There are many of them; Microsoft’s Virtual PC software has a plethora of uses in software testing, and for working around those irritating bits of software that I need to use very occasionally that don’t play well with Vista x64.

However, one of my favourite features is the ‘Undo Disk’ functionality. I can boot the virtual machine up, and any changes I make are only temporary. When I shut the virtual machine down, I can either choose to keep those changes, or wipe the slate clean as if the virtual PC had never been booted up.

This evening, I found this most useful in installing a neighbour’s broadband connection. A lot of ISPs (especially in the UK) are adamant that you must install the software from their CD in order to setup your ADSL. Normally this is utter rubbish, and you can simply log on to the modem directly and fill everything in.

Not so with the BT Home Hub.

Not content with irritating me by sending me spam, today I’ve had over a hundred bounce messages from other people because some donkey-molesting spammer is spoofing my email address to send spam to other people. Fantastic.

This isn’t a new revelation; I’d already been tipped off by various friends in the industry about how god-awful this device is. However, today was my first personal experience with the thing, and it did little to ingratiate itself to me. It’s also unnaturally large given how light (and how obviously empty) the box is.

My cousin and her husband were unfortunate enough to have one foisted upon them by BT, and had not been able to get the wireless working since it arrived – which was hardly surprising since the integrated wireless was not only not broadcasting its SSID, but appeared to be disabled entirely, despite several admin pages on the box claiming the contrary. After a few cursory searches of various forums, I quickly learned that this is not an entirely unusual problem.

If you are unfortunate enough to have to deal with this retrograde piece of rubbish, may I recommend the following resources:

• Lock your Home Hub into firmware version 6.2.2.6 from Jarvisers Workshop BT Home Hub,
• the BT Home Hub firmware recovery tool,
• and finally, somewhere to get some decent kit and a ISP that won’t sell you such shite in the first place.

It did eventually acquiesce and start broadcasting – incredibly, the device does even support WPA2 in the latest firmware, though since BT routinely send firmware upgrades to it remotely, I won’t be surprised if it stops working again at some point. Not a system I’ll be recommending any time soon.

I had an epiphany this evening while fixing yet another screwed up QuickTime/iTunes install.

• FACT: Apple consistently spread FUD about how Windows is so much less stable and reliable than OS X.
• FACT: A large proportion of the PC problems I deal with are to do with Apple software being installed on it and breaking horribly.

The way I see it, there are only two logical reasons for this:

• REASON A: Apple are deliberately writing broken software for the PC in order to support their flawed argument that Windows is unreliable.
• REASON B: Apple are in fact completely incapable of writing software that works.

Right now I’m leaning heavily towards the former, but I hereby invite all Apple supporters to pick either one of these reasons and explain why that reason should convince me to ‘make the switch’.

UPDATE 00.21: More than 2 hours later and I’m still trying to figure out how to get this bloody iTunes install to work again. Anyone thinking of taking up my above invitation best be warned: I am not in the best of mindsets for hearing how fabulous Apple is right now.