Vista Goodies

For Christ sake, what is it with Microsoft and levels and extras and stages and more bloody money...

I say this because i have just spent some time looking at different levels of Vista (no, i'm not stupid enough to fork out my cash on Vista, are you insane!) and my god, there must be 7 different levels of Vista alone, and then there's Office. When XP came out, everyone was getting into a rage about the 'confusing' Pro and Home versions. Now there's Starter edition, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, Ultimate and some random one they're trying to flog off to failing autocratic governments or something.

But more than this, every single one is different to every other one. There is one problem for Microsoft but... They didn't do a very good job of keeping them separated. See, as some others at school would vouch for, my (school-issued) Tablet PC appears to be an odd blend of Vista Ultimate, Third-Party Software and general customisation. As the logon screen betrays, it's actually Vista Business, but with Windows Aero, and all the premium games, and Windows DreamScene (unfortunately, whenever i try to change my background, say to DreamScene, it just says 'Page Failed to Load'... Still Fiddling, help would be appreciated), and i think i've found out how to get the supposedly Ultimate-only Bitlocker.

I'm pretty much just missing Media Center, something i don't really have a need for, but i've certainly compensated with all the third-party crap I've put on this thing. The fact that i'm writing this using FireScribe, a Firefox extension is enough, but the fact i have another 37 extensions is more, hell, the fact i'm using Firefox 3.0.3 means i've been fiddling with this thing. you name it, i've probably got it, or something to do its role: Winamp, VLC Player, Webshots, Graph, Motorola Phone Tools, the entire Office 97, CyberLink DVD Suite, PowerProducer, Google Calendar Sync, Mozilla Thunderbird (with extensions), a couple extra PIM Managers, Nero Suite, Palm Reader, RealPlayer (*shudder*), TrueSuite, Fingerprint Software, WinRAR (*ugh*, what's wrong with zip files), YouTube Downloader, Google Chrome and IrfanView...
I've also changed almost every setting in Control Panel, a couple of Registry Keys and anything else that can be changed.

While this may seem like overkill, i use most of them pretty regularly!

But to get back to the original topic (OMG! Topic creep on blogs!) my Vista is pretty different to the one they hand out at your local Hardly Normal (Harvey Norman) and it makes you think...

Why the f*** did you pay extra for Ultimate, sucker!!

PS. I'm fairly sure the Idiocy Department (IT Dept) aren't going to recognise this computer when i hand it back to them, especially now i've got my own custom skin on the inside and outside.


UPDATE!
I now have 41 other extensions, not 37 anymore... yay! i broke the 40-extension barrier!