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As I have had a number of blog-worthy confrontations with technology lately a question keeps coming to mind: is technology working for us or against us? This is part 1 of a 3 part series entitled, “Technology: Is it Working for Us or Against Us?”.

At the beginning of September 2007, I suffered the loss of my laptop and naturally I blogged about it. The time came to make a decision that I had been contemplating for a long time: Do I buy another HP (a high end configured HP Pavillion 9500 to be exact)? Or do I buy a MacBook Pro? At the time we knew that Leopard was coming soon. I made the decision that since the MacBook Pro was more expensive and a slightly weaker machine than what my HP Configuration would be, and since Leopard wasn’t out yet, I’d buy the HP. First, however, there was one stipulation! It had to have the ability to go back to XP in case my software wouldn’t run on Vista. I was equally fearful, because I know a number of people do not like Vista.

I called HP, went through the needed configuration that I would need, got the price, got a good discount ($500) because the last 4 laptops I bought were all HP. This made my HP almost $1,000 less expensive than a MacBrook Pro would have been. The clincher was when I asked the representative if I could replace Vista with XP if it doesn’t work out for me. The representative did not know and he had to ask his supervisor. The gist is that the answer I got was, and I quote:

“Sir, if you need to replace Vista with XP after receiving your laptop, please call us back and we will help you do that!

Fast forward a few days – my laptop arrives. I turn it on, set it up and promptly install my most critical business software As I feared, during installation, the installation crashed – it was not Vista compatible. (Before you ask, I also tried to run it in XP mode and that did not help). I talked to the makers of the software and they have no immediate plans to make a Vista compatible version. No worries though, I’ll just call HP and with their help install Windows XP.

After two hours on the phone, the same person who had promised help to install XP, had to admit that he had lied. I accused him of just saying what I wanted to hear to make the sale. Furthermore, HP informed me multiple times along the way, that if I install XP, I will void my warranty. If I don’t like that, I can certainly return the unit for a full refund.

I have solved my problem with virtualization because the laptop and I are now in Europe and I didn’t want to go through the procedure and I wanted to move on.

While Vista has many issues (some of mine are listed here), that is okay because so did previous versions of Windows when they were released. My biggest issue with Vista, though, is that Vista is being forced on the consumer! In a CNET Forum, The Buzz Out Loud Lounge, I’ve been involved with a discussion thread along this line. It started with a forum member ranting that people complain too much about Vista and that previous versions had problems too.

While I agree with the basic premise of his argument, I maintain that with previous versions of Windows consumers were able to purchase machines for a long time with the previous versions. Now, however, if I don’t want Vista, than the only other choice is to buy a Mac (Linux, while an excellent Operating System, is not an option the average consumer would consider right now). If someone wants a Microsoft box, they have to buy Vista and therefore has no choice. That is not right!

Microsoft has done the consumer and consequently itself a great disservice by forcing Vista on us.

To answer the question we started with: At Microsoft, technology is working against us – especially with Vista!