Trying out Vista

The word got out that I like computers, and so here are a list of my tasks for this week :

* Figure out why a friend's new laptop with Vi$ta isn't "working"

* Figure out where the mystery icons on another friend's XP desktop come from

* Explain to another friend why their games they just bought won't work on their computer - their graphics card is 5 years old, their processor is slow and they don't have much RAM, and they're running linux anyway, so Wine will slow this down even more :(

The more "interesting" task for me, obviously, is trying out Vi$ta. At a first glance, the laptop seems to be working fine, it booted without any trouble, and I managed to log into the user account, connect to my WiFi, download Firefox, and turn the thing off.

So my task includes figuring out what doesn't work, and seeing if Vi$ta is really as bad as I was told. My guess would be a resounding yes. It's even more annoying than XP, with all those info-bubbles nagging you constantly to do stuff - what if I don't WANT to? Did that ever occur to the developpers? Guess not.

Also annoying is the constant nagging for security. Linux is very secure. Mac OS is very secure. And they don't nag (not too much anyway)

And ESPECIALLY the screen blackouts. I have no idea why they occur - it's restored to normal fairly quickly, but it's annoying anyway.

I'm not impressed just yet. Then again I wasn't expecting to be.