For the first time in several years I bought a new computer! I am on about the 5-6 year interval for upgrading my primary machine, which means it's been a long time since I've been able to wait for the UPS guy with a giddy grin on my face. Of course, he didn't show up until 3:00 so the grin quickly faded as I eased into the day. But, then it finally arrived! I got a new Inspiron E1505 spec'd out nicely. I am excited to be running Vista Home Premium...yes, Vista for all you haters out there.

From the time I opened the package, it took me a whole 8 minutes before I was up and running and online. Not too shabby for setup! I'm definitely impressed with the 3D flipping and overall user experience with Vista. The TrueLife display is going to take some getting used to since I'm used to my old CRT monitor. The true test will be how well it displays when I use it outside. Of course, it is going to take a while to get used to where everything is stored (i.e. Adding IIS management console is hidden in a new section of the control panel) but that won't take too long. I'm sure I'll run into some issues but I don't think it will be anything major. For example, I'm already finding it difficult to find drivers for my Dell all-in-one printer. Hopefully, I'll get that resolved soon.

Future plans include converting my old desktop to a media server that I can use to store my music, pics, videos, etc. I am also excited to getting the Visual Studio.NET add-ins for Vista installed so I can play start messing with some .NET 3.0 apps soon.

So, to all of the Apple apologists/MS bashers, I have had a very easy and smooth experience so far with Vista. Surely I'm not the only one. I don't think that it's superior to Mac OS necessarily, but it sure has made great strides to catch up in the user experience department. It will be interesting to see what MS and Apple do to differentiate their products in the coming years.