It's been pointed out to me many times over the years that I'm slightly cynical.
This is not true.
I'm massively cynical.
There's a reason for this. I've been the IT "biz" for 15 years (that sounds wankier than it is), and before that I was an "amateur" since 1981. (Yes, I used a Sinclair ZX81 at school, and programmed it in lovely, lovely ZX Basic). So for 29 years or so I've been reading IT press releases, software manuals, and other IT documentation. I am therefore familar with both "translated from Korean via Japanese" Engrish... and lies.
It's often fun looking at press releases for upcoming software packages and looking for the places where the marketing department has got involved, and something that the engineers has said "might work if we sacrafice a goat or two" is suddenly top-and-centre in the feature list or - worse still - where a feature is obviously there just to please the marketing department. No names, no pack drill... oh damnit, Clippy.
Which brings me to Windows 7. Worryingly I'm not massively cynical about it. I really do believe it's going to be good. This is just about a unique occurance in my life. It scares me slightly. But I've run it on a few machines and haven't found anything terrible. It's quicker than XP is on this netbook. It's even fixed the biggest annoyance I had with Vista - the way that the "start" circle was slightly off the bottom edge of the screen. (Yes, of all the possible reasons to hate Vista that's the one that I'm most pleased they've fixed. I'm odd.)
So for once in my life I'm not 100% cynical about a software product. So I'm guessing I'm going to be disappointed beyond reason come October 22nd... Still, XP will still work for a few years yet, and Ubuntu does everything I need 97% of the time. A little disappointment is good for the soul.
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