Its hard living in the shadow of your big brother, especially when mommy and daddy had such high hopes investing countless dollars, hours and love dreaming that you would one day excel where big brother left off.  Well junior, you’re off to a shaky start but the good news is that it only goes up from here.

Though the boxed version of Vista has sold significantly less (59%) than Windows XP when it launched, PC sales saw a 67% increase over last year most of which carried Vista.  Which makes sense considering people like Joe Football could care less about upgrading their OS, hell he doesn’t even understand what an OS is, all he knows is that Macs are for fags and Minesweeper is the shit.

Here’s a nice little metaphor that explains how a Vista upgrade feels to your average Tech Blog writer:

Switching to XP from Windows 98 was like going from VHS to DVD, whereas going to Vista feels more like jumping from DVD to Blue Ray.  Yes, the upgrade looks and feels nicer, but the changes appear to be more of a luxury and less of a commodity.  But like XP, time will tell and we’ll just have to use whatever Skynet Microsoft tells us to use.

[via CNET]

I’ve been working with Windows Vista, and other than a few niggly, minor problems (a number of downloadable casual titles aren’t compatible, but I’m not about to drop bombs like that when an OS is under a month old; we’ll talk in five months or so) it’s been running quite fast and clean. Imagine my surprise when it told me that an update was already available. I’m pretty used to seeing this in XP, but never in Vista. So I did a little research.

According to PC World, the patch isn’t really a patch. Well, it is a patch, but not really. Yeah, existential. Deal with it. Anyway, the biggest update – there are 12 of them, 11 of which are marked “critical” – is a part of the Microsoft malware detection code, rather than being an update of the underlying engine. See? It’s not that Vista’s messed up. However, given the fact that Vista was supposed to be bulletproof, it’s interesting that a vulnerability was caught so early in the OS’ lifecycle. Does this mean we should be worried yet? *duhn duhn duuuhnnnn!* (yes, that’s the scary music cue)

[via PCWorld.com]

After the horrific laptop incident and madness, we’ve finally got a new laptop in the house (which means I have my computer back). After a little research and some luck, we picked up the Toshiba U200 ultra-portable (the computer in the linked page is a generation or two behind what we got; it’s really cutting-edge-ish). It’s a sweet little thing, I’ll tell ya. We were asking the folks at the shop - a reputable one, I assure you - if it was Vista-capable, and sure enough it was. When we booted it up, we got quite a surprise.

To our shock (and possible chagrin and dismay) Vista Home Premium was pre-installed. At least we knew it really was Vista capable. But how capable is Vista?

(more…)