The Unbearable Banishment: Hey! Ballmer and Gates! BITE ME!

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Hey! Ballmer and Gates! BITE ME!

Last spring I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad. (Not such a great laptop, by the way.) At the time, the only option I was given for an operating system was Vista. I told the Lenovo salesman that I had HEARD you could get Windows. He relented and said that for an additional fee I could have Windows installed but he strongly recommended Vista because Windows was being phased out. I cheaped out and got Vista, even though it has a reputation as a memory hog.

Here’s a headline that greeted me in this morning’s New York Times:

Microsoft Introduces Windows 7, Ending Vista Brand


You BASTARDS! Vista has been so maligned by the public and so beaten down by a merciless ad campaign by Apple that it is negatively affecting Microsoft’s bottom line, so they’re dropping it.

I feel like I’ve been played for a fool.

* * *

R.I.P Gerard Damiano. Damiano directed Deep Throat, the film that brought pornography into the mainstream. Deep Throat was funded by the Colombo crime family. Made for $25,000, it went on to gross more than $600 million worldwide.

You could almost draw a thread linking Deep Throat with the invention of VHS, then DVDs and the commercial use of the internet. And, no, that’s not one of my clever sarcasms.

8 Comments:

Blogger Digital Fortress said...

I wonder if this “new” Windows 7 is really Vista just with a different GUI…

Mob made porn...ah, how far we have come in such a short time.

October 29, 2008 at 10:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh man, don't get me started on Vista. I bought a Vaio with the Vista OS "conveniently" bundled in. Nightmares for months, ranging from interconnect between the Cable ISP and my laptop to shorting out my mah johng game. DF may be on to something, the GUI was nuts, too radical for no real reason.

SA

October 29, 2008 at 12:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Windows 7 is just the next OS in the same way Vista was the one that came after the previous (XP I think).
It's all a branding thing.

October 29, 2008 at 12:19 PM  
Blogger mjp said...

popomaticjeff is right. Vista is Windows...it's Windows Vista. The new version is just dumping the Vista name and going back to a release number name. What Windows 7 does that's smart is get rid of most of the things that make Vista suck so bad.

But as for being forced to take on Vista, yeah, a lot of people were. I paid Lenovo the extra $50 or whatever it was to get XP on my ThinkPad rather than Vista, and I think the machine is great. Maybe that's the difference, I dunno. The ThinkPad full size keyboard sold me. And all the geeks I work with (who are much smarter than I am) buy them, so I just followed their lead. But I love the thing. Maybe because it's never been Vista-fied.

Everyone complains about Windows and Microsoft, but what are the alternatives? The cult of Mac (which runs on top of UNIX now)? Linux?? Ever tried to install hardware on a linux desktop or notebook? Try it. Before you're finished (which will be a few days -- or weeks) you'll be building a shrine to Gates and begging his forgiveness. Seriously.

October 29, 2008 at 2:17 PM  
Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

mjp: You're not alone. Have a look at my friend Tim's excellent anti-Apple pro-Windows post from a few weeks ago.

October 29, 2008 at 2:37 PM  
Blogger mjp said...

Judging by your "ultraportable" comment over there I'm guessing that you bought an X or W series ThinkPad? I am in the T series group over here, so maybe that's the difference. I never heard of your friend's N series. Maybe that's branded for a retail chain.

All things being equal, they're pretty good computers. I think you got a lemon, which sucks, as it's impossible to exchange anything these days.

There's nothing worse than a temperamental computer. Carol and I chucked our Dells out the window a year and a half ago because they were so unbelievably awful. Yet we use Dells here at the office and they work fine.

It's a crap shoot, man. Only there's no gain if you win. You're just even.

October 29, 2008 at 3:42 PM  
Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

mjp: Yes, it's an X61, bought for its portability. A measly 2.8 pounds! And it wasn't cheap! Bought it online, which was another big mistake. Once they have your $$$, they don't want to hear from you again. If I had bought it from a Best Buy, as least I would have had a retail store front window I could have chucked it through.

Ironically, we had a Dell desktop that recently give up the ghost. That thing NEVER gave us a problem.

October 29, 2008 at 3:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I hate the Windows version "upgrades". Remember Windows Me? That was an abortion and, thankfully, MS killed it.

I ran Windows 98 on my home desktop until hardware upgrades caused 98 to run even slower, so I upgraded then to XP.

I've resisted the whole Vista experience. I've read even recently that if you say your notebook is for business and that you "promise" or "plan" to buy something like 25 or 100 units, some vendors will "downgrade" the OS to XP.

My younger daughter swears by Linux and I've often figured of moving to open source myself. I just don't have the time to fiddle with it, it seems.

Sadly, for the masses, either MS' Windows or Jobs' Mac OS is the way to go. Relatively simple way for the uninformed, uninitiated, and uninterested to use the power of personal "computing".

Rob

October 31, 2008 at 9:56 PM  

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