Journey to Vista: Part II

So, Vista did actually install that time. (Finally...)

I spent most of the first 2 days after that working, and/or installing WoW and various other games. Throughout all of that, aside from several dozen (Yes, I mean at least 25) messages asking me if I was REALLY sure about installing that game, or if I thought it might rip out Vista's internal organs, I couldn't tell that I wasn't using XP with prettier windows. I wasted no time at all getting rid of the "Windows Sidebar" (a.k.a. Mac Widgets for Windows) and shutting off various other resource-draining things that Windows assumed I'd need. I was relieved, however, to see that there was no Windows Messenger bugging me every time I started up.

If you asked me what I thought of Internet Explorer 7, I could only tell you as much as I saw when I was downloading Mozilla Firefox.

And then I tried to reorganize the Start Menu. EVERY TIME I tried to rename something or move something, it asked me if I really wanted to do that. After all, if I renamed it, that would just be bringing out a welcome mat for all sorts of terrible viruses. (?) At that point, I got sick of closing those windows and shut the User Access Control off. Who cares if some little piece of spyware figures out what websites I go to - it's a lot less trouble than closing 50 pop-up windows every day.

And so from there, I moved on to hardware issues. All my CDs that came with my hardware had drivers for XP, but not for Vista. Vista already installed drivers for my graphics card, so that was fairly convenient. However, finding and downloading the drivers for both of my audio devices proved to be a little bit more irritating. Not just because Windows goes crazy whenever you have more than one hardware option for sound stuff, but because the websites of the companies I had to get the drivers from were complete junk. Just, eww. But I eventually found and installed those, and got everything (even my microphone) working again.

So, overall, what do I think of Vista? Well, I'll sum it up in one sentence:
Vista is XP + (Pretty Graphics) + (Mild Foolproofing) + (Copied Features from OS X)
And, this is pretty much what I figured it would be.


Moving on... my spring break was way busier than I wanted it to be. Somehow, I ended up working a bunch for the first 3 days of the week. Oh, except on Tuesday I went to dinner with Sarah and the Tatums at Chipotle. I now know that it is NOT smart to get the sauce they call "hot". And we were going to see Amazing Grace, but Andy was in a random mood so we say Night at the Museum instead. Then I had to work more on the same old volunteer project on Thursday, but had a little lazy time later on in the day. On Friday I had the morning to do nothing, but then I went to help my mom do a big mass mailing thing. After that I had a LAN party, but it didn't last all that long... everyone had left or fallen asleep by 5:00 AM. Today I slept until 11:00, and then spent most of the day being lazy and/or doing nothing of significance.

Woo hoo. One more day of break until school. Gee, I can't wait to get up at 7:00 AM on Monday. *groans*