The wife’s old laptop started crapping out so we decided to buy a new one. So yesterday the DHL driver delivered a brand new Dell XPS 1530 to the house. I was a little nervous because it came installed with Vista Home Premium and other than seeing it on someone elses machine I hadn’t actually used it. I’ve also read all the horror stories on the web about Vista. So I fired it up, when through the motions associated with a new computer and eventually was up and running. Installed MS Office 2003 and Civ IV with absolutely no problems. At first I had trouble seeing the other computers on the home network but realized I had the Trend Microsystems firewall and Vista’s both running. Once I turned off Vista’s I was up and running on the network. Installed the printer with no problem and it even found the Xbox 360 on its own when my son turned it on and asked if I wanted to network with it also. Easy as cake as they say.

After all of this and playing around with the machine today I have nothing but good to say about Vista so far. It took me a few tries to find where all the settings were since it is a bit different than XP but that is minor. The machine runs great, all the programs work as they should be i.e. fast and smooth, and most importantly my wife is happy. Of course this is just after a few days but so far it’s been smooth sailing.