Well I finally made my mind up in that I was going to buy a new PC rather than convert my older Mac into a Windows machine. And here it is, in all its glory. My Dell Inspiron Desktop.

The machine is a bit of a beast when it comes to specification as I always said if I am going to buy one I am going to make sure that it is a top spec machine and then it will last me a few years. It is fully equipped with an Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz processor, 4 GB RAM (of which applications can only use 3.26GB for some reason!), and a 500GB hard drive (SATA of course!). It also came with a fantastic 22inch widescreen flat panel monitor which really does transform your computing experience.

I suppose one of the biggest changes that I have noticed with the machine is Vista. I was wondering for a long time whether or not to get it with Vista on and finally decided that it would be a step backward if I didn’t. However there are already compatibility issues with Vista. I use a little program called PQDVD for getting DVDs onto the iPod which will simply not run using Vista. Then Macromedia Studio 8 gave me a compatibility warning when installing saying that there are known problems, none of which I have yet come across. It seems as though there are too many pieces of software that will just not run on Vista which is disappointing.

Apart from that Vista seems OK. Once you get passed the annoying “Are you sure that you want to do that?” and “Are you really sure you want to do that?” messages and the fact that some basic things have changed, like the up one folder button in explorer then you get used to it. The interface and everything is actually quite good.

Anyway I will keep you posted on my Vista experiences in terms of software compatibility.