I’ve been reading some more and widening my perspective on Vista. My computer has decided to behave more normally the last couple of days so maybe it’s not panic-time yet. However, I figure, wherever possible in life, it’s a good idea to be informed and prepared instead of shocked. I’ve been in my database and photographs for a long time and just pick up bits and pieces of other things around the edges. If that’s you, too, here’s more info on OS choices.

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I’ve been avoiding this but I finally went and had a peek at Vista. It’s quite snazzy with all those 3-D effects and see-through tool-bars. How can I resist? It’s easy. I don’t need a new operating system. XP is here, it works, sort of, with a lot of help from other software. I thought I’d wait a year or two until some of the kinks are worked out.

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This has nothing to do with genealogy, except if you consider more easily navigating around your files and folders an important issue for sanity’s sake.

I have no doubt there are numerous options available for this purpose. I’ll just tell you what I found to fit the bill. Once it was all working I had no need to look any further.

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If you’ve had about as much fun as you can stand with Google Earth for now, the other most fun thing you can do on a computer is audio.

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My computer does not have a DVD-drive and it only has a 30 GB hard-drive so movies and videos are pretty much out of range here. Don’t know much about them really.

I once got excited over having AVI’s made of some 1950’s home movies; little bundles in snowsuits racing around the screen at warp speed, very funny stuff, so I tried taking one (4GB) apart to re-order the segments. Not only did it crash the program I was working with but it crashed my whole computer so bad I had to re-install the operating system. I’m sure smaller movies are possible but not something I’ve spent much time with so far. I’m still back in the dinosaur age with slideshows.

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