Ruby on Rails developer in Phoenix, Arizona

OK so I have to vent… I am not a dumb guy, I have been working with computers since I was very young, I was an expert at DOS 3.3 through 6.0, used Windows 2.0 through XP, I have used many many different flavors of Linux and BSD over the last 12 years, all with great success, culminating in my favorite OS du jour [yes Irish, that means "of the day"] Mac OS X. This evening I was bested by Windows Vista in a bad way.

My sister-in-law got a new HP laptop to go off to college (my advise was to get a Mac, but nobody listens to me) and asked me to get it “set up” for her. It took around 30 minutes just to get the stupid thing to join a wireless network. All of the hideous HP software that was installed kept getting in the way and the “Easy Internet Setup” wizard wouldn’t save anything properly. Of course every other time I clicked something I was asked to “Allow or Deny” the request. I was confused, I was frustrated, I was pissed. I have never been more dumbfounded by a piece of technology in my life. After battling this machine for around an hour, I had finally beaten it into submission, I could connect to the Internet!!! w00t!

So now comes the best part… we go to dinner and I head home. My wife calls me from her sister’s house saying that the laptop can no longer access the Internet. Using my great powers of RemoteTechSupport I tried to help them get back on the wifi… to no avail. After a few minutes of trying to get back on the wifi. Here is the conversation that followed.

Me: “OK. Let’s go ahead and reboot the computer.”
Her: “How?”
Me: “Well, click the Windows button and then restart.”
Her: “The what?”
Me: “That big round button on the bottom of the screen with the Windows logo in it.”
Her: “OK, how do I restart?”
Me: “I dunno, click the shutdown button”
Her: “There’s nothing like that here.”
Me: “Well, there has to be some way to reboot the computer?!”
Her: “I don’t see anything.”
Me: “Umm… err… It really shouldn’t be this difficult.”
Her (after a few minutes of awkward silence): “Oh, I found it, its this little ‘play’ button… dumb.”
Me: “… WTF?!”
Her: “I love my Mac”

Wow, I have never had such a hard time working with an OS in my life. Either my Mac dumbed me down or Windows Vista really sucks. I personally think I have just gotten spoiled using an OS that is actually well designed and isn’t a complete train wreck.

I am so glad I don’t have to use or support Windows in any way shape or form on a daily basis!

This entry was posted Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 9:43 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.