ILuvJohn

Last night I went out and bought myself my first laptop computer! Being the computer user that I am, I LOVE the ability to take my PC with me.

Aces Aspire 5517 5671

• Windows 7 Home Premium
• 1.60 Ghz Processor
• 256 MB Video Card
• 15 inch screen
• CD/DVD burner
• Card Reader
• 64 bit processor (32 subset)
• 16:9 screen res / ratio

My most recent post was that of “Windows 7 is not that bad…” but after my experience with it last night, I feel betrayed at the lack of talent and brain power behind Windows 7. I will explain a few key things that will help you make a good decision if you plan on buying a laptop in the near future with Windows 7 on it.

Let me start by saying, this is not just me ripping on Microsoft, this is me getting pumped over the lack of common sense that seams to be smothering our people these days.

Microsoft needs to stop making a “home” and “pro” variations of their OS’. Now days, all it does is piss people off when they switch from Pro to Home because home is missing a few important things. Windows 7 has a lot of great new features and more security, blah blah blah… but it is missing a LOT of functionality that we are used to having.

I just went out and bought a new WRT54G Linksys wireless router for my home network. I find that running a wireless network is just too much of a security risk unless you go the FULL extent of securing your network, including but not limited to MAC address filtering, WPA2 Personal Security (TKIP+AES), and a long password. Even then people can sniff wireless packets to retrieve passwords to internet accounts or your wireless network and can clone your mac address to match their own. So you can see that if you live in an area where a lot of people are in range of your Access Point, you can be hacked and you would never even know it. I brought home my new baby and first things first, I wanted to connect to my wireless network. But as Microsoft would have it, Windows 7 can NOT CONNECT to WPA2 Personal protected networks (even though it has the settings for it) and at that, it can only choose AES or TKIP, but not both. If I am not mistaken, have linksys routers with WPA2P+TKIP+AES not been around for many years? Why does Windows 7 lack this common connectivity issue?

After further attempts, I changed my network to use WEP encryption, and then even tried a MAC filter only - It seams Windows 7 took a crap because I couldn’t get it to work at all last night. Is it a possible issue with the Linksys WRT54G router? Who knows.

Windows 7 controls it’s users, not the other way around as it should be:

If you want to move your files around in My computer… I’m sorry, in “Computer”… it won’t let you. You are forced to have auto arrange left on permanently. If you try to connect to a wireless network and it fails, Windows 7 doesn’t even give you a reason why it failed. It just says that it was not able to connect. If you dive deeper and do the diagnoses it tells you, “There is trouble with the wireless card or the Wireless Access Point”…NO SHIT! You think that most people would know that by this point already. Instead of having one page with all the options for related system tasks such as setting your screen resolution, your font size, screen saver, background/desktop settings, etc they have these options spread over a handful of pages. WHY!? It was better, fast, quicker and easier with the way you had it in XP. 7 tries WAY TOO HARD to be like a Mac. The thing is, I use windows because it’s NOT a Mac!! That’s the whole damn point!

So I spoke with the people at Frys, where I bought the laptop, and they stated that installing a different OS voids the warranty. I called Microsoft and they don’t even have customer service / support unless you pay extra for it. So I was left hanging without so much as an explanation from Microsoft as to why I was having so much trouble. I called the manufacturer and the Jihad-ist on the other end told me that they are hardware only, no support for the OS at all was available, but they suggested that I register with them and get a new Wireless Access Point.

So enough is enough.

Forget this BS. Forget MS, Forget about ACER……..

I am installing WHAT I WANT on MY new computer!

Read my next post for a tutorial on what you need to do to install Windows XP (or Linux) on your new ACER 5517 Laptop.

Please comment below your hate or love for the new Windows 7.