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.
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Download now »I'm sure you will clean up what you can to make the system perform better, but you're stuck with the keyboard and video. You are probably stuck with the loud fans, and I bet you never receive an update to the touchpad driver. So much for Microsoft's rich user experience.
We have yet to hear from the novice user. Most experiences being reported come from the most technical users. They can work through missing drivers and installation glitches. They are more accepting of older hardware not being supported. And they can de-crapify the computer.
I'm puzzled that you don't "out" the maker of the ill-conceived clunker. You would be doing Costco a favor.
Related to longevity, my last three laptops have all been HPs, the oldest being 5 1/2 years old and still running like new (XP home upgraed to XP Pro). I bought the second one almost three years ago (Vista) and it is now loaned out to a friend. The most recent is the best I've ever owned and runs Windows 7. Each new purchase was to acquire newer technology. All three have been in to the shop, the oldest one twice, the other two once each, all for hardware issues, and in each case I got spotless service from HP.
My Windows 7 (64-bit) PC was purchased at Best Buy for the same price as RCK paid for his at Costco. It did have a faulty touchpad, which is why it went in so soon for repair, but based on RCKs description, I got a better deal than he did. This unit has a 17-inch screen yet is light for it's size. It has the usual stuff (CD/DVD writer, infrared, built-in wireless, Web cam, etc.) plus 4GB of RAM and a 320GB HD. The reviews of Win7 had been so wildly different that I didn't know what to expect, but I have a pretty good idea of who to believe and who not to now.
There are some wonderful things in Win7 that didn't exist in Vista. By the way, in all the time I've used these three laptops I have never had a BSOD, nor have I ever had an unexpected reboot. Related to viruses, the WinXP box had a couple over the years, never the Vista box and not so far with the Win7 box. I stopped using both Norton and McAfee a few years ago and use AVG exclusively now.
Traditionally, Macs were seen as better for graphics design and probably still are. But I do find it interesting that animation shops use PCs and not Macs. I know this because my daughter is in that field and all the labs she works with use PCs for animation projects. This indicates to me that, at least today, whether a Mac or a PC is better for a given purpose is more dependent on the available software than it is on the hardware.
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