Windows 7 Was Not My Idea

I've had my current PC since 2005. When I bought it I went ahead and gave it some extra power so that it would last longer into the future. I think that was a wise decision because even though it is five years old I am still happy with its speed. I have been running Windows XP ever since I got the computer. I am quite a big fan of XP. I have found it to be a very stable operating system. They even (mostly) got rid of the BSOD. It is way, way, way better than the previous Windows offering (Millennium Edition) and I pretty much hate Vista. I have heard very few people complain about XP, and I look at what they did with Vista and I ask myself "What were they thinking?" The whole file system reminds me a bit of an Apple so I wonder if they weren't trying to copy Apple's system a bit. Anyway, I haven't had any problems with XP until last week.

It was my own fault. I run spyware scans on my computer and am usually very careful with what I do and what I click on while on the net. Last week I was on a site and I got an Adobe pop-up saying the site was requesting more space to save information. It wanted an additional 900 kb. I wasn't thinking and clicked OK and shortly after my problems started. My spyware would find two trojans and a malicious program. It would quarantine them and upon restart, they would be right back where they were found, slowing down my Internet, popping up random websites in my browser. Making Windows very slow. After trying a bit to get rid of them and failing, I decided it was time to reinstall Windows. I had gone 5 years without having to do this, which is pretty darn good in my experience, so I gave in and started on the process of rebooting my computer from scratch so to speak.

Before I started this I installed Ubuntu on my computer. I have wanted a duel boot system with Ubuntu and Windows for years but never got around to doing it because I didn't want to have to delete all of my Windows files. Let me just say that I love Ubuntu. It installed within 15 minutes, and the very first time I logged in it was ready to get on the web and everything. I think I can do about 90% of my computing tasks within Ubuntu. The other 10% I either can't do or can't figure out how to do, and unfortunately because of that 10% I still need Windows. Ideally I would just abandon Windows all together. Currently I have a duel boot system with Ubuntu 10 and Windows 7, and am writing this post from Ubuntu. I am a big fan of the OS. If anyone has any questions about it or wants to know more info, feel free to ask.

I tried to install XP. They don't sell it anymore at stores so I got a free link from VU thanks to my brother Craig. Unfortunately I couldn't get the install program to accept my passkey. After trying for a few days I gave up and decided to just by Windows. Unfortunately, like I said they don't sell XP anymore. I hate Vista so I refuse to put that on my PC. So I decided to go with Windows 7. I have never used 7 before and really know nothing about it. It cost me $130, the cheapest version the store had. Installing it was a pain in the ass. I kept getting an error code 2 minutes into the install, and searching the net was of no help. I finally got it to work when my friend Ogre suggested I reinstall the bios on my system. I owe him a beer for that one. Windows 7 takes about 90 minutes to install and then it had another couple of hours of updates to install. One of the updates sabotaged my boot loader program so that the screen is black and I have to go through the menus by memory. It is all annoying.

I haven't used 7 enough to have a definitive opinion. On the surface, it resembles Vista. It is more invasive than XP but not as bad as Vista. I am pretty annoyed that one of its updates messed up my boot loader program. I will probably give a review in the future once I have had time to use Ubuntu and 7 a bit more. Again I am hoping to be able to do most tasks in Ubuntu and minimize my Windows log-ins. For now, crisis averted.

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes. I spent my birthday morning at the dentist, which really wasn't too bad. Otherwise it was basically a normal day. Sarah got me the Lost collection on DVD which is pretty cool because it has a ton of behind the scenes features and interviews I hope to watch.