A shattering experience with Windows

Those who opt for Windows over Linux or Mac OS X should be prepared for trouble

As you may know, I am a staunch supporter of open source alternatives to Microsoft. My enthusiasm for all things non-Microsoft was reinforced the other week, after I agreed to "sort out" our builder's new Windows XP PC, which would crash every time it got past the log-on phase. I still can't believe what followed and wonder if Microsoft ever factors the kind of appalling waste of time I had to endure into its fantastical computations of return on investment. I presume not.

First, the machine warned me quite correctly that it had not been shut down properly and recommended a scan, so I let it scan. Half way through, the scan hung. I tried again, this time it hung in a different place. Subsequently it always hung at the same place. Only a really incompetent system can't even scan its own disks, let alone repair them.

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At the suggestion of my son, I removed the disk, put it in a FireWire caddy and connected it to his Macintosh. The Mac had no trouble reading it, so at least we were able to back up important files onto one of the Mac disks.

Things went downhill from there. It was obvious that the XP hard disk would have to be reformatted, but, as there was no Windows disk, just a barcode with the XP Home reference number, I had to make a phone call to Time. The company said it would send a disk for "a small additional fee". This turns out to be 70 quid, which is hardly what I would call small. Time helpfully pointed out that I could get it for free if our builder took out the five-year extended warranty. It was at this point that I decided to hang up.

Anyway, given that our builder has paid for a licence and so have I, I used my disk and his number and managed at last to reformat the drive.

Next I started on the upgrades, service packs, security add-ons and so on to make this definitively underwhelming operating system modestly secure. This took just about all of my Saturday afternoon. Then it was time for Norton Antivirus, which, after being installed, told us that it was taking over the security and would therefore disable the Windows warnings so we wouldn't get them twice. (How do I know if Norton disables Windows from doing something that Norton cannot do? Answer: I don't).

At this point, ZoneAlarm - which my son prudently loaded off-line before all these shenanigans started - informed us that it had blocked 54 intrusion attempts, one of which was considered severe. These occurred while we were trying to update Windows.

So finally, we reinstalled 7GB of backed up files knowing full well the machine will probably succumb again within weeks. Norton then had to scan everything, which took ages.

I have never had to go through anything like this with Linux. My son has never had to do this with OS X. Why do we still have to endure this kind of hassle with Windows? Will it ever get better? Of course it will. Do you know there are fairies in our garden? No, really.