And I realized that consciously or not I’ve been playing with the idea of rolling back to XP Media Center for a couple of months now. Vista just won't work for me. Not that's it's a bad Operating System, in many respects I love it and as long as you're dealing with first party software and hardware, it's great but when it comes to third party, I pretty much gave up trying to make things work.
Take my sound card for example. I had specifically picked it for it's ability to output 5.1 surround sound to my receiver and the manufacturer even released a Vista driver. the card works fine except that it will not ouput under any circumstances 5.1 surround sound.
When it comes to third party software you can end up with some pretty funky stuffs. To download 'recipes' off Usenet (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) I like to use GrabIt, specifically an older version, 1.5.2 Beta, which has always been good to me. After completing installation, entering my account information, subscribing to my fovorite newsgroups, I then proceeded to download a first batch of posts, everything seemed to go well except after opening my "Download Folder" nothing was there. I knew however from the free space left on the hard drive (big long recipe) that the files were there. After doing a quick search by size and date, I quickly realized Vista was storing my GrabIt downloads in a mirror directory under AppData. I resolved the issue by changing the security settings on the GrabIt download directory:
Right -click on "Download" -> Security -> Edit -> Users -> Allow full control.
Then there are maddening issues directly related to the Operating System itself like the User Account Control(UAC). This thing will prompt you for something as innocuous as a "cut and paste" job. "Are you sure you really want to do what you're trying to do?" Errrr yes most of the time I do, thank you very much. Some will be quick to point out that you can disable it and they would be absolutely right, however no sooner do you turn off the UAC that the Security Center freaks out because your settings potentially expose your system to hackers and viruses. So now here we go disabling the notification settings of the Security Center. All I was trying here was prevent my computer to ask me twice if I really want to move that file!
Not to mention the sidebar that's buggy at best!
So at the end of the day Windows Vista, as it is, gets between me and my computer whereas Windows XP IS my computer. I'm switching back to XP next week.
PS: G4 you can bring back “Call for Help” still broadcasted on G4 Canada and “The Screen Savers” (I hate “Attack of the Show”) any day of the week
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