Micro-softy

I spent the better part of 12 hours reinstalling XP and getting my PC back up and running. Sure, getting a computer how you want it will take some time, but this is ridiculous. A lot of that time was spent wiping the HD and re-installing the OS a couple of times. I thought I was done when, finally, I got Windows installed properly, not just re-installed, but re-installed from scratch meaning I had, basically, a factory fresh PC. I plugged in the CAT5 cable and couldn’t get online. Uh-oh.

I popped in my Ubuntu live CD and was able to get online – no worries. Why is it I could just throw my Ubuntu CD in there and get online without having to install any drivers?

The process went like this – wipe the hard-drive, install one OS, reinstall OS because I thought I messed up with drivers (I’m using XP Home instead of pro because of this), boot into Ubuntu multiple times to download random drivers, boot back  into Windows to try them out, boot into Ubuntu to post on some forums, finally get the right driver from someone online to whom I am forever grateful, get online in Windows, install AVG, update, install Spybot, install SP2, install critical updates. I had to install critical updates just to install programs like Live Messenger and Live Writer.

Part of this , if not most of it is Dell’s fault. Why? Because their stupid driver CD didn’t work and it was so hard to find the right driver to get online even though I chose the correct system.  Why are there so many different drivers and such poor documentation? I am by no means a novice computer user and should be able to get this out with ease, yet I wasn’t. I popped my Ubuntu distro in and guess what happened – graphics worked, sound worked, internet worked all out of the box, so to speak. I can now see why people act the way they do over Macs, if it is true that “they just work” as is the claim. With Apple handling Hardware and Software, things just “working” seems like something I’d be willing to pay a premium for. Alas, all of this is done now and I have a freshly installed OS on a fast, un-gunked computer. I guess that makes me a Micro-softy.