Post-Prelude: On Improving Windows

Hazel, my girlfriend, has a 5-years-old computer that still runs Windows 2000. A month ago she realized that her anti-virus (Nod32) didn't not work on the computer anymore so she asked me to use VNC to inspect her computer. Just when she was turning on the VNC server and my client was searching for her, some freak hacked into her computer (anyone who can give me an explanation would be appreciated), and did something and the next thing she knew was, her computer downloaded some stupid spyware, and her computer was totally infested with virus. (Again Yvonne you're the expert and you are the few who still read this so maybe you can offer me an explanation). Out of despair and desperateness we decided to buy a new computer (since there was no way I could fix the computer remotely). As most of you know, Vista is supposed to come out next Jan so I asked her to wait... but she desperately needed one for her work (and honestly it was quite inconvenient for her since she needed one to make exams for her classes) so at the end we decided to buy the top HP model for $6-xxx. At the end, I agreed to her view that 1) she doesn't need an ultra-fancy OS 2) she needed a computer urgently at the time. But I was sort of worry that Vista would come out a lot quicker than I thought and they would offer free upgrade to people who buy PCs just before the deployment time.

I guess I possess certain clairvoyance in this case and MS now decides to give free Vista upgrade to whoever buy PCs after Oct 26, and we bought it during Oct 1!!!!

Were I a non-christian I would say WT_ and I guess I don't have to fill the blank but i was devastated. It means that now next time I go back to HK we probably have to buy the upgrade at Sum Tsui Po!

While I am considering mailing HP about the rip-off and ask them to offer us a free upgrade, I can only hope that one day we will have a G-indows or Win-gles or Windows G (for free and open source of course) and we don't have to spend the $5xx for a new Window upgrade.

But of course that got me into thinking HOW to actually improve my chance of buying an Authentic window for a reasonable price (and that's not happening) and I come up with a list of stuff that will make me want to buy a real Windows for around $2xx~

Well that will be served in my next post :) More to come!!!