David Gildeh

I just got my new laptop, a Dell XPS M1530! About time as I was being totally unproductive using a very old slow desktop that I couldn’t use away from home…anyway the laptop itself is pretty good, bigger than what I originally wanted, but livable.

However, I now find myself using Windows Vista properly for the first time since it came out, now I’ve heard all the stories about it, so I was prepared for how crap it was, but nothing prepared me for actually using it!

First of all the security may be much better in Vista, to the extent of bugging me everytime I move a file anywhere on my own hard disk. There seems to be no distinction between me moving a file myself manually and a program moving it automatically, so even though I am administrator of my PC, I have to approve all file movements as soon as I’ve requested them! Really sucks when you’re moving around all your start menu icons just to organise them the way you want, and sometimes it won’t even copy the folders because of security restrictions…

But the main vice I have with Vista is the desktop does not seem to show any new files or icons that I’ve added sometimes until I press F5 to refresh it! Talk about a step backwards, I never had that problem with XP!

So I guess the rumours are true, we waited years of delays for this, and apart from a nicer interface (which you can download as a theme for XP as well!) it seems to be a step backwards rather than a step forwards! No wonder so many enterprises are refusing to upgrade to Vista. You also have to question, in the world of the Internet, just how important is the OS anymore, all I really tend to need is a web browser nowadays, a good Linux distro can do the rest (although they still have a long way to go until they become user friendly for installing new software and hardware!)