Dialog Between a Man and His Vista Laptop

original article before discard

While continuing the cleanup instigated by the previously mentioned documentary, I threw out quite a lot of stuff.

One piece of paper had the following dialog that I transcribed before discarding. It concerns a man and his Vista laptop.

—Hello laptop.
—Hello user!
—I'd like to change some settings, can I open the control panel?
—[long, long pause] No problem!
—I want to change what happens when I close the lid. What happens currently?
—[extended pause] Well that depends if I'm on a battery or plugged in.
—Why, what's the difference?
—[assume long pauses unless told otherwise] Well, if I'm on battery and you close the lid, I go into sleep mode.
—And? If you're plugged in?
—Well, if I'm plugged in and you close the lid, I go into sleep mode.
—That's the same isn't it?
—Well, I kill a few apps, just to spice it up.
—I see. So what is sleep mode?
—It's a low power mode where applications are paused.
—Suspended?
—No, that's suspend.
—What's suspend?
—It's a bit like hibernate.
—Oh. What exactly is hibernate?
—Well... it's somewhat similar to sleep.
—What's the specific difference between all of those?
—Hmmm. Well, let me see. It's very... There's... Well Okay. I'm not completely sure myself. So I just delete a few extra files to make it convincing. Ah, anyway, you were wanting to change a setting?
—Frankly, I'm a little concerned now. But all I want to do is make sure that if I just close the lid, and if you're plugged in to a power supply, then I want you to just do nothing.
—Nothing?
—Just pretend like nothing's happened. Pretend I haven't event touched the lid.
—Can I kill some apps?
—No.
—Delete a few smallish files?
—No.
—Move the swap file around on disk. Jiggle it a bit?
—Not even that.
—What if I 'clean up' the registry or terminate some services?
—No, not that either.
—Nothing fancy at all?
—Nothing.
—Okay, Sir. It's your dime.
—So when I shut the lid, while you're plugged in to a power supply, what are you going to do?
—Nothing much.
—Nothing much?
—Okay, nothing at all. I'm going to pretend you haven't even touched the lid and that you're still watching very closely. I can do this. I'm a pretty sophisticated operating system you know. I'm not some version two or three operating system. I am Windows Vista, the most eagerly anticipated operating system in the history of windows operating systems. All of this tricky 'do nothing stuff' is considered elementary to a system like me. Go ahead.
—Okay here we go.
—No problem! Bring it on.
—You're definitely ready?
—Ready as ever. A little bit excited actually.
—Here goes.
Man gingerly closes the lid. Without a pause we hear the hard drive grind to a halt. Lights flicker out.
[man performs a facedesk]
 

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