Eww.....

[JackoliciousLegs]

I bought a laptop for my cousin. Money was an object, so I caved and got him a PC. It's been doing this loading vista crap for 20 minutes.

Right off the bat, why is it taking this long to start up for the first time? Is this some Vista Voodoo©? The screen is much more reflective than my mbp's too. Oh well... it was only $600 shipped w/ tax.

[Evan]

the reflective screen is a "feature" usually called something like "briteview" or something. you can get them without it.

no idea on the vista stuff. never used it.

[HAULN-SS]

brightview screens are awesome. You can actually tell what you're doing when you want to do some work in a car or somewhere outside

[BLINGMW]

Is this some Vista Voodoo©?

It's copy protection, it's much more robust now that the user can't do anything at all. If you DO want to use it for an hour, I think you need to insert a $100 bill into the CD drive.

[Ginger]

It does final setup when you boot for the first time. I have no idea what it's actually doing, but it doesn't do that again. You'll have to spend a little bit of time removing 3rd party programs and trial offers that the mfg put on there (don't judge vista on those, because Microsoft didn't decide to put them on). I also spent a bit of time disabling superfluous features that Vista used which I didn't like. That help speed the machine up a ton.

[jongp3]

I like MAC's new slogan

Don't Give up on Vista..

Honestly, format it and put XP on it, from my experience in working at a Software Test Lab Vista sucks balls.