The view

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This is what Windows Vista feels like.

Last weekend I finally got fed up of not having a working computer, so I decided to pop down to Currys and see if I could grab a bargain. Not really wanting to spend more than £300, I was expecting to be faced with the choice of a feature-light netbook (impossible to type on) or a low-spec tiny-screen laptop. As it happens, I was plesantly suprised, and managed to pick up an 15-inch widescreen Advent with Dual Core processor, a good-sized hard drive and decent features for my money.

Unfortunately, it also comes with Windows Vista. I'd heard horror stories about Vista, but never actually seen or used it until now. Sadly, this was also the point at which the pleasant suprises stopped.

There are countless things I don't like about it, many of which are tiny little issues that wouldn't be so annoying if they had also been present in XP. The fact is though, on a whole host of fronts, XP was simply better. Windows have fallen victim to the previous operating system's sucess, and obviously decided that the practice of changing things for the sake of it was the way to go. Hence pressing backspace no longer takes you to the previous folder; the taskbar needs to be selected before you can click any of the notification area icons; thumbnails don't work like they used to; the start menu shortcuts behave differently; Windows Media Player doesn't allow you to show the artist in the "Now Playing" pane... and it asks more bloody questions than a US Customs officer.

It looks nice, though.