Last summer (glorious time of year with no wet white cold stuff) my wife acquire a laptop computer. It was an Acer, and seemed to be pretty nice. It came with the operating system from the 8th layer of hell (WinDOHs Vista). She hated Vista with the same passion Sarah Polin feels toward Family Guy and so I replaced it with XP. It was my first encounter with Vista, also the point when I found a) most laptops have SATA hard drives and, b) Widows XP doesnt' come with standard SATA drivers, making installing it a bit of an issue. Fortunately her computer bios let me reset to ide mode for the hard drive. I later discovered a Toshiba laptop that didn't offer that bios option and I had to slipstream SATA drivers into a copy of XP.
Anyway, after hunting down, downloading and installing her drivers and all her favorite programs, the laptop was running like and charm and all was well for about 2 months, then her screen started developing lines. She showed it to me and it looked like a hardware issue. The laptop was under warranty so off it went. I just got the thing back. Now Acer was actually pretty easy to deal with on it. They said the lcd was "bleeding" and it was covered at no cost. Really the only problem I had with it was they reimaged the hard drive back to factory original. Now the repair agreement warns that they may need to do this to fix the problem, but this issue was a faulty lcd screen, not a driver issue of operating system issue. One look made it pretty obvious what was wrong, so why wipe it and start over? I suppose if I griped I would be told they had to diagnose the thing, but truth is it's stupid.
The thing came with a disclaimer claiming that the warranty would be voided if any operating system other than Vista was used. I doubt that would stand up legally, especially with microsoft being looked at for possibly violating anti-trust laws. I can see both sides I guess. I would hate to have to eat the cost of repairing an item is it was damaged by an improper driver being used or something, although basically I would think a driver would either let the component work or it wouldn't work. It might cause the company to spend some time diagnosing the issue, then resolving it, but I would think the compontent wouldn't need to be replaced. But really, if there are drivers available, what should it matter if I run Vista, XP, 7, or some form of linux?
I don't like Vista. Just moving a file from one folder to another was a chore and a half. Microsoft is trying to make an operating system that is stable, secure, and does everything anyone could possibly want and is idiot proof. Why? Let other people worry about browsers, image views, media players, ect. Build the darn operating system and let other developers worry about the rest. If you want to offer the items fine, but don't bundle everything together and cram it down our throats as a package deal that runs slow, crashes a lot, or requires me to confirm what I want to do and give permission 38 times before my computer does it. The little bit I have played with Windows 7 it seems a big improvement and I think I can probably live with it, but at the moment I think I will wait and see. My experience with first, second, or third editions of a new microsoft product is not good. I have a lot of stuff for XP also, so for the next year or so I will stick with XP. I would almost like to switch to Linux, I have tried a couple of different builds on it and like them, but the 2 online games I am hopelessly addicted to don't support it so no can do.
Anyway, I told you that to tell you this. I shipped her lappy off via Fedex air. It was returned Fedex ground. Those aren't the samething, at least not here. I found a door sticker yesterday stating they had tried to deliver and needed a signature. I was supposed to sign it and leave it on the door. The picture of the laptop sitting on my snow covered porch under the dripping icycles waiting for me to get home firmly in mind, I called the number on the tag and convinced them to hold it in the terminal. They first told me holding for pickup was not part of the ground service, but when I explained what it was and why I couldn't be there to receive it, they agreed tand gave me an address. Now I was speaking to a 1-800 number rather than the actual local terminal. I didn't recognise the Ten Tex Road name and asked if it was off Jackson Street, I was told no it was showing as off Brown Mill Road. That wasn't too far from my work so I felt safe.
The next morning I verified it was being held and called work to say I would be a few minutes late. I then drove to Brown Mill Road and went to the end of it without seeing Ten Tex Road. I did see a Fedex Ground sign in front of a semi-deserted warehouse with noone there. I then drove to Jackson Street and discovered that not only were Fedex Air and Fedex Ground not the same (oddly UPS seems to live with one terminal for all their travel elements locally) but apparently mortal enemies. After making some symbols in the air I assume were to ward off evil, (either that or I am now cursed to never ship another package via air) she gave me some very vague directions. I went to work and looked up the address on the mighty mapquest. I printed out the instructions. It looked like I should have taken Brown Mill Road, taken the first left onto Ten Tex. I wondered how the hell I missed that.
So I drove to Brown Mill and the first left was not Ten Tex. I again drove out to the end of the road and again found no road, right or left was called Ten Tex. I returned and took the last right and it wrapped around and came out about 100 yards off 111 from where I entered Brown Mill Road. Remembering the Fedex Air directions, something about moved behind a truck stop, I went to the truck stop. I noticed that the entrance to the truck stop continued across the front and wrapped around the building so I followed it and it became a road. Following this road I encountered a road turning to my right called Ten Tex. This road lead straight to the survialist's armed encampment, I mean the FedEx Ground terminal.
About 2 years ago I had to drive to Charles Bass Correctional Facility for a parole hearing. It was interesting in that Charles Bass was located in an industrial park in Nashville. You are driving along passing warehouses and factories and then suddenly come what looks like any other large factory except for the 8 foot tall chainlink topped by 5 strands of razor wire. FedEx Ground only had 6 foot of chainlink and only three strands of barbed wire, but still I couldn't help the flash back. Fortunately a driver arrived when I did, and he used his id card and passcode to get us in and he tracked down an employee for me, as apparently the huge building only held one. The turnstile you use to get in and out looked like either a medevil torture device or some futuristic transport terminal. Heavy steel with the key pad and card reader locking it, you feel like you are caught in a giant gear about to be crushed. It was kind of cool. You could probably like hold off an army of zombies from inside it, provided there was enough food in the break room vending machines to sustain you.
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