The Horror, the horror

ZOMG has this turned out to be a disaster.

I have concluded that the ultimate blame for all of this lies in the fact that I don’t have a real copy of XP, only a dumb ass recovery CD for the factory settings I got with my computer. I have Windows, but I really don’t have Windows. If I wipe my hard drive and try to reinstall from the recover CD, it is IMPOSSIBLE to get XP to run. It will install the files, but it wont boot.

I can install Linux and it can boot fine.

I’m going to install the RC1 of Vista I think rather than buy a full blown copy of XP. I’m so frustrated with Microsoft and their dumb ass upgrade and recovery CD’s, and their stupid activation codes. I have a perfectly good copy of Office XP, but I can’t use it because I can’t perfectly remember how I put in my name when I first installed it, now I can’t reactivate it. It’s worthless.

As I’m packing up all the crap in my house, I’m dumbstruck as the number of Microsoft CD’s I have accumulated over the years. The majority of which, I couldn’t use if I wanted to because they’re all upgrade CD’s or recovery CD’s for computers I don’t have (or just the paper license to the OS, with no CD’s at all).

The funny thing is, the only thing which has ever driven me to consider pirating Windows has been dealing with all the copy protection bullshit. Absent that, I’d really have very little issue with Microsoft.

Linux has been an education. There are parts of it which are good, and parts which are not. It doesn’t recgonize my video card and there doesn’t seem to be much support for it. Simple things like installing Flash are far more difficult than they need to be. (all applications really) I can’t easily run multiple monitors. I have a brand new video card, but I can’t run beyond the base resolution and can’t run 3D rendering natively. That seems like pretty basic stuff. All of those limitations have been less frustrating than dealing with Windows if for no other reason than I didn’t pay for it and I can always burn a CD if I need to.