Windows Rant

[NoOp]

<rant>
I stopped supporting Windows for my clients six months ago but still
maintain Win for my relatives et al. Performing what would be simple
changes in Ubuntu on WinXP brought home why I stopped supporting paying
clients.

1. My brother had an old 700Mhz Sony PC with 348Mb of ram & I decided to
give him one of my faster 1.8Ghz/1Gb recycled machines. Figured it would
be a simple swap of the hard drive (similar to Ubuntu); forgot that you
need to do an reinstall in-place of Windows to get the drive to work in
new hardware. One week later he *finally* has the machine.

  The process involved reinstalling WinXP(Home) over his existing
install (data was preserved), reinstalling all new security upgrades &
drivers for SP3, retesting, rebooting about a bazillion times,
retesting, rebooting, etc. Overall it was a complete PITA.

2. In the process of upgrading my brother's system, my 2.4Ghz/512Mb test
machine died. The death of the machine was apparent as it had had
thermal shutdowns etc. When the machine died I pulled the ram & other
associated parts as usual. I then realized that the ram would work in my
son's Sony PCV-RX770(UC) that had previouly been running with only 512Mb
of ram.

  I pulled the machine, brought it over to my test bed, added another
512Mb of ram from the the dead 2.4Ghz recycled machine for a total of
1Gb, fired it up and updated Ubuntu 10.04. No issues. I then tried dual
booting to WinXP(Pro)...

  The machine wouldn't boot to WinXP in normal mode. It would only boot
to Safe Mode. After several hours of messing about with it, I finally
put the machine back in his room & reconnected the original keyboard and
wireless mouse; the machine booted in WinXP just fine. Pulled the
machine and brought back to my test bed & the machine wouldn't boot in
WinXP again (just would keep rebooting). Brought the wireless mouse &
keyboard to the test bed & it booted just fine. Note: he uses the dual
boot to run his iTunes & a few Win specific games. The issue was that
WinXP didn't have the necessary drivers to run a simple USB keyboard and
PS2 mouse... amazing eh?

So, to all those that complain about Ubuntu/linux not working with
hardware xyz, keep in mind that it's not just Ubuntu/linux that have
such issues. A simple mouse/keyboard change in WinXP(Pro) prevented
Windows from booting into normal mode.
  Further, we become accustomed to having the luxury of pulling a hard
drive in Ubuntu/linux and swapping into another machine with out issues.
If you've ever had the displeasure of trying the same on a Windows
machine you'll know what I am talking about.

Disclaimer; one of my specialties a few years ago was maintaining and
supporting Windows machines. I reckon that you could classify me as a
'Windows Expert'. I could fix nearly any system (including eradicating
viruses without reinstalling etc). So I'm not unfamiliar with the OS,
nor bashing it overall. I'm just pointing out that sometimes we forget
how difficult it is to make simple hardware changes in Windows, and how
easy it is in Ubuntu/linux.

My apologies to the list for the rant, but it's things like this that
make me appreciate Ubuntu/linux daily. I deal with bugs/issues in
Ubuntu/linux daily, but that is primarily because I choose to do so (via
this list). And yes, followups should probably go to the 'sounder' list...
</rant>