The Neon Nurse's Charting

As you may recall, I recently gnawed on the ol' bullet and bought a new computer, since my old one had developed the distressing habit of having fits and spells every other jump out of the box. It WAS four years old, which is at least 100 in computer years, right?

I had been hoping that the complaints and criticism going around about Windows Vista were exaggerated, the usual response to Them Changing Stuff Again. Almost as soon as I started the setting up I began to suspect the worst, but I tried to keep an open mind. I thought maybe it would be like in a classic buddy-cop movie, where the grumpy old veteran (played by me!) is given a new partner, a flashy young upstart who wants to do things his own way and ignore all the rules. They don't get along at first, but adversity brings them together and in the end, they're pals.

Sadly, this is not to be.

There are half a dozen programs I use for my business and stuff. I couldn't just transfer ANY of them over! I had to either download and install a new version, then tediously transfer the data, or worse, BUY a whole NEW program and hand-enter the data! (I'm lookin' at YOU, Microsoft Money!)

Plus, hand-entering and tweaking is about six degrees of difficulty harder than it should be, because of how Vista is apparently intended to be used. As best as I can tell, they've made this thing with big fluffy icons to click and explanations in easy words (that mean nothing) because they believe this makes it User Friendly for the untapped market of people who are computer wary, if not downright phobic.

Which would all be well and good if the damn thing wasn't so buggy and unstable.

I keep getting a pop-up wanting me to connect to the internet. When I am already connected. If I have my printer plugged in and I turn it off or unplug it, the whole computer shuts down. Hell, sometimes it shuts down on its own little whim, for no reason! (By the way, I have four times the minimum stated requirement of RAM, so that SHOULDN'T be the problem. It DOES boot fast, I'll give it that.)

I guess I shouldn't complain. (Although why would I bother to have a blog if I didn't want to complain now and then?) At least it is more or less working kind of okay now, so I can move on with my life.

So now I'm going to go finish unloading my car from the auction we really should have skipped last weekend so I will be able to haul new plumbing items for our upcoming weekend project.

When I get to the part where I'm having fun again, I'll let you know.