Grrrrr: Why my new Dell sucks and insults me
Sorry to ease back into this with such a prosaic topic, but I am grumpled.
Today I got a beautiful new Dell laptop. Beautiful, eyesight-saving display, nice springy keyboard, all kinds of cool gadgets. I've taken a great pleasure in fixing it up just the way I like it, which (as I am a conservative) to some degree involved restoring the familiar layout of Windows XP. Can't quite get used to Vista's lack of a "documents" folder, or an icon for the computer itself. (This handy CNET video full of Burkean sentiments got me on the right track).
Of course, one of the first things I installed was Audacity. If you've been reading JYB a while you might remember this paean to Audacity I posted a while ago, in which I claimed that that little bit of freeware does for sound files what Photoshop does for pictures.
Well, not on my fancy new hot-stuff Dell, it doesn't. It can't record any sound. Heh. April fool, See-Dub! You really got me there, Dell. Oh, you got me there.
The first computer I bought was in 1996. Big old clunky desktop. I got a scholarship in blah-blah school and poured it into a nice 200-mhz pentium that served me well for about eight years. I could run Audacity on that. My new 2008 Vista machine? Sorry, amigo.
I'm going somewhere with this, by the way. See, there's a reason I can't record the sounds my computer makes. I had heard that Vista was engineered by Microsoft to make Digital Rights Management easier to enforce, but I didn't quite believe that. But lo and behold, after a long evening googling for answer as to why technology just took a gigantic step backwards, I see Dell confirms that that's more or less exactly what it's all about:
Dell is currently working with the vendor to investigate providing Stereo Mix support for Vista. There are, however, some significant challenges (e.g. DRM security restrictions) resulting from the design of Vista that need to be addressed, so this will not be a quick or easy task, and frankly may not be possible.I know the recording companies presume I'm a criminal and I'm going to steal all their music. I had assumed that Microsoft was complicit in that assumption as well. But I'm surprised to see a hardware manufacturer like Dell buying into the idea that their fine customers are a bunch of dirty thieves as well.We will keep you updated.*
That's nice. In other news, your fancy Wusthof steak knives will henceforth all be retrofitted with a dull edge. Because let's face it: you're probably a psychopath, and you're going to be using that knife to stab someone within a year. Wusthof considers it its duty to prevent stabbings, and the best way to do that is dull steak knives. Oh, you can't cut steak with them now, which is probably what you bought them for, but that's progress. Or wait, wait, I got a better one. You might look at some illegal pornography on your monitor, so the next generation of Dells will now not allow you to save any .jpeg files to your hard drives. You perverts. You filthy perverts.
Let's stop a second here, though, and presume the conservative thing: let's say people who buy Dell laptops are a bunch of corrupt music thieves, each last worthless one of us. This is skin off Dell's nose... exactly why? They may be concerned about music piracy, sure, but are they so concerned as to take the extraordinary step of selling what is, to me, a defective product...did their executives get backstage Hannah Montana tickets from the RIAA to do this?
I've got a few days of trial period on this machine. I love it, but I may send it back and buy a Vaio or a Toshiba. I've had a lot of fun fooling around with audio on my old computers (exhibit A); I don't see why I should have to give it up on this one. And I don't see why I should buy from a company that assumes I'm a thief.
Oh, one last thing: Apparently this limitation can be effectively overcome by the simple measure of taking a $3.95 Radio Shack patch cord--imagine a headphone cord with plugs at both ends--and running it from the "headphones out" jack into the "microphone in" jack. I'm curious to see whether that's the case. If it is, it makes these little software games look doubly petty and stupid.
Dell has a reputation for good customer service. If they care about preserving that, they'll post updated drivers that give their computers the functionality their valued customers--wretched kleptomaniacal filthy pervert-bandits though they may be--expect.
*"Stereo Mix Support"(which has other names as well) is what many Vista systems include, but Dell's laptops do not, that enable a program like Audacity to monitor the audio stream. Most sound cards have Stereo Mix disabled, but it's a matter of seconds to enable it and it works fine. Dell's SigmaTel audio cards, however, do not allow the Stereo Mix to be turned on.