The Curse of the New Computer

2005-12-14 

Let’s get the curse out of the way first:

I curse Bill Gates so that when he dies and goes to hell he has to spend eternity installing Microsoft software.

My old computer died two weeks ago. It was a trusty, overbuilt, over-clocked DIY project that had its origins in 2000. I was always fiddling with it, adding new or additional hard drives, upgrading the optical drives, the mouse, the keyboard, adding new devices such as USB and Firewire boards, installing new software, updating software… It was never the same from month-to-month. I had devoted loads of time and effort to customizing and tweaking the machine. But the motherboard died, so I needed a new computer, immediately. 

I quickly examined the internet using my lab machine to see what was locally available that would be an acceptable tradeoff of features and price. Best Buy offered an eMachines model that would do. I called them to make certain it was in stock and off I went. When I got there the salesman dissuaded me from buying the computer I wanted because if I bought a package, including that computer model, an LCD monitor and a cheap printer, the total price after rebates would be less than buying the machine alone. So that is what I did. 

I do not care for LCD monitors so I gave the LCD monitor to my wife because she needed the desk space she would recover by replacing her old CRT. 

As an aside, LCDs are still vastly inferior to CRTs when it comes to display. Yes, they do take up less space, and are more energy efficient, but as a display, the most basic function of the monitor, they still are a distant second to CRTs in response rate, quality of image and range of resolutions. CRTs may not be fashionable but they are the better monitors. 

I had no immediate use for the printer so it sits in its box in the basement waiting for the day I do have a use for it or I throw it out. It seems wasteful to me, but the rebate for the printer equaled its cost. So why not? Once I got the equipment home I began the tedious and lengthy process of setting up the new machine. It took me many hours over 5 days to get it to a reasonable level of doneness where it would be useable day-in and day-out. It took 72 reboots to get to this point. Yes, I kept count. 

This was a terrible waste of time and effort. I blame Gates. He has cheated us all with his awful implementation of the Windows OS, including the need to activate. What I should have been able to do was install the old machine’s C-drive in the new machine. Then the machine should have accessed the internet to download whatever drivers it needed to accommodate the new machine’s hardware. This should have taken me about 30 minutes total, to swap C-drives, download and install drivers, and reboot, just once, to a fully functional, fully customized “old” machine. It should not have taken me most of the week. 

I wonder when the last time Bill Gates set up a new computer, probably not in a decade or more