It was bound to happen. Three years of avoiding vista I had to make the leap of faith and put my trust into Microsoft again.

Last month January 3 my Toshiba laptop decide enough was enough and crapped out on me during a night of heavy Dungeons and Dragons online gaming. Yeah, I am a geek.  Anyway, I knew the end was coming. The computer had started acting strange the last few weeks.  It was little things but I could tell that I should begin research on a new laptop.  Then my laptop just stopped with no warning.  I was a little shocked. The damn thing had been a work horse.

I loved that little machine but please do not think it was all wine and roses. The Toshiba was bought because it had the use of four USB ports. Well, those ports stopped working three months after my purchase.

The Toshiba was dead. I needed a new laptop ASAP. So that night I started my research. I found out that there was no more Microsoft XP. Vista was the norm. I thought, alright this cannot be so bad. Vista had been out for almost three years now; Microsoft has to have worked out all the bugs from the initial release; Right? Man was I surprised.

Anyway, I found what I could afford and had narrowed it down to three laptop models:  HP, Acer, and Toshiba. All three brands were leaps ahead of what I had been using.  With these three models in mind I again researched prices and availability. It looked like I was going to have to purchase my new laptop from Best Buy.

I bought the Acer. More bang for the buck and all that. I took it home plug it in and was introduced to VISTA. I do not care who you are, the first day with VISTA sucks. Setup takes forever. I get that Vista was written for lemmings, but come on. I have been using PCs since Commodore 64 was out. I had to take Dos and Basic language computer courses in school. Please enough of the hand holding.

After a day I finally had it up and running without all the pop up windows asking if I really wanted to do this or that. I started to experience what Microsoft was trying doing. Vista was a good idea; for about a week.

Then Vista froze up. The mouse worked but nothing else happened. Damn; but this is Windows and no matter what version, this sometimes happens.  I powered down, gave it a ten count and started up again. Start up went to safe mode. From safe mode I restarted into regular windows. I decided that I was lucky I did not lose any important work and started the backup program to cover my ass. Vista froze again. Fuck!

Now I am getting worried. I did the power down safe mode thing and decide to do a disk clean and defrag before I run the backup again. I clicked on control panel and it froze again but this time I got an error code:

                “LOGON PROCESS HAS FAILED TO CREATE THE SECURITY OPTIONS DIALOG”

With the above message a box appears which reads:

“Failure – Security options”

I jot this information down. I restart safe mode again. I do not try anything but run Firefox; all is working. I look up my error message. Damn it is a common error. No one seems to know how to fix it. Those with desk tops swap out hard drives. Laptop owners are struggling with it. I spend hours online with no problems. I read how others are combating that problem and write it all down. I give it all a try but when I go into control panel I get locked up and receive the same error message.

I break down and call The Geek squad. They know of the problem. They think it is an OS problem and suggest that I wipe my computer clean and have them reinstall their updated version of Vista. This is where I am today. I dropped another $150. I will not spend another dollar on this computer.  So far I have no problems.

Lastly, I am pissed. How the hell does Microsoft get away with releasing a defective product like VISTA? Two years after the release of VISTA it’s still bugged. What the fuck? I heard that Windows 7 is in beta test right now. I looked at it. IT IS VISTA! Windows 7 in just a fucking patch for VISTA. Microsoft just changed the fucking name and is going to sell it as something new. I am already looking at other options. I will keep you updated on what I find.




I hear Linux is good.