There have been scientific studies to determine how long it takes people to adjust to a new place.   According to the experts it takes three days for new surroundings to begin to look normal, your brain stops feeling jolted by unfamiliar surroundings.   Your toothbrush has been in the same place for a couple of days, the pillow starts to feel right, when you pass a mirror, you stop looking.   I’ve noticed that when you get a new dog or cat, they look like a dog or a cat for about two days, then they look like your short, furry, clueless kids.

The same thing has been happening when I’ve tried new programs, new browsers and new Operating Systems.   The sense of being jolted when switching from one to the other lessens each time I switch.   I alternated between Slimbrowser (which runs on IE dlls) and Firefox just to get more comfortable with Firefox, then chose Firefox as my default browser.   It took three days to get used to it, now I never notice the difference.   Be aware that it is impossible to do a Windows Update with anything but Internet Explorer, that’s just one more MS arm-twist.   Playing with live CDs of Linux OSs is fun once you’ve absorbed the fact that you won’t hurt your current OS.

I’m working my way toward being Linux-competent at some point in the future, that future being when Microsoft stops supporting XP.   Vista?   Not.   One thing I’d like to find is a way to run PaintShop Pro 8 on a Linux Distro, I’ve yet to discover if it will run under Wine.   When I know more, I’ll be able to check it out.   Of course, by then I’ll have a little better working knowledge of GIMP and Inkscape.

My guess is all of this will take a little longer than three days.

Lisa Miller