Upgrading

I've been a little behind on this...been busy getting things installed, one program at a time. I took out both of my old drives, the original 20 gig that came with the Gateway, and my 120 gig master. I put in a 300 gig SATA, then installed Vista HP-32. Waiting for the external enclosure to arrive, so I can transfer some files and apps from the 120.

It certainly wasn't a smooth and headache-free experience so far. My mobo apparently sucks rocks...or at least parts of it, as I had a hell of a time getting the new drive installed. Installing the new SATA in conjunction with the new OS probably wasn't *the* smartest thing I've done in a long time, but oh well. So it's done, and this next phase is long and grueling...almost like beta testing. Through this, though, I'm finding some good apps and some pretty crappy ones. I'm just glad that I can finally say I am Symantec-Free. No more AV bloat-ware...no more bringing my poor system to its knees. It feels lighter and happier (same goes with my laptop).

Unfortunately, for every smart move I make, I invariably make another move or decision that sets me back a little. I've used Nero (5 and 6) with XP for a few years, and actually like it a lot. It's easy to use, and is NOT bloatware. I especially like the backup utility...to the point where I actually was backing up my data on a semi-regular basis. Okay, so Nero 5 or 6 does not support Vista, which bites, as I really didn't want to have to upgrade. Nero 7 was "made for Vista", in fact it is certified, so it can't be that bad can it? Ugh. I installed it using Custom install, explicitly directing it to only install 5 of the dozen "modules", and definitely NOT install any toolbars, be it Google, Ask.com, or whatever. Anyway, couple days later BitDefender finds a baddy in Nero's directory, something from ask.com. I hope that is a one-time thing.

So, not all of my XP programs will be reinstalled, but I'm finding that a lot of the old ones actually do install and work just fine. I had a small problem with Apophysis when first installed. It would not run most of the included scripts. I finally uninstalled it, then reinstalled it, but to a different directory. I have been reading that some programs have problems running from the Program Files directory in Vista...so I installed it in my user directory. Cool, now it works, and so do the scripts and the hack versions (JF's and Zeuk's). Hopefully, I'll have a few new ones to post here....soon.