🚀 go-pugleaf

I just needed to blow off some steam about a recent experience I had
trying to install Microsoft Word 5.0 on a new PC for another user:

Since I don't use Microsoft Word (I prefer WordPerfect), and had not 
installed it in quite a while, I had forgotten about the room-temperature-IQ 
of the mentally retarded rhesus monkays at Microsoft who designed the 
installation and setup software for WORD. An old copy of the Utilities 1 
disk would not run. So I went around to all the machines in my department 
that had Word 5 installed on them, hoping to be able to get a copy of the 
SETUP.EXE program, only to discover that the aforementioned pseudo-bipeds 
had designed the installation and setup so that NO setup programs end up 
on the hard disk. You MUST have a floppy to change your setup! (this is 
like saying you must have a special toolkit to adjust the seat position 
in your car)

"OKAY", I thought, "I will just have to try and revive the floppy disk." 
So I used a special image-copying option board to make a duplicate 
copy, then ran two repair programs on the copy and did a low-level
format on it. Suddenly the setup.exe program worked! Joyfully, I started
setup by inserting the revived floppy into the B: drive (the ONLY 5 1/4"
drive on the machine, since the A: drive is a 3 1/2" drive) and it 
chugged along for a while and then prompted me to insert the Program 1
Disk, which I did. Then I got an ERROR message: "Please insert the diskette
into drive A:", it said. But try as I might, I just could not get the
5 1/4" diskette to FIT into the 3 1/2" drive. I had discovered "The First 
Microsoft Law of Software Installation" which is: you can ONLY install from 
the A: drive.

You see, in the world of brain-damaged Microsoft Install Programmers,
if you have a 5 1/4" diskette, it ONLY works in drive A:. There is no
need to pay any attention to WHAT drive the diskette with the SETUP
program on it is IN, OR to allow the user to SPECIFY what drive he or she
wants to install from. This MUST be a law, since after FIVE versions of
software, it still works this way.

In general, I avoid the software of companies like this like I avoid
swallowing used motor oil. It shows a carelessness and lack of thought
that is PROBABLY present in the package BEING installed, as well.

Well, now that I have THAT off my chest, I am going into the PC to
rearrange the disk controller harness to switch drives A: and B: ...