Seeing the Vista

After seeing the need to purchase a new laptop, I stopped by Best Buy to pick up a relatively inexpensive one. My only criteria was that the video card not be Intel based. I found an HP laptop with ATI based video and all for a price of around $800. Thus began my brief experience with Windows Vista.
Without getting into all the horrendous details, let me just say that within 24 hours I was going through the process of acquiring and installing the latest copy of Ubuntu. Vista, although bright and shiny, I found to be slow, awkward and at times confusing to use. In the effort of Microsoft trying to make things simpler, they have stripped away and hidden a lot of functionality. Being a brand new laptop, I'm disappointed in lack of performance in Vista. Boot times and shutdown are somewhat painful, especially the latter. And what is with all the notifications asking me if I was sure I wanted to do something?? If I were an absolute beginner at computers, this would confuse the daylights out of me always having to second guess myself and what I was doing.
That being said, that's my brief experience with the latest and greatest Windows has to offer. Now I'm settled back into my comfy Ubuntu and enjoying my new laptop.