A Bug's Life!

Hello,

Some weeks ago I bought a netbook. The reason was pretty simple : I have a macbook that I use both for my personal use and for school. So I have MacOSX on it, but being a web-developer and an IT student, I sometimes need to be able to do some testing on Windows. Add to that the fact that I’m the proud ashamed owner of Windows Mobile based phone and that I want to be able to develop for it and you’ve got the picture!

So I decided to buy a Acer Aspire One D250. It comes loaded with Windows 7 Starter Edition and Android.

First, let’s have a word about Windows 7 Starter Edition : it’s just a joke. Excuse me, but preventing the user from changing the wallpaper isn’t anything feature-based. Not being able to create a bridge between two network interfaces is much more one… so I upgraded to Windows 7 Professional as provided by MSDNAA account.

But enough talking about Windows.

So, what happened when I unboxed my netbook?

I turned it on and at my surprise, Windows was booting without me being presented with any LILO/GRUB screen to allow me to boot Androïd. I found out that there’s a Windows utility to “install” (or allow booting of) Androïd. That’s a bit strange but anyhow…

So, next thing, when you buy a computer loaded with an OS, you’re wanting your “restore CD”. Well, years before, they used to give it. Now you have to burn them…

But since a 10.1” wide-screen netbook, there’s no DVD-Drive. That’s normal… But the utility to create the discs won’t let me create an ISO image… no, it just keeps saying that it can’t create the restore discs since there’s no burner… You know they could at least let you create an image for you to put on an usb-drive or burn from another system, but no. Period.

Later I found a workaround by using the demo version of a software to create a virtual burner…

I also have to say that there’s a restore partition on the hard drive but come on, how well does it work if you screw up your partitions table or accidentally write on it? You’re just fucked.

That’s what makes you feel quite bad about a system that should be 100% embedded… it’s not well integrated and that made me feel like “We have a generic software to create restore discs, we just ship it on all computers”, period.

Tomorrow, I’m gonna talk about the Androïd system that comes with it.

See you online!