Wrestling with Vista and my New Laptop

Finally my new laptop finally arrived. I was like a kid, quickly opening the box and plastic wrappers. But the joy didn't last too long. My new laptop comes with this little thing called Windows Vista.

For the most part, Vista is a looks cool, but I still need to get used to the new interface. I ended up uninstalling many of the preloaded software, most of them useless but launches automatically at startup, and turning off most of Vista's nifty cosmetic features just because it took me too long to do anything (mostly boot, reboot and launch applications). I am trying to figure out if there's a way to turn off or at least reduce the security messages asking me permission to launch, install or have access to anything.

For the most part, the migration from my old computer has been pretty decent. I managed to reinstall most software I had in my old computer, well it would be nicer if I could reboot less between installations. Yes, my IM buddies, that's why I logged in and out every 2 minutes or so. I was happy that it took me only a few seconds to get my old outlook 2003 data file to work with Outlook 2006. Some software, like Adobe Acrobat 7 kept telling me that I need administrator rights to install it, I thought I was the master of the universe.

It is more challenging to get my hardware to work properly with Vista (e.g. printers and scanner). I guess the trick is just to install the driver without its accompanying software (like HP's officejet utility/manager).

Anyway I expect to fight little fires here and there with my new computer for now. Maybe I should have listened to Chris Pirillo and get XP with my new laptop. Here's Chris Pirillo ranting about his Vista experience... I can't think of anything else to add. Well, I didn't exactly have a great experience with Vista so far, but my nightmare's not as bad as Chris described.