The Gateway M6705 laptop had everything I wanted in a lightweight, portable machine, and one thing I couldn't tolerate. It frustrates and saddens me that such a fine machine is so horribly flawed with Vista aboard. I took it back.

I feel completely betrayed by Microsoft. I'll have to make some effort to keep an XP machine running, but I've crossed the Rubicon with the software tyrant, and I ain't going back.

Fortunately, there are good options on the other side. I may yet get a Mac laptop, but my immediate plans include getting up to speed quickly with Linux.

I know there are strong opinions about which Linux flavor is best for a newb', with Ubuntu, Debian and SUSE getting most mention, while Gentoo, Slackware, Red Hat, and Mandrake also saw support in my limited survey. Some games will run under Linux, but most opinion seems to support the idea that XP is still the best bet for gaming.

I ran across a pretty good 8-part introductory article/tutorial on SimplyMEPIS, a Debian derivitive, but need to do more research. The article itself is a big plus, because of its thoroughness and clarity, as is the fact that SimplyMepis will run off the CD. Moreover, it's free. However, the article is three years old, and while I see Debian itself getting a lot of mention, the offshoot SimplyMEPIS doesn't.ExtremeTech's LINUX page is an excellent resource, so I've got plenty to keep me busy today. I plan on making a flavor choice within a week, perhaps within days. I need to make up for what? days, weeks, months, years... friggin' decades!!! of lost time with ms.

In any event, one of the newb'-friendly Linux flavors should be an excellent introduction and learning experience. If I become convinced that a different flavor might serve me better, I should be able to migrate to it without undue complications. I read of numerous people running more than one flavor, different flavors on work and home machines, and their accounts of starting with this and moving eventually to that. 'Point is: any experience with Linux will be to my advantage as I move on.

I should have seen this coming; computers have gotten too powerful to be entrusted to the Hoi Polloi. They'll be going after the internet next. It's a bad time.

Despite all its window dressing and eye candy, Vista's DRM protocols effectively castrate the data pipeline. To protect the precious premium content, non-secure I/O of any kind is prohibited along the bus, which is itself encrypted, as are pathways to and from the graphics subsystem. Microsoft encourages the development of stealth-mode drivers and other measures to obfuscate and conceal system activities. Then there are the tilt bits. Some of this stuff is too bizarre to dwell on for long, but right about now, a little history may be in order.

You see, this same Bill Gates now so concerned about protecting content actually made his fortune on other people's ideas and work. His AppleSoft was nothing much more than a port of BASIC for microprocessors. MS/DOS was derived from a rip-off of CP/M 86 that Gates & Allen allegedly purchased from a Seattle engineer for $50,000 when IBM came looking for an o/s for their new PC, and we've all heard Apple's decade long whine about MS stealing the look and feel of the Mac OS with Windows, which is to some extent true.

But Jobs himsef was inspired by PARC's pioneering GUI work. I've always seen both Gates and Jobs as hucksters, but I really admire Woz - he invented the personal computer.

Mr. Gates has certainly been in the right place at the right time more than once, and here he comes again with Vista, a so-called operating system whose ultimate master remains inscrutable.

In telling the tale, the Encyclopedia Britannica notes: "The term Trojan Horse has come to refer to subversion introduced from the outside." I've always treated this story, and indeed the entire Trojan War, as aprocryphal. Yeah sure, you're gonna drag that big horse into your fort, and yeah sure, nobody's watching the gates. We already know that people believe this kind of stuff, as recent events have shown.

But bogus or not, the morale of the story with the big horse is loud and clear: You damn well better look that gift horse in the mouth, and everywhere else too, before you drag it into your fort, else all your base may belong to them.

And so, what seemed like a fortuitous disaster has a silver lining after all. Even painful failures provide information, and in this case I've learned a lot: Vista has made it crystal clear that my computing future is not with Microsoft.

True, I will need to keep an XP machine of some kind running well into that future, but I'm also going to get going with Linux. I've established the long-range action plan of incorporating Linux into my all my processes, using it whenever possible, and a initiating a course of informal study to gain at least a modest level of skill.

Actually, now that I've made my decisions, I'm excited about getting into Linux. I used to thrive on all this geek stuff, but in recent years have been more content to avoid lifting the hood, as tech tinkering tends to offend my muse. The modern machines had made that possible to a large degree, especially the laptops, which are just splendid little creative powerhouses in the right hands.

But not with Vista.

The path is now clear: Avoid Vista, Preserve XP, Learn Linux. I'm going to enjoy watching Microsoft bleed money, marketshare, and hubris over this.
But more importantly, I relish my newly regained incentive and desire to learn.

Time to hit the books.
S