Ode to a lousy laptop, Windows 7 edition

Sing along as I count down the 12 things I hate about my new Windows 7 PC

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It's that time of year again: time to don the silly hat and play high-tech Santa to my wife and children. For the latter, I finally gave in and bought them a Wii, their first gaming console. To my wife I'm giving the early (as in now so that she can pillage eBay) "gift" of a new Windows 7 laptop.

I put "gift" in quotes because so far it has been anything but. Glitchy and error-prone, this unit has been a thorn in my side since the first boot cycle. In fact, I can't recall a more disappointing initial product experience (though installing OS/2 version 2.0 for the first time comes close). This slick-looking, ultra-low-power-usage unit is a real clunker, full of half-baked features and questionable design decisions.

[ Go deep into Windows 7 with the InfoWorld editors' 21-page Windows 7 Deep Dive PDF report. | Find out Randall C. Kennedy's choices for the top Windows tools for IT admins. ]

It's enough to inspire me to express my lamentation in song -- which is why I've arranged my top dozen grievances in true holiday fashion. Here, in all their glory, are my 12 miserable days of pre-Christmas PC support hell, aka "Ode to a Lousy Laptop."

12 random reboots: It's a cross we all must bear. Whether because of a buggy driver or some superimportant Microsoft automatic update, Windows simply decides it needs to reboot. This is especially true on a crapware-laden PC like this one. The lesson here? Save early, save often.

11 flimsy hinges: Coming from an IBM background, I got spoiled by those wonderful titanium hinges. Nothing is as smooth and reassuring as an original ThinkPad, certainly not this creaky, clumsy-feeling model. Yuck!

10 drive trays catching: Can someone please design a CD/DVD drive tray that doesn't catch on every possible surface? From tablecloths to carpets to random sheets of paper, this thing just won't keep to itself. It makes me long for the slot-loading bliss that is Mac ownership.