It's been over two weeks since my computer died, and things are only just now approaching normalcy. Lots of hassles, most of which seemed to trace to Vista security settings. I did get Windows Media Center set up, so I could stream Netflix movies to my Xbox 360, which is a very nice thing to be able to do, so that made me feel somewhat better about upgrading to Vista. But lots of things were a pain in the ass. Especially recovering my music from my iPod, which was doubly frustrating as I had just recently had to do it on XP. I had trouble getting the recovery software to even find iTunes, and then the default location for my iTunes library kept arbitrarily changing. Only when I disabled security settings could I finally get it to work (had to do the same thing to get Media Center to work with Netflix). But even with such settings disabled, I had lots of trouble getting access to files on my old hard drive (I discovered my backups were a lot less comprehensive than I thought: Jungle Disk did not do a very good job updating files that had been changed, and Windows Live OneCare backed up a lot of random shit I didn't need, while missing some crucial files--whether these problems are due to flaws with the software or my failure to properly set up said programs is not yet clear).

Anyway, things are almost back to normal. A few programs won't work with my 64-bit version of Vista, but no huge loss. DVD43 won't work, but I'm thinking, now that I have a 750GB hard drive in my computer, I might use my 1TB external hard drive to rip DVDs to, then convert that raw data into a format most appropriate for my iPhone or Xbox. No point copying a film ill-suited to watching on a tiny screen to H.264, when I'd rather want to see it on my HDTV. This is especially an option now that my computer is not so painfully slow; converting one hour of footage off a DVD into H.264 used to take about 70 minutes, but now takes only about 10.

So, my opinion, now, with some hands-on time, is that, if you experience an equipment failure or for whatever reason now need a new computer, you might as well go with Vista. But if you don't need to, you'd be nuts to upgrade.

I should also note that, the weekend I first set up my computer, I was sick, Tanner got sprayed by a skunk--again!--and I found out, only too late, that the annual sea shantey festival on the Star of India was that very weekend (the highlight of my year, and I missed it!). The festival was moved from September to May, for some reason. I take some small consolation in that it was a very hot day, and there's not much shade on the boat. But a tribute was planned to mark the anniversary of Stan Roger's death, which I would have liked to hear. I suppose the wait will make next year's concert all the more sweet, but missing this year's was a bitter pill. All of which is to say, that was a crappy weekend.