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From this week's TechWatch
Vista challenges my IQ
And reminds me of my dirty fingernails
By Jon Peddie
hate those surprise IQ tests; I never do
well on them. You know, the ones where you have to figure out how to open a
plastic box specially designed to be more convenient, or worse yet, childproof.
I got a new phone the other day and it took me five minutes to find the On
button.
Vista is the same way. It
takes precious seconds trying to find commonly used things, and why? No good
reason, just because some GUI designer thought a button should be moved.
One nice feature of Vista
is it shuts down and boots up fast—at least so far it does, who knows what will
happen once we load Office, virus checkers, and the sundry tools and codecs
that tend to proliferate on our machines?
But it has been
absolutely mad-dening trying to get some things to work. I won’t bore you with
the trials and tribulations of getting 3Dmark06 to load and run the new AMD HD
2900 XT. However, I will give you a precaution. We had an AMD Radeon 1950 XT
running in the Vista Ultimate test system, and replaced it with two HD 2900
XTs. I can’t remember how long it took, but on the third reboot Vista insisted
we register the program. Ah, but it is registered. OK, to avoid wasting any
more time we complied and tried to register it. No no no, said the MS website,
this program is already registered—and there we were in the Catch 22 of Vista
land.
Next step call MS
support. Here, for a mere $60 an hour we could get help on getting the program
we’ve already paid for to work the way it was yesterday. Now let me digress for
just a moment and sing the praises of Caesar. Microsoft’s tech support
works—period. I’ve used it a few times, and you can bet it hasn’t been on
anything easy, and every time they’ve come through. What’s more they never
abandon you—the tech IDs himself or herself, and it really is good service.
OK, back to the rant. So
after the usual ping-pong of phone calls and holds to/from India, we got
vectored to Mecca—a.k.a. Redmond. That’s called escalation, and we were
escalating (and steaming—all we wanted to do, for crying out loud, was benchmark
a couple of boards).
Finally the Redmond dude
explained to us that any time you switch out a graphics AIB you have to
register Vista. This sounds too far-fetched to be true but he and JPR’s Robert
worked something out that got us up and running, or at least got Vista back.
Segue to the point.
Time was when I could fix
my car. I knew where things were in the engine, and underneath. I had tools,
and even a desire to find out what was wrong. Today I doubt I could change a
spark plug, although I can still tell you where the air compressor, alternator,
and power steering pumps are.
Working on cars was fun
but it came with drawbacks: bruised knuckles and permanent dirt under your
fingernails.
Time was when I could debug DOS, tweak a WIN INI file, and
even edit and fix registry entries. I can still, for the most part, replace a
mobo and PSU, and field-strip a DVD drive. But the OS is getting further away
from me and subjecting me to those spot quizzes, those unscheduled IQ tests.
So I’m thinking of just
saying no to hacking about in the OS and its sundry services and programs. I’m
going to go straight; it will be a little weird as I adjust, but it will have
one positive side effect: no more dirty fingernails. 
