Laptop Lament

Two years ago we bought a Sony Vaio laptop for me at the end of the year. That was when my business was a C corp and I had to spend any potential income to avoid being subject to a punishing marginal corporate tax rate. The Vaio came well-recommended and had the added attraction of its name starting with the letter "V". So does the Vista operating system on it that has been the bane of its existence.

Saturday morning the laptop stopped functioning again. This is the third time in two years. Either I am too hard on it and need to find a more robust machine or it is the sign of yet another Vista blowup. I hate it when my technological servants stop being servants and become tormentors. I think Vista would have been a better product if Microsoft felt the need to make sure it worked before releasing it. They might have if they weren't a monopoly. Monopolies are bad. Monopolists feel they can charge exorbitant prices for whatever they deign to sell. They can discontinue support for old products that work fine, in order to force the consumer to adopt new technology that they don't fully test. If they had meaningful competition, they wouldn't dare foist a piece of dreck like Vista on wary consumers who have no meaningful choice.

Oh well, time to get it fixed again. Did I mention that monopolies are bad?