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From an email I wrote today, names changed to protect the innocent:

So today two important computer related things happened.

First, I think I may have mentioned that a Windows desktop that exists for the sole purpose of being able to let [my flatmate] and I access the corporate VPN and let us telework had died randomly after trying to update some weeks ago. Not sure what happened – it asked to reboot after installing updates … and never came back up. So I booted it up and discovered that there was a built in system recovery feature and allowed it to wipe the drive and start over. It took its sweet while, but it came back up – and the first thing that happened was that the setup wizard crashed. If I had no knowledge of computers, I wouldn’t have known what to do – there was a giant white screen with a frozen “HP” logo. As it happened, I hit Ctrl+Alt+Del, terminated the process and went on my merry way. Which brings me to item the second: crapware. It took eleven reboots, two hung Symantec uninstaller, a hung HP uninstaller, a failed Microsoft “Works” removal tool and 4 hours of my time to get the machine to a state I would consider usable. I’m currently (6 hours into my adventure) trying to install service packs. It turns out that unlike any other operating system in the world, which would allow you to skip installing intermediate service packs and go to the latest release, Windows requires you to download, in order, SP1 (434MB) and SP2 (380MB). I’m waiting for those downloads to complete. If this is anything like the last time I installed SP1, that will mean an hour of my time and two reboots; if this is anything like the last time I installed SP2, that will mean 45 minutes and a reboot (possibly two). After that, I will need to install software to make the computer usable (Office, Office updates, Virus Scanner, Virus Scanner updates, iTunes, Picasa…) All told, I’m looking at maybe another 3 hours or work.

Second, today [my flatmate] bought a MacBook – one of those $800 Microcenter ones. She asked me to set it up. I started at 10.11pm to do so: setup (worked perfectly, by the way) – about 5 minutes; no crapware to remove, and it finished downloading the latest version of Mac OS X, and all the updates in a single go, installed them, rebooted once – about 17 minutes. Office installation took the longest time, because again, to get from Office 12.0.0 (which is what shipped) to Office 12.2.3 (the latest version), it downloaded 12.1.0, 12.2.0, 12.2.1, 12.2.3; time wasted to install Office: about 50 minutes. So it took twice the time to install Office than setting up and updating the computer. And, of course, the whole Mac installation took less than 1.5 hours – versus, six hours and counting on the PC.

In short, if you’re still using Windows, it’s because you value your time at $0. There’s no other explanation for why on EARTH it should take so long to get a computer to a working state. Truly, unbelievable.

Ugh.

The short take away: avoid Windows. Unless your time is worthless.