Starting to have MacEnvy...Or Not

Please allow me to vent for just a moment.

My trusty laptop is dying a slow but imminent death so we decided it was time to work on finding a new one. With Consumers Report predictably in hand, I ordered a lovely lightweight replacement a few weeks ago. I tracked its journey via UPS truck across the nation and excitedly opened the box last week, venturing into the time sink that is Setting Up a New Computer.

And this is where I will say: Microsoft is Evil. And Vista is Eviler.

I – and all of my software – was quite happy with XP but sadly, the only laptops available with XP these days are discontinued models with other issues. So I am now a Vista Victim. I have been working on this little project for about a week and I have had to download many megabytes of supposedly compatible drivers and patches and work-arounds. I have searched and relied heavily on message boards. I have been on the verge of literally tossing everything out my Windows and starting over with Mac. Indeed, had the height of my frustration not hit one morning at 1:30 and were I not living in a town that shuts down at 8:30 each night, I believe I would now be typing on a snazzy Appley keyboard in some sort of trendy edgy color.

But I am not one to easily give up. I know just enough computer stuff to think I can do this myself. I am stubborn and hearty. So I trudge mostly forward, cursing Mr. Gates along the way.

As of today, my Pilot is finally working but my desktop version of it is not nearly as pretty as it was on XP. In fact, the Vista interface looks rather beta-y. As of about 2:00am not long ago, my wireless print server finally found Vista from a distance. I’m still not sure what I did to finally get them talking to each other. And I’m not convinced they will continue being friends. It still feels fluky, this wireless printing capability. And my email, well, there was lots of spotty, techy, marginally useful posts on message boards to help me figure out how to work around a critical Outlook feature that was omitted from Vista’s new email upgrade in the name of security.

I had hoped that the fact that I had not heard much grousing about Vista in recent months meant that all the we’re-not-really-ready-but-we’ll-release-it-anyway glitches had been fixed. And perhaps they have. Perhaps it’s my fault to expect software and hardware that are less than 3 years old to be immediately compatible with the Bill’s new view of the future.

So onward I forge. Hopefully by the end of the week, I will have my new laptop comfortably up and running and I will be able to let go of the past. I really do hope so, as working off of two laptops simultaneously is getting rather tedious, not to mention confusing.

UPDATE as of 11:21pm:
Now that I've spent the last 2 hours trying in vain to figure out how in the world to get my old iPod to work on my new computer, I have concluded Apple is evil, too. In their efforts to protect the copyrights of the music industry, Apple has made it nearly impossible - or at best hugely time consuming and inconvenient - to transfer an iPod and its files from one computer to the next. Far as I've deduced, in between seething, is I can either go buy a 4 GB flash drive and crochet a blanket while I download and then upload all my music files, or I can download some meagerly reviewed shareware designed to solve this very vexing problem. Until I decide, at least I'm making progress on reloading my music back onto my horrifyingly empty iPod after iTunes on my new laptop so conveniently erased every last file from it.

Remind me again how technology makes our lives easier??