IT columnists still haven’t grown tired of singing its praises, and the public’s collective brain is like an empty cave that echoes the general noise.

The main reason for this, many of us feel uncomfortably in the back of our heads, is the low bar set by its predecessor – Windows Vista.
When Vista was released, everybody got their undies in a bunch. They wrote the OS off faster than the metaphorical one legged man in a butt kicking contest.

Microsoft pleaded hard, but were shouted back at like the evil little meanies we all know them to be.
Their theory?
The OS is not as bad as the popular opinion makes it out to be.
Since there’s no point fighting popular opinion, they needed, instead, to come up with a replacement, and soon. There was too much at stake – it was all or nothing.

So they did a small experiment they called the “Mojave experiment”.
The premise – give everyday users computers loaded with a new version of Windows – codename “Mojave”, and get their opinion of this OS as compared to Windows Vista.

The average pre-demo score for Windows Vista was 4.4.
The average post-demo score for the new operating system codenamed Windows “Mojave” was 8.5.
Infact, 94% of respondents rated the “new operating system” codenamed Windows “Mojave” higher than they initially rated Windows Vista before the demo – not a single one of them rated “Mojave” lower.
Now comes the fun part – Windows Mojave was actually Windows Vista – the only difference, for the users that took part in the experiment, was the name.

With the success of this small scale experiment under their belt, Microsoft decided to go big – by releasing Windows 7.

Apart from a revamped taskbar, there really isn’t much difference between Windows 7 and Vista. Windows 7 is fully compatible with drivers written for Windows Vista and heck, they even have the same major version number for the underlying kernel! (Windows Vista was build 6.0, Windows 7 is build 6.1 … not 7.0)
What was released as Windows 7 might as well have been a major(?) service pack for Windows Vista. Windows XP Service Pack 2, anyone? But, honestly, would that be good enough for a public that have already had an opinion formed for them?

Let’s admit it, Microsoft have proved their point – they were right about Windows Vista all along – the only real problem with Windows Vista was that of public perception.
They didn’t waste anymore of their time and effort trying to reason with the mob mentality.

They yielded – they buried Vista before everyone’s eyes, then secretly exhumed it and gave it an alias – with great success.

“We know Windows Vista was a bad product and all, but here’s one that’s much better – it’s called Windows Mojave Windows 7”

Deeply concerned by the way natural food was killing their kids, hundreds of good looking mothers march upto the said “Department of Nutrition” … they want blood … er, answers !
Scared out of his wits, the guy with a stethoscope around his neck (evidently, a doctor) reveals the sensational findings of a research “carried out over a period of three years on hundreds of kids” – kids who drank Complan grew twice as fast as those who didn’t.

You heard it here first folks ! Why, you ask ?
I’m pretty sure it’s some sort of government conspiracy. “They” don’t want us to know about the findings of a “research” that conclusively proves that regular food is just not good enough for modern kids. The outing of this “research” would mean the end of all naturally grown food, and by extension, the end of all involved in the sham of a business called farming.

What the advertisement doesn’t tell us is about the protocols used in the alleged “research”.
Were the children from the two groups (A – those who consumed Complan, and B – those who didn’t) equal in all other respects ?
I’ll bet the groups were divided based on the children’s existing diets. Here is the pitfall -

Group A – kid drinks Complan regularly -> kid is probably from a well-to-do family -> kid probably has a better overall diet, notwithstanding his Complan intake.
Group B – kid doesn’t drink Complan -> kid is probably from a poor family -> kid is probably malnourished anyway.

Honestly, which well-to-do family doesn’t get their kids some health drink or the other ?

Anyway, just like the helicopter moms in the TV ad, I’m utterly outraged at the way mother nature has failed to provide us with sustenance.
Thanks to health drinks, today’s kids can have proper nutrition – provided it’s the right brand …

So I burned the mammoth 3GB Vista DVD image onto a rewritable disk (you didn’t think I’d commit a regular DVD for that stuff, did you?)
And onto the installation process.

First annoyance came when Vista refused to install on a FAT32 partition.
The exact reason behind that will become later on, but for now let’s just say they have a “good enough” reason for insisting on NTFS.

There were no customization options offered during the installation, and after about half and hour Vista was sitting pretty occupying a good 8.5GB of harddisk prime estate.
Of which, around 1.5GB was the pagefile and another 1.5GB is hiberfil.sys (dedicated for the hibernation feature).

Next, Vista wouldn’t recognise my LAN card.
And since the card manufacturer’s site no longer exists, I had to rip out the driver files from my XP installation.
I must give it to the Vista developers … for all the code re-write they have put into Vista, all my XP specific drivers still work like a charm on Vista.

And then there is the “user access control” feature.
Windows has always been criticised for letting users easily mess up their system, unlike certain other “secure” operating systems where any major system operation requires reentering the root password.
So they put the same into Vista … any system wide change now has to go through a number of warnings and prompts.
Naturally, the next thing I did was to turn off user access control.

But admittedly, this is good thinking on the part of Vista developers.
The average joe will be wary enough of messing up his system, while the ones who really know what they are doing will simply disable this feature.

Next I took a peek into the task manager. 700MB RAM usage right off the boot !
Now don’t get me wrong, I have a pretty decent system that I threw Vista upon and 700MB is not really a big deal, but this somehow wouldn’t let me sleep peacefully in the night.
So I took up trimming Vista next.
Search indexing service was using around 100MB. I suspect this service might use lesser or more varying from case to case.
Another good concept, and let me tell you, it does make for some lightning fast searches. But I know exactly what I put on my PC and know exactly where I put it, thank you very much.

TrustedInstaller service was using another 90MB or so.
Which brings us to the reason behind the choice of NTFS.
Even the administrator doesn’t have the ownership of the system files, but this service called TrustedInstaller has full permissions on them.
Thus, any change made to system files has to be through this service. Again, this way the Vista developers intend to prevent users from messing up their own systems.
And yet again, a power user who knows his way around things can easily take ownership and full control of everything, while average joe is unable to directly mess with the system files

After disabling thw above two and many other useless services like TabletPC related, Diagnostics related, Media center related, backup/restore related and update related services … Vista boots up using under 250MB memory.

(note : The task manager itself is using around 8 MB out of the usage shown here)
And that with Aero Glass – the desktop windows manager service (DWM) enabled and running!
Stopping the DWM and Themes service bring the memory usage down to around 150MB!

But the Aero Glass looks so good that I’m willing to dedicate a 100MB of memory to have it running.
Just look at these neat looking Windows screenshots :

So the drama began with the usual political correctness …

This beauty contest has got absolutely nothing to do with physical beauty, it’s all about brains …

These women are not here to be commoditized, they are being judged on their mental faculty …

blah blah blah …

To this date, my ribs hurt from rolling so hard on the floor.

No wonder then that next on agenda was a brain-storming session on beauty tips and products … selflessly sponsored by a popular cosmetics company.
The contestants won such prizes as a year’s worth of supply of mentally stimulating face-washes and appointments for further brain-storming at elite beauty parlors.

We join the contest after a short, completely social-service oriented, commercial break … for a photo shoot of the contestants.
They’re all there, making titillating poses to the camera, looking like over-polished Barbie dolls. All in all, a gathering of the most select intellectuals if I ever saw one.

Then the contestants were interviewed one by one, and this turned out to be an endless torrent of thoughts of sheer genius:

I guess the best thing about me is that I’m very confident …

She “guessed” that she was “very confident” … go rack your brains over that!

I think the quality that I have and contestants don’t, is my humility …

She’s so “humble”, she couldn’t help but boast about it.
I told you we were dealing with some pretty nasty complicated intellectual stuff here.

I don’t know about the others, but I’m here to win …

My roomie’s natural reaction to this brain-liquefier – “the others? well they’re here for the buffet, of course !”

And before we all dismiss this as just another beauty contest … let me remind you that they did play a game of Sudoku.
That it didn’t count towards their final evaluation (which invariably was all about the contestants walking around in expensive dresses and heavy makeup) is completely irrelevant.

One of the least good looking girls ended up winning the contest.
I guess it wasn’t about physical beauty after all!

A typical soap episode starts with a recap, which takes around 5 minutes and covers the last episode’s story in more detail than they did it during the actual run of that episode.
Then they take a commercial break. Then two ladies come on screen looking at each other menacingly and the camera man shows off his skill by zooming in and out at their faces, while the music troop plays dramatic drum rolls until … the next commecial break.
Again the same scene appears, this time incredible amounts of tears flowing from the ladies’ eyes. (their makeup remains intact, by the way).
And before you can say “this is so freaking boring” (when you’re high on marijuana to the point of time-dilation, and then say it really slowly), it’s over.
Phew … that was a lot of storyline for one episode.
Heck, I’ve seen a soap where a family spent the whole episode wondering who’d sent them that mysterious parcel … I hear they didn’t open that parcel until 2-3 episodes later.

Just incase you missed any of the blindingly furious action, there’s always a repeat telecast soon. Or you can always watch any other soap, and pretty much find the same story.

There are also reality shows and talent hunts.
Which usually mean telephone/mobile operators making loads of money and people doing disgusting things just to be on TV.
For example, eating squishy bugs, jumping off cliffs while their pants are on fire or even trying to sing !
“please please please vote for me please please please” … amazing ! what talent !
(My roommate digs all of those though … you can get an idea of what I have to put up with)

You’ll also find film awards ceremonies on almost half the channels.
Which involves self-inflicted “celebrities” pretending to be cool and imporant.
There will also be few such “stars” dancing like frogs on the stage, and a couple of anchors cracking the worst of the jokes.

Cartoons ?
They seem to be all Japanese these days.
If you are juvenile by the standards of a kindergarten kid and like to make a great fuss about spinning tops or cards or imaginary animals … you’ll probably like them.
But by it’s very definition, a cartoon is supposed to be funny.
Maybe the licensing fees are lower for these Japanese animation films.

The sports channels have all hired retired/expelled cricketers to discuss Saurav Ganguly, and I’m not going to even mention all the music/devotional/fashion channels due to the obvious obsecene nature of their nonsense programs.

That leaves me with the discovery channel, and you know what ?
They’re running a women’s day special …

I’m going back to playing some game on my computer.

As I was going through the blog-replies to the satirical articles on that site, I noticed something very striking …
religious zeal, fanaticism !

Tormented rival browser fans spitting venom all over the place :

internet explorer suck

Microsoft f**king sucks, just look at all the god damn BLOATWARE! One example, in my opinion, is Internet Explorer. It is so f**king slow, it takes forever to download programs! Don’t get me started on outlook express, I got more worms from my mailbox than I have from random downloads! So I say once again, F**K YOU!

THIS SITE WAS MADE BY SOME 12 YEAR OLD LOSERS WHO ARE SO FAR UP BILL GATES A**, IT’S NOT EVEN FUNNY. THEY CAN GO F**K THEMSELVES. GET FIREFOX. – [followed by several big "spread firefox" banners]

LOL, I bet this site was written* by a bunch of hackers, fed-up of people having a secure browser which they can’t hack.

* sorry, typo, “copied”

trust me! Firefox is much better

GET A LIFE A**HOLE!

f**k you

IE, doesn’t even suppor right PNG images, please, HOW LAME IS THAT? Neither it does RSS, and suxs with CSS! HAHAHA, Firefox supports a way better all standards. So… Don’t mess with the Fox!

So there … just a little sample which represents the general mood – “You do anything but profess allegiance to my religion, you deserve to die” … the satire all lost on them.

Some blame IE for slow program downloads. Others connect IE with computer naivety. Most just plain abuse IE users.
No one seems to care about the fact that it was Firefox fans that created the spoof site in the first place.

I don’t see IE users doing the same at the FireFox fansite.
The IE users I’ve seen can have a peaceful discussion on a forum. Can we say the same about FF users ? Heck No … they have the “word of God” that must be spread at all costs …
Dare to state that you use IE – on a public forum ? Try it and you’ll see what I mean.

I’ve seen sites that detect visitor’s browser and prohibit IE users from entering ! (usually with a derogratory message like “Get a life and a real browser” … at the same time providing a spreadfirefox.com affiliate link)

Missionaries, Intolerance, Rioting, Professing.
Sounds uncannily similar to religion …

Not much, as I learned the hard way.

Prologue

I have an Apple iPod mini (6 GB second generation), which decided to go dead for no good reason.
It would not turn on, do nothing but heat up like crazy when connected to the computer, and showed all the signs of having been done for.

Even more disheartening was the fact that the evil gadget contained some precious data that belonged to my brother, apart from quite a few songs.
The Apple service agreement clearly states that any user data can and will be lost if the iPod is given in for service.
I had to hold long counselling sessions with my brother to help him get through the trauma and he finally accepted the fact that he had seen the last of his data.

A gadget that cost 15 kilo bucks going bad certainly is no good news.
nBut I was not to be flustered, I had the “Apple global replacement warranty”™ to save my day !

A Nail-biting Drama

I got the number of the Apple authorised service center in my city and called them up.
They invited me to come down and give in the iPod for preliminary checkup, after which they’d decide what was to be done with it.

Quite eager to get my music back into my life again, I rushed down the the place (no thanks to my roommate for driving me down there).

The person incharge, had a look and declared the iPod dead.
I imagined my brother telling me it was no big deal … with that typical sarcastic expression on his face.

Next the guy connected it to his Mac (yes, they do have one of those expensive machines at Apple authorised service center), and what I saw next was like light at the end of the tunnel.

My dead iPod had the bitten apple on it’s display !
The hard disk was still fine, and so was all the data.
I was almost ready to believe in miracles.

It was decreed that the iPod was a good candidate for a replacement.

After a “little” persuasion, the person agreed to backup the important data on his computer, promising to keep it safe till he transferred it back to my replaced iPod. (no thanks to Apple policy or my roommate)

I was told to check back a week later.

I left the place, feeling much better…confident about being reunited with my iPod and data real soon.

Not really

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The week passed, I called up the service center to inquire about my belonging and if it was time.
A curt reply from the clerk – “not yet…check back next week.”

The same thing happened the second and the third week too.
Somehow hearing “not yet” became a part of my routine.
The service staff or Apple showed absolutely no interest whatsoever.

The service center staff disowned any responsibility, taking the easy way out by blaming Apple for not being prompt enough.
And the Apple Asia contact did the same few days later by saying that the iPod was on it’s way … just stuck at the customs clearance.rn

An Irrelevant Rant

They should have called me just once for followup, and should have proactively informed me of the status, the day they promised to deliver.
It’s the least they could have done.

But who am I kidding ?

I wasn’t in America where I could sue them for being so irresponsible.
Here, only a potential is customer worth any bother at all.
I lost any importance I had for them the day I completed the purchase deal with them.
Apparently, service is not their duty … it is a favour they do to their customer.

The Climax

But undoubtedly the most interesting thing happened the fourth week (my iPod still on it’s way), when while inquiring about my iPod as had become my habit of late.

The clerk told me that the delay was not their fault.
According to him, there had been an incident at their headquarters (another city) and that all the iPods in their stock had been stolen !

I could do nothing but hangup, utterly amazed…

Conclusion

The iPod did finally reach me – a whole six weeks later. Half the warranty period that remained already spent waiting for it.

The service center employee then told me about an extended warranty offer.
Cough up some more money – about half the iPod’s original cost, and get another 12 months of “Apple global service warranty”™.

Now how could I possibly refuse an offer like that ?
Just think of all the peace of mind I’d get by paying a “little” money ?

Thanks a lot … but I think I’ll pass …