After five years without Windows

After five years without Microsoft Windows (except some glimpses here and there), a few days ago I had to use Windows Vista on an HP laptop. Wow, I almost forgot Windows could actually run on a real PC in place of a virtual machine!

All I had to do was checking if my multi-platform-Eclipse-based-application worked on Windows and make it a ZIP bundle.
I felt a kind of excitement while testing my application. First, it was working smoothly, second, Windows was kinda working too.
So it came the ZIP time. My self-confidence vacillated a bit when, looking for a compress-like menu item, I discovered it wasn’t there. Then this idiocy returned into my mind: compressed folders.

Right click, create compressed folder and here I go. I dragged my 250MB directory in the compressed folder and… 5 minutes to go… FIVE. MINUTES.
I patiently waited the 4.30 minutes (Windows always overestimates) and there was my ZIP. After that I plugged my usb pen drive that mounted correctly and explored my resources to locate my zip file -as I accidentally closed the window-, I noticed the disturbed fact that a compressed folder is actually listed among the files  (as it’s one) and not among folders… Personal HCI note: if you call it folder, handle it like one.

Anyways, I got the zip in the pen drive.

The real trouble came when I had to install the software on a VIP client’s laptop with Windows XP.

After copying the zip from the pen drive to the hard drive, the client double clicked the “compressed folder” and dragged its content on the desktop. After minutes of “computing” the computer whined that a certain file could not be found and the operation could not completed.
DAMN, corrupted zip, that’s what I thought. I ran to Malex who copied it into his Linux box that uncompressed it smoothly, into an iMac, that uncompressed it smoothly, and also into a Windows VM that uncompressed it smoothly.

As I brought the pen drive back to the client, I was frantic. “Could you… try that again?”. And he did but nothing worked.

I was about to go and make the bundle again, hoping for better fortune, when the client’s partner  exclaimed “Hey it worked!”.
The end of the story is that clicking on the “extract” action brought to a success, while dragging and dropping was failing miserably.

I was as happy as a kid, but when I looked at them, no feeling appeared through their eyes. Not surprise, nor anger for the time lost, nothing. Just the usual. The usual Windows shit.

Thank goodness I am so out of the Windows daily misery I can be happy the rare times I have to make it work and I succeed.