I do not accept your silly software license

So our newest Mythic Beast started working for us today. The first task is to start installing your new laptop and reading and signing employment contracts. Today we had our newest employee fail at the first hurdle.

The laptop in question is a shiny Toshiba z930. This one came with Windows 8 and a fully charged battery. On first powering it on it comes up with the Windows 8 licence. This has a tickbox option for ‘I accept the license’ and a big button labelled ‘Accept’ to click on.

If you don’t tick the box, it tells you you have to. There’s no option to reject the license.

If you press the power button the laptop suspends itself. If you press and hold the power button the laptop still suspends itself. Ctrl-Alt-Delete doesn’t work. You can’t remove the battery as it’s built in. In frustration our newest employee suggested pouring his coffee over the damn thing to make it power cycle. This was a really stupid idea, not only does the laptop have a spill proof keyboard he’d also then have no coffee.

The best plan we could come up with was to wait for the batteries to run out which requires pressing a key about every five minutes to stop the thing suspending itself.