After two years of working only on Windows XP (and reinstalling the system about 2 times) and using Windows Vista in the last 4 months I am happy to have converted myself back to the Mac!
Actually, now that I am back with my favorite applications (BBEdit, Entourage (yes I like it), etc.) I wondered how I could ever move away. I am still on installing more applications I need for work, but can’t wait to have ColdFusion installed 
Some days ago I posted that I was not able to install SP2 on our Dell D800. Well, after surfing the web some more while waiting for Dell to send me a CD which includes SP2 already (my previous post) I have found a very cool application which allow for a customized Windows Installation! Yes true, one can have its own Windows installation made with NLite.
First I was skeptical but then thought I will give it a try and since NLite is a free tool there is nothing to loose. Ok, so I downloaded it the application installed it and started it up. First of all I was very impressed by the nice GUI and the option it offered. Anyhow, I inserted my Dell CD which only included SP1 and then told NLite that I want to include SP2 on this installer. After some confirmation dialogs it took about 5 minutes and Nlite told me to insert a blank CD for burning (you can also save it to an image file). Another 4 minutes and I had a full Window installer with SP2 already on it.
Needless to say that the whole installation was smooth and our D800 is now running happily (well more or less with Windows).
NLite can be downloaded from http://www.nliteos.com/.
This weekend I have tried to re-install my Dell D800 with the original Dell Windows XP CD.
Well, I went my way and reformated the D800 and then started from the CD to install Windwos XP. To make it short, Windows XP installed fine and all went well. So before doing any further driver installation I started downloading the latest updates for Windows from the Microsoft update site.
All went well until I got prompted to install Service Pack 2. Service Pack 2 started installing and halted at the “Checking product key…” and stayed there forever. Since I was on a WLAN network I thought that this could have interrupted the connection and rebooted and tried to install it again. Again, the installation stopped at the same screen. To make a long story short, I even did a reinstall and got stalled and the same screen again.
Today I called Dell support and told them all this. After some minutes they told me that they can not resolve this and are going to send me a new Windows CD with the service pack 2 included (just like I have for my Precision M70 laptop).
After all, Dell made it very easy to deal with them and are very supportive. Two thumbs up to them.
Do you know this disease which all developers worldwide have in comon? I think there is no name for it yet, so let us just call it “featurebeforeweship” disease.
So what is it all about you might ask. Well, it is the little guy up in the developers mind that will not let him finish off the application before this “little” feature or addon is build in and ready. As an example, you got this little blog application writn all on your own. You think to release it to the public but then, just before yuo are about to let the world know about your masterpiece, you think “nah, let me build a nice backend administration to it that will let my users do (write in here what you want)”.
So what happens? Your application will not hit the net and will end up for another round of development on your screen. This disease can even be so intense that your application, which is actually at Version 1.0, becomes a feature rich application, more like a version 2.0, but still unshipped at the level of Version 1.0 
Now, to be totally honest with you, I am suffering from this disease too. I have suffered from it in the past many times and are sill under the impression that my application(s) should only see the world after feature “xy” has been implemented. Now let’s see how we can overcome this challenge …
