I found a religious extremist for you to hunt down.

 

 

Maybe America should be looking inward, before trying to find them in other countries. But that's not news at all.

 

(No offence to my non-extremist religious friends. People like he give you guys a bad reputation).

 

 

Now, I'm well aware that whinging about Microsoft's latest demon-spawned brainchild is about as avante garde as making jokes about POTUS Bush's overwhelming failures. But my new Acer laptop arrived the other day (if you didn't know, they couldn't fix my old one and so replaced it instead) and I'm mostly pretty happy. Dual-core processor, 120gb hard drive, stacks of RAM, and other nice little trimmings.

 

But there's one glaring error. One huge oversight, so massively all-pervasive and insidious that I'm stumped in trying to fix it.

 

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the laptop was shipped with a virus. Known to the masses as Microsoft Vista Home Premium, else known as Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.

 

The problems start almost immediately. On first startup, one is treated to the full force of Vista's overbearing graphics (Vista is the first operating system that actually lists a graphics card as necessary for smooth operations) in a charming setup screen. What is my name, which desktop wallpaper do I want, which language do I want to use; all the basics. Oh, and do I want to use Automatic Updates? Well yeah, I'm not stupid. In XP, you got four choices: download and install updates without telling me, download them but let me choose which ones I want, let me know when downloads are ready but let me choose whether or not to have them, or do nothing at all. In Vista, you get just two choices: all or nothing. My way, or the highway. One was marked with a bright green shield and a very schoolmasterly tick, the other a smaller red shield with a large cross and devil horns. Guess which was which.

 

Being subversive as I am, I chose to receive no updates at all, with the intention of changing my settings later. But no, Vista wouldn't have it. I went to the control panel later on, and found that Vista had signed me up for automatic updates depsite me specifically saying that I did not want them. Manipulative and subversive is Vista.

 

My next trouble came when I was downloading AVG, just about the most well-known free antivirus in the computer world, I'd say.

Am I sure I'd like to download it? Yes. I'm sure. Thank you, Vista.

Oh no! Someone's trying to run the program! Are you sure you'd like to allow it? Yes. I opened it. Let me have my antivirus.

Wait! WAIT! The program is trying to change settings or install things on your computer! ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT THIS POTENTIAL VIRUS OR THREAT TO BE GIVEN FREE REIGN OVER YOUR COMPUTER? Yes. Thank you. It's an antivirus program.

 

Sigh. Vista's continual need for authorisation and assurance make it seem like a dependent child, who has to have everything sanctioned by a parent. It asks if I'm sure I want to open programs in Control Panel. Oh no! A terrorist might want to change my wallpaper! Ahhh!

 

So I got sick of Vista, and decided to upgrade back to XP. I put in my installation CD.

 

There's a CD here from an unknown publisher! Do you want to let it run? Yes. It's a Microsoft Windows product, just like you. You Know What The Hell It Is. (Yeah, it really did claim it couldn't find the publsiher).

 

Then I ran into Vista's most pervasive function so far: its blocking of anything it doesn't understand. You click install Windows XP, and are confronted with This program has been blocked due to its incompatibility with Windows Vista. Would you like to check for solutions online? Well SUCKED IN: There aren't any! Hah!

 

So, for the time being I'm stuck with this stupid, tricky, manipulative, subversive operating system which, rather than doing what I want it to do, does what it assumes I want it to do. I'm not sure enough in my computer-y abilities to try dual-booting XP and Vista, or just reformatting the hard drive: computers these days are being made to deal with Vista's many exentricities, which means that they often act in ways which XP wouldn't understand. Which is sad. I hope hope hope I can eventually return to what we might grudgingly call the pinnacle of Microsoft's technical programming, or else I'm all for trying Linux.