:: PC - Supporting hardware ::

What for today? What about talking about companies who suck when it comes to giving decent support to their costumers? Ah, you've seen this "movie" before, right? We all did, unfortunately.

Let's begin by recalling the fact that I gave up on M$ Window$ Vi$ta 64 because some drivers, for the hardware I now own, simply SUCKED. The most important "sucker" of that moment was NVidia's driver for my 6800GT video card. After taking Vi$ta 64 off my comp and installing Vi$ta 32 bits, the comp is running fine. Oh, yes, remember that I only use Windows as my video game, because it has no other uses for me. In fact, once on my LILO (Linux Loader, that is the Boot manager) there were two options: Linux and Wintendo. Now it is Bluewhite64 and Vistendo *LOL* (and I think I am funny ;P )

Then today I took on the mission of helping a friend to rid his computer of the cumbersome M$ Window$ Vi$ta Home Ba$ic. "What's the problem with Vista, Mr. Kenjiro? You just said you run that crap on your computer!". Yes, I do. But then, ladies and gents, I have 4GB of memory. My friend's computer has only 512MB. Can ANYONE tell me why these damn computer assembly companies insist on pushing this kindda configuration on people? Please, Vista barely runs on 1GB of memory, let alone 512MB. So, his salvation would be to take Vista off and install Window$ XP. And that's exactly what I did. The installation went nice. His computer is a HP Pavillion a6220br (Pentium D, 512MB of RAM, 250GB HD, etc). Then the whole storm began. HP didn't give him (or the store where he bought the PC) the proper CDs. Yeah, no install CDs. "OK!" I thought "we can always download the drivers from their site..."

MY FUCKING MISTAKE!

On HP site there are no drivers for that particular computer, for Windows XP. What a crap! OK, I understand M$ is pushing Vista down the throat of everyone. And then, the computer makers/assemblers are trying to push it down their customer's throats. I wouldn't bother that much, if they would try and push those craps... if the hardware they are selling is decent enough to support the demands of such an operating system. As I said, Vista barely runs decently on a 1GB computer... how they expect it to run on a 512MB PC? Man... the computer was sooooooooo slow. When I took that crap (Vista) off and put Windows XP... I swear I could almost hear the computer saying "Thanks, kind sir, for relieving me of such a burden" *ROTFL*

I had to use Everest to find out which was the motherboard's brand (Foxconn) and to identify all the rest of the hardware. Then my driver hunt began. On Foxconn site there are lots of drivers for that particular motherboard. They went as far as making the Video and audio card work. But then, the ethernet card would not work, not even by miracle. I had to do lots of searching on google, till I found a forum about hardware which led me to some obscure links and sites... but finally "I found the light!". Those links led me to the correct drivers.. and now my friend's computer is running really smoothly, WITHOUT THAT HEAVY WEIGHT VI$TA :D

So, here is the lesson of the day:

1- Check very carefully all the information about the computer you are about to buy;
2- NEVER, EVER, EVER, try to run Vi$ta on a PC with less than 2GB of RAM. You will only be try to add layers of patience to your life *LOL*

OK, enough for today. Damn, this driver hunt tired me! :(