The Aerie
I have rebuilt my laptop, and it is good.
I was really appalled when I booted up my new laptop a couple of weeks ago at the volume of bloatware that came pre installed on the system. It included all sorts of stuff. AOL and Netscape ISP software, for example. Phaugh! Ew! Yuck! I want to scour the hard drive with Brillo and borax after I've had AOL on my system.
Norton Antivirus... trial version. Do you know what Norton Antivirus trial version is? It's like a "trial version" of marriage. Removing Norton Antivirus from your computer is as easy as brain surgery, and much fun as divorce. AOL is hardly different, you can never tell when you've gotten it all out. So I think sending an operating system with these programs installed is akin to selling someone a bird which you have deliberately infected with bird flu.
In addition to these travesties, there was some kind of cheesy spyware remover (I'll take Webroot Spysweeper, thank you), and all sorts of DVD-burning, CD-ripping, shirt-rending software that really made the place look quite violent. Honestly, I don't know what half of it was.
Now, it wasn't so bad that these other programs were on the system, except... they didn't run. Half of them I'd try to run, and the programs would hang. It was clear after a few days I was going to have to rebuild this thing.
And yet... I was reluctant to do so. Not merely because the process itself is so tiresome (and it is - from wipe to full-functionality takes me more than two days although, yes, I do try to be organized and I'm goint to Ghost-backup this installation since I plan to have this laptop a while). No, it wasn't the time so much as it was losing the crap software.
I know, I know, that sounds contradictory or hypocritical or even hypodictory, but... this software was an unknown. For all I knew, it was some of the finest DVD-shredding MP3-disemboweling software ever. I had no idea. It seemed a shame to throw them all away.
So I ghosted the original system (although I had without regret already uninstalled AOL and Netscape) before wiping the machine and starting over.
I also prepared by pre-downloading all of the drivers and software that I would need to get the system up to operation again. Unfortunately, Sony did not make this process very simple. It was easy enough to find all the software, but once it was downloaded it was very hard to tell what was what. For instance, when you click to download the DVD firmware driver, you get a file called "KMFOPD-01120300-US.EXE". Now imagine you've wiped your machine, it's not on the net anymore, you're trying to set it up - what's the name of the DVD firmware file?
So I had to spend an hour downloading all the drivers, then renaming them in some fashion so that I could tell what the heck they were. In the end I copied all thirty webpages from the website so that I would be able to tell what I was installing.
When it came time to reinstall them, I kept track. Of 29 driver files, I used only numbers 2-5, 11-14, 17, 18, and 21-24, or about half of the files in order to get the system running again. That means that about half the files are bloatware (or, if I am wrong and end up needing a few later after all, a quarter).
So that's what I did pretty much all weekend. I was very pleased with the battery power - at one point I spent two hours in a cafe, wirelessly pulling down and installing files, and also installing files from CD. That was two hours of wireless and CD operations, and the battery was down to only 43% when I had to leave. Yah!
Speaking of power, at one point I was so busy I blew the circuit breaker. Examining the situation, I realized that it was carrying four computers (laptop, fileserver, and my boys' computers), two printers (Samsung and HP), five lights, a space heater, and a lava lamp at the time it threw. No wonder! Delightfully, my backup power strip worked and my file server didn't even notice the downtime - and of course the laptop stayed up.
But I wasn't a total recluse. We had the neighbors over for dinner tonight (Theresa made a Jane Brody vegetarian lasagna), and went to church. I skipped the service at the cafe, but I went for coffee afterwards.
Anyway it's about time to start burning the ghost backup of this installation so I don't have to do this again, quite, the next time. Gnight!
Posted by Albatross at February 19, 2006 10:01 PM | TrackBack