The sudden meltdown of one of our longest surviving laptops triggered much grief and wringing of hands. What now? We’re home to computers running XP, Mac OS X, Linux, and even an old blue clamshell Mac running 9.6 so I was open to replacing the laptop with just about any operating system. But, alas, for reasons beyond my control it had to be a PC and today the only operating system I could get was Vista.

When life hands you Vista, it’s time to make lemonade.

Let’s start off with my first impressions from when I booted up the beautiful Toshiba laptop for the first time.

• I can’t find anything! Everytime I go to where I logically expect something to be it just isn’t there. Let’s see, where are the applications I can’t see in the start window? Where are the applications that aren’t in the All Programs list? They call it all programs but I guess they don’t really mean it.
• The Start window is just as bad as XP. How is that possible? Why can’t Microsoft get it through their thick skulls that this interface needs to go away? I had hoped that they were listening over the last 8 or so years and created something that made sense. Guess not. I intend to search for aftermarket interface alternatives. I will post what I find.
• Does it seem slow or is it just me? This new laptop is a dual-core T6600 2.2 GHz machine with 4 GB of RAM. You would think it would scream. Not sure what’s going on, maybe it’s just the way Vista makes everything fade in and out like they just discovered how to do it. Could it be fast and just look like a pig of an operating system?
• OMG! The screen just went black! Oh, it’s just the security feature trying to warn me that opening an application might BRING THE END OF THE FREE WORLD! Seriously, the screen goes black for just over a second while it figures out which message to show over a stylishly grayed-out background. Gotta find out how to change that. Will post that as well.

Now, what do you do after you have created your first account and tell Vista how to work like a computer?

1. Prepare to become a genius at uninstalling stuff.
2. Figure out that there is no Run command line. You TYPE COMMANDS IN THE SEARCH BOX! Huh?
3. Need to connect to a hidden wireless network? Good luck. Fortunately, I only spent 3 seconds trying to figure it out then had my Linksys software create a script on my USB pen drive. Now that’s a nice feature.

Overall, I am obviously not impressed after my first day with Vista. It might grow on me but I doubt it. Fortunately I don’t have to use it every day. I’ve got a MacBook Pro.