I’ve heard all the negatives about the OS over and over again, and my personal experience hasn’t been a complete nightmare, despite what so many pundits make out to be a given fact about Vista.

You make a very valid point about Vista running better on notebooks than desktops for the sake of having less hardware to manage. I can tell you that in my home office I’m running 7 desktops currently and this laptop. Of all of them the laptop is the one I’m trusting things like mail and audio/video to. It isn’t because of Vista, but because of the reasons you gave, notebooks tend to be more reliable when it comes to consistently behaving with new software.

I can tell you the USB attached devices I use, of which there are quite a lot, connect and install themselves easier on Vista than they have on XP. I use XP for my gaming, writing, and production machines. Would I risk Vista on those machines, no. These machines were made with XP in mind, and include custom configurations since I bought them piece by piece. Vista would likely destroy that experience, as I’m sure my SLI video isn’t currently working well with Vista.

Let me also point out, yet again, that I’m only writing this because I don’t have a mac…. I worked for Apple and believe so strongly in their product that I’ve recommended Mac first, Windows second to everyone that I have that discussion with. OSX is far superior, in many ways, unless you’re a gamer.

I also wonder why you don’t acknowledge that with a laptop, you are basically restricting the number of problems you’ll have to external connections - that is, it is easy for Apple OS X to be very solid, as it has only to deal with Apple hardware, and once the problems with this very limited number of pieces is taken care of, one only must worry about component failure. So it is with Vista - the most successful stories you hear are with Vista on laptops, not desktop machines, where video cards, and their drivers, can be exceedingly troublesome.

I only know it took little more than the reinforcement of my opinion of Vista by Alex St. John, the man who led the development of Direct X at Microsoft, to remove any desire to remove my copy of Vista from its packaging. (Mr. St. John’s exact words were “Vista blows”.)

Oh and the screen can be viewed in the sun
and has a dvd burner!!

Anyways, it is not a case of Windows not playing nice.

Windows was on the drive first.

Wubi/Ubuntu came along second. It was up to wubi/ubuntu not to mess things up, or at least not leave a mess behind.

How the heck is Windows supposed to cooperate with god knows what coming after it without any prior knowledge of what it is going to be?

On the other hand, Wubi/Ubuntu is specifically designed to be an overlay on top of the host operating system, therefore, it has the responsibility for compatibility and housekeeping.

Here’s how I dealt with some extra poundage, and started immediately feeling more energetic and healthier (while effortlessly dropping 15 pounds without added exercise):

Quit the red meat. Opt instead for skin-free chicken breast, turkey, or fish. Think that’s boring? And you want to consider yourself to be a techie or geek? USE GOOGLE. Ask it for recipes. Google is your friend.

Other proteins: Soy (in the form of burgers, soy nuts, etc.), beans and legumes. These provide good amounts of protein and relatively little fat. I’ve found some great portobello-soy burgers that I love. (Skip the bun.)

Make a big batch of vegetarian chili. Dried lentils are nutritious, inexpensive, versatile, and easy and quick to cook — again, make a big batch, and freeze some for later.

Switch from regular or 2% milk to 1% or, even better, skim (NON-fat) milk. NON-fat yogurt — buy a big container of plain, and add your own fresh fruits, some generic Equal, and a drop of vanilla extract.

(Both of those were “step work” for me. From whole milk to 2%, then to 1%, then to skim. From full-fat ice cream to frozen yogurt to non-fat frozen yogurt, to fresh yogurt.)

(While I’m not a big fan of skim, it’s OK on cereal. They now have fat-free half-and-half — give that a try.)

Fresh vegetables and fruits. Baby carrots, a bag of fresh green beans, seedless grapes, fruits of the season (apples and pears are best in the early fall). Don’t be afraid of your supermarket’s produce department!

Whole grains: beware, some manufacturers use the term “whole wheat”, which does NOT mean that they’re using the whole GRAIN of the wheat. Look for foods with LOW fat content and HIGH fiber content.

Popcorn (check the fat content), protein bars, Slim Fast shakes… an occasional handful of nuts can do wonders (but nuts tend to be fatty).

Sugar-free sodas as an alternative to the sugary variety. Try some sugar-free iced teas, including iced green teas.

Have some of this stuff sitting on your desk and nibble. Some grapes, a few whole-grain crackers, a crispy apple, a protein bar… DON’T WAIT UNTIL YOU’RE FEELING REALLY HUNGRY BEFORE YOU DECIDE TO EAT.

I started eating this way, and, since the food is low-fat and generally high in fiber, and low in calories, really I can eat as much as I want. I never had to count calories — the reduction of dietary fat was enough to effect weight loss. The key is to use one’s creativity in preparing food (it doesn’t take as long as you might think) and to be adventurous in selections.

If you have a bowl of ice cream, or a Zagnut, you have not “fallen off your diet”. You have simply had a bowl of ice cream, or a Zagnut. No biggie.

I also have always used vitamins, and lately have added CoQ10 and omega-3s to the mix.

At age 46, my last physical, which this year included a cardiac stress test, showed me to be in perfect physical health.

Check with a doctor or dietician before starting any diet.

Does everybody who bought a $199 Walmart pc or the OLPC have broadband access to use online apps? What happens when you don’t?

And while we’re at Walmart, am I the only one who realizes that you can use just about any old pc, load your flavor of linux, and have a much faster performer (with local apps) than the $199 special?

Continuing the rolling tangent, what’s up with the new, cheap pc’s running Vista? I have an older Celeron 1.7 laptop on which it’s painful to run XP. Yet I’ve seen that kind of hardware being sold with Vista on it. It’s wildly irresponsible on the part of the mfgrs and vendors.

I’ve looked at the OLPC and Asus laptops because of the price and size. They’re cute but not ready for prime time yet (for me). They don’t offer much more than my Treo. When the horsepower and storage start to ramp up seriously, these units will become contenders.

Ymmv, of course.