Hitch Hiking to 64 bit Vista

In those days, even people who didn't pay much attention to Queen knew their two most popular pieces - We will rock you and We are the herose. No, three, including Bohemian Rhapsody. Did I spell that wrongly? Alright, We are the heroes.

I never knew they were categorised as heavy metal rock. As a kid I thought they sounded rather classical and operatic. They are nowhere jock-shocking as ACDC, Black Sabbath or Alice Cooper. Using midi software to reassign tracks to strings and winds, you might think they sound pretty classical, right?

Who on earth flagged this (I want to break free) video as inappropriate so that you needed to confirm you're 18 before allowed to watch it? Is men dressing as women in a video inappropriate? No sexual explicitness and even some traditional ballet routines are more sexually suggestive. Perhaps, we should go around youtube flagging every ballet video as inappropriate. I recall, some fifteen years ago, a certain school district, I can't recall which, considered banning the Bible because of its sexual explicitness.

So, after two weeks of consideration, I decided it is pointless to upgrade to 64 bit Vista. The myth was you should not run 64 bit Vista because it requires all drivers to be signed. There is a registry flag to set, which would allow the installation of unsigned drivers.

I went to Microsoft upgrade web site whose previous pages boast they could ship us the 64 bit Vista DVD for our current product keys, where I keyed in my Vista product keys, one for a Toshiba laptop and the other for Gateway. The web site responded that those are OEM keys and I should contact the respective OEMs. Okay.

I called Toshiba and they said it's your fault for not specifying 64 bit Vista when you bought the laptop. Now you have to purchase a new licence with a DVD that has both 32 and 64 bit installations and perhaps sell your current licence (I presume to some uninformed/unsuspecting buyer). I told them, to no avail of any sympathy, that I believe my licence is valid for 64 bit installations too - so just sell me the (danged) 64 bit DVD without a new licence, just as Microsoft would.

Should I call Gateway if they have a similar response? Would an American company have better response than a Japanese one? Toshiba, as a Japanese company, is surprisingly actually more disappointing than Gateway in my previous experience. I had an acquaintance who was rather frustrated and smashed his Vaio to the wall because Sony wanted him to ship it all the way to Singapore for repairs. Do you know that Singapore is diametrically the other side of the planet from Boston? A little bit less, give or take.