Memos From the Cube

It’s a cliche, but for me it actually applies. Gentlemen, the future is now!

I’ve just bought a nice new Toshiba Satellite 201/O2H notebook to replace my dying less-than-two-year-old heap of junk Compaq Presario M2000V. Let this serve as a warning to others; DO NOT PURCHASE COMPAQ LAPTOPS. Screen issues (vertical lines, anyone?), design issues (overheating) and other problems are well known in the HP/Compaq brand.

The new Toshiba came with Vista, which is my first proper experience with the new OS. I sat down being fully prepared to hate it as numerous others already do, but I’m very pleasantly surprised. The new features are fantastic, and a year’s worth of patches/fixes and such has resulted in quite a nice new OS. It’s not without its problems - I had to reinstall the webcam drivers and fix a problem in the registry preventing the system tray icons from appearing - but all in all, I’m very impressed.

Everything just seems to work, and work well. I’m a little worried that my years of computing experience will be of no use in the next few years; with parts replacement as easy as ever and auto-configuring systems, there’s little call for someone who knows how to repair OS components. However, it’s all in the name of progress and I support it wholeheartedly.

Being able to control and dictate to the entire system with the inbuilt speech recognition is very, very cool.