Dear Microsoft

Dear Microsoft,

Against the advice of all of my colleagues, I decided to install Vista on a new computer I just assembled. I spent a lot of money on it and a lot of my time to assemble it. I made sure that every single component was Vista compatible, even spending $200 on a video card instead of a $30 one that would have worked fine with XP.

Yet, I kept on getting the same blue screen of death during installation; one which provides no real information about what the problem is.

So finally I turned to your company to get some help. And on the first screen of your website I'm prompted to enter the "Product Identification Number". I entered the number found on the yellow sticker on the product box but am informed that this is not the what's required.

So I looked up on your site to find out where I should locate the "Product Identification Number". Lo and behold, it says to look on the Help - About screen of Vista.

Isn't that just brilliant!!! I can't install Vista and you demand that I enter a number that is displayed once Vista is installed. Is this some kind of elaborate psychological experiment and I'm the guinea pig?

Please send me some competent professional help. And just so there's no misunderstanding, I'm talking about the technical type, though I may soon need the psychological variety as well!!!

Remote Desktop

Being away for a month, I had the time & space to clear my head and think. One thing that became crystal clear was that I needed to improve my workspace at my home office. So I moved things around quite a bit and am very happy with the end result. Thanks to some advice from one of my best friends, a young lad in Mexico, I figured out a way to finally clear my desk of the huge 17" CRT monitor that once consumed a large footprint on it.

Its only purpose was to access a desktop computer that I use as a "server" of sorts for running a database and holding large files. But the fact is that I only rarely need to turn that monitor on. But how to get rid of it?

The key lay in turning on a neat feature in Windows XP called Remote Desktop (though some variation of it is available on every operating system. Once activated then I could connect to the server from any other computer on my network (or even outside my network if I so wanted).

This screen appears. Once all the correct permissions are set then you just need to press "Connect".

This is the desktop screen of my server, except that I'm looking at it on my workstation. One difference is the pale yellow tab on the upper edge. It reminds me that this is a different computer I'm looking at.
Other than that, it all works exactly the same as if you were typing at your local computer. Very, very powerful!

One Of Those Tech Unfriendly Days

Last night the hard drive on my computer started making a strange clicking/clunking sound. Never did that before. After it happened, the computer seemed to go to sleep for about 5 seconds. When I woke up and turned it on, the sound started happening more frequently. I tried a few things to fix the drive but it only got worse. Eventually the computer didn't even recognize the drive altogether!

Thankfully I had copied all my critical data off the computer. So when it died, I was safe. However, I still needed a new one to get back to work. So I walked down to my local NCIX to see what they had in stock. My old one was only 30GB. I was hoping for something in the 60 - 80GB range. No suck luck with what they had on hand. So I settled for a 160GB model; much larger than I required but time was of the essence.

After running a few more errands I got back home and immediately set out to restore Windows XP onto my computer. It's pretty much been an all day affair ever since. Much of the time there's nothing to do but you still have to sit near and watch for prompts. Thankfully I had a second computer to work on.

The next time you ask a friend or family member to fix your computer - for whatever reason - keep in mind that it may take them 10+ hours to do so. The going rate for such work is usually $75 per hour. Just something to think about!

Young Brilliance: You Just Never Know Where It Might Lead

This is the current image on the Microsoft home page. It reminded me of the young fellow from Somalia who my organization gave a computer to the other day. How many people thought young Bill Gates would accomplish what he did and literally change the daily activities of billions of people. No, not all on his own, but great things often come from just one or a small handful of people. Gates has proved that intelligence, perseverance, determination, and lots of hard work can accomplish great things.