Vista: The Big Mistake

Over the years, since Windows 95, Microsoft has been slowly sucking the life out of my enthusiasm for working with computers (for managing family photos, getting into digital music playing, programming, etc.). Microsoft has been controlling more tightly every year my ability to freely use the software that I have bought from them... requiring me to "activate" it to make sure that I am not trying to use copies illegally... having the operating system check its hardware environment to make sure that I haven't tried to clone an installation, etc.

I did get to a point for a few years between ~2002 and 2007 when my home computer systems were working pretty well together. I had upgraded 2 older machines to Windows XP and was successfully running a secure, home wireless network to share printers and files... and computing was as it could be with minimal hassle and administration effort.

When I decided to buy a new computer in April 2007, I considered Apple/Macs ("just work"), but I *believed* the reviews which described Vista as "warmed over XP". I figured I would try to keep the home computer environment homogenous, and I ordered a new notebook from Dell with Vista.

That turned out to be a big mistake.

I won't go too much into the gory details, but... within the first year, I had to reinstall the operating system (and lost lots of data) due to a graphics driver problem. In the next 6 months, I had repeated problems with compatibility and function of the DVD burner... very slow and erratic... not to mention the file system taking *forever* (read "hours") to copy a few Gb of files from one folder to another on the *same* C: hard drive. This led to a second reinstall of Vista... from the installation disks this time... under Dell's direction. Now some of the DVD burner issues seem to be resolved, but not all. (Vista takes 20+ minutes to burn a data DVD... fedora Linux running dual-boot on the same hardware takes less than 10 minutes for the same job.)

At this point, I don't put any important files on this notebook (under Vista) without backing them up immediately on the attached external hard drive.

Next... the desktop XP Pro hard drive fails.

Enter Linux.