Posts tagged Microsoft
Why I hate Microsoft this week
Jan 22nd
I hate Microsoft because no matter how hard I try, Windows makes me look stupid. This Wednesday I was over at ERHS helping Team 53 get their FRC robotics development environment set up. This involved resetting the network addresses on a wireless router, where the driver station will be connected, and the wireless bridge that sits on the robot itself. To troubleshoot the setup, I wanted to alternate between using my laptop on wireless and directly connected to the router or robot.
Windows 7 would not let me configure the same IP address on both my wireless and my ethernet interface, even though I disabled the wireless adapter.
Shut up. What if I'm in the lab connected to a dozen test networks, and I want to quickly switch between them, and I want the same host address each time. Give me a break. If I do something stupid, and try to enable two interfaces at the same time, then go ahead and break my network. Don't even bother telling me; I'll know why.
Ok, so tonight I'm at home, on my normal wireless network, and I plug in a crossover cable to the camera I'm testing for the robot. A nice little private network with just two devices, my laptop and the camera. Boom. my wireless connection stops routing to the Internet. EXCUSE ME?!? What the heck is the problem here?!?
And that is why I hate Microsoft this week.
Microsoft UI design
Jan 3rd
I just had my first BSOD of 2010. I went looking for the memory dump file and found that it had been auto-deleted, replaced with a minidmp file. Seems that this is the default behaviour on Windows 7 under certain circumstances, e.g. if you are a “home” user with less than 25G of free space. The Startup and Recovery systems property page makes no mention of this new behaviour. You have to google to find the info on this new design.
I don’t mind Microsoft making design decisions based on how they think their customer would like the system to operate. I learned during my days at AOL that some products are designed for the mass market. That’s why I’m in the 5% Linux crowd.
I just don’t understand why they didn’t put the new design controls on the Startup and Recovery page. Why hide the info so that only a crafty Google search would find it? Why make your customer do everything via regedit?