Yesterday, Microsoft opened up Windows Vista for a public beta, so I thought, “What the hell, I’ll give it a try.”

First off, downloading the DVD image was a pain. Microsoft really needs to learn the virtues of bittorrent. The download would disconnect after only a few minutes, whether using a direct download or using Microsoft’s special download manager. It took me over a day to actually finish the download, and then I had to go in search of a blank DVD to burn it onto.

Once that was completed, I popped in the disc and rebooted. The installer has received some work since XP, but as it has been almost 6 years, I would expect that. The partitioning scared the hell out of me, as I had three partitions with important data and 16 gigabytes of blank space for Vista, but the installer made it very hard to tell where exactly Windows was being installed to. After making me sweat for about an hour, Windows rebooted, and then rebooted again for good measure it seems, then hung on a blank screen, then rebooted again. Some thing never change, it seems.

After the installation, I was greeted with the new login screen. Microsoft couldn’t have made the colors clash any more if they tried. I logged in, and then the real fun began. I started poking around for all the new and exciting features that Vista included. Internet Explorer, check. Windows Media Player, check. Windows Mail (a.k.a. Outlook Express), check. Windows Movie Maker, check.

I was dissapointed, however, that even with the inclusion of all these new and innovative products, the one feature that I was looking forward to playing around with, the Aero user interface, was nowhere to be found. Obviously, this was becuase I didn’t have the drivers installed for my video card, so I hopped on over to ATI’s webpage and downloaded the Vista drivers for my card and installed them. Then of course, I had to reboot, and then…

Nothing. The interface was exactly the same. I poked around in settings, control panels, whatever. The option to enable Aero was nowhere to be found. Now, my video card isn’t the most powerful thing out there, a 32MB Radeon Mobility 9000, but for crying out loud, it can run Xgl/compiz on Linux great, and ATI products absolutely suck under Linux.

I really wanted Vista to do something cool, so I decided to jump off the deep end, and plug in my iPod. Here’s what I expected to happen:

Vista: Hmmm…. awful lot of stuff you’ve got on here.
Me: Yeah, so?
Vista: Wait a minute, I don’t think you paid for this song…
Me: What are you talking about?
Vista: They are in some strange format called MP3. Obviously, MP3 is used by music pirates.
Me: That’s a standard audio format, you idiot.
Vista: Would you like to convert all your music to Genuine(R)(T)(C) Windows Media Audio files?
Me: Hell, no!
Vista: Unrecognized response, please choose: [ ] Yes or [ ] Yes, please.
Me: What is wrong with you?
Vista: HOLY SHIT! There’s a Linux partition on this computer! Don’t panic, I’ll take care of this…
Me: Noooooo! *pulls plug*
Vista: Bwahahaha, you can’t kill me, for I have no soul!

In actuality, it wasn’t anywhere near that exciting. It simply asked me if I wanted to open Media Player, and after I said yes, It proceeded to not play back any of my music.

So there you have it, my initial reaction to Windows Shitsa, I mean Vista. To summarize, Windows Vista is big, bloated, and full of bugs: sort of like a dead hooker.