Technical Karma

Beverage: Diet Doctor Pepper

Toast: health and happiness

I've been on a bit of a spending spree.

Perhaps it's a little foolish, especially in light of my current business climate, but I don't really care. Retail therapy has been a helpful. But some indulgence is fine, indulging in indulgence is a problem. I got a wake up call this weekend.

I got it into my head to install Windows on the iMac and dual boot. It's a geeky thing to do, and it didn't seem that bad. The iMac doesn't have a DVD drive, so I log into Windows online store and find a download for Win 8.

Now, the instructions on both the Mac and PC about how to do this process are a little vague. But what they are telling me is that I need to download this thing, create a USB thumb drive that I can mount and then partition my drive and load Windows there.

Great. Except that the downloaded to make the thumb drive is PC-only. Hmmm, catch-22. After some searching, I decide to use my work PC as a pivot to download the installer. Now, this is mildly terrifying. The installer dialogs are pretty vague and you don't know what comes after each Next screen. If I do the wrong thing, I could mess up my work computer and would have a lot of explaining to do. But I do it fine and avoid installing anything on the PC. The process takes about an hour.

Great! Now I have the required gear.

I should stop and tell you at this point that the Windows software cost $130.

Pop the thumb drive into the Mac and start the partition process. I have to go through another long update/prep process for that, but now I'm ready to-- Nope. It wants the 64 bit version not the 32. What did I do? Was there a chance to install the other version I missed? Do I try to make an ISO image instead?

I drop ten and go onto the Windows site to ask or help. After the usual rigmarole, it comes out that I did NOT buy windows for $130, I bought the upgrade to Windows 8. The full version costs $220 and can't be bought as a download. So I would need to buy a DVD drive as well.

 

I asked for a refund.

 

It's time to step back and respect what you've got.

Posted with Blogsy