layout: post title: Now for wrath, now for ruin, and the redeye dawn. created: 1047320505 categories:

• Microsoft

I'm attending night courses at BCIT right now, and my MS Project term project is due this evening. So yesterday afternoon I head over to finish up the project and get it into workable shape. Towards the end of the changes asked of me by the term project, reverting to a previous version for the purpose of doing a "Save as" of the current version results in a crashed program. Open the file again, crash. Open the save as program, revert changes again, crash. Ok, computer needs a reboot.

Reboot produces error "We were unable to load your desktop", and the Windows desktop shows none of my files. I lose 90% of a 5 hour effort thanks to a Microsoft program that is so screwed up that it is capable of producing a file with features that can crash itself.

And that isn't my only run-in with the crapware Microsoft sells. I now have the Zip disk Grim Reaper that will crash and mangle any Windows computer I put it in and click on the drive. Windows simply does not have the capacity to do "Ok, this isn't working. Stop, give the user options to recover files or install a new boot sector."

Very ticked. This is the glory of using the Mac. And being in a Mac retail environment is a big eye opener. Ask any of the salesmen and they can recall two or three distinct stories of PC users coming into the store, with tales of woe. It happens all the time. There's a reason why commercials and comics can feature people taking a hammer to their computer - they're usually always Windows computers, except for the one instance in Fight Club, where the wannabe social revolutionaries decide to blow up a computer display, which was more a social statement than frustration after a crash.

Windows sucks. I can't imagine how many billions upon billions of dollars are wasted by Windows users on virus software, re-doing projects that they lost in a crash, and the other general meyhem Windows can set upon people. I know a guy who only works with Windows and Unix, and it took him 4 days to get sound up and running on his custom PC. Absolute lunacy.

End of anti-winblows rant.