Posted By : Dan Wilson     September 22, 2006 9:21 PM

Vongo.

Ok. What is Vongo? More importantly, who do these Vongo people think they are? Check out http://www.ihatevongo.com/ the site to learn about and share stories about Vongo.

I bought a new HP laptop a few weeks ago. It is quite a nice laptop with some very well laid out features. The laptop model is HP dv5000 series. It has some fun features, like the integrated 6 in 1 card reader, which have come in real handy as well as It has a 15.4" widescreen display, DVD writer, an Intel Core Duo processor, Windows XP Pro and preloaded with 1.5 GB of Ram. It was exactly what I was looking for. Not to mention when was the last time you saw a laptop from the factory with 1.5GB of RAM? Seems like an odd number, doesn't it? I think that kept rolling around in my head (1.5 GB? 1.5GB? ) until I bought it just to keep the noise from rattling around my corpus collosum any further.

I looked around online for a little while and apples to apples (no pun intended) it was the best deal around. I originally thought I would be ordering from an Online Store, just to save money and was surprised to find this model at CompUSA for the right price, ($1,100). I drove over and picked it right off the shelf.

So when I open the laptop for the first time, I note a good number of 'helpful programs' the fine folks at HP placed on the computer for me. Quite a few of them are games, which I've left on there for now. Good Airport fodder, yeah?

There were also offers for Internet service, various trial copies of software and something called Vongo.

Vongo, in a nutshell, is like Downloadable Netflix. From what I read, you download movies to your computer and watch them. I didn't read about it too much because I imagine the movies are DRM crippled in some way as to prohibit file sharing, or duplication. I already have Netflix and don't have time to watch many movies, so I figured I wouldn't be a Vongo customer anyways, but it seemed interesting enough not to delete first hand.

Vongo is a tool of Satan. I am convinced of it. Apart from the juicy bits of DRM slathered over the demon flesh it uses as an installer, its main task is to drive me absolutely nuts until I purchase a Vongo subscription.

No point in hyperbolic statements without facts, so here is my Vongo experience:

Apparently, Vongo is only partially loaded on my PC. Or, at least, it thinks it is.

Every time I start the computer, the Vongo application, begins to install more parts of Vongo from the internet using a windows installer. This, of course, interferes with me using any part of my computer until I get the Vongo Installer to quit. This is easier said than done.

The Vongo installation window only has a [cancel] button. Pushing it puts the computer in a bit of a tailspin for half a minute or so. all the windows become inactive and there is nothing to do but wait for the computer to start behaving again. One would think that after pushing the cancel button and waiting 30 seconds to get control of the computer again. Well, surprise, it doesn't.

Vongo thinks it is a wonderful application that everyone should have installed. Vongo has such a high opinion of itself, that when the user pushes [cancel] to stop the installation program, it happily restarts the install program once again, thinking no one in his right mind would wish to not have a fresh copy of Vongo installed.

I typically have to click the cancel button five or six times and wait for the 30 second electronic epileptic fit each time to actually fully quit the install spin cycle.

After a few days of this, I decided to get rid of Vongo for good. Whatever interest I had in the Vongo service was converted to seething hatred for their consistently annoying interruption of my work.

As Robert Burns put it best The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Well, to be accurate, he actually said "The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley". I am sure he meant to put "often go awry", but who knows, he had some insight into the complex doings and transpirings of rodents, it is conceivable through discourse with the rodents themselves, he learned of some insightful concept from the mice and, Gang Aft Agley is the closest mousespeak  English translation.

Of course, it might have been he actually did say "often go awry", but at the time he was snacking on peanut butter treats left over from the conference with the mice and it just sounded like "Gang Aft Agley". I don't pretend to understand poetry...

Mice notwithstanding, I have a demon process (daemon process ;)) to deal with and Vongo has to go.

Round 1: I ran the uninstaller for Vongo. Surprisingly enough, it refused to uninstall Vongo. Round 2: I disabled it in msconfig hoping at least it would quit taking over my machine on startup. I promptly rebooted my machine and crossed my fingers. Much to my chagrin, Vongo started reinstalling itself again. Round 3: I renamed the Vongo.exe binary to Vongo.sucks, confirmed with windows that yes, changing an application extention might cause the application not to work, it was precicely my motive for changing the extention. It can't possibly run if I rename it, right?

Well either the .sucks extension is recognized by windows as an executable, possibly from windows.sucks itself, or there is another demon claw sunk in to my XP Pro OS.

I am running out of options so I push the Thermonuclear lever!

I began locating small animals for sacrifice in case it came down to sprinkling animal blood over it to get it to go away for good.

So goodbye Vongo, I think I've driven the last wooden stake in your heart. See, I did a search on the hard drive for Vongo and deleted all references to your foul name. I also searched the entire registry for the hint, the whiff of your malodorous presence. May you never again darken my door.

I'm warning you Vongo, I'll reformat the whole hard drive if this doesn't work...

Oh Yeah, and if anyone personally knows any person associated with Vongo, please punch them in the spine for me....

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