Now, maybe I would have been interested had it still been called Longhorn. Longhorn was a great name: it had style.  It didn't necessarily mean anything, but then that was part of the appeal. Longhorn. Sort of secret-spy codename title for a project, which thus gave it mystery and appeal. However, it's not, and it's Vista. To me, Vista sounds like the name of a gay Spanish guy, so even if it really is a good thing, I can't say I'm tempted. Currently, I use XP and, while I'm not going to wax lyrical about it, the name is at least alright. Okay, maybe it's not quite as good as Whistler, but what XP stands for grabs me. The Windows experience. Okay, it sounds like some bought a cheese cheesecake and made a cheese sandwhich for it and then poured melted cheese over the top, but by calling it XP sums up the wonderful realms of RPGs, and thus becomes semi-decent.  Plus, everyone knows that X sells stuff - just ask X-Men, Mutant X or Wormhole X-treme.

Before that there was Me, which was alright because it had me in it, and 2000 which was factual. Plus, 2000 probably seemed great back then also, with the whole Y2K stuff and it sounding hip, biblical and large, etc. Then there's 98 and 95, which are equally factual, as was 3.1. Really, I think I prefered the cold and hard version, compared to the warm, tanned and...well, I'll stop that line of thought.

DOS was always good, of course. I still remember being really young and not understanding why, no matter how many times I filed my name, it didn't do anything but keep repeating itself. Plus, DOS was a brilliant introduction to IRC, which makes it possibly the most brilliant OS ever created by Microsoft. If only more people grew up to DOS, we wouldn't have some of the more disgusting graphical garbage in MSN Messenger. Or is it Windows Live Messenger? I can't keep track. I mean, I installed a newish version a bit ago, and it popped up a welcome window, and then gave me several useless toolbars and advertising/Live/MSN/Passport crap. I'm a simple man - well, I'm a man, that says it all.

I don't want my "emoticons" to become pictures. I don't want it to automatically create a little table of smileys to choose from whenever I type a colon. I'm old-fashioned, because I'm from IRC. :) is good enough for me, and I don't need some hideous yellow thing looking at me. Dodgy anime-inspired smileys aside, smileys should force you to turn your head to understand them. They should look like a collection of letters on the keyboard (or at least, ASCII characters). That's why they're smileys and not <img> codes. I want to feel like I'm engaging in a massively multiplayer notepad, that's gritty and requires the decoding of strange collections of symbols; that I'm immersed in a highly elitist and singular medium of communication. I don't want to be confronted by some hideous cartoon circus that wants me to buy more passports, or go on dating websites.

Speaking of websites, this is my first entry here. Woohoo. I was almost tempted to usurp Shadow1980 and speak about the horror that is the UK bus, but I might see how he explains it first.

Back to OS' though. Obviously, unix based systems have the right idea, because they have the magical x. That would mean change though, and let's face it, changing an entire computer software block is scary, and I could play even fewer games than I do now, and all sorts. Maybe that's what it comes down to: change. I don't want to change from XP. Yes, it has all sorts of flaws, and treats me like I've never seen a computer before by default, but I'm still mostly used to it. Plus, I'd have even more backward compatibility issues.

So maybe that's it. I don't want to change version.

I could almost believe it if not for the gay Spaniards.