OneAndOneIs2

I go to the library every week, and take out some books. So does Lou, but since they stock a lot more girly books than Sci-Fi, she has more success in finding fiction books she wants to read.

So these days, I tend to get more non-fiction books. And wandering through the computing section, I saw a book on Vista. I've seen quite a few such books in the shops, and been a little puzzled as to why the self-proclaimed most user-friendly OS ever should need so many manuals to use, so I had to pick this one up.

And although I'm only a few pages in, it's a brilliant read, albeit not in the way the authors intended. Here are a few of the gems I've come across so far:

"In 2001, Microsoft...claimed that XP was "the most secure operating system we have ever delivered." In fact, XP and...Internet Explorer were full of maddening security holes." They then go on to explain that they "don't hesitate to recommend that you get Vista" because (You guessed it!) it's the most secure operating system Microsoft have ever delivered!

Then there's the intro to the Aero interface. The first paragraph contains the qualifier that you'll only have this if you have an expensive version of Vista and the high-end hardware to run it. They only get as far as the third paragraph before admitting that it's an irritating interface and telling you how to switch it off.

They continue by letting you know that "in its frustrating way, Microsoft has renamed" the Add/remove programs feature as the "Programs Explorer" on the grounds, presumably, that unlike a Linux package manager, there was no actual option to install things with it.

They are very up-front in admitting that IE 7 was nothing more or less than a frantic catch-up job - "IE 7 has (thankfully) copied several other features from Firefox"

All these unintentionally-entertaining insights have been crammed in to just the first dozen pages, and there are over 600 in total, so I have high hopes of the book being an entertaining read.