Dear Mr. Gates

Dear Mr. Gates,

Please accept this posting as my official request to have a week of my life back. I would either like the time fully returned to me or payment in lieu for IT services. I am an ICT professional so I expect proper rates to apply.

I'm sorry I don't have a detailed accounting of my time, but I have been fully engaged, for more than a week, with the sole goal of installing your Microsoft Windows XP computer operating system. In that time I have booted from my legitimately purchased Windows DVD perhaps 2 dozen times. This is not easy, since your software doesn't recognize my hard drive. Once inside your software, via the DVD I have selected the option of using the Recovery Panel a number of times. But the Recovery Panel looks an awful lot like the C:/ prompt. Staring at it doesn't ever fix the problem. I've loaded the actual operating system at least 8 times now, half as a repair to an existing installation and half starting with a disk format and reload from scratch. Thanks to these reloads I've loaded service packs one and two at least four times. And I've loaded service pack three once or twice.

The problem is the software. The basic OS works. SP1 seems to install and work. SP2 installs. But once it asks me to reboot at the end, it rarely returns.

Isn't it amusing when a software upgrade wipes out the files the OS needs to boot? Haha, very good, got me there.

If upgrading the software must destroy my system, then can you please stop presenting me with minute by minute reminders to download or install updates? Or even better, could you consider producing software that actually works? Based upon the amounts you owe me, for my time, and no doubt also everyone else, please sell your next software release for $1 and include a shiny new $100 bill in each box. Failing this, please compensate me for my time. Or failing this, please at least allow me to use my computer again. If there is a ransom you wish paid, I have not received the note.

Your humble slave in economics,
Morgan