Beta software, Microsoft, Windows and other shit things

A while ago when the first release candidate of Windows XP Servcie pack 3 came out I read a couple of reviews and got sold on the fact that it promised some speed increases over SP2. Now I'm no fool and I knew it wouldn't be anywhere near the equivalent of getting some hardware underneath the thing but I didn't think I'd experience anything near as retarded as I have done.

Shortly after the release candidate was made available I formatted my laptop ready for a clean install. The first thing I installed after my fresh windows was SP 3. Now I know you're about to say "It's your own fault for using pre-release software" and it completely is! I doubt I'll ever use a pre-release of something so fundamental as an operating system ever again.

So what happened? Well, I came into the office Tuesday after being ill on Monday to find I couldn't use remote desktop as "this beta software has expired"...
After a quick chat to James I discovered he had had the same problems and that you needed to install a "technical refresh". This involved uninstalling the previous version, which was installed before any other software on my system.

So I uninstalled it, spent about half an hour trying to get IE back on my system as the uninstall had shagged it up royal and made the decision never to use pre-release software again.

Now I don't blame myself completely for my world of shit. Sure I installed it in the first place but Microsoft made it a bag of shit!!!

Why and how?? Well this is many-fold

1) By making it time limited in some way

This is ridiculous; if someone has gone to the trouble of installing Beta/RC software you can pretty much guess they are going to be tech-savvy enough to know when to upgrade to the full release or get the new / updated release candidate. Don’t all of a sudden make their system unusable!

2) Make uninstallers that work.

Once I’d taken the plunge into uninstalling SP3, and waited hours for it to happen I decided NOT to install the technical refresh and stick with good old SP2. Which you would have imagined would be what I was left with after removing SP3 as it was a SP2 disk I used in the first place. But no, it wasn’t! It was some clagged up hybrid crock of shit which windows update wouldn’t even recognise. I had to download the SP2 installer and run all of that again to get my system back to “working”

2.1) Make installers that work / don’t fuck your computer up

So after all that I was left with IE6 so I installed IE7 and which now refuses to accept cookies, loads of sites complain about security and loads of other shit has gone wrong.

At 1st opportunity I’m installing Mac OS 8.1 and having done with it! Well maybe not but it just baffles me why developers make things so overly complicated. Ok, it’s Beta and you’d prefer people not to run it forever so stick a warning in there. Don’t cripple their system for them and force them to brick their computers. You have a responsibility to the end user as much as to the business objectives, unless one of those objectives it to piss users off!

How many developers does it take to figure out some stats

Matt, Andy and Rich stress over some numbers

Shit

Tax returns are shit, I've decided.

Come tomorrow I shall be promptly de-registering as self employed after having just submitted (well almost) a tax return for gross annual earnings of ZERO pounds and ZERO pence.

What a fucking waste of time and all for the luxury of potentially being fined or dragged through court if I, in my flagrant disregard for the laws of this lovely land, have inadvertently made a bollocks of of the frickin thing.

Ohh well, I can only sit here and cross my fingers and hope that I'm not one of the unlucky percentage that actually get their forms checked over and that I will *get away with it*.

Christ, It's hard work being a honest citizen!

Pissing governments...