I am never particularly eager to embrace new technology.  However, having been lent a new computer running Vista Ultimate, I have ventured timidly into the latest iteration of Mr. Bill’s Brand.

Vista’s not as annoying as I thought it would be, but that’s largely due to my immediately dumping all the shiny-shiny stuff and optimizing for best performance rather than best appearance.  I also took back the classic menus and folder view.  After that, I just cruised right along.

It won’t let me create user accounts, though, no matter what I try.  Doesn’t surprise me, given that this came from a corporation that imaged it to their own specs, but it’s annoying.  But given how many other ways it could have annoyed me a lot more, that’s not so bad.

And tonight I figured that having Vista would actually be a good thing, for the first time ever.  Netflix won’t let me watch streaming video on my usual computer, because I run Windows 2000 on it and refuse to change that until the day it no longer does what I want it to do.  But the Netflix viewer will run on Vista, so I decided to try that out.

Well, there’s a hitch in the gitalong–it only works with IE and I only use IE when I’ve got no choice.  But I suppose experimenting with streaming video is worth it.  So I fired up the little blue E, installed the viewer…

….and now I can watch my favorite episode of “McCloud,” which was one of my favorite shows.  “The Night New York Turned Blue.”  Oh, the sacrifices I make for seeing Dennis Weaver and JD Cannon ride again.

photo credit: Digital Sextant.

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