Surfergeeks

So…yesterday morning Firefox started doin’ wonky things on me. Namely – it refused to remember its window settings or toolbar settings. Most annoying. Useable, but annoying. My computer was starting to get kinda slow on bootup anyway so I figured it was about time to reformat and reinstall anyway.

And SINCE I was reformatting and reinstalling anyway, why not go up to the RC1 version of Windows Vista – the next operating system from the folks in Redmond. Well…I ran into a little problem. The DVDs I burned of Vista didn’t quite work. I *STILL* don’t know why, but it’s beginning to look like a LOT of DVDs I burned before the reformat didn’t work. Man that’s a lot of pr0n down the drain. Seriously though – it may be a HUGE bummer as I’ve burned off all the old 8mm video tapes I imported into the computer. If I end up having to redo all that….fuck. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.

So, okay, no Vista. Reinstall XP, install the HP stuff (drivers and shit), then go to install Office. The disc won’t read. Jeebus. Try it in Nikki’s computer. It appears to read from there. Cool – time to install over the network. Slow as hell, but it works. Usually. This time? Nay. It got stuck on a file. Okay. Let’s make a copy of the disc and go from there. Well, while Nikki’s computer was taking just short of forever copying one CD, I tried burning off ANOTHER copy (this is #3) of Vista RC1. This one actually works! OKAY! Well, since all I’ve managed to install is some drivers, let’s go for Vista. Fire it up and choose upgrade. When I go to bed it’s happily upgrading away. In the mean time, Nikki’s computer FINALLY finished copying one CD. Only took about 90 minutes. Largely due, I suspect, to corrupt files and NOT the speed of her computer.

I wake up this morning, bring Alex out to the living room and am met with a eerie silence. No computer fans. Hmmm….Fire up the computer and it starts to boot into Vista before kicking out an error that says the upgrade wasn’t successful and to click to roll back to previous version. Click. Minutes pass of it doing stuff. Error message saying it couldn’t roll back properly or something. Drop in the Vista DVD and reboot. Format the partition again and reinstall from scratch. Success! WooHoo! I’m running Vista.

Now for the office install…drop in the newly created CD and fire it up. The install starts…and hangs. No go.

Thank god for torrent sites. 3 hours and one newly downloaded version of MS Office AIO and I’m up and running.

So it’s now early Sunday evening and I have MOST of my old software installed. I have a few more programs to install. Unfortunately, there’s a TON of software I usually run that just simply won’t run on Vista yet. This happens to include both Alcohol 120 and Nero, the two best burning programs out there. Makes it tricky to burn discs. I think Vista burns DVDs natively but I’m not 100% on that. Also, almost none of my Stardock software runs yet. Object Dock Plus DID run until I loaded in my theme and broke it. I think it’s probably my MSN dock that’s killing it, but I don’t know. I’ll play with that more later.

How’s Vista you ask? Pretty freakin’ cool. Think of it as XP’s cooler big brother. There’s been plenty of “under the hood” changes – especially to security – which are supposed to make this a far better operating system. Me? I turned off most of the “security” features right off. Kinda annoying. The UI, in my opinion, is a gazillion times better than XP.

So that’s where I stand right now – I’m running Vista RC1 with most apps installed and running. Anxiously awaiting fixes for some others and awaiting the official 2007 release of Vista and the inevitable crack/workaround for those of us that absolutely, flat out REFUSE to pay more for the operating system than a lot of people pay for their computers. The retail cost of Vista Ultimate is reportedly around the $600-700CAD range. Fuck. That.