Hasta la vista, baby!

Microsoft are cunts. Utter, utter cunts. Money-grabbing, time-wasting, monopolistic cunts!

It started a couple of months back when i bought my first computer. Yes, you read that right - my first computer. Until now all my blogging and other computer-related activities have relied on computers at net-cafes and work, as well as the sloooow one my mate Horlicks has. But my new job needed me to have a laptop so I bought one. Granted, it was a cheap one, so I have no right to expect speed or a massive memory for storing porn, but I should be able to expect to do basic office-type work on it hassle free, shouldn't I? Not according to fucking Microshit...

You see, all new computers now come with Windows Vista as their operating system. No choice in the matter, that's just how it is now. Having encountered the frustration that is Vista once before I was not hugely enamoured with the idea but I thought "What the hell... about time this ol' carcass was dragged into the 21st Century. Can't be that bad, right?"... fucking Micuntsoft!

It was only at home that I discovered that Vista does not come with Office as standard. No spreadsheet, no word processor... nothing that 99.999% of computer owners use on a regular basis. All I needed the thing for, aside from net access, was those two applications, but all I got from the fuckers was a 60-day trial version of the "new-improved" Windows Office... *sigh*. "Okay, I can live with this... use the trial for 60 days, during which time I have to save up enough to rival the economic spending power of a small country in order to pay for the full version. That should suffice for now, right?"... fucking My-cock's-soft!

I soon discovered that this spanking new Office wouldn't let me do simple tasks I had taken for granted (adjusting spreadsheet margins on the 'Print View' screen; Ctrl + Y to repeat an action; etc....). What the fuck? Why not? Why make a new version less usable than the previous ones? Then a friend pointed out that as this is the trial version it probably deliberately does not allow you to do these things, as blackmail - sorry, 'encouragement' - to buy the full version straight away. Now this, to me, is stupid. Isn't that what the time limit is there for? Why give out an inadequate tool? Doesn't really make me want to get the whole package... I would say it's akin to getting a free trial sachet of washing powder that does pretty much everything except get your clothes clean. "Try our brand - it smells great and bubbles nicely, but if you actually want to remove general dirt from your garments you'll need to buy the full packet".

Now, add in to this the fact that when I tried to open Word and Excel files that other people sent me I discovered that they are not compatible with my software. Neither are my files compatible with older Windows systems. They even have different suffixes. All of which makes the wonderful new and improved Office facility completely fucking useless to me.

Oh, and speaking of incompatabilities, my printer/scanner is also now of less use than the Scotland rugby squad, despite being less than two years old. I was given it a year ago, still in its packaging, by neighbours who were leaving the country, although my lack of computing facilities meant that it stayed in the box until now. Where it will also be returning shortly.

All in all I have wasted about 60% of my work time and another 30% of my free time this last week trying to decipher instruction manuals, following software upload procedures that result in "Unable to complete" messages, e-mailing tech support and getting answers to completely different questions from those I had actually asked and generally hurling obscenities at the wankers who designed all this. Fucking Microbrains!

Which is why I am not typing this from my laptop but from Lovely's, which has an older, more sensible version of Windows. And also why I have had to lock all my windows, lest I hurl it out of one of them in a fit of Anti-Gatesism...

Cheers m'dears!