My Computer Woes

Well the past week has been incredibly busy, yet totally unproductive. Why? you ask.

Last week I read a blog post about gOS, the Linux operating system that comes on the Wal-Mart $200 computer. I decided it would be a good idea to install the system and play around in case any customers had questions after buying said computer.

I downloaded the ISO and created my live cd. I then ran the live cd and was pleased with the interface. It's clean with a strong tie to web applications, especially Google apps.

I used gParted partition editor to create a small partition on my hard drive where I could safely install my new OS. I then proceeded with the installation. Now here's the part where I can only blame myself for being stupid. During the install, I selected the option to use the entire hard drive. (which I didn't realized immediately)

After the installation was complete, I rebooted and was a little confused when the computer booted straight into gOS without an option to boot Windows. I shrugged it off and started playing with the OS. I was immediately disappointed that gOS didn't natively support wireless networking. Actually, I couldn't even find an easy way to add such capabilities.
(Note that I'm a complete Linux newbie and there might have been an easy way that I just didn't know about. Then again, I'm going to throw it out there that most of the people that buy the infamous $200 pc from Wal-Mart won't have much Linux experience either.)

Frustrated by gOS I rebooted in an attempt to go back to Windows to do some work.
Hmmm... No boot options.
I then realized what happened and started thinking about doing a system restore.
***Did I mention I did this to my main computer?!!!***
Luckily I'm very big on doing backups so all important information was still safe.

The computer is a Dell laptop, so there aren't any restore CDs. Instead, you press Alt+F11 when booting to initiate the restore process. Hmmm... Didn't work.

Oh, how bout that. The restore files WERE on a separate partition of the hard drive. Which were also wiped out when I installed gOS. Super.

So I succumbed to the fact that I'd have to use a free os temporarily to get some work done. I gave up on gOS and installed Ubuntu.

Wow this post is getting much longer than I wanted...
I just wanted to whine for a minute. :-)

Ok, so I'm using Ubuntu and there is tons of free software just waiting to be installed. Wireless support was built in, so I was online in a flash. I'll say I really like the look and feel of the Ubuntu OS.

However, I wasn't incredibly impressed with the software. I'm one of a growing minority that actually likes Microsoft products. I use Visual Studio and Office 2007 very heavily so I had to find substitutes. Real quick, I couldn't find anything comparable to VS. Eclipse is a great IDE, but what about programming VB and ASP.NET? Basically, I was handicapped in this aspect. I had to code everything totally by hand. (sounds like a weak complaint, but Visual Studio makes it very easy to program with its drag and drop, and wizard features.)
For Office, the obvious choice was OpenOffice.org which is always reported to be a great replacement for MS Office. Well...it isn't. Documents are formatted slightly differently so things show up in different places than originally expected.

Ok, so now I decided I NEED to get back on a Windows system. I had a several-year-old pc running XP that should suffice for a while. I began updating everything, cleaning out the junk, and installing the many programs I need. This took about 3 days.

Now I'm up and running on my familiar Windows again. It's a bit slow, but I got to do a little work.

Last night, as I was just starting to become productive the computer rebooted. Odd.
Upon reboot, I see those wonderful words. "Non-System Disk or Disk Error."
Great. All that work and now the hard drive's shot.

Well I was done messing with this and ran out to Best Buy to pick up a new tower. I was surprised at what I was able to get for the money.

I'm back home by 9:00 PM and began the update/remove junk/install process all over again. I should be back to full productivity in a day or two.

I'm very happy with the new computer (running Vista), although I wish I was able to get some more work done over the past week.

Ok, I feel better now.

Do you have any horror stories? What should I have done differently?