June 1, 2013

New toy (laptop), New experiences... in Microsoft failing

So my trusty Acer laptop died on Thursday, and I was absolutely devastated. I mean I had no computer access for TWO WHOLE DAYS.
Yes, I was very distraught. I even ended up having to sleep early (@10pm)! And today I finally had time to walk into an electronics store and happily bought myself a new laptop, a HP ENVY m6-1117TX. I was pretty content with this purchase, considering I got this baby at a bargain price.

So the story goes: after my laptop died, I immediately consulted my computer guru megabubbletea (+Diluen Cheong ) on what laptop I should purchase and he sent me a list of options (a short list thank goodness!). I then compared his various suggestions and decided that the HP Envy was the one I wanted because it fell into my desired price range (below $800), in fact it was advertised online as $698, and had really good specs.

But this morning when I walked into the store I discovered that the price tag on the laptop I wanted said $998. I jumped in surprise and thought 'WHAT? That's too expensive, that's not what the online advertisement said!' I kind of started to panic, thinking 'oh no, what should I do, I don't want to fork out that much money for a laptop, should I pick another brand instead?' But then I decided to *try* and "argue" with the salesperson to see if I could get the HP Envy at a cheaper price, namely the price listed online, but I wasn't hoping too much. Surprisingly, the salesman agreed to sell the laptop to me at the price listed online, and he too was surprised at how cheap such a good laptop was; A co-worker of the salesman serving me overheard our conversation and he immediately declared that he was going to set one stock aside for himself (noting that there were only 4 pieces of stock left). So I guess I was pretty lucky in this transaction.
 
Then tonight I decided to have a play with Windows 8 before dumping it on Monday and installing Linux Mint instead. It took a while to setup and download the apps (perhaps due to the slowness of my internet). Of course once I was able to 'use the computer' I HAD to go online and tell the world (via social networking - G+) that I'm using my new gadget and testing out Win8. So I clicked on the IE icon (because Chrome isn't installed by default on a Windows) and I was immediately greeted with the following friendly familiar message:
Was I furious? Not really, I was pretty much rolling on the floor laughing at how poor Microsoft was. Not even 10 seconds into the system and a Windows error message was thrown into my face. This has got to be a world record at Microsoft failing.