NEWSFLASH Susan V's Vista - Vista wins 6-2

The run up....

Ok, it has been one thing after another the last few weeks. Started of the new breaking up with my boyfriend, (less said about that the better) Quickly followed by having my car windscreen smashed, and not the one I needed replacing either!!! My car then decided to break down, luckily in Halfords car park, (Hmmm very suss) had to cough up for a new battery, Then the same day I came home, and all the electric had gone... and to what did I owe that pleasure? My microwave had blown up and took all my electric with it!

My background with Vista

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse it did. CUE VISTA.......

If I even started on what Vista has put me through in the last year, we would be here forever, and btw anyone who came here looking for a solution to their vista problems, I do have one that works brilliantly, keep reading!

My vista was sold to me by an over enthusiastic sales woman at PC world, who told me my computer could easily run it as an upgrade to my XP, and well to cut a long story short, she was wrong!

Vista was a trojan horse sent in to my computer to make my life a misery. Simple tasks like saving files had now become a chore, and the delights of a basic yet fully functional graphics card, were no more to be seen. It appeared to me that my hardware had taken an instant dislike to this new chap and were making sure I knew it! Not one to give in too easily, I resisted the urge to throw the machine out of the window, (why does the line resistance is futile come to mind?) and I let battle commence ... Susan v Mr. M Vista

The last straw

So the battle with vista started in May last year, like I said previously I had problems adding files to folder, which I had learnt do deal with, by simply not adding any, and the simple task of having to restart my computer at least 5 times each time just to get the graphics card to kick in. I was used to seeing 70% RAM being used simply with only the basic processes running, and not being able to run the sidebar and Windows Aero was merely a small detail, hey what did I need that for anyway??? So what happened I hear you ask, what made me surrender this battle?

My music folder became my D drive was the 1st thing, when you clicked on properties of that folder it's identity had become the D:/ if i changed it's location, to was twinned with D:/ so it changed the location of that too, I couldn't change it's name or anything with out affecting the D:/. So after hours on google I still had no answer. Then i realised that my documents folder had become twinned with my user profile folder. Again no reason for this. You clicked on documents and were taken in to my User Folder. All documents had vanished, and the system had taken control of the documents and settings and I no longer had access, despite running take ownership. I had every tech guys on every forum studying all hours my DSS, Hijack this, and other such logs, but they were as stumped as me to the solution. (Do you need a Coffee break yet?) So what's a girl to do. Reformat of course. So I uploaded my data, what was left of it to an online back up service reformatted and re-downloaded my data. GUESS WHAT! All the data I had left vanished. It went in to my folders and disappeared, the folders all said the contained files, but you opened the folders and it said folder empty. (No they weren't hidden) They just weren't there. 3 days I spent with a tech guy trying to find these files but to no avail, Then all of a sudden as strangely as they had gone, they just re-appeared, no doubt abducted by the aliens aka Vista..

That was it, finally I had an answer that was going to solve all my Vista problems. After careful consideration, I decided against strangling the PC World saleswoman, an instead opted to... Wait for it....... YES... RETURN TO XP. Old reliable. And well Its like I have a brand new machine, it's running as smoothly as clockwork, and I couldn't be happier, See I told you I had a solution.

During my Vista trial's and tribulations, I came across many tech guys, all of whom said, that while Vista may look good, It is now where near as good or reliable as XP.

I will miss the look of it, but there are so many sites out there with vista themes for XP its amazing. I will evaluate some and get back to you on where you can get some of the more decent ones.

By the way quick note that may be of interest, PC WORLD kindly apologised to me and gave me a full refund of the Vista, however they did not sell XP anymore so couldn't replace it without using their business center, but the cost was £150, but they recommended here as they sold OEM versions for £70. Bargain.

My Conclusion

Bloody hell are you still with me? Well what a crap year I have had, and dare I say it, I'm fairly sure it defiantly can't get any worse now. But like they say every cloud has a silver lining. Just haven't found out what it is yet, lol. Although, the refund I got for the vista in essence paid for the microwave and the car battery, so may be there is a silver lining after all, but one thing is for sure, the critics were right, It is wonderful to be home again with the old reliable XP. Here's to trouble free surfing!!

You Know You're 30 When...

• You leave gigs before the encore to "beat the rush".
• You get more excited about having a roast on a Sunday than going clubbing.
• You stop dreaming of becoming a professional footballer and start dreaming of having a son who might instead.
• Before throwing the local paper away, you look through the property section.
• You prefer Later with Jools Holland to Top of the Pops.
• Before going out anywhere, you ask what the parking is like.
• Rather than throw a knackered pair of trainers out, you keep them because they'll be all right for the garden.
• You buy your first ever T-shirt without anything written on it.
• You start to worry about your parents' health.
• You complain that ecstacy's "not as pure as it used to be" coz you know that if you have some it will take about 48 hours to recover and anyway, you might look a bit of an idiot.
• Sure, you have more disposable income, but everything you want to buy now costs between 200 and 500 quid.
• You don't get funny looks when you buy a Disney video or a Wallace and Gromit bubble bath, as the sales assistant assumes they are for your child.
• Pop music all starts to sound crap and you find yourself saying, in my day they made real music.
• You opt for Pizza Express over Pizza Hut because they don't have any pictures on the menus and anyway, they do a really nice half-bottle of house white.
• You become powerless to resist the lure of self-assembly furniture. Ikea anyone?
• You always have enough milk in.
• To compensate for the fact that you have little desire to go clubbing, you instead frequent really loud tapas restaurants and franchise pubs with wacky names in the mistaken belief that you have not turned into your parents.
• While flicking through the TV channels, you happen upon C4's Time Team with Tony Robinson and get actually drawn in.
• The benefits of a pension scheme become clear.
• You go out of your way to pick up a colour chart from B&Q.
• You wish you had a shed.
• You have a shed.
• You actually find yourself saying "They don't make 'em like that anymore" and "I remember when there were only 3 TV channels" and "Of course, in my day...."
• Radio 2 play more songs you know than Radio 1 - and Jonathan Ross has some really interesting guests on.
• Instead of tutting at old people who take ages to get off the bus, you tut at schoolchildren whose diction is poor.
• When sitting outside a pub you become envious of their hanging baskets.
• You come face to face with your own mortality for the first time, and the indestructibility of the 20s gives way to a realisation that you are but passing through this life and if you don't settle down soon and have kids you'll have no-one to look after you when you're old and frail and incontinent.
• You realise you can't go on p**sing your life up against a wall forever and think of how many brain cells you're destroying every time a swift half turns into 10 pints.
• You find yourself saying "is it cold in here or is it just me?"
• You realise all the young people who were on TV when you were a kid, are now really old (Todd Carty) and all the old people that were on TV are now dead (Carry-on films entire cast)

My first taste of being thirty!

Well this is it, I finally caught up with the younger generation in deciding to do my own blog.

As you are probably well aware, I am nine months into my 3rd decade. Born 8th June 1977 I'm at the younger end of the 70's babies to finally join the thirtysomething saga. Leg-warmers, My little pony, Rubix cubes and the Atari are now a fond but distant memory and I now find myself talking about ipods, the latest mobile phone, processor speeds and of course my new favourite..... ....blogging.

I dreaded the day I was going to turn thirty, for some reason when you hear someone is in their twenty's they sound young, but the moment you turn thirty, thats it - assuming you live to a rip old age of 90 at thirty you suddenly realise you are at least a third of the way through your life.

A third??? How could I possibly already be a third of the way through, where the hell did the last 30 years go? I blinked and missed them.

When you were a child how many of you remember adults saying to you:

"Enjoy your youth you dont have it very long"

"When I was your age I would never have done that"

"School is the best years of your life, enjoy it while you can"

My immediate reaction was to always sigh and think: You must be bloody kidding, I hate school and I don't care if you never did that and I want to be a grown up" Well I feel now that I wished I had listened to them, and really made better use of my youth, and education, because all to quickly it was gone. 

Don't get me wrong, Im not saying I'm out to pasture just yet, I just know now that I am not as young as I once was. part from the fact I need a dictionary to translate the youth of today's txt language the main giveaway is I now find myself saying to children today all the quotes my parents said to me, however I do smile to myself when I say it.

I did decide to have a do for my 30th, although I actually think it was more of a Bon Voyage to my twenties, Myself and 12 of my closest dearest friends & family went to the Cafe De Paris in London's Leicester Square, and wow what a night it was, quite possibly one of the best nights of my life.

So 9 months in, is it going as badly as I had feared it would? Well actually yes and no.

There have been highs and there have been lows, I entered a new loving relationship, then subsenquently suffered a break-up. I excelled at college and passed my exams, but failed at many a job interview, my weight went up to a massive 201 lbs but after my new years resolution to lose 60lbs, I have so far lost 33lbs.

So all in all my first taste of being 30 has been a bit of a mixed bag of emotions, there are 9 years and 3 months left of my thirties, and I am going to make the most of them.