Sunday, November 9, 2008

Get a dog if you have Vista

Barack Obama, president elect of the US, began his acceptance speech by saying that he was going to get a puppy for his two girls to have as they moved to the White House. He, I guess, meant it as a reward for his children on his success. I think he also meant that he would have more help in the White House so he could afford to have a dog.

Dogs are high maintenance pets. You need the time to re-arrange your life if you have a dog. There is a new product available on the market that can help you to rearrange your life and generate those extra minutes that you never knew you had. The advantage is that if you had this product, if will also raise your stress levels and having a dog will not only use that spare time but help you reduce those stress levels.

Thus, I think the other reason why Obama is getting a dog, that not many people know, is that he will also be getting a new pc when he moves into the White House. And that pc is going to come, loaded, with the new operating system from Microsoft, Windows Vista.

The reason I am able to make these perceptive connections is that I have a new Notebook that came loaded with Windows Vista operating system. And having a dog has been a lot on my mind. You see, if you had a dog, you would need to play with it and take it out for walks, etc. That requires finding some minutes to spare in between various daily activities. Now if you have Vista, you would find several such minutes in between your activities, since the amount of time it takes for the system to load, the amount of time it takes to ‘Switch Users’, the amount of time it takes to put it to ‘Sleep’ and the time it provides you to wonder if the system has shut down or just some program is loading, etc., gives you those minutes you need to take the dog for a walk, to give it a bath, to give its food, and so on. Of course, if you did not have a dog, you could use the time to make a cup of coffee (or tea, if that is your pleasure), to polish those shoes that you have been putting off for a long time, to dust those (real) windows, etc.

I was skeptical of this Vista business even when I purchased this machine. Various news reports warned me about it. Even this Fujitsu Notebook machine was sold with the older Windows XP till June this year, but I procrastinated and bought it in August. So it came loaded with Vista. Too bad.

But wait a minute! What do I find in the box that the machine came in? A disk that will allow me to downgrade to an XP! Microsoft, collaborating with Fujitsu, have thoughtfully provided me with a way to switch to the older system. (Bharadwaj wants me to perform the switch sooner than later so it does not mess with other files that I may be storing. But I worry if I am going to mess up anyway and have been procrastinating.) But let us reflect on the market power of a company that knows that it has put out a dud product, and gives people a way to switch to a product that it thinks it has improved upon! Wow! And this company makes profits, and has not collapsed like all those dud banks have been in the recent past.

Now Dasharath, who wanted a dog when he was young (and was refused by me since I did not want to do all the work that it takes to keep a dog), still cannot use my reasoning above as an opportunity to get a dog, because he has a Mac, whose operating system responds much faster to his needs and therefore does not provide him with those precious minutes to perform various dog related tasks.

2 comments:

gopo said...

i prefer to spend those extra minutes cursing at the computer and breaking things to get rid of my frustration.

the time i make for my (future) dog will be quality time that will come out of things like sleeping, eating, going out, and traveling. wait a second...

Gollum said...

You got it done the easy way, Gopi mama with the downgrade CD provided by Shri Gates. I did it the hardway. Had to format my drive and re-install most of my software. I also lost some of my already preloaded software which ahem ahem were not "original".

There is a moral somewhere in the story very similar to the IceAge 2 DVD I had got for Pranav sometime back.
I paid good money and got the original DVD with it's fancy hologram sticker and separate box with cute wrapping. When I played it, it said something daft on regional codes and refused to work. I consulted the DVD manual, the shop from where I got the DVD etc but nothing came out of it. I finally picked up a fake one from the streets of CMH rd and its in pristine condition and would work in any region including Mars.

But I know your views on IPR , etc.. so I will just say that the Vista is a lousy bit of software indeed. I would love a dog but Kamala will probably throw me, the pooch and Pranav out of the house...