So, Cy gets a new laptop. It’s the last one they have, so it was the demo unit. Heavily discounted, good. Tested and solidly burnt-in, good.
Fsck only knows what’s installed on it, bad. Very bad.
So,
- Reinstall XP.
- OK, first find that damn 25-character code. Where the hell is it? Don’t throw out that receipt — it’s not in any of the paperwork.
- Oh. Here it is, on the bottom of the machine. OK.
- OK, now reinstall XP
- Oh, we need a network connection now?
- Merde, wireless isn’t working.
- Dig out an ethernet cable.
- Good, that works.
- Now, reinstall XP.
- Wait. Every 5 minutes, the screen will change, but leave it alone, and it will prompt you for an answer to an inane question.
- OK, we still have to do that windows update crap.
- Install all the drivers. At least it’s only one DVD-ROM worth.
- At least now wireless works.
- Install firefox, his copy of office, anti-virus, anti-spyware, set up privileged and unprivileged users (to keep things safe), RealVNC for remote access, Putty SSH and cygwin for me to be able to use it as well.
- Defrag the disk (to speed things up, since speed is the major gripe I hear about)
Oh, and let’s not foget after:
- Turn away for 30 seconds, and turn back to find weatherbug installed.
- Endure 2 hours of constant bitching, as I install gaim instead of aim.
- Hope for death to end the bitching. No such luck.
- Oh, but every other system is slow because of my anti-spyware activities. Forget the fact that there are > 200 useless and unused programs installed on the system in question.
- Oh, and I’ve never recommended a cd-ripper that works, despite the fact I’ve never used anything except cdex on windows, and it’s the only program that has ever worked. That’s my fault, you see.
- That also explains about 50 of the useless and unused programs that don’t slow down the system.
- Tabbed browsing? Keyword search on google, ebay and amazon? OK, maybe this isn’t so awful.
- Sure, if gaim and firefox aren’t so bad, let’s try Thunderbird.