2. Help, Microsoft! Please!

Not one to give up easily and just a little shell shocked from my experience so far, I reasoned that if I tried the recovery onto the Satellite while it was booted with a legitimate copy of Windows, all would be well. Screwed again! Same problems.

At this point, of course, I was screaming “Who designed this crap?” at volumes that would cause a Marine sergeant to slink away in vocal defeat.

So, I dutifully installed my legitimate copy of Vista Ultimate and all of the drivers for all the hardware on and peripheral to the Satellite. Then I slowly, painfully, unhappily and angrily reinstalled every copy of every piece of software I run on my all-purpose laptop: Trend Micro Antivirus, Microsoft Office 2007, Firefox, Thunderbird, GoodSync File Synchronizer, Photoshop CS3, Quicken Home and Business, Acrobat Professional, Skype, iTunes, SnagIt, Bulletproof FTP, FinePrint, Verizon Wireless WAN card support software and a ton of other applets and such that I can’t remember.

Reinstallation was fairly easy for some of the software, though, of course, I lost all my original settings in the Vista registry. I know, I could have backed up the registry, but I forgot and I wonder how well it would have restored over registry settings for some of the reinstalled software. For some software, like Office 2007, Photoshop and Acrobat Pro, I had to get a new installation code from the manufacturer. That took some time on the phone and added to the pain.

So, what do I want from Microsoft and other software vendors? Not much really. How about if Windows backup and restore worked like this? You backup your system just like now. Next you connect your old and new laptops using a USB cable. Then, before it starts the restore, the backup program checks to be sure you have a good clone copy of your old laptop disk, assures that the copy of Vista on the backup is legitimate, and securely wipes your old laptop’s internal drive clean. With the old software completely gone and that old demon piracy now impossible, it then does a restore to your new laptop, bringing in any new drivers that are required. When the restoration finishes, your new laptop boots up and everything looks and works just like it did on your old laptop. Mission accomplished.

I recognize that this little scenario isn’t going to be totally acceptable to software manufacturers or easy to implement. First, if you had pirated software on your old laptop, it’s going to get restored to the new one. The software folks should just ignore that one, because every time you use Vista’s complete PC backup to restore to the same laptop, there is the potential of restoring pirated software. Second, network and other drivers for the new laptop will have to be available during the restore. That little problem should be easier for Microsoft to solve once, than for millions of us end users to go through laptop update hell day-after-day-after-day-after day….

If Microsoft and its cohorts don’t have enough motivation to fix the problem, then laptop manufacturers should get their noses into this thing. Just ask them to estimate how many people put off upgrading to a new laptop, because they approach the laptop upgrade wars with total dismay.

I actually put the question to some product managers from a major manufacturer’s laptop division. They said “Sure, but we can’t do it alone.” They’re right, but in reality they’re not alone. I’m sure their competitors and we end users would join them in pushing and shoving Microsoft and software manufacturers to do what’s right.

I’ve said nothing about the impact of this new approach to system upgrades on desktop and even server users. It should go without saying that they too would welcome it with open arms.