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.

Another solicitation to my techy/developer friends out there.  I am redesigning a stand-alone application here at work and would like to use some proven GUI guidelines for Windows applications.  I have found some stuff online but I would ultimately like to find a good book that can be used as a good design reference to help ensure that I'm designing a good, intuitive, MS-standard interface that incorporates best practices for controls and overal user experience.  There's a wealth of resources on Amazon, but there's no better review than those written by people that I know who have used the resource and have a real opinion about it.  So, any ideas out there?  Thanks in advance!

Thanks to everyone's feedback on my previous solicitation for universal remote advice.  I went to Best Buy to look at what they had to offer and ended up getting the Philips DVR 8 function remote.  After the sticker shock of looking at the top of the line ones, including some of the Logitech remotes that were recommended, I decided to go with a cheaper option for now.  My reasoning was primarily that I would wait until I have a more sophisticated TV setup at home before I get a remote worthy of such a fancy set up.  I'm still trying to get used to the new remote and in fact, I may decide to return it to try out some other options.  I'm not thrilled with the fact that the buttons do not light up which is really nice when watching movies and the dog yacks on the floor or something and you have to search frantically for the pause button in the dark.   

Jan's parents were generous enough to give us their old ProScan 27-in flat screen TV and a Sony DVD player to go with it.  Since we are not in the big and fancy tv market at the present, this is a good thing that will make our viewing experiences better without breaking the bank.  It gives us more time to watch the price of HDTV's to continue to drop too.

I could use some advice at this point in the area of universal remotes.  We need to get a new one because the one that we inherited just does not work very well.  So, any recommendations from the blog world are welcome here.  Criteria to keep in mind are:  price, function (ease-of-use), size (don't want a laptop-sized remote), and dependability.  I appreciate any recommendations as far as what is available and where the best place will be to find it.

Ok bloggy blogs...I need some help.  I'd like to get something to aggregate the RSS feeds from various blogs that I like to look at.  Where do I start?  What is a good software package that will allow me to do this?  I need your help as this is a new area for me.  Send me your ideas and recommendations.  Thanks in advance!