< PREVIOUS ] [ 1999 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
While searching for a Bronco-free environment recently, I hit upon the notion of a computer upgrade. Turn off the office radio, close the office door, and hole up for an afternoon installing a bigger hard disk and the Windows 98 upgrade package.
Before this adventure, I had been rooting for the government in the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit, lately pushed off the front pages by more lurid news (what Bill Clinton does to one person is apparently more significant than what Bill Gates does to millions).
And if that fails, there's always the possibility that the Invisible Hand of the Free Market will reach out and smite Microsoft with a thunderous whack that leaves it as desolate as Digital Research, Borland, Ashton-Tate, MicroPro and dozens of other computer companies that were once vital and important.
Installing the new bigger hard disk took a couple of hours, mostly devoted to copying files from two old drives (1.2 gb and 800 mb) to the big new drive (6.4 gb).
The main trick is to remember to reset the jumpers
properly to indicate the proper master-slave
relationship between the drives. It is astonishing that the
forces of Political Correctness haven't hammered the
computer industry about that terminology and forced it to
use more sensitve nomenclature, like
supervisor-subordinate
or manager-gofer.
That done, I had to hunt around town for a Windows 98 upgrade package. The computer shops have OEM versions for the new machines they assemble and sell, but the shops generally don't carry the upgrade because Wal-Mart can sell it at retail for less than they can buy it wholesale. Wal-Mart, of course, was sold out of Windows 98 and didn't expect any soon.
Finally a shop owner found an upgrade hidden on a back
shelf, and I was ready for the package that promised to
enhance your productivity
and redefine your PC's
possibililties ... You'll be amazed at all you can
do!
Well, the amazed
part was true. The book said I
just had to shove the CD-ROM into the drive, run a program
called SETUP, and the built-in wizards would take care of
everything after that.
The first two or three tries, the installation got locked into some endless loop while expanding files from the CD to the hard disk, somewhere around 38-percent complete.
Eventually, the wizard managed to reach 100 percent. Then it was supposed to do some configuration scans, to figure out what hardware was on my computer, and reboot a couple of times as it installed the appropriate drivers for the hardware.
Or so I gathered. Along the way, the wizard announced that it couldn't find the CD-ROM which held the driver files.
Now, I'd just been installing this stuff from the
CD-ROM. And now Windows 98 can't find it? The box
promised that I'd be amazed
by Windows 98, and I
sure was. Couldn't it make a note to itself in a
configuration file so that when it rebooted, it could find
see CD-ROM?
I must note, however, that Windows 98, like many other operating systems, responds to vocal commands even though this is not listed as a feature. Swear at the damn thing long enough, and it will respond.
Finally, a Windows 98 screen and I think I'm ready for the fine-tuning -- except that my mouse doesn't work. The manual tells me to click here and scroll there to look for solutions, which is of course impossible without a mouse. I suspect that if I had a Microsoft mouse, instead of a Logitech mouse, Windows would have found it by now.
Linux is supposed to be a hard-core hacker's operating
system, while Windows 98 is a mainstream product. The
Windows wizards are supposed to shield you from horrible
places like IRQ conflicts and SCSI Hell.
But
installing Linux on an old machine took about two hours,
IRQ jumpers aren't hard to set, and I've never needed more
than a day to get a SCSI device to function.
After three weeks of intermittent struggle, I still don't have Windows 98 running, even with some help from the local gurus.
One of them theorizes that Microsoft is collapsing even
as it appears stronger than ever. As soon as there's a
good Java interpreter for the Linux X-Window environment,
Microsoft is dead,
he said. That's why Microsoft
tried so hard to set up a proprietary version of Java that
would run only on Windows -- when there's a universal
version, who'll need to put up with Windows and the
arrogant company that makes it?
My current paranoid theory is that Microsoft CEO Bill Gates doesn't really care how the government's anti-trust suit comes out. I think he's been buying Apple stock on the sly, knowing that it will soar in price as millions of people, after attempting the Windows 98 upgrade, throw up their hands in frustration and go buy an iMac.
Since none of their old programs will work on the new machine, they'll need all new application software -- and Microsoft will be glad to sell it to them.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1999 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >