Windows Vista

I just took at least 5 years off my life. I bought a new Hewlett-Packard lap top with the new Windows Home Premium Vista operating system. My purpose for purchasing the newer, faster computer, was to be able to run some of the more complex software which creates digital slide shows; for example, Adobe's Premier Elements (which would not load on my 2 year-old system without SSE2- huh?). I wish I could have stayed with Windows XP, since I'm finally becoming comfortable with it. However, I didn't have that choice when I bought a new computer. It's either Windows Vista or MacIntosh, or nothing. Unfortunately, only one genealogical computer program is made for the Macs. Most of the programs I use require Windows- at least that's the way I see it.

In any case, several of the wonderful programs which ran perfectly well, or nearly so, on XP, are not compatible with Vista. Also Vista has a lot of problems as you can tell by your first visit to the communal help groups online. The Vista "Help" section has just as many meaningless answers as any of the previous versions. And if you don't understand their answers, you can always contact your Administrator (I guess that's me) or the manufacturer of your hardware or software. Yea, right. Thanks a lot.

So, if your planning to buy a new computer with Windows Vista, plan also on purchasing several hundred dollars worth of new, "Vista ready" software, including the 2007 version of Microsoft's Office- sorry your M/S Office from last year won't work.

Incidentally, Vista comes with about four photographic slide show creators. Two of them send you to web sites to purchase the upgrades. The others are bare bones. Signed, Sour Grapes.