Today I’m getting my first hands-on experience with Windows Vista. So far I’m not terribly impressed. There’s a little bit of good and a fair bit of annoying, if not actually bad. The good consists mostly of the built-in search capabilities and (I have to admit it) some of the visual improvements. On the downside, however, there’s the fact that I have to agree to everything if I’m doing anything actually interesting with the OS, the fact that it runs about as nimbly as a drunken three-legged basset hound, and (as usual) the fact that I have to turn off so many default “features” in order to reduce clutter and annoyance levels. Also, the “power” button icon doesn’t do at all what I thought it would, namely give me some options as to what sort of powered-down state I would like to achieve. Nope, clicking that simply put the thing to sleep without a prompt.

Wait, wait: I have to confirm every time I want to change display settings or show additional processes in Task Manager, but going to Sleep Mode doesn’t require any confirmation at all? Oh, that’s just spiffy.

I just don’t see myself going to Vista any time soon, I’m afraid. Sorry, Mr. Bill.