The Phantom 30 gig

I thought I'd write about Windows Vista before I forgot about the experience ... Most people seem to hate it and because of this no one uses it. Strangely enough, that seems to be the biggest problem I've found with Vista. Nobody likes to use it, so there's more scattered and confused tech support for it. There's also less software for it and just a general confusion about it ... You can tell, because Microsoft tried to attack this general dislike and confusion with the Windows Mohave ad campaign. I discovered this lack of support when I had a rather interesting problem with my system.

I was trying to partition the hard drive in order to put things like music on one partition so that when I inevitably need to reformat I wouldn't have to copy all 32 gigs of music I have to a back up drive and then back again after the reinstall. I figured I would split my 100 Gb hard drive in half and leave around 50 for windows and whatever I might need to install. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? I'd had the computer about a month and hadn't done anything crazy to it, so I went in to look at how to partition it, and ... there were about 60 Gb used. And my music wasn't even on it!! As a matter of fact, it wouldn't even fit nicely on there! I was astonished that vista took up that much space, so I went hunting to see what exactly needed all that room. I tried sizing the folders on the C drive, and then I became even more perplexed. The total space all the files on my C drive took up was about 30 Gb. There was a completely missing 30Gb. Like I said, I was very very perplexed. So I did what I always do when I am very very perplexed. I googled it. Because I have found that no matter what my compter problem is, someone, somewhere has already encountered and kicked the ass of said problem. It's a good situation to be in. Unless you're running Vista ... I searched for what I found to be an exceptionally long time for a computer problem for an answer to this question and not simply the confused question posted all over support forums. I even went to *gasp* the Windows tech support site ... I know. I was desperate. Anyway, I finally stumbled upon this forum thread which had the answer to my question!! but even that guy had a seemingly difficult time finding this ridiculous problem, *and* it was posted on an Ubuntu forum. The one good answer. Was posted on an Ubuntu forum. Really? So I turned off the system restore feature and recovered about 20 Gb (the other 10 it turns out is an additional Lenovo backup ... man that system was backed the heck up).

But really I'd just like to complain about the ridiculous situation Microsoft had got themselves into. I actually think that Windows Vista is pretty cool. The neato graphics are awesome. It looks cool. The search option in the start menu is *spectacular.* It utilizes IPV6 if that's your thing. Tablet functions are already built in if *that's* your thing. For the not-so-computer savvy, I think it's a great OS, because it pretty much does everything for you. The only reason I'm not using it now is that I had a nasty LAN problem with the network in my office. I had and IT person come look at it, because, well I didn't have time and it was a really weird problem and it took me so long to find Vista help the first time ... He couldn't get it to work (He was seriously in my office at least twice a week for about a month, poor guy.), so I quit and installed XP over the break. Now I have a few more moments to look around for a good answer, and it turns out it wasn't even really a Vista problem.

For the computer savvy, it's rather annoying, because you have to navigate through about 4 or 5 menus to get to things like network connections just to disable the wireless connection. It does a lot of things on its own, and that is pretty cool, but never take away my manual option, because it never fails that something will go wrong and even if the manual option doesn't work, it could still give me more information as to what is going on. But I don't think Windows is really going for the small percent of the population that is computer saavy with their general OS.

So what happened with Vista, which has done nothing evil to me besides eat some of my hard drive space and waste a little bit of my time due to an incompetent OU network? Well, the trouble is something that causes problems, I think, in most of the world. Too many people take other people's word for it. Newscasters, Oprah, Politicians, the New York Times (who once "wrote" an article stating that blonds will die out by the year 2020 or something ridiculous. This story had months before circulated as spam and was proven to be incorrect by snopes.com and apparently has been around for a loooong time. Seriously? I wrote them a nasty email), bloggers, Wikipedia (don't get me started on high school science teachers who don't bitch slap students for using wikipedia as a reference--though it is generally very good, and I do love it ... ) Obviously the internet and TV don't really help this situation.

I find that to be a recurring theme in this blog and something that generally annoys me about people. If someting can easily be experienced first hand, don't be lazy and just rely on stereotypes and public opinion. Everything is spun. I think that will be my new year's resolution: Experience more things first hand. (What? I'm only like a month late--you should ask my professor how late my papers get in ....)

... Or maybe Vista really does suck ;-)

PS. I've got a new polymer post coming up! At least Steph should be excited about that!