Vista Still Sucks

Time for a short technology rant. A little over a year ago, in other words long enough for the warranty to have run out, I bought a snazzy laptop from Hewlett Packard's website. I primarily used it for business trips while I was with the EPA, since the government issue machines I would have borrowed otherwise would have made any self respecting paperweight sneer in disdain. It came with plenty of speed, storage, memory, nice sound, graphics, even a built in card reader for a digital camera memory stick and a webcam. Unfortunately, it also was burdened with Microsoft Vista.

Vista is Microsoft's attempt to make a computer look like Mac's OS X. And while it does look nice, it lacks a couple key features of OS X, speed and stability. There's also the compatibility issue. In order to get some of my work software to... well... work, I had to download and install Virtual PC from Microsoft. To their credit, Virtual PC does work rather well. I was able to use it to set aside a part of the hard drive to accept Windows 2000. I could then install my older work software in the 2000 partition. Switching between 2000 and Vista was actually quite easy.

Alas, Vista was still a resource hog, though after some research, I found some tweaks that substantially improved the performance. So despite some lingering annoyances, I was able to treat Vista for what it is... an operating system.

Until two days ago.

A downloaded Vista update went badly, and I started getting the feared "Blue Screen Of Death". This is not a good thing, and has been known to make users perform acts of depraved violence on inanimate objects, like their computers. This phenomena has also lead to spikes in Mac sales, and wondering just what this Linux thing is all about.

Anyway, I tried restoring the computer to earlier dates when everything worked, tried deleting the errant Windows update that I'm sure was causing this disaster in the first place, then finally decided enough was enough, time to use the System Recovery files to restore the machine to its factory fresh configuration. Fortunately everything I had on the computer was backed up, so nothing was lost.

Except...

The System Recovery files were defective. The restoration would crash at certain point and refused to continue. Perusing some forums with my other computer revealed a number of angry to plaintive missives from other HP laptop owners with the same issue. So a couple of calls to HP were in order about my options. "Adolph", (kind of a strange help desk name for someone in India, where as with many other companies HP has there call center), was convinced it was the motherboard. I don't think so. A second call got "Rex", who deduced the original System Recovery files were at fault. He sent me a link to get a dvd with replacement files. Being impatient, I went with the Fed Ex overnight option for delivery.

Fortunately, the replacement files did the trick. My laptop lives again, though I now need to reload my software and files once again. And since there is a good chance I'll be traveling again with my future consulting business, I will need a functioning laptop.

And if they weren't so blasted expensive, a Macbook would be given serious consideration. Oh well, hopefully the HP will behave from now on. However, Vista still sucks.