I’m redoing a client’s Dell hunk of junk XPS tower right freaking now and I made the mistake of thinking the Dell Windows installer would autodetect the internal hard drive. Oops, of course not. The hard drive is SATA and so I have to create a floppy containing the SATA drivers just so the Windows Installer that shipped with the Dell can detect the hard drive which, well, shipped with the Dell. Nice. A freaking floppy!

I still find myself at this same agonizing task of very slowly committing suicide via Dell. I can boot into the current Windows installation from the internal SATA drive, but even with the floppy containing the SATA driver, the Windows installer can’t find the hard drive.

Comparatively speaking, all my Macs have been much easier to deal with than any of the Windows, or even Linux, systems that I have dealt with. Even though I enjoy using Linux and mucking about with config files, I’m never enjoying my job when I have to fool with Windows.

– and later —

Turns out the driver on the disc I received from the customer contained the wrong SATA driver altogether. Downloaded the newest SATA driver from Dell and it worked fine. Well until the printer driver reinstall failed, but then the printer was suddenly recognized, and IE 7 never showed up in Windows or Microsoft Update. Even though both said I had authenticated with WGA. I download the update manually and told the client to make sure it installed because I was 4 hours past do. I emailed her to check up on the system from hell. Oh did I mention downloading the HP driver via an optional Windows/Microsoft update crashed the system…hard..with a blue screen…some sort of fatal exception…buffer overflow. I had to roll back and get the heck out of there. I’ve got to come back to network all the machines after the FIOS install anyway so I can always rebuild the system software again then.

The XPS Gen 3, or whatever awful name Dell marketing came up with for the system, is an ugly hunk of junk with a case that didn’t fit quite right until I made a blood sacrifice. Literally. I have an inch or two gash on my thumb/hand area where I cut myself trying to get the case back together. When I picked the system up, the whole case was misaligned and wouldn’t close properly. I’m not sure what the Geek Squad did to this thing when they had it before me, but things were in dire shape.

[ed: I pulled this from here to show that, while pain can be found on all sides of computer maintenance, only Windows offers that perfect storm of frustration, anger, exasperation and thoughts of indirect violence — Matt]

I think that’s more of a statement than a question these days. Vista is, at best, seeing lukewarm reception in the OS marketplace. And the Zune? Hmmm. Not much to say about that. Microsoft has seen a string of music services go down in flames to Apple’s iTunes Store and iPod juggernaut.

So how about that core?

If Microsoft resolves all those concerns, no one (including the Open Document Format camp) will have a problem with it. Microsoft doesn’t seem to grok that true openness breeds trust. If it were submitting a truly open standard, it wouldn’t matter what anyone thought of the company submitting it.

It looks like Microsoft’s days of rolling over opposition with a superior lobbying budget and the lack of clear alternatives is over. It might actually have to play nicely now with the other children. Imagine that.

To me the question isn’t so much is the core business fading, but rather can its new businesses and related services like Xbox make up the difference? If Microsoft can iron out significant manufacturing problems with the Xbox 360, and keep its (very) healthy share of the server and corporate desktop markets, it’ll be ok for the next half decade. If not, watch out.

In defending a previous comparison, Scot Finnie uncorks some new, spot-on observations I agree with wholeheartedly.

The main point I was trying to make is that when you compare Macs with comparably equipped Windows PCs, sometimes Macs beat Windows PCs in the price/performance comparison. Sometimes Windows PCs beat Macs. Overall, there’s relative parity.

Danger! Watch out for high capacity SanDisk CF cards going for “insane” prices, especially on eBay.

Fortunately, there are a number of tell- tale signs, which indicate a counterfeit CF card, though those committing the fraud are becoming increasingly good at disguising it.

Among these are…

• Performance - Write speed significantly lower than genuine SanDisk CF cards
• Operation - Your camera may fail to operate correctly and the red LED may be flashing indefinitely
• Label printing - In direct comparison, the counterfeit cards will show poor label printing quality
• CF card casing print - Counterfeit cards will be lacking correct batch number and manufacturer ID printing

We have received and examined one of these cards and have found that:

• The card labeled SanDisk Extreme IV 8.0 GB in reality is an 8.0 GB CF Card made by Apacer (No indications of Apacer being
• involved in the fraud!)
• The card performs at 1/4 the speed of an original SanDisk Extreme IV 8.0 GB CF Card
• The counterfeit CF card does not support UDMA performance
• The counterfeit CF card will work in a non- UDMA compliant device, such as a 35mm DSLR camera
• The official Apacer 8.0 GB CF card sells for USD 148 on E-Bay
• SanDisk Extreme IV 8.0 GB CF Cards list at USD 269

courtesty pictureline

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