Vista = The Matrix?

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Watching The Matrix Reloaded yesterday in the same week as I acquired a Windows Vista laptop was slightly surreal. After 4 days battle against 'helper' services and programs whose main purpose was to swallow processor cycles and RAM and generally get in the way, it was amusing to hear the 'Oracle' talking about programs that are written to do this and that and generally not be noticed. I'm sure Microsoft intended most Vista services to not be noticed, but in the real world on less than cutting edge hardware the constant hard disk access and processor/RAM hit is very noticeable.

And now I've ended up with a Vista laptop that's configured like XP and runs only 20% or slow slower. Why didn't I get a XP-running laptop in the first place? Because you can't buy these for love nor money.... Sigh.

On the bright side, Vista's device discovery and driver installation has been great. No printer driver CDs or trying to find CDs for every other accessory acquired in the last few years - everything was recognised immediately and silently installed. Pretty cool and how computers are supposed to work....

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