My First Vista Rant

This is Bill Gates thinking about the hundreds of thousands of suckers who spend good money on lousy operating systems. I have a new notebook computer and I decided to go ahead with Vista since I wanted to get a good feel for what issues we would face when our whole campus goes to it (IF we do).

There are a few things that I like about it, and many other things that I am just starting to figure out. However, the painful things are easy to spot and quick to frustrate.

The first thing that really ticked me off was this. After using a flash drive to transfer some files, the OS could no longer locate the optical drive (CD/DVD burner) which had previously been drive letter E. Apparently the flash drive stole that letter and then didn't give it back, or something along those lines.

Turns out that this (or other things very similar to it) has been happening all along with Vista. Literally hundreds of thousands of people have probably been affected by it. The Microsoft website advised that I install the proper driver for the DVD drive. Buggar off!! The driver is installed and always has been!! I had to get my advice for a fix from a user's website. Since that time I have found several other sites where the fix is also explained - but never by Microsoft. The site that I used currently has 451 comments in the thread of people who have had similar problems, dating back to April, 2007. The solution is to do a regedit and delete some lines of code from Vista. There's a great idea, let's expect the common people to go in edit their registry - because nothing could possibly go wrong with that - right???

This problem has been around since Vista was introduced and Microsoft has done nothing about it! Can't wait to see what I find next. Ick!!!!! (Double ick, actually)

CC Flickr photo by Domain Barnyard