Oh, Windows Vista

Why do you have so much hate for everything I love?

Not only did I play several hours in KOTOR 2 the other day when it magically decided to work, only to suffer disappointment when it lapsed back into being incompatible and crashing, but AIM has not worked for at least a week. And we all know I cannot live without my IMer, and people probably think I'm dead. And on top of this, yesterday we discovered Vista won't play iTunes videos we paid good money for. Yet here I am on the desktop because, well, my laptop is four years old and the warranty ran out. I need to spare it from menial things like gaming and checking the internet. It must be saved for essential situations like airports.

My main issue with Vista is that it thinks it's smarter than me. I KNOW it is blocking AIM from connecting. The reason I know this is because Vista up and decided to do it to Firefox for awhile. It worked for months, then one day Vista was like, "Hey! This thing isn't made by Microsoft? ... What to do with it? ... [block]." It's not in the firewall, it's somewhere else in the settings that I can't find. Because of course now I don't remember how I fixed the Firefox thing. But the point is, I don't think my operating system should display such an alarming and annoying mind of its own. I do not purchase an OS just so it can one day up and decide that the settings I've put in place aren't good enough anymore. It's such bullshit.

Also. Can we talk about how every time I want to move a file into a different folder, Vista pops up a box and I have to give it permission not once, not twice, but THREE times. YES I AM SURE I WANT TO MOVE THE FREAKIN' FILE ALL RIGHT? I WAS SURE THE FIRST TIME I CLICKED YES. I realize that Microsoft is marketing toward people who don't really know or care about how to operate their computer. But that doesn't describe me. God forbid I ever have to go into my registry and delete some keys. I do not even want to know what will happen on that day.

I like the way I put it to Mike: The problem with this approach is that it's vastly outdated. In fact, it's backwards. Think about it. Windows has been around and popular for what, fifteen years? From that one can conclude that a lot of people have probably figured it out by now. But Microsoft did not conclude this. As far as I can tell, Microsoft concluded the opposite: that people who use Windows Vista are actually dumber and more technologically inept than people who used Windows XP. How does that make any sense? What are their marketing people telling them?

I'll tell you what would have been truly revolutionary and useful to me. They could have made it so there are three or four different overall settings. You know, like "Total Newbie: Needs Vista for Dummies," "General User: Vaguely Knows Way Around Own Computer But Warn Me If I'm Going to Accidentally Explode It," "Competent: Do Not Need Extra Help K Thanks Bye," and "SuperHacker: Proceed At Your Own Risk."

Then I could just click the box for #3, and all the pop-up boxes would go away and we'd all be happier with our computing experience.