Let’s be real.  I have been a Windows “fanboi” for as long as I can remember.  In fact I’ve also been a “fanboi” of Intel, Apple, and AT&T-but those are a different story.  My very first computer ran Windows 98.  My second computer ran XP Professional.  My third computer runs Vista Ultimate x64.  I’m annoyed at Vista!  At first, I was a huge fan of Vista.  Its graphics are a little over the top for my video card at times, but initially I was quite please.  The occaisonal crashes and bluescreens were few and far between and for the first time, I had Windows Media Center.  I find it bloated and slow, but it works.  Or at least it did.

As you may or may not know,  I was one of the first adoptors of the public release version of Service Pack 1 for Vista x64.  Since then, Vista has become increasingly unstable.  I, for one, would have thought that Vista and WMC would be BFF considering that they’re made by the same people!  Every morning, I try to record 2 episodes of JAG using Windows Media Center.  Almost every morning, Vista throws a bluescreen and ruins the entire program.   This also happens in the evening when I’m trying to record The Biggest Loser or American Idol.  While these problems are merely annoyances now, because I’m recording these shows at home as well, they are completely unacceptable.

I am faced with two choices. I can either try to fix these bluescreen problems by reformating and starting, or I can cut my loses and move on to some Linux distro. I think that I will try to reformat and reinstall Vista over spring break which is a week away. while I’m at it, I might as well also set up a partition and install Ubuntu 7.10.

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There has been unbelievable hype leading up to today in anticipation of some sort of new product release from Apple.  There is significant evidence pointing to new MacBook Pros being released today which have shown up in Best Buy’s inventory database but, the iPhone SDK is supposed to be released by the end of February which suggests a firmware update, and the 3G iPhone is coming out *sometime*.  Maybe we’ll get all 3 today.

Oh, btw, the Apple Store is down.

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It is just under 22 hours since I installed Vista Ultimate Service Pack 1 x64 on my laptop and I’ve just received my first Blue Screen of Death.  How I’ve missed ya buddy it’s been almost a week now since I’ve seen you.

Interestingly enough, I don’t believe I ever had a BSoD on one of my personal XP machines.

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Service Pack 1 for Vista Ultimate x64 is showing up on my windows update.  I’ll be installing it in the next few minutes to see if there are any drastic improvements.  On the whole, I’ve not found Vista to be incredibly buggy, but Windows Media Center has been an incredible pain with all its frequent crashes and blackouts.

UPDATE: I did get SP1 installed this morning. The install process took just under an hour and went off without a hitch except for the cursor being a little shaky when I tried to do the required restart. This however was not an issue once everything was back up and running. I’m not really sure if anything is different yet. Things could be running just a little bit more smoothly on the whole, but I can’t really say for sure at this point. Everything I use frequently still appears to be functioning so at least there aren’t any major headaches on that front.

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I know I am!

You can take the FCC’s quiz on their horribly designed website at dtv.gov.  Seriously, I could design a better
website than that, and I suck at designing!

There are 13 questions, which is a really strange number for a quiz, about the DTV transition.  They are
all pretty easy so give it a shot so that all your pals can know just how cool you are.

Or, if you just want to look cool, you can download your deputy certificate here. Honestly, who else is going to know?

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The Apple store is back and the update was indeed to add a new 16GB iPhone.  Saddly, this was not also a 3G data update. Apple also added a 32GB iPod Touch  Both the 16GB iPhone and the 32 GB iPod Touch will run $499 and are shipping now.

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1. It is Tuesday morning.
2. The Apple Store is down.

Based on this, many people are predicting that a new 16GB iPhone is going to be released today with a possible price point of $599.  I, for one, and I’m sure I’m not alone would rather have the “coming sometime in 2008″ 3G iPone.  I guess we’ll see what’s going on latter today.

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