tim's experiment

I have become resigned over the years to the fact that any computer running Windows will sometimes not work.  Bill Gates may be the world’s most generous man but I suspect that may be a sign of a guilty conscious. You may get rich on a small scale by doing a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. But for record-breaking levels of wealth it is difficult to beat selling over-priced rubbish. 

A new technology is entitled to our indulgence for a while. Early personal computers were temperamental and sometimes downright difficult to deal with. But they were pioneers in a new field. Users, makers and programmers had a lot to learn. We have now all learned something. Users have learned that if you can afford it you should buy an Apple. I know there is a continuing argument about the rival merits of the two systems. But this is conducted between computer geeks who are advanced users. For the ordinary working stiff who just wants something reliable and easy to use, Apple wins hands down. Makers have learned that they are at the mercy of the software people. And the software people have learned that they can get away with a lot.

Consider my current computer. I have now had about as many computers as I have had cars. As it is impossible to get any meaningful repairs done to them I buy the cheapest possible computer and throw it away when it starts behaving badly. This is a cheap system as long as you keep the old monitor. Compared with cars, though, my computer is a grossly unreliable piece of work. The car – OK it’s a Toyota – starts when you switch it on. Failure is so rare that you do not consider it a serious possiblity. The computer, on the other hand, is so prone to reluctance to start that it comes with a free “start-up repair” programme which you run, sometimes in vain, when it refuses to start. This refusal can take two forms. In one it goes through all the motions and then dies. The screen goes blank. The CPU mutters to itself. In the other version you are treated to a little animation which indicates, mendaciously, that something useful is happening. After a while you realise that actually nothing is happening except the graphic display. Underneath it is a little line of type which claims copyright in what is going on for Microsoft Corp. I’ll say. Failure to function as expected is their signature dish.

Last Tuesday I made a new discovery. We had failure to start of the blank screen variety. I checked the hardware, which was fine. I ran the start-up repair, which made no difference, back-dated the system twice and floundered about a bit. Then I noticed that there was a flash drive in one of the ports and removed it. At this point a little window opened and announced that failure to start when a memory device was in a USB port was an established Vista glitch. It even had a registration number. That made me feel much better.