Despite my inisistence that "I'm never going to, no way, no how", Windows XP is trying to get me to like it. It may have just done the one thing that may change my mind. Eventually.

But in the interest of not confusing the few people who read this blog, let me go back to the beginning...

After months of continuing problems using an old computer and Windows 98, last week my internet connection stopped working completely.

To be more precise, I *could* dial up (yes, most of us are still on dialup here in the Aussie bush), but the modem handshake was usually followed by a hung connection within 30 seconds of loggin on. I would say rude things about my ISP and had a large phone bill. I would say the rude things about my ISP quite loudly, and in an annoyed tone. Occasionally I would say the rude things about my ISP in an annoyed tone loud enough to scare the cats. We have a large dog and the cats don't scare easily.

After about a week of this, in which I didn't achieve much internet-wise (but did a lot of knitting), Jamie became even more annoyed at me than I was at the ISP so he scrounged up every computer part he could find in the house, butchered his own computer, and built me a new different computer. And put XP on it.

Herein lies a new problem.

I have used XP before. I hate XP almost as much as I hate my ISP. XP has security problems and has little popup bubble windows that say things that make you feel like your computer thinks you're stupid.

XP has renamed all the stuff I understood in Windows 98, so that it takes me 3 hours to figure out how to change my colour profiles so Photoshop will open.

So I persevere, and start to figure out what everything is now called. I install my prescious Kermy as my desktop wallpaper.

But all this has still not convinced me to love XP. After all, it's still popping up bubbles that think I'm stupid and occasionally reboots of it's own accord because I need 4x the ram I have at the moment.

So why am I thinking of liking it?

It plays my David Bowie and Moby mp3s perfectly! My last computer would make them stutter horribly whenever I tried to do anything else. It would occasionally spasm so completely that I had to hit reset because it would insist on attempting to play the same note until my ears bled.

So, the new computer still reboots occasionally, it pops up insult bubbles and I can't find everything, but it does play my mp3s!

I may be a geek but I have my priorities straight.

:-)