Like Cream Cheese Frosting on a Turd

Well, I really didn’t want to be writing this, especially here. But I must step into the booth and confess that I’ve said a dozen or so swear words in the last 24 hours.

It all began when a dear friend of mine was able to buy Vista Home Premium for me at his company store… for really cheap. I use a PC mostly for testing Web and software apps that I’m creating, and I also use a PC for playing games. I was looking forward to setting up a Media Center PC / Game station for my family since I’ve got a nice TV, Xbox 360 and ton’s of time on my hands.

Here’s what I’ve got for a PC:

Alienware Area-51 Laptop
P4 3Ghz
15.4″ Screen with an nVidia G-Force 128MB Video Card
and 2GB of RAM
… one smokin’ machine, for 2004.

After 4 installation re-starts lasting over 3 hours, my nice laptop was rendered unusable because my wireless card and video card were not recognized by the system. I’m too tired to get into the details, but a number of hours later I was able to find a hacker who wrote video drivers to trick Vista into seeing my card… so now I have a screen that’s legible… and outta know where my WIFI started working. My machine now has a 3.1 performance rating in Vista, but my mouse jerks around like I’ve got a bad twitch from the stress.

I’m sure I’ll love this new operating system someday.. because it reminds me of when I upgraded to the first version of Mac OS X back in 2001. Very nostalgic with all the shiny stuff and transparent graphics.
I guess it’s like a yummie visual Frosting on another pile of Microsoft crap.

(updated)… OK, so I have to say, I really do like what Microsoft is trying to do with Vista. I really is a much nicer OS than anything they’ve produced in the past. We’ll have to see if Apple will eventually find some things that they have to “borrow” from their arch enemy (best friend). Of course, we’re not too far away from the new Mac OS X Leopard… and I’m sure there will be many similarities.