I called Microsoft Customer Support the other day.   I was impressed.  I got an actual person to talk to in a relatively short time after going through the usual  telephone system automatic pick a number if it fits your problem.

I can’t say that I hung up happy, in fact, I finished the call  downright angry.  What was the problem?  About a year and half ago, I had built a computer. and paid for and installed the OEM version of Vista Home Premium as the operating system.

For those of you who have not looked at operating system pricing, the OEM version, as opposed to the Retail version,  is supposedly for system manufactures and integrators who build systems.

To continue the story, the system crashed and in the process took out the power supply and motherboard.  There was nothing wrong with the disk drives, and I still had Vista and all my data on the drives.   So I purchased a new power supply and motherboard, and connected everything up.

That’s when I found out my system wouldn’t boot.  What was the problem.  Well, in one word, Microsoft.  It turns out if you have an OEM copy of the operating system, It can only be reinstalled on a system with the exact same make and model of motherboard as where it was originally installed. My original motherboard was obsolete, so I was in a “Catch-22.”

What did Microsoft Customer Support say, “Well, that’s our policy.”  Which made me instantly angry.  To paraphrase heir policy, we know you build systems, and that you repair systems, but if your customer has a problem with his motherboard, which needs replacing, you’ll have to buy a new operating system, of course, you could have bought the retail version initially, hint, hint.  In order to get up and running I had to purchase another license.  Pay another $200 to turn a software switch on.

You would think that Microsoft would give its partners a break, which it supposedly does by making the OEM version about $100 less than the retail version.  But as you can see from this experience, you are better off initially buying the retail version.

Better yet, your better off boycotting Microsoft products all together.   Is that possible?  I believe so, yes,  I’ve just ordered the parts for a new computer.  It’s purpose is to prove to myself that I, or anyone else for that matter, don’t need to use Microsoft products.   That you can still have a fully functional computer without using Microsoft products.   I believe Microsoft is going the way of IBM, a has-been, and has peaked.  And I aim to do my part to help Microsoft along.  Yep, I guess you could say, “that’s my new policy.”

Well, well, Opera has just announced Opera 10 and all I can say is, Wow! It deserves a full 10.00 version release.

It’s fast. Of the five browsers: Chrome, Safari, IE8, Firefox, and Opera; Chrome and Opera are the fastest, with Chrome just a notch ahead of Opera.  With this release they have joined an exclusive club occupied by Safari and Chrome, Opera 10.00 now passes the Acid3 browser test for Internet compatibility with a score of 100 out of 100. Congratulations to the development team!

This Opera release does more than that though. It’s appearance has been redesigned and it looks, as they claim, intuitive and sleek. Intuitive because the layout has been redesigned to make it easier to use. The default design is gorgeous, and there are different skins if you want a differenct look.

I found myself wanting a new tab button on the tool bar. I get tired of having to go file>new tab in all the browsers. Opera made it easy. Right click on the tool bar>customize>appearance>buttons and drag the New button to the toolbar, done. Click the icon and you have a new tabbed window. And when you mouse over a tab, a small screen appears showing a thumbnail of the page you would go to if you clicked the tab. That coupled with Speed Dial allows you quick access to your favorite sites.

Opera has some new features. One is Opera Link. For those familiar with Delicious, this is Opera’s Delicious. You save your bookmarks to the Opera server, and they are then available on any PC you use. When you log into Opera Link your bookmarks are synchronized. So if you delete a bookmark in one browser, it will be deleted in the other browsers.

Opera also has something called Opera Turbo that will speed up slow connections by compressing images and data before it reaches your computer, the result is a speed boost on slow connections.  This is just icing on the cake.

In all fairness, Firefox released a new version 3.5 last week. Their big thing with this release was their support for open video format. This allows you to play videos in your browser window, like “You Tube,” without requiring plug ins. They also have improved their web compatibility by reaching a score of 93 out of 100 in the Acid3 test. There last version only got to 72, improvement, but not there yet.   Meanwhile the new Microsoft browser update IE8, struggled to get a measly 20.

Our favorite browser of the five is Opera. It’s fast and sleek and takes the work out of browsing the web. Although we have to admit for web development, we use Firefox exclusively. Why? Their web development tool plug ins are good, more specifically, because of their Aardvark plug in tool.   If Opera had an easy to use, “Aardvark” tool, and beefed up their web development tools. Bye, bye Firefox.

Do yourself a favor, download Opera, and give it a try.