Tag Archives: PC

Vista is teh work of teh debil

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A few weeks ago I finally cracked and bought a new PC. Out of the box, this one was great. The HDD is massive and silent. The huge amount of RAM makes Photoshop usable once more and the widescreen monitor is a pleasure to look at.

What really lets the whole deal down is Microsoft Vista. It is, without a doubt, the worst operating system I have ever used. Yes, it may seem like it does more than MS-DOS but, in reality, it constrains you more (and uses a trillion times more system resources). Vista is pretty. It has nice icons and the transparency looks cool for the first hour or so you use it, but the reality is I had a more stable system with Windows 3.11 (even my ME box crashed less).

All the doom and gloom aside, my Vista box only has a few problems but they are monumental annoyances. I would rather have the limited use Windows 95 gave without the massive inconveniences Vista forces on me. Let me explain:

First off: I have (at the moment) 136 problem reports waiting for solutions. The very existence of these annoys me. Windows claims to be able to search for a solution then comes back with nothing. I also have 4 which claim they have solutions but I cant find out what the solution is. This is leading to no small degree of madness.

Next in line: Vista makes it harder for me to make changes than Ubuntu. Every time I try to do something I have to give administrator authority. It gets to the point where I almost authorise without looking. This is not making the system safer by any stretch of the imagination.

Thirdly: The resources it uses is astronomical. If I have no applications open, nearly 1GB of RAM is being used. What do I get for this? Transparent icons. Wow.

Not my screenshot but this is the error message I getFourthly: It crashes. It is no more stable than Windows ME and a far cry from what I would have expected from Win2k or WinNT. If I get another USB driver error message I will explode…. Argh… Boom…

Last but not least: It hates my software. The Rise of The Machines is obviously a genuine event because my Devil Infested Vista machine has software it just doesn’t like. Not in the normal software failure way, but almost random dislikes for certain applications (they run fine on the other Vista machine…).

The two applications The DevilVista hates at the moment are Opera and eMule (before you ask, I only use this share legitimate files, I would never use it get warez or the like). It hates them to the extent that neither are usable any more.

When I open Opera, it seems to open fine. All my previous windows and tabs load and the system works as normal. The evidence this is a recent dislike is evinced by the fact sites I visited last week as still available on load. However, over the last four days every time I click on ANY link in Opera or type an address in the URL bar and press go, the USB WiFi connection drops out. The network goes from full strength (the router is about 8 feet away), to unable to find any networks. Normally, there are about six or seven networks within range, but this instantly goes to none. No matter of refreshing will cure it. (remember this state).

eMule is different. I can open it. Connect to Kad or a Server and start sharing files (all legitimate remember). This works well for about 60 – 90 minutes whereupon the WiFi network vanishes and I am at the same state as above. eMule worked fine until about four weeks ago so this is not time coincident with the Opera curse.

Anyway, I try to troubleshoot the WiFi connection. Windows is no help, coming up with spurious error messages and terrible advice (and complaining it cant get online to find help… the irony.. it burns…). I try unplugging the device and re-attaching – this just kills it as now the device no longer exists on the system. My WiFi connector is attached to an external, powered, USB hub so I take the plug out of one port and put it in a different one.

This makes things go very weird. Initially it is great, the WiFi light comes on, and networks are found. I try to connect to the router and it asks for the WEP key. So far so good. It then connects to the router but refuses to “identify” (whatever the **** that means) and I am restricted to “local” access only. I try to log into the router (surely that is part of the “Local” network) and it just fails – unable to connect to server. (In the meantime, the laptop on the table next to me connects fine). In the end, admitting defeat, I reboot only to discover the BUGCODE_USB_DRIVER Blue Screen of Death message and it reboots again. This time everything works fine, I log in and it connects first time, every time.

It is coming close to driving me mad. For the most part, I can get away with out using Opera and eMule but the apparently arbitrary nature of this software vendetta is confusing. The machine used to run both without any problems. I am a touch concerned it may start to hate MS Office or FireFox and then there will be a real problem.

For completeness’ sake: I have run AVG and SpyBot S&D with upto date definitions. I have tried an online virus scanner and a rootkit checker – all seems to be clean. I am not yet willing to reinstall everything (there is a lot on the pc) and, before it is suggested I dont want a Mac (too expensive) and while I may install Linux (Not Ubuntu after my previous efforts, but PcLinuxOs is tempting) it isnt a solution.

Linux – Partial Success

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Well it seems I have had at least a partial success with the installation of Linux onto this machine. Numerous attempts with openSUSE, Ubuntu and Solaris all failed dismally.

openSUSE 10.2 in both 32 and 64bit versions refused point blank to find the USB device (previously they found it) and certainly wouldn’t give me the facility to configure it. This is doubly strange as I have openSUSE 10.2 running on an older machine in the spare room which uses an identical USB WiFI dongle, and it worked straight out of the box. This really is a shame as over the years, I have come to like SUSE and thought it’s progress was excellent.

Ubuntu 6.10 (32/64bit) and Ubuntu 6.06 (32 bit) also completely failed to work. While it was similar to openSUSE, Ubuntu is a lot more frustrating with it’s problems. The way Ubuntu obsesses about hiding the inner workings and hand-holding pretty much drive me insane. As I see it, the main reason some one will go to Linux is because they want the power and capabilities offered by a great OS. Making all of this hidden and “unintuitive” strikes me as abject lunacy.

Solaris 10.2 (32 bit) bombed. I wasn’t really expecting much from this, my experiences with Solaris on desktops in the past has never been “fun.” This time was no different. It got as far as trying to set up the graphical interface and crashed. A reboot and it was the same all over again.

While the Solaris farce was no surprise, I was a bit disappointed by the first two. This time last year I was happily running multiple linux machines (SUSE and Ubuntu) and would regularly tell people about the benefits of using them (see blog archives for examples). I honestly thought that the way both were heading, there was actually a chance you could get Linux out to the broader audience (ask heather – I kept harassing her to try it, saying how easy it is now, etc.). Give my recent experiences, I think both have taken a step backwards.

No one expects a “niche” OS like Linux to have out of the box support for every hardware device on Earth, but I would expect them to make it easier for people to find the problems. Having lots of on-line resources is useless when your problem is the network connection! I wonder what the goals of the various distros are – in the case of Ubuntu, I can only assume world domination. If the distro makers want to really move away from the small home market share (in the main, people who work in technical jobs), they need to re-think their approach.

This brings me to my last attempt. PCLinuxOS. Worked straight out of the box. I even did it twice to check. Both time this ran perfectly. Given the frustrations, and the cabinet full of install DVD/CD-Roms I have, this was amazing. I am even writing this on Firefox, under PCLinuxOS.

While I am impressed with it’s ability to find and connect to the network first time (with lots more configuration options than either SUSE or Ubuntu), I am not fully convinced I “like” PCLinuxOS yet. Give me some time to play with it, and see what installing new software is like – the main reason I want Linux is to set up an Apache server with PHP5, Perl, Python and Ruby/Rails to assist with web development. If this is not up to the task….

Anyway, let me close with a big well done to PCLinuxOS. It has succeeded where the bigger names failed (Even Mepis dropped the ball).

Virgin (techy) to the slaughter

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I am going to take my metaphorical hat off to Virgin broadband customer service here. This is mainly due to a certain amount of guilt at what the poor tech support lad had to go through to serve a customer.

Here’s the picture:

Chirpy lad, who’d look more at home serving coffee in Cafe Nero, wearing his chirpy new Virgin-Media-logoed sweatshirt, not iunlike the primary school uniforms round here, turns up as per spec.
Enters house that is being rebuilt around a woman who is sitting in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a pile of binbags, full of food and mouldy books, osessively tapping at a coffee-covered keyboard. The particular half-disassembled PC at which she is kneeling is only one of a mixture of half assembled PCs, each of which is trailing random colours and shapes of wires. The PC she is using has no sides to the case. All components are covered with a fine coating of brick and wood dust.

The keyboard, mouse and mouse mat are balanced on the top of the case. This is not immediately apparent, given that keyboards, mice, micemats, abound – as well as scanners, three sets of giant headphones, a couple of webcams, a surroundsound set of cube speakers, half a dozen power packs, a few data cables, a digital camera a spirit level, a canister each of Dove deodorant, Safeclens monitor cleaninfg fluid, and Xanto carpet and upholsery mousse (oh, the irony of the last two), a laser printer, 2 coffee cups, a few CRT monitors, a kettle, a huge collection of USB to MP3 cables and far too many other bits of crap to count. Not to mention industrial quantities of ciggarrette stumps and random ash.

He is as yet unaware that the PC has no on-off switch – it being ignited by pressing a clicky thing that was once a component of an off switch.

Nor that the afore-mentioned woman has one major objective apart – from a stable internet connection – which is to hide the lack of an on/off switch at all costs, in case the techy decides that he can’t be expected to connect a pc without an on/off switch to anything except a truck going to landfill. So whatever, he does, she is going to make sure he doesn’t try to make her reboot.

She starts off by apologising for the building work and explaining that the builders (I worship at your shrine, European Community, who made it all possible, by the way) didnt start until after the net connection started to go random. He is now on the spot and has to say “no problem” when he clearly never expected to get drilled and sawed and painted round while he worked. This has now given him no out for when he finds the cable from the cable modem to the wall is being crushed under the weight of a glass door.

She insists that the obviously untroubled online state of the PC is not the norm. He is further stumped – he is here because there is no working internet connection…. When she goes into tedious detail of how she’s got it back, involving messing about at the command prompt and typing in her own IP, he starts to look increasingly panicked.

Thye stare at the PC, willing it to drop its net connection. It doesnt. He fiddles around with obviously blameless cable connections and finds them blameless. He has absolutely no idea what to do, he can’t determine any fault that he can possibly influence. He is surrounded by workmen who are achieving biblical miracles of transformation before his eyes, in times that would shame a microwave, while he is spending half an hour prodding at rock solid connections, reading things off the screen which the aforementioned woman has already written down days ago.

He doesn’t know what to do, so that he can have done SOMETHING, so he can bring the job to an end.

Inspiration. There is a loose piece of plastic missing on one end of the cat5 going to the PC. His face, near to despair at this point, lights up. He gets a piece of fresh cat5 with no broken ends and replaces the tired cat5. (Aforementioned woman has already tried about 6 different piece sof cat5, cannily hiding the ones that looked frayed so he didn’t falsely blame the cat5)

He incomprehensibly removes a bit of the tv box – which isnt even on the same cable from the point at which the signal comes into the house – and prepares to escape.

Get effusive thanks from woman, as she has been spared the ignominy of having to reboot by rubbing two sticks together. He then confides that the last house he went to has the exact same problem. He has no idea what caused it there either…..

(It has been pointed out to me since that the issue is almost certainly due to dchp not being properly set up on the server, after the outage at the time of the changeover. So, there really was nothing he could have done here, anyway)

So, given that the apparently bizarre woman was me – caught at an eccentric moment – I have to say – “sorry, tech support, you did everything you were supposed to, when you were supposed to and you remained helpful throughout the process and resisted what must have been the overwhelming temptation to run or, at least, blame me. Thanks for the cat5.”

Vista Pricing – Shamefull

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Although we have mentioned MS Vista in the past on this blog, it was always unlikely that we would upgrade to it in the very near future. A recent check of the technology news helps confirm this.

It seems that Vista has been released in the US with an MRP of $99.95 (Upgrade version of Home Basic). Given the current exchange rates and using Reuters currency converter this works out at £51.23,

For some reason, it has been decided to sell Vista in the UK at £85 + VAT, which works out at about £99.88.

What madness is this! According to Reuters this is the same as US customers paying $194.72. I cant imagine MS would ship many boxes at that rate.

Just goes to show, you can pay nearly a hundred pounds, have to upgrade your hardware and learn a brand new way of working, or you can get linux for free. I think I can honestly say the only way Why Dont You will upgrade to vista will be when we get new computers and it comes pre-loaded with no alternatives.