Hmmm. That looks familiar ...

I assume that's Vista is it Baz? If so, I think you're the first to post it here. I'm going to be getting a new Windows laptop soon so I suppose I'll have to get Vista, I believe the option to "upgrade" to XP is only available to commercial users At least I can partition the HD and install Ubuntu on it as well.

How very strange Andy! I even used the same programme as baz, so I can't see why this should happen. Sorry.

A

It ain't necessarily so....

You were right - Vista it is! But it's not all that bad really - at least it mostly "works". I have had three problems that have been irritating:

a) on the desktop computer Vista automatically updated to Service Pack X one morning, and the internet connection was immediately lost! After hours of digging into the software, I discovered that (for some reason) Vista had started to use PPPoE instead of PPPoA. I reinstalled the router software (Netgear) only to be told by Vista that the computer could not detect the presence of a router (even though it was hard-wired into the correct port). Since this is because it is now running PPPoE (by default), it is obvious that changing to the correct PPPoA MUST be done within Vista (rather than as a result of running the router software) - but nowhere can I find a way of doing this. My only option has been to install a USB wireless dongle (that now works fine, though some speed has been lost).

b) Vista deliberately has been provided without the module that allows any applications to show their inbuilt Help files (how crazy is that?)! So when, say, some information is needed about a program, clicking on the Help menu merely brings us a box in which Vista says that the contents cannot be displayed. Out of conscience Microsoft has now provided a downloadable patch that will allow the help files to be displayed. BUT...when this is used none of the links provided by the program concerned can be activated.

c) I had to scrap a perfectly good scanner because Vista disqualified its software as being "not fit for purpose". I also had to download additional patches in order to maintain my current (perfectly good) HP printer. That was fortunate because I feared that it too would have to end up in the skip! Hardly any of my previous software packages can be run properly with Vista, and that is a real nuisance.

Now for the real confession: I should dearly have liked to "upgrade to XP", but unfortunately my previous machine was so ancient that it still ran (in a manner of speaking) under ME! So I did not even have XP software to hand.

I tend to look on the bright side of things! I well remember years ago how "inconvenient" and "user-unfriendly" it seemed when machines started using USB technology. Why was there no longer a floppy drive on the Mac? Why could the printer no longer be plugged in (since the plug was now the wrong shape)? Why did I have to purchase a completely new MIDI interface (the other being as good as the day it was built) just because the size of the plug had now changed? But we now take USB for granted, and some of us have hubs that enable as many as EIGHT devices to be used - all plugged into ONE USB port! Swings and roundabouts perhaps?

Baz

That's very funny 

During the ill-conceived EU anti-trust suit against Microsoft in the late 90s, one of the demanded changes was that Microsoft removed Windows' ability to display on-line help files (one presumes that the problems this would cause was not obvious to the technologically-clueless lawyers and bureaucrats).

I always said that Microsoft should just go ahead and do it and redirect all complaints to Brussels 

I seem to maintain a more 'active' desktop than several other people here ... It's not that I don't use My Documents folders extensively, but things that I only need temporarily, or versions of files which exist in multiple versions and which I haven't yet got round to combining into a single document, tend to sit on my desktop - sometimes for not very long (the two right-hand columns here will probably disappear soon), sometimes for months or even more than a year (the bottom of the 3rd and 4th columns and the top half of the 5th are files I transferred from another machine several months ago and need at some point to check off against things which are already filed away properly on my laptop).

Apart from those, it's either shortcuts to certain programs (although I've deleted most of those, and I access most things from the Start menu), or notes to self that I'd rather be able to see than file away somewhere neat and tidy and forgettable.

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