I've have my head down this week, buried in the install of a new computer at my office desk. My old one was getting....really old!....so I decided to get a new one that has promises of faster/better, you know the drill. Money has been tight, but I decided I could spring for the $ 999.00 HP Quad Core unit at COSTCO after getting seven years out of my current one. I made the jump.

Then the horror began.

The new computer, in fact every new PC, comes with Windows Vista. Not the older 32-bit one, but the new 64-bit architecture. Microsoft is really pushing the 64-bit engine and I didn't pay much attention to it. Take it to the store, plug it in...its BEEEUUUTIFUL. Fast, sleek, and sexy (as sexy as a computer can get). Love the display! So I start loading up my existing software and hooking up my color laser printer, scanner, photo dock, all sorts of things. The computer revolts and gives me the Blue Screen of Death. Hours and hours of updates, setting tweaks and studying what went wrong ensued. And guess what? Not one single piece of existing hardware or software that I owned would run on this new 64 bit machine.

I bought new software. $ 600 i had not planned on spending.
I bought a new color laster printer. $ 400.
I bought a new scanner. $ 200
Took out my Kodak Printer Dock (no driver updates for V64)
Gave up using Quark, Adobe Acrobat, and my Photoshop since that would be another $ 1,200 to upgrade all that.

Once I realized that nothing old runs on this machine, I had to go back and remove drivers and software routines to get it all off the machine. Finally - today about 5 p.m., after about 25 hours invested in this and 2x what I wanted to spend I think I have a stable new computer.

Microsoft needs to put a big red label on the box of all 64-bit Windows Vista systems that says "NONE OF YOUR OLD HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE WILL RUN ON THIS MACHINE".

I anxiously await the new Windows 7 due out a year from now. Supposedly it runs smooth and quick, and far less fussy than Vista.

BTW, I use an iMac at home. The setup on that one took all of 15 minutes.