this is a rant.

"Big and Dumb"

Goddamnit!

I am working on a dated HP desktop that has been sitting in my house, broken for about a year. I have never really studied the design much, I always thought of it as a pretty shyte computer in general... mostly, because it's an HP... and my impression it left me with was that it was: big and dumb.

But I took a second look today, and read a little more into it. It does look big and dumb, with its bulbous... plastic... uh... design face plate thing. But, it does look stylish! Stylish, yet still so large and puffy that it is comforting enough to make me think computers aren't scary machines that I don't understand. The monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers all reflect these same qualities which come together to form something I hate.

This things has always been slow. It looked slow. It played shitty games slowly. It had a lot of shitty pre-loaded crapware, which is nothing more than an advertising and marketing ploy mastermined by Micorosoft! It slowed it down to a shitbox crawl. Needless to say, the shitbox eventually crashed into a shitwall and there was a shit-splosion! It was blue and white and grand.

There is a percentage of the population that would preform the "Recovery Mode" returning it back to the way it was when they bought it, losing all of their data, and regaining all of the crapware. Another percentage would take the computer to a service shop, or call a friend. The consumers I think about when I see this bulbously grand HP package of computer and marketing programs are the ones who would rather just go buy another one, which is certainly better all around since it is a few years newer. Hell, they're disposable anyways, right?

No!

I formatted and installed XP and was amazed how much better it ran. It was still no gaming computer by any means, but surfing, loading photos from a camera, ripping and burning music, it was just fine. If it were less of a marketing package, and more like a personal computer (a la, Apple?) It would have kicked ass!

As I understand it, Microsoft owns half of Apple. Microsoft also dominates the market. Micorsoft's products are generally cheaper with a wider customer base, and Apple's are more expensive with a more focused market. Its a win-win for consumerism, yay!

Why is Microsoft so large, though? Yes, one could say they are mainly business oriented, but their operating systems hold the vast majority of the marketshare. This allows them a very excellent position when a Computer Assembler (Dell, HP, Compaq, EMachines, etc.) is producing their package and wants to integrate the two products. and add additional services. and trialware. and tons of other shit most people will never use and ignore.

Yet, there are those who are sucked into the big and dumb thing. Big. Easy. Simple. Short, BIG WORDS. Primary Colors! Ugh.

The default XP theme is blue and green. All previous versions were grey. They knew what they were doing. XP is an excellent OS... now, what they were thinking with vista is yet to be determined. Maybe its easier to integrate shitware? I donno...

But the whole big and dumb thing comes back to fast food companies, whom everyday produce a shit-ton of pure waste that is not recycled. The idea of a throw-away, disposable society. Glutens.
And then I thought, hey! This machine would run the newest Ubuntu pretty nicely! Probably compiz/beryl and all that too. Vista? ha!

I like this "green" movement. Hopefully we can save ourselves from ourselves.