I am so done with Windows

    I got up early this morning thinking I was going to have a really good day. Yes it was raining and a bit chilly, but it was also the start of my five day weekend. Longest paid weekend I have ever had, I love the holidays.

    Before the clock showed seven this morning I got a call from a frantic co-worker. Apparently he inadvertently installed a driver for a keyboard with the wrong language for yet another co-worker. At this point I should mention his job is working on Windows based computers. The normal solution is of course, just uninstall the driver and install the correct version. Of course if was that simple I wouldn't have anything to blog about.

    The uninstaller removed the files but not the registry entries. Now every time he tries to install the correct drivers it just asks him to uninstall the old one first. He even tried to re-install the first set of drivers in an attempt to re-run the uninstaller again. Now he has to spend his day manually scanning and searching through thousands of registry entries in an attempt to find the one that is holding things up. I do not envy him at all.

    I have been in his position many times and I remember the countless hours of frustration and stress I spent on various Windows machines trying to get something to work the way it was suppose to. Driver issues are probably the worst. This is especially true when working with hardware from a smaller, less-known company that may or may not have the best quality driver programmers at their disposal. These smaller companies usually cannot afford to offer the best support and the user base is either nonexistent for help or so overly technical that any help they may offer is rendered useless.

    While I do pity my co-worker and I do genuinely feel bad for him, I can't help but look upon this as a reminder as to why I switch to a Macintosh. I have not had to restart my computer (as of this writing) for 11 days and 19 hours. Not too bad. While I do not consider myself an Apple "FanBoy" (I love my Android phone) I do really like the fact that my computer just works.

    I hope my co-worker can fix the problem and get his friends computer working before the weekend starts. I am just glad that, for once, its not me in the hot seat.