Ambiguous Help

A spanking new laptop!

Tommy's impressive 80GB, Intel Core Duo laptop with 1GB of RAM could easily run circles around his old laptop.

Instead, I watched amusingly as an incredulous Tommy demonstrated to me and Chong Yang how a state of the art laptop can be brought to its knees when it is not showered with the love and care you give to a favourite aunt.

Placing both laptops side-by-side, we saw, without a doubt the old laptop booted up significantly faster than the widescreen successor.

Tommy recounted his tale:

His new laptop had been mistakenly delivered to another Dell customer - and coolly sent Tommy the bill.

Needless to say, hell broke loose, and Dell retrieved the laptop for Tommy.

Unfortunately, Dell failed to restore the laptop to its former factory setting.

There were more than 60 running processes with dubious names.

Evidently, eric (the username displayed) had been a naughty boy. Besides treating the laptop like a mucous ball, sucking every piece of tech dirt; he had been visiting the naughty Internet places too...

And that set the tone last Friday. My task was to kill and reincarnate the love forsaken laptop.

Starting with trying to reinstall Windows XP, I found myself stuck on the Product Key page. Mind you, this being a genuine copy of Windows, I immediately dived into every documentation I could find before Tommy suggested calling, the dreaded tech support.

It was nearly as bad as I thought, with the long pauses between different 'experts', monotonous classical music while on hold, and unreliable Dell people.

Not getting the help I needed from Dell, they subsequently directed me to Microsoft, where after heated clarification I was after the Product Key and not the Activation Code, curtly pointed out it might be stuck under the laptop.

So here's the summary.

I called Dell to get the Windows XP Product Key which was stuck under the laptop, that wasn't pointed out by the young, useless and oblivious Dell staff, but by an enlightened, no-nonsense middle-age lady working at the Activation Code department of Microsoft.

The only bright side, toll free 1-800 numbers.

The entire process required artificial grafting of my cellphone to my ear for half-an-hour.

Even after that ordeal, the Windows installation CD still failed to format the hard drive and remove every trace of its previous life's memories.

Apparently, karma works for technology too.

My resolve to never-ever install Windows on my new PC is strengthened.

Oh yeah, the laptop was a major distraction for the real task of the day: Making sure the database manager we are currently building for Palma Housing remains on the right path. At this resource-strapped period in our company, we can ill afford to waste time building something the client won't want later on.

Whatever needed to be said was said; and whatever that needs to be done, will be done.