Like 500,000 other people, I bought my Windows 98 upgrade CD on the first day they were available. Breathlessly, I loaded it into my no-name year-old Pentium-II/266, ran the setup program, and waited in vain for anything to happen. Windows 98 would not, and still will not, load on my PC. The setup wizard says there isn't enough space on the hard disk to create a temporary directory as part of the installation. But the file manager tells me I have 2.8 gigabytes free. Microsoft Tech Support tells me nothing at all because I can't get them on the phone. Their Web site knowledgebase knows nothing about my type of problem. And so I wait and wait and Microsoft has my $90. What's most weird about this is that less than a week later I finally had my private hour with Bill Gates and I never even mentioned the problem.

Bill Gates wasn't going to roll up his sleeves and solve my problem. You don't get an hour alone with the top PC guy in the universe and ask him to solve some problem that he can't solve anyway. Making Bill squirm with the knowledge that Windows 98 maybe isn't the panacea he says it is would have been satisfying, true, but a wasteful use of that hour. So I let it ride and we talked about other stuff.

But what could be more important than Windows 98? Plenty. I wasn't even sure I needed the upgrade, having to that point successfully avoided the beta program. What finally got me to buy was the need to be able to sympathize with readers when they called with their inevitable horror stories. And now, even without loading Windows 98, that's exactly what I can do. For a reporter at least, that's $90 well spent.

It was obvious in recent weeks that there would be serious problems with Windows 98, just as there have been with every significant Windows upgrade ever. The reasons are simple. Even with millions of beta testers, there are always hardware and software combinations that were never tested. And institutional blindness or naivete nearly always let a few big bugs get through that the developers, praying for miracles, hope users will somehow avoid. Users never avoid bugs. It's better than it used to be in the sense that Microsoft does use lots of outside testers, unlike the days of Windows 3.0 when the testing was all done in secret in Redmond where literally every desk held an identical Compaq 386/25. Windows 3 sure ran like a charm on a Compaq 386/25.

But the biggest reason why it was obvious Windows 98 would have problems was Microsoft's own coolness about the software. Oh, they wanted to release it all right. They wanted the money. They also wanted to get Win98 in circulation to make it harder for the Department of Justice. It's one thing to keep a product from being released (one can argue Microsoft might have done that, itself, purely on quality grounds) but it's another thing for the Feds to demand a recall. To have the strongest possible position, Microsoft needed to get Windows 98 on the market, complete with Internet Explorer. But they knew there would be trouble, and there is.

But is anyone really surprised? I just wish they'd hurry up that service pack, now scheduled for September. My particular install bug probably won't be fixed, of course, because that's just the way my life works.

It's curious that I couldn't find my problem in the knowledgebase. If this was a few years ago, the reason why would have been obvious. Back then at Microsoft there were two ways of knowing things. The first way of knowing was the way you and I know something: we figure it out for ourselves or somebody tells us. The second way of knowing was to be officially informed, which meant not only knowing but also being allowed to know. So people could know things in the first way - they heard there was a problem - but since they hadn't been officially briefed they didn't OFFICIALLY know, and so couldn't comment or pass the information on. Not suprisingly, this behavior was learned from IBM. What killed it was the advent of Internet time and the very act of allowing the public to access something that looks like Microsoft's internal knowledgebase.

There is a trend here. Companies are manipulative. Customers are cynical. Money is exchanged for dubious value beyond our being allowed to continue to exist. I feel sometimes like upgrades are extortion. We won't be cool unless we upgrade, yet what does upgrading get us but headaches? "It's the price we pay for progress," my daddy used to say, but he was talking about paying high taxes to fight the Cold War and beat the Russkies, while I keep trying to figure out who our Russkies even are. It has me worried.

Here are some other things I worry about. I continue to be fascinated by the interest by the telecommunications industry in video and the Internet. How can an industry so un-visionary expect to become a dominant player in a field they cannot comprehend? What happens to AT&T's grand plan if their corporate culture kills TCI? All I can guess is that it's more important for AT&T's stock price for there to be the appearance of movement than for actual movement to take place. But when the culture clash happens - and it WILL happen - it's anyone's guess what will be the outcome. The last time around it was Bell Atlantic that tried to buy TCI and that deal fell apart over personalities, too. Maybe it was the technical meeting in Denver when the TCI engineers sent over hookers for the enjoyment of the BA engineers.

I worry about Merrill Lynch, which recently announced it was moving to online trading but, damnit, that trading would still be done through a personal broker. What have these people been smoking? It's hard to argue that stockbrokers offer any real value to consumers, but it's impossible to argue that they form a logical part of any online brokerage scheme. The whole point of going online is to cut out the middle layers between the customer and the actual transaction. Merrill's insistence on keeping the broker in the loop means there is no way they can ever be competitive with true online brokers like eTrade and Schwab. If Merrill actually means what they say, the company is committing suicide.

There is an even more disturbing trend I've noticed that hits closer to home. Southwestern Bell, parent to my phone company, Pacific Bell, has introduced an annoying new service. Trying to become a major telemarketing force, they recently opened a huge call center. As I'm sure they explain in numbing detail to potential customers, there are some real advantages when your telemarketing is being done directly by the phone company. For one thing, they have a system that determines if you are at home. They can see if your phone is in use or send you a test phone call to check up on you. Don't answer! When they know there is a human near the phone, the calls will start. If you are home, you'll be bombarded by dozens of calls for products and services.

If Southwestern Bell is doing this, can your phone company be far behind? Have you been receiving an unusually large number of calls lately where there seems to be nobody on the other end? The truth is out there.

Okay, so we get wise to their tricks. In that case the phone company will sell us caller ID and call blocking. See where this is headed? Unfortunately their system seems to have the ability to get around these services. We pay them more yet the telemarketing calls continue. Remember this is all in the context of local phone companies whining about not being allowed into the long distance business and long distance companies whining about being frozen out of the local phone business. We're the ones who ought to be whining since what they are fighting over is free access to our wallets.

Next they'll find a way to sell us software upgrades for our telephones - upgrades we don't really need and probably won't load, anyway. Or maybe I'm getting a bit carried away.