We purchased a new Dell computer recently, which came with Microsoft Vista installed as the OS. I found it a little telling that upon completing the OS setup information and opening the desktop for the first time, it hung and crashed. Once I restarted the computer it was fine.

After playing around with it for a few hours, getting things installed and configured, what can I say, it the super model of operating systems… pretty and shallow.

• I found it frustrating, as a power user, to get things done. I kept having to allow operations to continue, sometimes more than once… if I clicked on that executable, yes, I really want to install that application. Annoying.
• The new Windows Explorer is frustratingly devoid of everything I found useful in the old one. I had to take extra steps to get a list of the drives on the computer.
• It is a bit of a memory hog, rightfully so for all the frills, but I don’t really need/want the frills.
• Lastly, I found it to be slower to respond than XP, which just blows my mind because this computer is twice as fast as my old one.

I started using Windows back in the 3.1 days, so I have gone through quite a few of Microsoft’s window manager implementations, but the changes in Vista seem a little too drastic considering that I have yet to find any way of making things act more like XP.

Overall, I don’t hate it, but being someone who likes a nice light OS, I will most likely transfer my old XP license to my new computer, or I will just purchase a new copy of XP (not that XP is a nice light OS, but its better than Vista).

I have considered installing Ubuntu; however, my last eight-month experiment with it reminds me that it is still not ready for use by mortals unless you are willing to change out hardware or spend hours/days combing through blogs and forums for resolutions to your issues. But you never know, I could keep the old box as a Windows box and make a lean/mean linux development box out of the new computer.