Technical Whinge - XP and Adobe Reader and Power points

Three whinges today. 
Firstly, last March, I was trying to use WiFi at Food Inc.  Free WiFi.  My laptop collapsed in a heap.
Well guess what?  Today, same thing.  XP collapsed catastrophically.  I love the robustness of XP and I've never seen anything like it.  I switch the laptop on.  Enable WiFi and then BANG, a quick blue screen with an error message to quick to read, and laptop switches off immediately no disk close down, nothing.  Luckily this time, it didn't damage my disk.  So when I go on the WiFi at Food Inc (Melbourne Central, Elizabeth St), I can create a complete collapse of XP!!  What the hell is it about the WiFi at Food Inc that would cause this to happen repeatedly.  The one long shot is that there's a power surge on my battery, but I can't test that theory because Food Inc doesn't have any power points!

Which brings me to my second whinge of the evening.  What's the point of having free WiFi or paid WiFi, if you don't advertise it on your window, and you don't have any power access!!  Let me tell you guys, the places that advertise their WiFi, and make users welcome, and have power access, are packed out.  I'll name them. Kat Baloo on Acland St, and E55 on Elizabeth (don't read the review if easily offended!!).  And this looks like a good list for free WiFi in Melbourne.
Hey Azure, you need to start getting your clients to put up stickers on their windows, and work out if your WiFi is usable.  At Melbourne Central, there are no seats and power, to use your two WiFi locations, and the one place where there are actual PC stations with power, are too far away from the signal!!  At Ludo Cafe another Azure location, I set up outside, the helpful waitress came up to me and asked where I was getting the WiFi from.  Your cafe!! "Oh I didn't know we had WiFi!!"  And she was the one who told me about E55!!

And finally, Adobe reader.  Why is Adobe Reader so often such a pain in the ass to upgrade.  A simple upgrade wants me to close down every tab in Firefox, and Adobe locked the first time in the DOS prompt.  DOS!!!!

Comments

[Ric]

Talking about whingeing - have you enjoyed the cricket this summer?

On Adobe Reader 8 - did you find it much more difficult than it needed to be to actually GET an install file that you could put on a USB stick?

[Peter Christo]

why do these things only happen to you POM's?

[Flotsam]

@ Tony:

Try the freeware Foxit reader for PDFs. It leaves the Adobe product in the dust.

@ Peter:

The great thing about us whinging Poms is that when we have finished griping we then go out and create something that fixes the problem; this is why we are the most inventive nation on the planet. The attitude of "she'll be right" is not all that productive, mate.