“Two hundred dollars. Are you shitting me?” I asked the clerk.

“$199.99 plus tax,” the timid man corrected, undoubtedly wishing by now that he could crawl under the counter and hide.

“I can buy a netbook with Windows 7 on it for $200.”

“Would you like to look at a netbook?”

“No. Give me the damn box.”

Anything off a shelf is more expensive than free, so after blissfully converting to an open source household years ago, the idea of paying for an upgrade has become alien. If that seemed unusual, the idea of paying serious money for what is, in effect, a patch for a previous failure seems batshit fucking loco. With the right contractor, $200 would supply the purchase and installation of a Toto bidet and would likely result in less shit on my hands than Windows 7.

After a morning of intense retail struggle, I at last had the product in my hands in front of its intended recipient. For me, Windows 7 was a performance upgrade. I had heard from a number of friends who jumped in during the beta that the overall responsiveness of the operating system had dramatically increased. Being a tablet user, this was crucial as the laptop had sacrificed horsepower for light form factor. Even with four gigabytes of RAM, Vista takes an eternity to boot and frequently slowed to a crawl for even basic web operations.

Stoked to see the performance boost for myself I plinked the entirely too goddamned expensive DVD into the tray and got going with an in-place upgrade. To cut to the big reveal, I never made it past the compatibility screen.

My laptop is the Lenovo X60 tablet, very popular in the tablet PC scene if a couple years old.  Made by a major manufacturer and Microsoft partner, I would have expected the upgrade to run smoothly.  I made it exactly one screen past the license agreement before hitting my hard stop.  During the compatibility check, it told me to uninstall a program that came installed by the laptop manufacturer.

The hitch?  No such program is listed in Add/Remove Programs.  Windows 7 was telling me to get rid of a program that Windows Vista said didn’t exist.

After three hours of repeated attempts and uninstalling a shitload of the manufactuer-loaded software, I found in a forum that I needed to rename a system file in order to clear the false incompatibility message that prevented my upgrade.

In Linux or OSX, this would be simple enough.   Open a command terminal, gain superuser privileges, and rename the file with one command. Definitely not something the average fuck-stupid user would consider appropriate for an OS upgrade, but for my nerdly patience an acceptable obstacle to navigate for a better performing laptop.

In Vista, however, renaming a system file is fucking impossible. Because of the revamped, short-bus security model in Vista, two commands are required to just get the permissions to change a system file – even as the most privileged user on the machine. However, once those permissions are gained, one still can’t rename the file if its in use, even if it is non-critical to the system running. According to the research I did in that three hour timesink, the only other option for me is to do a fresh install which I’m not going to do.

This is not 1999. Operating systems are not some mystic, ethereal projects only one company can manage any more.   The entire Internet can be searched in seconds.  The human genome can be sequenced in a week.  After nearly two decades of development, Windows should be able to just fucking work.

For Mac and Linux users, in-place operating upgrades are ordinary.  My Ubuntu desktop has retained all my installed applications and preferences since Breezy Badger, which was released four years and seven upgrades ago.  The hassle of reinstalling and reconfiguring my OS is just not acceptable any more.

So my review of Windows 7?  Well, the box looks great, but I wouldn’t pay $200 for it.

Microsoft’s stock jumped today on better-than-expected earnings and the promise of Windows 7, the latest revision of the software giant’s flagship product.  Allegedly sleeker, faster and better than its oft-maligned predecessor, Windows 7 is supposed to be Microsoft’s return to form, the solid release needed after the cyclical once-in-a-decade clusterfuck that was Windows Vista the company seems to need to wake itself up.

The reviews thus far from the technology press have been glowing, though solidly couched in the admission that the last three years of Vista have been pretty terrible.  A ton of folks on Twitter have been asking for our gonzo take, so your intrepid (d)N0t editor set out to snag the release on launch day.

And after three goddamn hours, two beers, four aspirin and a broken Enter key I’d love to tell you what Windows 7 is like, but I wouldn’t know because I can’t install the motherfucker.

But I can sure tell you what buying this warm turd was like.

I rolled into Frisco’s dork outlet Central Computers at the crack of noon to snag a copy, expecting a Microsoft marketing-fueled fiesta with balloons, crap techno and complimentary strippers and blow for the first 50 customers.   Accustomed to the usual PR bender Microsoft goes on for its releases, I was surprised to see… nothing.

The only external signal indicating that Windows 7 was even launching that day was a 8×11 white sheet of paper taped to the door with a Windows 7 logo printed on a clearly entry-level  inkjet printer.  At least at this store (which is the customary first stop for early adopters in San Francisco), it didn’t seem like Windows 7 was launching to a ravenous horde of hungry consumers.

It seemed like Thursday.

Once inside I stepped up to the counter and asked a gentleman in a company-issued polo and stringy Asian facial hair for my copy.

“What version do you want?” he asked.

“What versions do you have?”

“Uh…” he stammered like an unprepared freshman at a pop quiz.  “I know there’s an ‘Ultimate’.”

“Ultimate!” I exclaimed.  “Well that sounds like an operating system just awesome enough for me.  What are Ultimate’s features compared to other versions?”

“Um.  Encryption?”

“Are you asking me or are you telling me?”

“I think it has encryption.”

“I already have plenty of encryption.  I got that part of my life handled.”

“Well, this has encryption built-in.”

“Built-in to what?”

“Built-in to the operating system.”

“Wouldn’t I want the operating system to be encrypted as well?”

“Windows 7 has encryption built-in,” he repeated.

“I got that part, chief,” I retorted.  “I’m telling you I have hardware encryption on my laptop.  It’s faster and it encrypts the operating system as well.  I’m set on encryption – what else does Windows 7 have?”

That’s about when he tried to find some marketing collateral.

After twenty minutes of squirreling about and getting no fewer than five of his colleagues huddled around a web browser, I had enough of a sense of the distinct Windows flavors to make a purchasing decision.  Though I’ve been strictly Linux on my desktop for the past five years, I do use Windows for its tablet functionality.  As a compulsive note-taker and writer, I’ve come to rely on Microsoft’s best-of-breed handwriting recognition and integration with their superior OneNote software.

For this peripheral use case, I needed Windows Professional, which I indicated to the salesman to produce with all available speed.  He had “to go to the back” in order to find a copy and when he returned, he slid a white OEM copy towards me.

“Hey dude, this is OEM,” I said.

“This is full Windows version,” he replied, trying to assuage my concern.

“Yes, but it is OEM.  This is for new system builds.  I’m purchasing an upgrade for my laptop.”

He stared at me blankly for a few moments before consulting case.  “This is full version of Windows.”

“I know buddy, but it is for new systems only.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The gigantic fucking label with big red letter on the front,” I snapped, pointing at the obvious front of the disc.

It was about that time that the transaction started to take a downturn.

Turned out they didn’t have the retail upgrade disc.  They didn’t have a launch kit.  They, as near as I could tell, were only dimly aware that Windows 7 even existed.

I eventually got my hands on a copy at Best Buy, but even in a retail giant similar in size to Microsoft the experience was underwhelming.  Sales staff also had little clue as to the differences in Windows flavors and there was a conspicuous absence of early adopting customers.  A news correspondent for the local news station commented as she stood arms-crossed in front of the computer counter.

“If more people don’t show up in the next 30 minutes, we’re leaving.”