Author Archives: Fordiebianco

Folding is cool

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P1000362

 

So it finally arrived. After only 4 weeks the lovely people from London Fields Cycles in Hackney gave me a call that my custom made Brompton had arrived. Extra durable tires for the tough London roads, permanent magnetic lighting for better recognition by lorries, extra high saddle for tall riders and extra stiff suspension for the er, abdominally challenged. Today I gave it a quick 6 mile trial run, and it’s exactly as you would expect: sturdy, firm, quick and comfy. I still have to get used to folding mechanism and don’t have it quite down to 15 seconds like the pros (my colleagues at work at a good laugh at my feeble attempts to unfold the little gem). Made in London in its factory just around the corner from the Chiswick roundabout, visible from the M4 on the way to Heathrow, it’s an iconic piece of British manufacturing history, and as such an item I am proud to own.

If it now just makes my commute to work a bit easier, reduces my heini size and improves the weather it was a worthwhile (and considerable) investment.

Windows 8. What a mess.

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That’s it. I’ve had it. It has to go.

After for the first time ever being happy with a Microsoft product, the wonderfully stable and useable Windows 7, I chanced it and played early adopter, installing Windows 8. Why do I have PC at all in my house, I can hear you ask? Well, good question, but I do like a spot of gaming, and the prospect of being able to put together a powerful gaming rig with some choice hardware always tickled my fancy. While each of us here in the household have a Mac for the more serious work, the gaming rig in my ‘man’s lair’ was a welcome distraction from the world’s worries, and the regular tinkering with the hardware was pure fun.

So, when Windows 8 came out, I had a go at it in a Microsoft shop in Houston and quite liked the new Metro surface. I installed it without any problems and was even quite surprised by the ease of the whole process, but as soon as was installed the problems began. The first surprise was the fact that the Metro GUI actually did not stay permanently on the desktop: In a multi-monitor setup I envisaged for the start screen to continuously stay on one Monitor, but no such luck. Every time a tile was clicked, the screen would disappear, revealing a bog standard Windows desktop. Apps and tiles would spontaneously disappear and reappear (I still don’t know what happened to the calendar tile), Windows 7’s Aero design was gone, but worse of all where the driver problems. Even on a machine with the latest drivers, the latest Microsoft patches, a normal core temperature and no over clocking in sight, the bloody thing would throw spontaneous blue screens of death (something that never happened on the same hardware with Windows 7). Also half of my peripherals don’t seem to be supported. It has now wrecked my current installation, so I will have to sit again for a day in front of the computer, reinstalling applications, downloading drivers, rescuing data and games from Steam and do all the things that one really shouldn’t spend a weekend on (at least according to the best girlfriend ever).

Sod you, Steve Ballmer. Sod you for luring me into believing that Microsoft products were finally out of beta when released and letting me spend another day of misery with one of your machinations.