The Design and Implementation of laffer1

Amazon unbox service runs on Windows.  Some users of Windows experience problems that require an OS reinstall or even a revert to a previous checkpoint.  The product activation can be lost in these cases.  This means you lose videos that you purchased.  Amazon makes you rebuy videos because Windows has bugs.

At least with iTunes, you can reset it every year (computer count).  Worst case you have to wait a year to get your content back.  It's not gone forever.  

Ways they could improve the service:

1. allow you to deactivate a computer from the web, see a list and make sure it's dead jim.

2. Don't do it in the uninstaller!  What if it goes wrong?  

3. Allow people to reset their activations once in a while.  Just require a net connection periodically to "verify" even.  I don't care as long as I don't lose my damn videos.

4. Ideally provide support for other operating systems.  I know this is a long shot.

5. Give me ANY reason to like it over iTunes.

I seem to be on a role.  

I gave up on Windows Vista ten months after launch.  It "died" because I added more ram.  The file system was corrupted and it just freaked out.  I suspect it was a memory mapping bug with the video card.  It was x64 vista and 4GB of RAM.

Yesterday, I got a new motherboard and processor.  It's an AMD Phenom 9600 and Asus M4A78 Plus. Everything else stayed the same.  I decided that with a major CPU and motherboard shift, I should reinstall Windows.  Why not try 32 bit vista this time?  

After spending 2 hours deactivating amazon unbox, iTunes, adobe acrobat, various games, and other stuff I finally got to put the motherboard and cpu in.  This process took me about an hour.  My case was dirty and I hadn't used an AMD chip in years.  The heatsink setup is much better than the Intel design for core2 and pentium d chips.  

I tested BSD first as I didn't have to reinstall the OS like WIndows.  However, the USB controller and Ethernet are not supported correctly.  I'm already bummed.  Now to install Vista.  

Windows Vista's installer is quite nice and easy to use.  I had to use it twice because I know vista won't let you go from legacy sata to AHCI mode later.  Once the bios was fixed, I got Vista loaded.  

I found that I had to install over 100 updates to vista and that didn't include SP1!!!!!  In fact, it didn't suggest I use SP1 first to save time.  Only 70 installed correctly.  Upon reboot it "tried" again and the update mechanism just froze.  I decided to stop updating and it claimed it stopped.  Next, I attempted to install the chipset driver from ATI.  It seemed to hang near the end, but otherwise looked complete.  I proceeded to install some other software like steam and amazon unbox.  It went fine.   Then after I had setup a good part of the system, I decided to reboot.  BSOD

Try again : BSOD

Try in safe mode: BSOD

Use the repair feature of vista disk which claims not to whack your personal files.  It then told me that it had to use a restore point, but my files would be ok except for a few "programs" i recently installed.  It deleted everything!  It was almost a factory install at that point.  It seems the restore point was at the beginning of the install!  

What have we learned?

1. The dialogs are wrong in the installer.  You can and apparently do lose data with Vista.  Tell the user.

2. The backup software isn't like time machine and i can't get my amazon unboxed videos back.  Mr. Monk and the man who shot santa is gone!  

3. Vista can't shut down.  it takes like an hour and never does anything.  I think this is motherboard related but since i can't install the drivers....

4. Everything is hidden.  I hate that.  

5. The only thing that works worse is KDE 4.  Since it was designed to look like vista, i think they did an exceptional job getting the suck down.

Now, I'm sure you might find the above to be misleading.  Perhaps I did something out of order or "wrong".  If so, Windows let me do it.  That in itself is a bug.  If I can't use it, how on earth could a typical non computer literate person make this thing "go".