On the 17th I bought a new HP computer with monitor and printer at the local Circuit City. I should have known I was in trouble when I saw the computer on display. It is running an AMD processor but was sitting in front of a poster that talked about all of the virtues of the Intel Viiv technology. Instead of running away I decided to go ahead and purchase the computer since it was at a good price and as a bundle I figured I would have no compatibility problems. I was wrong.

We got the computer home and even though I have been setting up computers for many years I still read through the manual. I got the computer set up and went through the install provided by HP. I answered their questions about who the machine was registered to, when and how I would be using it, and also set up accounts for each member of my family. That part went about as expected. Then I went in to their "Help Center" to see what else I might need to do. It had some helpful suggestions like that I should get anti-virus software and I should also create recovery disks. I installed the 60 day trial for anti-virus software that came with the computer. So far so good. I then created backup disks. Normally I wouldn't do it but I had read on the web about someone else's bad experience and lack of disks to get back to the factory installed state. The utility told me to make sure I had everything ready because it would only run once. ONLY RUN ONCE????! Why? There is nothing stopping me from copying the disks once I make them so why not let me run the utility more than once?

Next I decided to set up the printer. I had read the manual that said do not plug the printer in until the software tells you to. I put the driver CD in the DVD drive and started the install. I get to step 1 of 4 and it tells me that it failed. WHAT???? Why can't it install the printer? The dialog had two options one was to try again with "correct settings" or something like that and the other was to say that it had installed correctly. I don't remember the exact text on the dialog box but I do remember that it made it sound like it could fix the problem. I tried the "correct settings" option and got a message that the drivers could not be installed using the "run as" command. Well isn't that special. Even though I am logged in as the administrator I don't run as administrator unless I need to elevate my permissions. This is basic UAC in Windows Vista and a good idea in my mind. Elevating permissions appears to use "run as" and so I couldn't install the printer. In frustration I just plugged it in. The dialogs for new USB devices came up and then I was prompted to look for drivers on the web. It found a driver and I was in business....NOT. The printer had a problem with the color cartridge. We cleaned it, we reseated it, we tried a couple of other fixes off of the web and nothing worked.
We replaced it back in the box and took it back to Circuit City. They exchanged it without too much trouble and the new one that I brought home didn't seem to have the same problem. For some sick reason I tried the install disk again. Again it wouldn't run. I plugged it in thinking since it was the same model it would just run. It didn't but instead takes me to a page on the HP site where I can download the appropriate driver. I did and installed it. This time the printer works without a problem. As an aside on that page there was a place to leave comments. I left a scathing comment about how HP had plenty of time during the beta/CTP cycle or even after the business release to get their Vista drivers created and tested and I didn't think they had any excuse for the poor performance. I wasn't too kind and said things like if they had spent more money on developers and less on figuring out who is leaking their information they wouldn't have these problems. At the least they could put a single piece of paper in the printer box that says something along the lines of "ignore this book and instead go to this web site with Vista specific instructions".

A week later I think I have everything working. I decided not to blog about this when it happened because 1) I promised to never blog mad and 2) I kept hoping that the light bulb would come on in my head and I would see where I had made a mistake and realize that the system is more user friendly than I thought. Well, I have calmed down but I haven't been able to figure out where I messed up and made the install more difficult than it should have been. I still have an icon in the HP help center for system health monitoring. When I click on it I get a web page that says HP will have it out soon. It is almost 2 months since the business release of Vista and they still don't have it in place? At this point I am recommending to my technical friends that they upgrade to Vista because they can deal with the problems. For my non-technical friends I am recommending that they get the disks from Microsoft and install from them. I have never had this many problems with Vista including back in the beta 1 days on a VPC. I really love Vista and I hope what I am seeing is not HP trying to make Microsoft look bad because Microsoft didn't have Vista available for the big Christmas selling season. In any case I have had enough experience with Vista that I am putting the blame on HP.