping bloatware.

I learned that was a mistake on the next reboot.

When Windows came up, it complained gave an incomprehensible error message with only an OK button to respond. No "details" or "help" button, just OK. A search on the Internet told me that the complaining program was Acer's "eRecovery" program -- the one that made my initial system restore DVD.

I also learned that eRecovery depends on .NET 1.1. So I guess I shouldn't have uninstalled that.

WHAT THE F**K?! Doesn't .NET 2.0 provide .NET 1.1's functionality? Why didn't the system tell me that removing a "dependency" would hose eRecovery. This is stone-age computing technology!

So I proceeded to reinstall .NET 1.1 and -- of course -- rebooted. But guess what?

That's right, it still didn't solve the problem! eRecovery still gave an error message and it wouldn't run. Amazing stuff, this Windows software! Now I know why there are so many MSCE's around -- with software like this, they're needed!

So I mentally ignored the error message I got at boottime on my new laptop and proceeded to explore the system.

I was amazed at how some of the icons on the system tray looked like garbage. Hey, this box was running at 1280x800. The KDE desktop looked sharp and pretty (remember, this was a dual-boot machine; more on the GNU/Linux install in another blog entry). Considering that this was "commercial" software, it didn't have the polish and eye candy I was expecting. The vast majority was fine, but some areas looked shoddy. I'd excuse that for free software, but this was the best commercial software that capitalism could offer. But again, that's a picky thing.

Next I had to set the MTU of my wireless network link to 1452. Silly me, I figured that would be buried in a dialog box under an "advanced" button somewhere -- after all, this was the GUI of XP!

I was naive I learned.

To set the MTU -- obviously a techie thing, but not unheard of -- you have to fire up the Registry Editor. Then you have to dig down through upteen frigging folders to a location just east of Timbuctu. Then you have to create a new key and add in a value of 1452. It took 10 times longer than Debian's method of editing /etc/network/interfaces and adding "mtu 1452" with a text editor.

After some more reboots, I got tired of that eRecovery error message popping up and decided to "solve" the problem. I figured a reinstall of the eRecovery software would fix things up. Nope -- no luck. Acer must think that eRecovery software will be the "next big thing" because you can't download it from their web site -- it must be "too special".

So I did the next best thing. I figured I'd uninstall it. So I uninstalled all of the Acer software -- that'd fix it, right?! Nope. No error messages, but I'm guessing that the eRecovery software didn't uninstall.

How do I know that you ask?

Because on the next reboot, I still got the same error message!

Go figure! But hey, I used to teach MCSE classes! I know I can get rid of that. So I fired up the good ol' Registry Editor again. 10 minutes later after searching for every instance of "eRecovery" and deleting any key containing it, I rebooted. No more incomprehensible eRecovery error message!

I doubt that is from the Acer or Microsoft best practices manual, but WTF?!

After all, I'm a legal Microsoft Windows XP Home edition licensee -- so I can just do a "system restore" with my DVD that I created. Whoo-hoo! It's as pleasureable as getting junk mail from the local appliance store or answering telemarketing calls.

But despite the "pleasure" of "owning" XP and the "fond" memories it brought back, how come I think XP is only Win2000 with a different "theme" and that the Windows computing world has barely progressed since the Windows NT/98 days?