Lotsa motion, unknown result...

With the imminent release of Microsoft Vista, the question of the hour is: How long will I be able to refrain from joining the migration to this new operating system?

I did pretty well resisting the move to XP, until January 2004, when I bought a VAIO with XP pre-installed. On the whole, it's been a pretty trouble-free system for me (although I simply detest its default appearance, which is not a show-stopper by any means). Then again, perhaps it was my delay in moving to XP that made the process so palatable; any bumps there were to experience early in the game had been smoothed away by the time I set off on the road.

I've read a lot of articles about both how great Vista is (<insert marketing stuff here>), and how brain-damaged it is, owing to its implementation of Trusted Computing (i.e., there are enough controls on what you can do with the machine and software that vendors are satisfied they can "trust" you) and the increasingly ubiquitous DRM (Digital Rights Management, which allows content owners to pretty much dictate how you may use, view, transfer, etc. stuff they sell you).

I'm thinking that the overall answer to the question is: For a pretty long time. But then again, that's going to depend on my hardware needs in the near term. A preliminary estimate shows it will take about $250 or so to bring my old Windows 2000 desktop machine back into working order, maybe as much as $300. OTOH, Wal-Mart is advertising an eMachines system (with LCD monitor, if memory serves, and Vista) for under $500. Then again, maybe I can do without additional hardware, period, in which case, I can probably live without the new software.

Apropos of which, I've managed to find an open source application that eases the process of connecting to the Internet via cell phone (GPRS Easy Connect), and the app even supports the BlackBerry 7100, but the installation requires a connection to CPAN to download and install a bunch of dependent Perl modules. This information is mooted, however, by my decision to have broadband access delivered to the house via cable. This new service erodes much of the financial advantage I had derived by going broadband via Verizon and my cell phone, but not entirely, so I'm still ahead of the game, except that now, Galina can get online while I'm on the road somewhere.

* * *Today, I went with Galina to the fitness center she had signed us up for earlier this month. It's a fairly decent-looking place, getting ready to expand into facilities that are under construction next door, and the equipment seems okay (the treadmill I used today was a step up from the ones I had become familiar with in Baikonur). I will drop a buzz in management's ear about the ear-splitting level of noise coming from a boom box in the corner, though. While many might consider it music, it makes listening to your own stuff impossible unless you show up with a set of industrial-strength noise-cancelling earphones.

I felt good after the session, though, and even managed to jog about 0.3 miles out of the 1.75 miles covered.

Cheers...

Not my imagination...

Without engaging in some kind of scientific research, at various times through the day today I started the following applications, used them for a little bit, and then closed them. The catch was, I used a stopwatch to measure how long it took to arrive at a ready-to-work state from the time the program was launched.

Typically, a browser would be open in the background, along with a couple of directory windows, along with all the default processes that run whenever I turn on the machine (firewall, anti-virus, etc.). My results stated as an average startup time for three launches of each program:

Application	Time until ready
Apple iTunes	34 sec
MS Word (Office 2003)	22 sec
Quicken Invoice Manager	79 sec

With Quicken, you almost have enough time to go get a cup of coffee. (Criminy! And I thought iTunes was slow!)

Cheers...