Wasting Major Time

I apparently have a strange idea of what's a good way to relax. And I'm not usually a computer nerd, but I'm about to sound like one.

I left work a little early today and stopped at Best Buy to get a 120 gig hard drive that they had on sale. Despite a migraine that kept peeking through the clouds of medication, I installed the hard drive and then installed the free beta release candidate of Windows Vista, which won't be available to the general public until first quarter next year.

In short, I was quite impressed. It was attractive, responsive, and had a sturdy, quick-footed feeling that Windows usually lacks. It also had a lot of nice new features, and a sidebar full of gadgets that actually beats out the Google sidebar, of which I'm an regular user. I can also say that the integrated search really made finding things easy -- especially programs. No more trying to remember which folder I put the program icon in. Just type a few letters of the program I'm looking for, and there it is. Very nice. Windows Internet Explorer 7, which is a little clunky on XP, flies along in 64bit mode on Vista. Very fast.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have a full set of device drivers yet, so my sound-card and secondary video-card didn't work. Nor did my scanner. This is to be expected from a beta release, and I'm sure that the companies who made these items will produce Windows Vista drivers, once it's actually released.

And I'll tell you what -- if sound and my second monitor had worked -- I'd probably be re-installing all my programs to Vista right now -- I'd probably be writing this on Vista. I haven't been at all impressed by a new Microsoft release since Windows 95, back before I knew anything at all. This one looks pretty solid, and makes me happy that I got myself a next-generation 64bit PC, instead of a low-end Macintosh (for the same price). But don't quote me on that.

Alas, without sound and my second monitor, I'm back on XP for now. However, it only takes a reboot to switch between the two, so I might be playing with it more in the future. And when the upgrade finally comes out, I will certainly be making the switch.

That is the end of my computer-nerdery for a few years.

And so, now, I sleep.

Comments

  1. puplet_loaf10/17/2006 10:49 AM

    You're weird.

    ReplyDelete
  2. misplacedwilder10/17/2006 7:33 PM

    God, I hope so.

    ReplyDelete
  3. misplacedwilder11/27/2007 2:34 PM

    By the way, I should note: Vista ended up being ... oh, awful. Why? Because it wasn't all that much better than the Release Candidate 1. It is slow. It's a resource hog. Half my programs never worked on it, and the driver to support my cell phone never arrived.
    In fact, Vista sucked so bad, I decided to try out Linux. Ubuntu, to start. And I am never, ever, ever looking back. There is nothing better than an operating system that will actually do WHATEVER you ask it to do, no artificial restrictions or forced upgrades like Mac or Windows, and will look HOWEVER you want it to. Some days, my laptop looks just like a Mac, except I can pull songs OFF my iPod. Some days, my desktop looks like nothing you've ever seen, full of fruity effects, and its faster than it was on XP. So... that's the end of that saga.

    ReplyDelete

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