Vista

2 weeks ago, my laptop OS was upgraded to Uncle Bill's latest money generating product - Microsoft Vista. With all the fancy graphics and new interface, no doubt I was impressed.











As to all new systems, some learning and in this case, unlearning, was required. I expected that already and to be honest, I kept an open mind. But, after 1 month of using it, I can't say I am truly happy with Vista.

The boot-up and shut-down time is noticeably longer and worse, there's a LOT of things i can't do, which requires the administrator to do for me (although I am a Power User). Grrrrr.... imagine trying to delete an application/driver file from the Desktop, and your system stopped you. Frustrating, right?

Lately, there was this annoying Vista verification thingy pop up. Obviously, I can't do anything but to ask the IT administrator to get rid of this for me. She had to call Microsoft, spoke to a machine, transferred to a support personnel, transferred to another support personnel, answered tonnes of questions, gave her contact details and was finally given the activation key. The entire process took more than 20 minutes.

So what is wrong with that? It's just layers of controls Microsoft set down to prevent unauthorised (read: illegal) software from being used. No Sir, there's absolutely nothing wrong in making sure that we pay good $$$ to ensure Uncle Bill's wealth continue to rise perpetually. And what's wrong to annoy and disrupt your full-paying customer with all these verification process.

I wish my IT adminstrator best of luck. Hopefully, she is still sane after going through the verification process for all the remaining upgrades.