I have found great humor observing 'MAC' and 'PC' in the excellent television commercial series from Apple Computer. Virtually every item that MAC picks on PC for is something I have encountered in the many years I have been cursed to run operating systems from the far northwest. The good news for MAC is that the list of things he picks on PC for is so long the series could run forever.

Recently I moved to a new laptop, something I do approximately every three years. I considered different operating systems chiefly Windoze, Linux, and MAC-OS. Unfortunately being an IBM business partner in my daily life I was essentially boxed into Redmond's worst, as far too many of the bits I use daily are windoze only or are only supported there. My theory with staying with windoze was that at least if I was on a supported platform I would likely be able to do my job, after all the laptop is supposed to be a tool, not a hindrance.

/RANT *ON

Windoze, how I hate thee, let me count the ways.

First the new machine came with the scourge of the PC, VISTA. Oh my. Such junk, such trash, such a pig and not even any lipstick. On a dual core 2.2Ghz Thinkpad with 3GB of memory and a 7200 RPM SATA hard disk it took FOR-EV-ER to boot up. At one point I ran the 'speed test' and scored something like 5.7 which I'm told is very good. Before I get back to Vista I'll be needing about a 57! After taking two dog-years to boot up it wouldn't connect to my V5R4 partition though it would connect to V5R3 and V5R2. Huh? Worse it would connect to my XP-Pro desktop but not to my old XP-Pro laptop. Sorry guys no connectivity, no use. And can you believe that every single time you run a program, even the ones on Vista's own control panel it asks you if you're sure you want to run the program because 'It could damage your machine'?! I nearly popped a blood vessel after the 50th time. How does that help security? It only helps some lawyer claim it's not MS fault if you blow up your PC with a Trojan or a virus…. How could it be that bad? So back to XP I went.

Initially I was unimpressed with issues I had to fight through, and then it got ugly. The previously very useful tool 'IBM Access Connections' failed to connect. Silly me, I made the mistake of turning on logging to see what was wrong. HA! Remember those 2.2Ghz? Simply logging from that program uses one entire core! AMAZING. With help from support, I back-leveled the software so that at least I could connect to a network.

The hibernate mode is completely useless. When you come out of hibernate in the mini-dock I use in my home office, it displays ONLY on the external monitor. Because I stretch my desktop to both the laptop and external monitor I'm S.O.L. No task bar, no start button and the only way out is a forced power down and re-boot with the button. Ain't that a nice touch.

The suspend mode works only slightly better. When you open the lid and touch the FN key to wake the machine, the display comes up for about 1 second and then goes black. The only way to get the display back is to close the lid and then open it again. How stupid is that?

Also when you suspend you lose your video settings completely. Even if you suspend in the mini-dock and wake it up without moving it, the stretched windoze desktop is gone and everything is piled back onto one display. Nice touch.

Here's a beauty. Every use FTP? I do every single day. FTP to your System i and do a 'dir' or 'ls' command. If nothing ever comes back you probably have that miserable excuse for a firewall turned on in XP. Nice touch Microsoft breaking FTP for me. So I must leave the firewall off because I simply don't have time to turn it off and on every time I crank up FTP.

And this stinkpad laptop. Why IBM did you sell off the Thinkpad? If I ever find the guy who made that decision, why I'm gonna {content deleted so the Dr. doesn't get checked out by IBM legal. Again.}

Last week I moved the thing a bit on the desk and it popped the power connection from the docking station. "So what" you say, there is a battery in the laptop right? And it's about 98% charged so big deal, just beep to tell me and I'll plug it back in. NOTSOFAST! The laptop goes to a blue screen that says 'Call hardware support'. Well it turns out that IBM still provides (or perhaps routes) support through 1-800-ibm-serv. I dial and eventually get a technician who after hearing of my problem tells me the solution. This is a great solution by the way, and here it is; are you ready? This is good. You're sitting down right? I still don't believe he said this, he said: "Don't Do That." AAAAARGH!!!$%^#$ AND he followed it up with this amazing and eloquent statement: "They're not made by IBM any more you know." At that moment I really wanted to take this guy to the woodshed, I also wanted to talk to the duty manager but given my state of rage I merely hung up on the idiot.

You think I'm done picking on this laptop? HA! It also has a habit of simply rebooting while suspended. Guess what happens? (No I don't lose any work because I Never, ever, under ANY circumstances suspend without saving my work.) What happens is the thing gets cooked silly hot because 99% of the time when it's suspended it's in my backback! A nice touch indeed. THEN because it shut down rudely it takes a couple more of those dog-years to come back up. When THAT's done it asks me if I'd like to take the time to tell Microsoft about the severe fatal error that XP has 'recovered from'. (Tell me is there such a thing as a fatal error that's NOT severe?) Recovered? HA! It didn't recover one single thing! No programs I had open are opened. No files I was working on are displayed. In fact it has completely re-arranged my task-bar and my desktop as well. It turns off the task pad, changes the size of the icons, re-sequences the icons and randomly changes other attributes too. This is all the more annoying because I have selected the option to 'Lock the Taskbar'. Must be a cheap lock. And of course programs like Notes take forever to start because they must 'consistency check' my databases. Crash penalty, add 10 minutes.

Some day this laptop will meet its end. I am dreaming of the day when I can 'Office Space' the thing. Stomp on it maybe? Nah, too easy. Cut it in half with one of my chainsaws? Possibilities…. Drive over it with my brother's motorhome, no wait, one of my cousin's big dually tractors towing a fully loaded triple axle manure spreader. Oooh yes, that would make it as thin as a MacBook Air!

No No No, I have the best idea of how to send this piece of junk to its final resting place, a real 'Myth Busters' finale to this its sad existence: Feed it to the biggest, the baddest, the most awesome disintegration machine on the planet. I'm talking about the The Morbark model 7600B Wood hog. 70 feet long, 13'6" tall, 11 feet wide, 53 TONS and 1,200 HP (Yes One THOUSAND 200 HP) of diesel powered chipping mayhem! Feed it into that thing and there wouldn't be a chip left big enough to identify! Oh to picture a thinkpad going from one to a million pieces in about ½ second. Sweeeeeeeet!!!!!! Oh, and the chipper? MADE IN MICHIGAN, USA! Can't say that about the stinkpad.

/RANT *OFF, or, maybe just RANT *morelater

- DrF