Uma, John, and Windows 7 Home Premium

My whorish lust for things computational has cooled over time. Nowadays I’m far more interested in the dandy goodies I can create using computers, rather than exploring the beasts just for their own sake. I consider this to be a positive development. Hardcore nerdiness has its charms, but I was never cut out for a life in IT.

That said, I remain enough of a geek to keep a Windows-based laptop on hand, despite being a Mac guy and proud scoutmaster to a troop of Apple products, each with an assigned role in my life and a niche in my house. Maybe I just want to keep tabs on the rest of the computational world. Maybe I just don’t want to lose what was once a fairly strong set of Windows skills. I knew how to set up a Microsoft Exchange server within a full-bore Windows NT network, after all. I knew all about group policies and security tokens and shadow copies and network protocols. I fell off the Windows wagon around the time Active Directory started elbowing out the old domain system. Nor do I indulge in programming any more, after a good long run during which I became quite adept at object oriented programming in C++, using the Windows 32-bit API via the Microsoft Foundation Classes. But just as I called a halt to all things Microsoft right before the introduction of Active Directory, I also declined making the conceptual shift to the .Net framework. On the Windows timescale, I’m an old fart.

On rare occasions I might actually need a Windows-only program, or I might be moved to amuse myself by following a pixellated white rabbit down the bottomless Microsoft hole. Virtual environments à la Parallels or VMWare Fusion are all very well and good, but honest-Injun hardware is more to my taste. My previous Windows laptop was a Dell Studio XPS that sported a feature list a mile long. It should have been spiffy. It should have been cool. It should have been a prince among laptops. But it wasn’t. Some nincompoop designed it so that the opened lid blocked the one and only ventilation port. Since a laptop works only when the lid is open, overheating was the Dell’s regular modus operandi. Its fans started by buzzing but soon began whirring hysterically as the smell of scorching plastic filled the room. Dell was remiss in their taste-testing for that particular model.

I sold the XPS before it melted away altogether and acquired a Samsung that matches the XPS tit-for-tat in both features and performance, but adds Apple-envy goodies such as an aluminum body and a large trackpad that responds to a variety of gestures. The engineering is intelligent. The build quality is tip-top. It’s no MacBook Pro, but at 1/3 the price of a comparable Apple laptop, its relative shortcomings are not only understandable but forgiveable.

The best thing about an Apple laptop is its gold-standard operating system, OS X. Microsoft’s Windows 7 marks a significant improvement over its precedessors, but Windows 7 is no OS X. Particularly noticeable is the lousy impression that Windows 7 makes in its virgin state on a brand new computer. Windows totally screws the pooch where the intial setup experience is concerned. Setting up a Windows laptop is frustrating and annoying. It takes way too long. It’s unnecessarily complicated. If setting up a new computer is like a first date, then Windows 7 is Uma Thurman to John Travolta in that blind-date-from-hell scene in Pulp Fiction.

My new Samsung introduced itself to me with a colorless and humorless opening screen that required me to determine the hard drive partitions (oh, how very romantic of you), after which it got to work installing the operating system. Thus the first twenty some-odd minutes of our relationship consisted of watching it attending to itself. Our date: Windows 7 started out by buffing its nails and ignoring me.

Once Windows 7 was finally up and running, it pestered me with demands: the OS needed updating, Java needed updating, some other stuff needed updating. But because the setup routine neglected to determine my wireless network or ask me for a password, all those demands were accompanied by whining about the lack of an Internet connection. Our date: first it paid no attention to me, then it found fault with me.

I bought the laptop at a retailer that adds annoying automatic software—i.e., stuff that runs whenever the computer is booted up, even though the software does next to nothing. It started bitching about the lack of an Internet connection, too. So I got the wireless connection running. Anything to stop the kvetching. The laptop immediately required a restart to install updates. Our date: it demanded that I run it back home before we could continue our evening.

The Samsung must play nice with my networked Macintoshes. You’d think that would be simple. Mac OS X includes a Windows networking suite and so a networked Mac should look just like a Windows box to Windows 7 Home Premium. But no dice. Windows 7 Home Premium is designed to speak only to other Windows 7 Home Premium computers. It can’t see a Mac. Microsoft will tell you that your only option is to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional, but there’s a way around the limitation. It involves hacking the Windows Registry—a distinctly studly IT-type activity. Our date: I was obliged to perform minor surgery in order to render my companion socially responsible.

There’s a secret to making Windows 7 useful. The secret is to turn everything off. Everything: updates, notifications, security warnings, start-up programs, value-added crap. Everything. I have no truck with a fretful, self-absorbed computer. I need these 64 updates right now! it says. Tough titty, I reply. Your virus definitions are out of date! it shrieks in horror. I don’t care, I respond. You haven’t backed up the computer in 1.4 days!! it moans. Get over it, I growl. This software may harm your computer! Are you sure you want to proceed?? it gasps. Stop questioning my authority and do as you’re told, I order.

In fact, what Windows 7 needs more than anything else is a Fuck Off key.

The Samsung’s setup is complete. It’s up and running, ready to roll, hopefully free of its inborn paranoia. Maybe it can be used without incessant hand-holding. Only time will tell.

That is, provided I ever start it up again.

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