Regular readers may have been following my gadget travails: how a month ago my printer, my palm pilot and my laptop died in the same weekend (and then I refused to touch my iPod for a few days). Then the laptop had to be sent away for repair as it was still under extended warranty. After 3 weeks the laptop has finally been returned to me with the warranty claim denied because they claim "impact damage" proving it was dropped. I never dropped it! This is just the background to the chapter:
Because the necessary repair to my laptop would come to approximately half the cost of just buying a new one, I began looking into sucking it up and buying new (needless to say, sans the useless Circuit City extended warranty). I began my research 3 days ago, completely oblivious to the fact that Vista was coming out this Monday. Apparently, according to some, I've just emerged from a coma. Anyway, the release of Vista on Tuesday means that all new PC's will come with the new uber OS. This also means PC's are not being built with XP and haven't been for awhile now (yes, still wiping the crust out of my eyes). The new Vista PC's can't be sold until Tuesday, and the old XP PC's have been sold out on clearance. This brings about the bizarre scenario where it's nearly impossible to buy a PC this weekend, the one weekend that I have decided to buy one.
If that isn't bad enough: I don't WANT Vista. We're talking about a product that has LeBron James as a spokesperson (I only know this because I read about it online. I have Tivo, I don't watch commercials). LeBron James? As if he knows anything about OS's. All my research suggests Vista isn't that big an improvement and has conflicts with security software like McAfee and Norton. I already HAVE my McAfee for 2007! Microsoft expects us to rely on the security features in Vista? HA! The entire PC security industry exists because of security flaws in Microsoft products. And you know I'm going to shell out for a new printer, too, and that new printer's drivers probably won't work with Vista and I'll be pissed.
I am NOT pleased... I'm going to have to either fix the old laptop or suck it up and wait some period of time for the bugs to be worked out of Vista, but I did enjoy my jaunt through Best Buy. They had no laptops on display, they had no capability of actually selling any laptops, thus there was no point in the salespeople stalking me through the store. I cruised in and out, and the people in the PC department were just standing around eating candy.
Wait! Don't buy Windows Vista!
Piercing Together Vista
The Insider's Guide to Windows Vista
