When I got my new laptop, one of the last IBM G41s to ever be manufactured (and possibly refurbished) I was somewhat disappointed by the care extended to me by Lenovo, which has been handling IBM's hardware sales for awhile now and in the last few years took it over entirely. The delivery time was listed as 2-4 weeks. Having dealt exclusively with Dell before I expected this really meant somewhere between 3 days and a week. Lenovo took the full 4 weeks before they even bothered to tell me that my computer was not coming at all, they had sold me a computer which did not exist. Their representative offered me a comparable computer that was slightly better in some regards. I readily accepted because it had been hell dealing with them and I just wanted my computer because I needed it for work (I was working on my boss's computer in the meantime). So the new computer was on its way in 2 weeks.
It actually did come in 2 weeks this time but the additional RAM I had paid to have installed came in a separate package which is incomprehensible. It still makes absolutely no sense to me but normally I wouldn't have really minded - it turns out that installing RAM in a laptop is even easier than it is for a desktop - but I had to walk back to the UPS after I realized this to get the second package.
Anyway, now I had the computer and all seemed to be well, I was pretty ticked about all the unnecessary programs installed on there but Tommy tells me this is pretty typical so I just set about deleting the ones I didn't need - I would have like to reinstall the OS and format the drive but Lenovo does not give you an OS install disc with the purchase of your license. Steve just bought a new Dell and they didn't give him one either so maybe this is par for the course now - I dont know about Dell but Lenovo will magnanimously sell me the 5 cents worth of plastic for $50 plus S/H. Another reason I really should format the drive and start over is because Lenovo sends their computers out with part of the drive partitioned as a recovery space with all the start state programs and such. This is ridiculous - I can't understand why they would want to waste precious gigabytes on install files for programs I didn't even ask for in the first place when they could just send the installer discs along with the computer. Am I wrong? and to make matters worse I can't even see the partitioned drive from windows - is there some kind of hidden feature for a drive that could be concealing this? I am piss-poor when it comes to hardware so I have no idea, but like I said, I just needed this thing to work so I could stop inconveniencing my boss.
is anyone still reading this?
Things have been going pretty well since then, I got a bitchin Digital Blasphemy background and that little pop-up video "bloop" noise when i get new messages. A few days ago I wanted to watch a DVD, so I used their crappy included dvd playing program InterVido WinDVD or something like that. It came with my computer but normally it costs somewhere between 20 and 60 bucks. InterVideo WinDVD is about as pleasant to use as a vagina filled with centipedes. That fucker is way too glossy, the most ostentatious program I have on my computer is winamp and I am still using the classic skin. So i started just using Windows Media Player to view DVDs and deleted the 60-some megabytes that InterVideo was splayed out on like a Roman emperor - don't get me started on Windows Media Player but at least its (immutably) integrated with the operating system.
Oops, InterVideo took with it my DVD Decoder drivers. Now I can't even watch DVDs on WM. I fixed this by installing the very awesome, spare VideoLan VLC Media Player. I think the total download was 7 megabytes. I was initially turned off by an unfortunate website but it plays everything perfectly in a tiny and conservative window with all the features I ever wanted. It even plays the really obscure pornogo...er...stately european documentaries that wouldn't play in winamp or Media Player. So that's just a heads up if anybody ever makes the same mistake I did or they put their computer together themselves. What I would really like is to be able to install a DVD player plugin for winamp but the only thing close to that I could find is PowerPlayer2 and it just threw a bunch of access violations. I don't mind configuring something but if it greets me with a bunch of hex strings and exclamation points the odds of me embracing it are poor. I'm not even sure if it was ever intended to play actual .VOB files.
So the end result is that now I can watch the last 20 minutes of Last of the Mohicans every night before bed again.
Adios suckers.
p.s. the horrendously awesome metaphor comes from the tragic geniuses of Old Man Murray
Posted by Jon at February 4, 2006 01:40 PMHey Jon...
You should have bought an Apple. But that aside, VLC is a pretty sweet program. Apple doesn't have a program to play certain types of .wmv file which is sufficiently frustrating when I download what sounds like a very exciting european documentary only to find that Quicktime doesn't support it. Don't get me wrong, I think QT is one of the best video programs out there, but VLC picks up where QT leaves off. Microsoft WMP should become obsolete. But it won't. Mostly because people are idiots. That is all.
oop... that was me.
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