Why I Have Come to Hate the PC World and Microsoft

Things have been somewhat acceptable for a number of years; until this year, until now.

Perhaps your adventures have been more maddening earlier than mine; I only know what I know and when I know it. What I mean by that is this:

My first foray into computers took place in the 80's. My former girlfriend's brother, Tom, was a engineering geek of the First Degree, a whiz who had a huge house in the Santa Cruz mountains of Fornicalia -- a house that he built himself and a house that completely survived the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 because he had the miraculous foresight to build a house on JACKS that were not unlike the springs in your car. Yes, he lost his swimming pool; the house took the hit mostly undamaged whilst others around him were damaged horribly and beyond repair.

At that time, in the mid-80s, he had one of the first MacIntosh computers -- the kind with the computer and small screen built into one unit -- called the 128k if I remember properly. It had the screen, drive and floppy built into one vertical unit with, zounds, this new thing called a MOUSE. I found it an absolutely amazing device!

After seeing his computer, I bought MY first computer, an Apple Macintosh IIcx. I had to drive to Cupertino, Fornicalia, in order to buy this computer (in 1989). The thing cost me OVER $5,500 and I had to prove to the seller that I was good for the check I wrote. I can recall having to CALL my credit union to verify I could cover my check. But I walked out with a IIcx, a monitor, a full keyboard and an Apple Imagewriter printer. For Christ's sake, I had to take a LOAN out to cover the purchase.

For $5,000, here's what the Mac IIcx had: it ran at 16 mhz (but even then, Mac had a 32-bit data path!), and came configured with 1 meg of RAM and a 40 meg hard drive. The Imagewriter printer had to make TWO to THREE PASSES to complete ONE LINE OF TEXT. One line of text, therefore, took at least 15 to 30 seconds to finish, depending upon its motivation at the time.

From there, however, because of my work, I was dragged kicking and screaming into the PC world. I had just promoted to detectives and was the recipient of a crazy, boxy kind of thing called a PC which ran at 32 mhz and had a green screen. But I could type into it and produced prodigious amounts of reports. And from there came my first PC, a Dell laptop running at 75 mhz ($4,200), two Dell desktops, then my current custom PC desktop (4 gigs RAM) and my current HP Pavilion zd8000 laptop (where I have been making my posts for 2 years now), with its flawless 17" screen.

But boys and girls, I am so verily TIRED of screens that are becoming more prevalent day by day:

Was this information helpful to me? How about fuck no, Microsoft, and fuck you.

Already VISTA is having nasty problems that Microsoft knew about for months.

And, after all this, after having my PC work just fine for quite some time, I am wondering (am I really a tinfoil-wearing Conspiracy Theorist for thinking this way??) if Microsoft has built into its OS certain cues that FORCE the user to either upgrade or become so incredibly irate with his or her system that they, in disillusion, throw up their hands and acquiesce to all the ridiculous Service Packs that seem not to work or begin to consider slamming down hundreds more for the NEWEST Microsoft OS -- this time entitled VISTA?

Am I a loon for even thinking this??

All I hear about, all I read about (I subscribe to PC World) are the doom and gloom dangers of any PC coming into any contact whatsoever with the internet or various other nets. I hear and read of dozens and hundreds and thousands of viruses and corrupted codes written for no other reason than to fuck with or kill the hard drive of your PC. It's an entire sub-culture, for Christ's sake.

I already lost one entire PC hard drive to a virus.

I think I have HAD IT with the PC world. I think my NEXT computer is going to finally get me BACK to my roots. I think my next computer is going to be some form of an Apple laptop. Because, you know what? I just want shit to be simple; and I couldn't care one wanton fuck less HOW it works -- I just want it to WORK.


Because, when I actually start to don my tinfoil Conspiracy Theorist Hat -- well, maybe it's time for me to change my entire computer mindset.

BZ