No Funciona
Thursday, November 9, 2006Whilst faithfully fulfilling my geek-boy duty to download the beta of Vista (bloaty, jerky, blurry – my computer scored a lowly 2 out of 5 on performance), I accidentally signed up to a bloody Microsoft newsletter which has since gone unread for months and months.
So, armed with a comforting mug of tea, I decide to click on the unsubscribe link in the email. The resulting page is plastered with smug, nondescript IT professionals and has a somewhat hidden link to ‘Manage my subscriptions’. I’ve seen this sneaky sort of thing before: I’m not afraid. Then I have to sign in. I’ve forgotten my password, so request a new one. I get a silly screen of twisty letters. Enter them as best I can, but get it wrong. Four times. My tea’s getting cold. I give up.
Decide to think about buying a MacBook to shun Microsoft once and for all. That’ll learn them! Manage my defection, suckers! Then I remember that they keep melting, and that OSX has the world’s dumbest lock-out/log-out mechanism, and that iTunes 7 is unusable on my humble XP machine because of Quicktime’s mysterious playback engine.
Briefly consider moving to Unix for good. Decide that a life spent recompiling the kernel – if not the WHOLE WORLD – to get a basic driver to work is not the life for me.
Sometimes this whole computer malarkey is all a bit faffy and annoying, isn’t it? Goddamn it I’m going to go and live in a hut on the side of a Welsh mountain somewhere with only a kettle and a teaspoon for company.
(And maybe once a week the person from Tesco online delivery… Oh man!)
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I think you secretly know that a Mac is the way forward, Simon. iTunes and Quicktime suck on windows the same way acrobat sucks.
The keyboard shortcut to log out is Shift -Command-Q or Shift-Option-Command-Q if you don’t want a prompt (not quite a three-fingered-salute I’ll grant you).
I’ve got the macs I use at work and home set to use hot corners so when I put the pointer in the bottom right corner it will activate the screen saver which is set to require a password before it goes away.
As for the melts I confess I don’t know about that but I too am eying up the new Macbooks. And if someone tried to swap my aging G4 iMac at work for a shiny new XP / Vista machine I’d snap their arm off.
Armless Genuine Advantage.
November 9th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
Try to imagine a smattering of <br> tags in there as I can’t read instructions.
November 9th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
You know, it’s the password thing that’s the big mac problem. Unfortunately the powers that be at work won’t allow us to have a single, local logon for our shared G5 which we use for testing. The result is that we have to log in individually, and inevitably the screensaver kicks in (can’t change that setting, either) and then you have to *reboot* to log in as a different user. Any solution to this particular headache gratefully appreciated…
November 9th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
Urgh, this popup is absolutely horrible. Must sort this out. Oh and I put some linebreaks in for you, Paul :)
November 9th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
Assuming you’re on OSX 10.something – as soon as you get to the unlock screen, click on other user, and log on – it’ll leave the existing user logged on the background. Better than XP, where a locked screen requires a hard reboot or an admin password if the locked user wanders off.
November 10th, 2006 at 1:32 am
But there isn’t an ‘other user’ option… :(
November 10th, 2006 at 8:25 am
Maybe you need to enable Fast User Switching?
It’s in System Preferences, Accounts, Login Options (though you’ll need to be an Admin). I’ve just checked and if you tick “Enable fast user switching” then you’ll get a Switch User button when trying to disable the screensaver.
Keep in mind however that the previous user’s programs will still be running but as you say you’re using it just for testing hopefully you’ll only have a few copies of Safari and maybe *spit* Mac IE 5 run up in the background.
November 10th, 2006 at 10:14 am
Try to imagine a smattering of tags in there as I still can’t read instructions.
November 10th, 2006 at 10:15 am
I give up. Coffee time…
November 10th, 2006 at 10:16 am
Bite the bullet, go hippy and install Ubuntu! Then tell all your mates how easy it is to use and how your comments about recompiling the kernel were completely unjustified. ;-) Having said that, I am smug because I have geeks on tap to tell me what to do… http://www.ubuntu.com/
November 12th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
Linux Linux Linux :-)
The trick is not to get the latest and greatest the day it’s released. Instead wait a month or two for everyone else to find and fix the bugs. Just like Windows really.
November 12th, 2006 at 2:06 pm