= Windows Hell =

I've had my new Windows laptop (from work) for one week.  One week of hell.  Just a few of the problems I've encountered are:

== Windows and the pervasive VPN ==

Why do Windows people insist on using VPNs?  I'd much rather have an SSH tunnel bastion host so I can limit accesses to the boxes I care about and setup specific applications for connection through the tunnels I want them to go through.  My last place had both, one for Windows users, and the ssh for linux users.

In most unix programs, I can tell it to connect through a certain interface, say, my wireless connection, directly, for my ssh connection to my home box, and through the vpn.  Take ping, for example.  In ping, I can use -I on my linux box to specify an interface, or -j to specify a source routing.  I didn't see a -I on cygwin, so I just tried -j, to no avail, it didn't seem to work, and failed silently.  Yay for Windows being annoying.  I can start a connection before opening my VPN, but if the Venturi crap doesn't work, I end up disconnecting the VPN to reconnect to my home box, then reconnecting, which often messes up the default outlook install when it tries to connect to an address that doesn't exist.  This is just crap.  SSH tunnels have none of those problems.

I could setup pptp without giving it the default route, and setting up ssh tunnels to my work box, I guess -- when my desktop finally comes in.  For now I've been using my linux laptop at work and leaving it there since the battery finally died on it and it's useless mobilely (and I can't find any of its batteries new online).  This is much easier in linux than in Windows.  I suppose I could also add static routes for every destination too, but where do I put this, in a script I have to run after the stupid gui connects to the vpn?  My workaround has been to spawn rasphone in a script (rasdial I have as an option too), so I could put it in there, but it's a pretty dirty interface.

== Windows still is unstable ==

Windows crashed trying to get it out of stanby.  Then, Explorer wouldn't open after coming out of hybernation until I did a cold reboot, not a warm reboot, for some reason (which was associated with the standby crash above and a chkdsk run).

== Replacing the default shell ==

Blackbox for Windows doesn't support full maximization properly, so I'll just be using Blackbox auto-hide.  Other than that, Blackbox has really made my computing easier (workspaces on Windows, with one workspace containing a rootless X in cygwin -- nested blackbox).  I also loaded my http://swoolley.org/blog.cgi/miniature%20font%20updated miniature font for Windows, so it matches my linux installs.

== Windows is always preloaded with crap and screen annoyances ==

   * Bluetooth systray icon, Volume Control ssytray icon, Eject systray icon -- Windows uses the system tray for both system and application crap.  They should have two trays, with the ability to hide system versus application notifications based on user preferences that can be quickly modified, such as a drop-down menu for system crap.

   * ZoneAlarm Pro

   * Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition

   * IBM Message Center (if you don't get the hint, I don't care about your messages IBM).

   * IBM ThinkVantage Access Connections in addition to the Windows Connections in the status tray (six icons this way).

== Verizon cellular Internet Access ==

Venturi-something came with my VerizonAccess crap.  See http://www.venturiwireless.com/solutions/technology.html#aao -- it replaces TCP!  VTP advertizes preventing connection losses, but when I had it running on linux using straight TCP, I had fewer dropped connections and reconnections got the same IP, so my ssh connections ran just fine.  

It also recompresses, caches, and compresses websites.  But good website designs already pre-compress, have integrated caching, and recompression is unneeded.  It's quite the hype, and for 99% of my use, it is dumb.  

VZAccess also does connection choosing that ThinkVantage does (but ThinkVantage doesn't grok the wireless connection) and Windows already does.  It seems every piece of hardware has its own software value-add that just adds more code bloat.

== Conclusion ==

Windows still isn't for me.  Despite my attempts to make it usable, I'll have to dump it or relegate it to a vmware session.  Ironically, what I have to support for Windows is automated in cygwin already, it just hasn't been ported yet to linux and run through conformance and quality assurance internally.  When that happens my company shouldn't need Windows to do anything.