Shhhhh … Don’t tell anyone, I am typing this on a Windows XP computer. What happened? – you ask. Well, here is a little adventure I have decided to go on for about 10 days.
My other hobby is ham radio and for that I need a PC with Windows to run a specific program, and to run it all the time, 24/7. It’s called Logger 32. At times I have to use another piece of software, which is also a Windows only application (N1MM logger), so I have decided to get myself a nice little PC and have it running on my radio desk. Having Windows XP running in Parallels on my MacBook Pro all the time is just not practical for me.
I was pretty lucky to score a second hand HP Pavilion with Pentium 4 – 2 GHz cpu, 512 MB RAM, 80GB HDD, 64MB graphics, monitor… for $80 (AUD), approx $50 USD. Yeah, I know, I’d buy truck load of them for this price.
I also bought Benq FP92W, 19″ wide screen LCD monitor, since the 17″ CRT screen that came with PC is just obscenely large for where I need it.
So I have decided I will use this PC as my main machine for about 10 days. Just to see what it fells like, after using Mac for just over two years.
The PC came with the installation disk which was completely useless. It was scratched and couldn’t be read so I used an old Windows XP Home OEM disk and entered the license number that was on the computer itself. Come the activation time, I thought this will not go right as it took too long, about a minute while activating online, but it finally came up with ‘success’. Woo-hoo!
Now the Windows was installed and it was time to download and install updates. I let Microsoft take my hand and lead me through the process. Two and a half hours later and after seven reboots I have finally got Windows installed and have all updates. Seven reboots!
The next thing to install was MS Office 2003. I only installed Excel and Word, as this is all I needed. This went fairly smooth. FrontPage 2003 installed well, too.
Half an hour later, while importing my bookmarks into the Firefox a little yellow notification came up in the system tray, telling me the new updates are ready. OK, so I opened details and was greeted with some updates for MS office. Four items altogether, the last one being some sort of spam filtering for Outlook. Since I haven’t installed Outlook I unticked this one and proceeded to install the other three. The setup nicely offered not to remind me of this update anymore, which I gladly agreed with.
Another 20-30 minutes later the yellow notification comes up again – new updates. Guess what it is? The Outlook thing. Didn’t I just tell it not to remind me of that again? OK, another ‘no please’ and away it goes.
So that was it for the first day, solid 4 hours spent with the computer just to install operating system, run all updates and install applications I need. What a waste of time.
The next day I installed both Logger programs that I required for my ham radio. Logger32 gave up straight away after importing the data, just displayed message that unknown error has occurred and it needs to shut down, with the usual “We are sorry for inconvenience …” I had to tell it not to bother with notifying anybody. I rebooted the machine and started the Logger again, a few minutes later the same thing happened. But that was it, the problem never came back after this. Why did it crash – I don’t know. What did I do to fix it ? Nothing. Why it never happened again? I could keep asking these questions all day, couldn’t I?
However, after this rebooting I noticed something new. I never have any icons on my desktop, I put the shortcuts to all the programs I use either into Quick Launch or into the program menu. However, totally uninvited, the Firefox icon was proudly shining in the top left corner of my screen.
Hey, this is going to be rather lengthy, so you better get yourself a cup of coffee or something …
So I moved the icon to the Recycle bin and reclaimed the clean desktop again. At this point all I had installed on my PC was: Windows XP Home with a few dozen updates, Excel, Word, FrontPage, Firefox, Logger32, N1MM logger and Smart FTP client.
I have decided not to run any anti-virus software, neither anti-spyware or anti-adware as I noticed the more software I installed the more computer was acting anti-itself (this is the latest word to be added to all English dictionaries).
By the day three or four I had that Outlook spam (or anti-spam) thing popping up a few more times, each and every time telling it not to come back again, but it doesn’t seem to negotiate well.
That day I also noticed that my PC was getting rather sluggish, at some stage the Firefox would take half a minute to open. Quick jump to Task manager revealed that the process called wuauclt.exe (automatic updates) was using 99% of processor, so I killed it. The computer came back to normal speed after that, but I rebooted it a little later anyway. It was working fine for some time and then started doing the same, so I opened the Task Manager and a list of services and stopped the automatic updates service, which also killed the process. I then decided to disable the services altogether, otherwise I’ll get to know that Outlook anti-spam update rather well.
Not more than two days later, while enjoying the absence of the automatic updates another thing popped up – Install shield is asking me to do checks on installed software, just in case there are some updates. Arghhhh! Thanks heaven this thing understands word ‘no’ better than the ‘Windows automatic update’ does.
Since I am a huge Formula One fan, and there is a race this weekend in Bahrain, I have downloaded my favourite usenet client – XanaNews, just to see what’s the latest blurb in the news groups. So I installed Xana, connected to the news server at my ISP, downloaded a list of groups and subscribed to a few. Spent an hour or so reading the posts, posting a few replies myself, and happily going to bed just after midnight.
This morning (Saturday) I made myself a cup of coffee, booted my PC and lo and behold there is Xana News icon on my desktop. Remember how I religiously keep the desktop clean? OK, I move the thing to trash, go to Start menu, Programs and start Xana News from there. Program opens, I click on BigPond News folder but there is nothing there, not a signle group, not a single message. I click on to retrieve the news groups from the server and there is this announcement of the day on my screen – “Unknown news server”
Hello? I have connected to this server last night, downloaded newsgroups, subscribed to a few, downloaded 20-30,000 messages, read a few dozens and also posted replies. Now, it’s all gone, absolutely nothing there. So I reconfigured Xana, did all the same things again and checked the news groups – my replies from last night were still there. Phew, so it wasn’t me!
Throughout the day today I have used the PC just to browse the web, do some emailing and that’s about it. Oh yes, I haven’t installed any email client since I use Gmail (GAFYD) for all my emails.
My MacBook Pro is sitting right next to me, switched off for the first time in – I don’t know how many months, but ready to jump into action tomorrow morning.
So how did i like using Windows for a little over a week ?
As a fairly experienced user I can say I am more than able to handle it, but it comes with a huge amount of frustration. So many times I felt almost violated by the operating system. I ask it to do something and it doesn’t. I ask it not to do – and it does. Almost anything I tried to do, any application I used, I had some issues. It’s just not funny.
I don’t know, I may have gotten spoiled over the time with using a Mac, but there are so many things that are in the way when using Windows. It is just so intrusive, so attention seeking, it’s really soooo counterproductive.
With Mac I feel like with my TV, I turn it on, use it for what I need and turn it off. And when I use it next time, it works in exactly same way. With Windows it feels like turning on the TV, adjusting the colours and sounds, then half way during the movie having to adjust them again, seconds later to update firmware for the digital tuner, then getting back to the movie but from the start again. Of course, the TV would change the channel on its own sometimes, then ask me if I don’t want it to happen again, and when I say so – it does it anyway. And all I wanted to do is to watch the movie.
I also missed the simplicity of Mac. I was doing some updates to the code on this website, so before I edit anything online I usually just Ctrl-A to select all and drag it to my desktop to back it up, in case I mess it up. On Windows I have to create a text file, give it some name, paste the text and save again. Just annoying.
I do lots of screenshots but after doing only one on Windows I couldn’t be bothered anymore. On Mac I do Ctrl-Cmnd-4, highlight the area and get the screenie delivered as a jpeg file onto my desktop. I then attach it to an email and off it goes.
In Windows it doesn’t work that way, you have to print screen, then go four levels down through Start menu and open paint, paste it there, crop it, save as – select file type and finally have it on your desktop. And no, I can’t simply paste it into an email as Gmail doesn’t let you do that, you have to attach it as a file.
These things may sound like “oh, get a life” to some Windows users, but they are exactly what makes Mac so great – simple, easy and it always works.
At some stages, early in this ‘adventure’, I was even considering buying Windows Vista, now I’m sure I’ll wait for at least Vista SP4.
Good night all, it’s 3:00 am here. I’ll be back to my Mac in the morning to proof-read this before it goes live.
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