Ryan Martinsen

My Anti-Anti-Microsoft Rant

Posted by Ryan  October 17, 2007

Lest the visitors from my sister’s site really believe I’m in love with Microsoft…

It’s really more of a dislike for Mac OS than a liking of Windows. I think Mac OS is ugly. I don’t find Windows particularly fun to look at either, but it does have the benefit of not making me want to puke.

I know it’s all just a matter of personal taste, so all of you Apple fanboys and fangirls can just let me have my personal taste, ok? Thank you. You’re so nice.

So why not Linux? Linux is cool. I’ve used Ubuntu, but as you can see in the right column of this page, I write software for Windows. Well, I should say I used to write software for Windows. I haven’t updated any of that software in a long time. I can’t bring myself to completely abandon the idea of writing more software for Windows though.

The main reason I stick with Windows is because I’m so used to it. I’m not a big fan of getting a system up and running the way I like it, especially when it’s a system I’m not already familiar with such as Linux or Mac OS. As proof, I probably need to reinstall Windows to get rid of junk*, but I don’t because it means I’d have to re-do everything. Yes, I have backups and all that, but if I were to re-do everything I’d want to do some things differently and I just don’t have the time for that.

* The speed of the machine is fine. Really. I don’t know what people do to their Windows machines that makes them run slower over time. People have to re-install Windows every 6 months?! I find that extremely hard to believe and I work my computer as hard as anyone I know. I’ve been running this installation of Windows for over 2 years now and the only time it slows down is when I’ve got gazillions of things open at once. Oh, and as new software comes out that’s been written for newer systems my computer will obviously be slower, but that’s not Windows related.

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Dell is awesome

Posted by Ryan  February 15, 2007

Back in August 2005 I bought a Dell 700m Inspiron notebook computer. It’s been absolutely great.

After much prodding and convincing from several friends I finally installed Ubuntu on my laptop. The installation was super easy and I’ve now got a dual boot running on it.

As Windows tends to do, Windows has been getting rather sluggish lately. No, I don’t have any viruses, spyware, or other crap on here, but it’s just not as fast as it used to be. I’ve been wanting to re-format for a while, and now that I’m getting more into Linux I’d also like to allocate more space to it. Dell has a hidden system restore partition that takes up about 4GB. On a small laptop with a 80GB hard drive that’s a pretty good chunk. I didn’t get a Windows XP installation CD when I bought my laptop, but if I’m gonna be re-formatting and blowing away the system restore partition I want to have a way to re-install Windows again. Say what you will about Windows, but I like it. I’m far from being a complete linux convert, though it could happen some day.

Anyway, I called up Dell Customer Service and after waiting on hold for 10-15 minutes (not bad at all I think) I was talking to a very helpful woman with what sounded like an Asian accent. I told her what I was doing and that I was hoping to get a Windows XP installation CD. After running me through some standard procedures and asking some questions (my name, service code, etc.) she said she was mailing out the installation CD along with copies of all the other CDs that originally came with my laptop. Oh yeah, she also said that if they don’t arrive tomorrow that they should be here by Monday. Dang! How’s that for customer service?!

I am happy. My next computer will be a Dell.

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