Vista sucks

Good GOD does it suck.

I have to use it for school, because the addle-minded monkeys that run the computer labs apparently lack the sense that the good lord gave a jar of mayonnaise.

Give me XP, or ME, or (shudder) a Mac any day of the week.

Update: Maybe it's time for another round of "John uses Ubuntu, and likes it (mostly.)"

A few weeks ago I discovered that the copy of Windows that shipped with my Laptop doesn't allow me to rip CDs to MP3 at a reasonable bitrate - less than 128! So I booted up the trusty linux box, installed GRIP, and after spending an evening noodling with the settings (which is just another form of play for computer geeks) got it set up to do what I wanted.

I've also been tooling around with avidemux for video editing, but so far I haven't made the switch from using mostly Windows on my laptop to using Linux on my desktop. Partly this is because I've got the Windows install set up pretty much like I want it, and partly because when I've got a laptop that runs silent and efficiently, I can't bear to turn on the big clunky desktop.

Oddly, I've found that instead of using Linux for the usual stuff I do on Windows -- the kind of thing Linux has been capable of doing for years, the kind of stuff partisans say proves Linux is ready for the mainstream -- I'm using Linux for the exceptional stuff that Windows either won't let me do or wants to charge me to do. This, to me, shows that Linux is much more than ready for prime time, but that's just me.

I have some gripes about things not working right, but they're pretty minor and I suspect I could fix them if I could find the time to delve deeper in to Ubuntu forums.

Eventually, I think I'll work up the courage to install Ubuntu on the laptop too, and see how that works.