How ironic, that I resume updating this space on a regular basis by continuing where I left off over two months ago. If you check the post previous, you’ll see the point at which I began by cursing Windows Vista for the poor performance of Adobe Photoshop - yet in the end decided that the slowness was in fact a blessing in disguise.

Slowness I can handle. Instability, I cannot.

I was recently trying to apply a windows update, when Vista up and froze on me. Not a temporary freeze, but a ‘you must unplug your computer to get out of this freeze’ (BTW - does anyone know how to unstick a frozen machine without unplugging it? Yeah, power button is real useful when you can only use it to turn the power ON). Upon restart, the computer - having crashed in the middle of an update - could not figure out how to complete the boot back into Vista. This resulted in an episode of restoring the system to its previous point (before the update). Normally, this would not have been a big deal - however by that point I felt like a boxer who had already gone 10 rounds too many against an opponent who was lacking in intelligence, but made up for it in sheer endurance. Of all the problems I had encountered with Vista - a Windows Update causing it to crash… that was the knockout punch.

I did a system restore to the point immediately preceding the update, and proceeded to move all of my important files off to an attached network drive. Muttering sharply beneath my breath the entire time, I waited until I had completed my backups, and then gleefully restarted and booted into my Windows XP cd. I must admit, I have rarely felt as joyful as I did when I elected to format the partition, and watched the progress bar slowly erase all of those painful Vista memories.

Having re-installed XP, I was reminded of what it was like to have an efficient working environment again. Photoshop once again ran smoothly, my hard disk no longer spun for reasons I could not fathom, and all was again right with the world.

Except for one thing.

Does anyone out there want a slightly used copy of Windows Vista Ultimate?

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