OS

Edit: Found via /. is this little blog entry about upgrading from Vista to XP... HeeHee

It's been a while since I've written about operating systems. If you've been reading for a while, you'll remember my earliest experiences with Vista. At first, not all was bad with Vista. The best thing that could be said about it as an operating system is that it's pretty. I was pretty happy with it for a while (it's installed on a Dell XPS M1210 laptop) since I was able to accomplish pretty much whatever I needed to do, just not as efficiently as I could with Win XP. Cut to the chase, I am no longer using Vista on that laptop or anywhere else for that matter. I've finally gotten sick and tired of dealing with Vista and all it's little idiosyncrasies. The final straw was when I went to uninstall Norton Internet Security and totally lost all networking ability. Yes, all networking ability. Wireless, ethernet, everything! Figured re-install drivers and I should be good to go. Nope, nothing. OK, uninstall all the wireless software, nothing. Ah, maybe it's just DHCP... Nope, static IP did nothing. I could see the network, I could see wireless AP's, but could never get the machine to get or take an IP address (oh, it had a self assigned local IP, but never anything else). I tried, a friend and colleague at work worked with it for a day. I read forums, tried published solutions, everything I could think of. Finally, I downloaded Ubuntu and booted it from the live cd. Wow, networking worked right off the bat! The machine got an IP right away! Next step was to re-boot into Vista, get all my files off the hd and install Linux. Nice, clean, easy install and almost all the drivers are installed! The only thing I have to get is the driver for the Ricoh card reader.

I'm really pissed that I had to give up on Vista, but I just don't think that an OS should take so much work.

On another note, I've re-discovered working with a Mac and I absolutely love it! I'm running Leopard and it's smooth and efficient. I can do pretty much anything I need to do with it AND run Win XP! I have Parallels Desktop installed so that I can run an instance of XP without any stress. I'm really happy that I've gone back to using Mac and plan on working with it for a long time to come!