Trying to give something back to the Community...
So my new HP laptop arrived earlier this week. After a quick trip into the office to build it off the network things looked good until I needed to start the migration from my old Dell (which is getting slower and slower and slower each day so I won’t be sad to see the back of it).
Why or why or why… does moving to a new PC have to be SO difficult?
Outlook – What a palaver to get your Calendar and Contacts exported over. Then there’s RSS feeds (not sure if these are working yet).
Live Mail – Why is there no Export for Rules (why do I need to either re-create them or go export Registry keys to migrate them over)?
The list goes on and on and on.
Come on Microsoft I think you make some great software but where it REALLY falls down it the practicalities of migrating between machines. I can see now why Cloud Computing/ Thin Client is such a hit as having everything online certainly overcomes these sort of issues although I’m not convinced from the speed/ security aspects but as with all things in life I’m willing to be convinced.
On top of this my new machine is running Vista <shiver> something I’ve managed to avoid up until now (XP worked just fine for me so I saw no reason to upgrade/ change). Using Vista is taking some getting used to and a few cross words have already been exchanged with it. But I sometimes feel that Microsoft in trying to make each new OS simpler to use each time they end up making it a LOT more painful for those of us that have grown up with the PC.
Why is the menu disabled in Explorer for example and I have to go hunting round trying to figure out how to turn it back on again?
All I can say is that I’m SO grateful for my fellow men and women for taking the time to research, write-up and share there pain to make it a lot easier for the rest of us (I’m no Outlook, Office, Vista, Live Mail, whatever guru – to me the PC is a tool to get my job done). Google has certainly proved invaluable during this whole nightmare.
I don’t want to sound arrogant of condescending to anyone but I like to think I’m pretty PC savvy so if I’m having all these issues I can only imagine how time consuming and frustrating for those people who are scared to even turn on a PC let alone use it this must all be when it comes to upgrading their PCs.
By the way the HP laptop is very nice. I HATE touchpads with a vengeance but this one and the keyboard seem pretty good to work with although I think I’ll get my external mouse sorted next as it’s a habit I’m just used to.
Oh and yes one of the first things I did was install the System Center Gadget – if anyone’s got any suggestions for others that are useful ping me a mail.
Read the complete post at http://wmug.co.uk/blogs/cliffs_blog/archive/2009/11/12/rant-the-long-and-painful-road.aspx