It's alive, alive!!

It being George, my new laptop. :) Which arrived Monday after some FedEx detours. The mouse and carrying case were also detoured via UPS. The shipping experience with Dell this go-round has been...less than ideal. But I don't care...because I have a new computer! A speedy computer. A pretty computer. (Vista may suck down the Ram, but boy oh boy is it pretty.)

And after far more tweaking than I expected, I'm online! There was a brief moment of panic when I feared my Actiontec modem (which George insists is actually a Texas Instruments RNDIS Adapter) wasn't compatible with Vista...but it seems I have 32 bit, not 64 bit Vista so a quick trip to the library to download a driver and I was good to go. Mostly. Ran into some more trouble...as soon as the driver was installed, George started talking to the web, downloading Windows updates...but me, I couldn't get online. To access my connection I needed a "username & password, provided by my ISP". For the record, Qwest tech support was no help at all...but the Qwest community forums were exceedingly helpful and after following a number of posters' suggestions, lo, I am connected to the internet in my living room. Oh frabjous day. At the moment I'm downloading Windows updates and World of Warcraft updates. (Cue the extremely contented sigh--WoW, I've missed you so.)

BTW, for anyone contemplating the joys of "upgrading" to Windows Vista...I highly recommend the book HACKING VISTA by Steve Sinchak. I checked it out of my local library and am loving it so much, I'm probably going to have to break down and buy my own copy. I'm not quite brave enough to alter the registry settings (yet!) but the book is filled with all sorts of simple tweaks designed to make Vista more friendly for the beginning computer user and to make it a bit more...compatible with other software. Vista does not play well with others, no matter what Bill Gates might say differently.

So very soon I should be back on track with the "things" and working on rolling my own search engine. And tackling my online book discussion duties with Eliza Dresang's Jane Addams award contenders. I am so very, very behind. I'd forgotten what a "joy" getting a new PC was. Stay tuned...