{"id":236,"date":"2006-03-08T20:05:46","date_gmt":"2006-03-09T01:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=236"},"modified":"2006-03-08T23:00:07","modified_gmt":"2006-03-09T04:00:07","slug":"new-computer-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=236","title":{"rendered":"New Computer Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m shopping for a new computer, and I run into <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tigerdirect.com\/applications\/searchtools\/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=1576817&#038;sku=G153-1120&#038;CMP=ILC-FPM01\">this unintentional humor<\/a> at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tigerdirect.com\">Tiger Direct<\/a>.  Check it out:<\/p>\n<div class=quote>\nThis magnificent machine runs on Windows&#39; brand new XP Media Center Edition &#8230; light years more advanced, intuitive and magical than any other operating system on Earth &#8230; the perfect system to take full advantage of the unprecedented features of this wonderful PC.\n<\/div>\n<p>It takes a special blend of ignorance and foolishness to call windows &#8220;intuitive and magical&#8221;.  You guys DO know there are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/\">other<\/a> operating systems <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redhat.com\/\">out there<\/a>, don&#8217;t you?<\/p>\n<p>I mean, <strong>magical<\/strong>?  Are you kidding me? <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m looking for a machine with 1GB of memory and about 3Ghz of &#8220;oomph&#8221;.  Something in that neighborhood.  This machine looks like it fits the bill, but it&#8217;s a Gateway.  <\/p>\n<p>Last time I got a big-brand PC it was wall-to-wall with annoying &#8220;helper&#8221; software that made the blasted thing infuriating to use.  Just one example of many: Put in a music CD, and instead of doing something intuitive or magical like <em>playing the CD<\/em>, it instead popped up with an ad for me to register my copy of Musicmatch. The whole machine worked this way. I&#8217;d try to do something simple, and get an ad in the face.  The first time I booted it up, the system tray was packed with useless nonsense, and I was buried in popups to register this, activate that, check for new versions, enter my user info, configure something else.  It took ages to uninstall this stuff to the point where the computer was &#8220;clean&#8221; and ready for me to start <em>installing<\/em> stuff. (For the curious, the machine was an HP.  Never, ever again.)<\/p>\n<p>It was a nightmare, and after that I swore I&#8217;d never get another big-brand machine again.<\/p>\n<p>Suggestions?  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m shopping for a new computer, and I run into this unintentional humor at Tiger Direct. Check it out: This magnificent machine runs on Windows&#39; brand new XP Media Center Edition &#8230; light years more advanced, intuitive and magical than any other operating system on Earth &#8230; the perfect system to take full advantage of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}