While working today a window popped up and reminded me that I have less than 2 weeks to validate my legally bought legitimate copy of Microsoft Vista. It’s not the first time this has occurred. I still haven’t gotten around to reinstalling Vista twice as recommended by Microsoft to get rid of this, but it is the tipping point that has finally driven me to lose faith in a company I’ve used for 20 years. From my first XT running Dos through many years of new computers, including building many of them myself, through Win 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, ME, XP and now Vista I’ve remained a PC guy. I’ve literally spent tens of thousands of dollars, and yet Microsoft finds it necessary to punish me today, despite doing the right thing and running a legal copy of Windows on a system that came pre-installed with XP: the bloody product key is still stuck to the side of the box, not that it matters to them.
Today I ordered my first ever Mac.
I’d had advice to buy a Macbook Pro or similar, but I already have a laptop, one that will pretty soon probably be running Linux. Given my expenditure already on a wireless keyboard/ mouse, webcam and twin 22″ monitors the only logical choice is a Mac Pro. They’re not particularly cheap, but I shopped around and I didn’t buy directly from Apple. Went for the basic twin 2.66ghz dual core Intel Xeons, only ordered it with 1GB of Ram though, $480 for an extra 1GB is insane and I’ll pickup some generic Ram that will work in the system in the next couple of days. 500gb hard drive and bluetooth support just for good measure, you can never future proof a system enough.
I’m not sure whether to be sad, angry or just plain excited. Obviously a super fast new system is exciting, but it’s sad that it’s gotten to this point. The anger is directed at Microsoft. Here’s hoping that the new system meets expectations. I’ve got no idea when it might get here, it’s coming from Melbourne so I’d guess a week, and I’ll write some more when it finally arrives. I’ve got a lot of homework to do in the mean time, like tossing up buying Office for Mac or just ditching Office all together, replacement software, running Parallels etc… all things that need to be considered for a new system.
Update: it just occurred to me that read alone this sounds like I’m making the switch just because of one thing. I’m not, it’s the many things in Vista that don’t work, the error messages I get every morning about a MCE db error, the programs that wont run, the programs Vista wont allow to run, and the never ending “are you sure boxes”…whoever thought up that idea at Microsoft should be shot. Simply I probably wouldn’t be making the switch if I’d stuck with XP. Win XP was a great OS, I never had any issue at all across 3-4 boxes and XP editions including MCE (which I’ve still got on a dedicated box). XP was the pinnacle of Microsoft programming, Vista is like the last days of the Roman Empire.
