My Vista Premium OS Acer 4810T laptop is less than two years old, running on the Pentium Dual Core chip, before the new i-3, i-5 and i-7 Intel multi-core chips were launched. Since then, the Vista had many problems, which I survived. One burnt out motherboard, and two damaged HDDs and one replaced LCD TFT. If you consider all these, you would think that Acer makes cheap and lousy laptop notebook personal computers. But the history and facts require some objective delving, and some of those failures were because my notebook was travelling alot, and I could have protected it better.
The after sales service by Acer was good enough for me to feel loyal and I did not hesitate to buy an extended warranty for the notebook for another five years.
Just then three weeks ago, after my Vista 4810T was quite stable, the only real bug was that the CD-DVD player would hang with any disc placed inside the tray and cause the dreaded Vista Blue Screen of death. Playing around with CDs to DVDs and other discs became a mini-scientific laboratory business. Do this, it sort of works, but do that, and it simply hangs; any other time, you get the Blue Screen of Death, and the notebook reboots.
So, after running the Windows 7 Advisor and all things looked great - just a Toshiba Bluetooth application and the Intel Pro wifi application did not have Windows 7 drivers, it warned. Checked other websites and found that users noted that these two would still work, except if you ran their respective diagnostics.
So I went down to Challenger and bought a Windows Upgrade Anytime key at around 10.35 pm. Back home at around 11.15 pm, I excitedly tried to launch it and found that the website said that this application was no longer available. It looked like a US site. I tried the Singapore Microsoft site and it showed that this was available, but click the links here and there and you realise that the SG site only featured a store catalogue of products but nothing you can buy online or download.
You then realise that Intellectual Property zones actually is far from globalisation... Like the Warner Home Video digital download you get free with Code 1 DVDs, when you try to download it, you find that your player codec (Code 3 or Singapore/South East Asia) prevents you from doing so. Left hand in US sells you a Code A Blu Ray disc with free digital version to download but Right hand does not recognise your right to do so, even if your disc is legitimate. I wonder if this may ever be a contributing factor to piracy? LESSON LEARNT: do not buy Blu Ray discs with Digital Copy included. Why waste the money or time.
Now, at 11.45 pm, and rather exasperated, I quickly decide to return to Challenger by taxi which cost me S$12. When to the Customer Service and spoke to Ivan Tham and indicated that I could happily buy the Windows Upgrade Home Premium version at S$235 but asked him to help me with getting a refund. Wisely, he could not guarantee me but said that after Microsoft verifies that the software key was not unlocked, then it may be possible. I think now that the S$139 paid for the Windows upgrade is a "write off" as was all the time and cab fare spent.
For the sake of the idea that Windows 7 is so well approved by so many people, it may be worth it. So I thought. Now, I finally got the disc and I needed and at 1.30 am the next day, I sat down on my desk, with my laptop all ready. Backed up and removed key content, and even used the Windows Easy Transfer so that my Acer W500 Iconia tablet PC would have everything I needed installed and set up. The tiny built-in memory was somewhat tricky but I was consummate about making it work and put some niffy effort and thinking into how I used the 32GB SD card slot to park all other non-program data in it.
Then I launched into the Windows 7 Upgrade on my laptop, which in theory, just meant that you could keep all your existing software and this would simply, well, upgrade the OS.
Yeah.
Hahaha.
They designed it that way for maybe two PCs in the whole world and every body else is a sucker. And those experts who got suckered, were too wounded to admit and must have conspired to simply gloat - "Oh yes, it was really easy, and mine worked perfectly" while they secretly squirreled off and bought a replacement PC with Windows 7 pre-installed. The others, simply and finally learnt their lesson and migrated to Mac.
Did I tell you that I dated a MacBookAir last year because my Acer 4810T Vista notebook was having serious hiccoughs? Well, after holding fast in belief and consorting to all sort of pragmatic solutions (like using an external disc player unit instead of every touching the built-in unit on the Acer 4810T), I decided that I could live with the whacky Vista Acer notebook. Buying the Acer W500 Iconia with the Windows 7 showed me that I did in fact like Windows 7, and the Acer tablet technology more. In fact, the Iconia W500 made me a bigger Acer fan and a better Windows (7) fan.
So, back to the fateful Monday three weeks ago, when I began installing the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade on the Acer 4810T. For starters, it seemed fine and wow, really, cool.
I logged on to Facebook and bragged about it and quite simply, jinxed it all.
Firstly, the ESET firewall could not be re-started.
Then the real Windows 7 Balrog began the attack like a zillion arrows across the hallowed depths and darkness of Khazad-dum. The Windows Updater seemed to have heaps, and heaps to download and install, and after attempting to re-start, the machine began to hand. Logging off... but never. Shutting down... but never.
This went on for two days, and I skipped any winks, staying awake to download, repeat, shut-down, repeat, force re-start, repeat, wait, download, repeat, re-start. The experience could make Alan Ginsberg write 21 new poems and 4 new novellas on the evils of technology as drug and hell, and we are all the abused victims of rich and fat corporations that skimmed off our insatiable need for efficiency. Whatever happened to the human mind, memory, and fingers clicking away at key strokes hitting through a carbon ribbon and striking paper.
Came to a certain point, I knew my Acer 4810T was "Lost". Euphemistically and plainly. Some facts are wonderfully simple in truth and you cannot argue any other way.
So, ensuring that my Acer W500 Iconia was good enough for me to use for my work assignment the following week (that was, last week) to Hiroshima, Japan, I brough the notebook down to Acer and abbreviated the whole experience: Blue Screen of Death when loading disc in player, and yes, upgraded to Windows 7 and system constantly "hangs".
So, finally I was doing my laundry out in the open, and it is all hung out for the fact. Windows? Why just hang out the laundry outside on the clothes line to dry, right? Yes, Windows does not work and all it does it drive you outside to hang yourself, after your system hangs, hangs, and stays, hung!
Now, I look at th Windows logo on the screen at start-up and marvel.
1. With all this crappy problems, why there can not be another company like Adobe to create a really simple and great OS to rival Windows and Office?
Answer (from Steve Jobs): Mac, dummy!
2. So why can't Mac work with Flash?
Answer (Jobless Steve): Darn, you can't trust them Adobe folks. Did you notice how your Adobe Reader 9.2.0 now does not launch or work after installing Windows 7? (Yeah, wow, that is so true!)
What is the lesson, three weeks later, and with an Acer 4810T Windows 7 upgraded personal computer that is whacky and wonky and really slower than when you ran Vista on it, and now can't even run some software, or install, or uninstall, or well, even run reliably?
LESSON: never get Upgrades. Buy exactly what you want, use it and then dump it. At this rate, the greatest waste of our time is really TIME and ENERGY to simply keep things running.
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