Les Bonnes Choses

This is a delayed blast entry. I'm timing its publication for a few days from now so y'all don't have to go so long between witty observations.

I've spent the better part of this evening resetting my buddy Gill's Sony Vaio laptop to its factory condition. After four years, computers usually get pretty bunged up with crap, which is why I usually wipe mine clean every year (it also forces you to back up your important stuff, which is a good side effect). So over a few hours, I checked in on the progress bar to find it wasting probably an hour and a half restoring assinine software that I intended to delete at the first opportunity. Things like the AOL toolbar. Or Napster. Or some lame audio mixing software. Honestly. If someone buys a Sony laptop with the intention of doing some music editing, they probably have something specific in mind, and I doubt that it's a program that ships for free with the laptop.

What I find ironic is that computer vendors invariably ship computers preloaded with either Norton or Symantec antivirus software. It's ironic because one function of antivirus software is to prevent the automatic installation of crappy software that you don't want and will probably cause your computer to crash -- software very much like that that comes preloaded along with the antivirus software.