Experience of using Windows Vista after six years of Linuxing

Some time ago I found that I'm not comfortable with 15″ laptop and decided that time has come to buy something new, nice and tiny. I have chosen Acer Aspire 3810T it's display is 13" and LED-backlit, 4GB of RAM, CPU enough for browsing the Web and running old games.. decent battery life. It comes with Windows Vista Home Premium. Ok, I've heard a lot of negative feedback about it but I wanted to give it a try.

So, everything was going pretty OK, no problems browsing the Web, chatting, puttying, etc. So I'm using Windows for one month. Installed few programs, OpenOffice, Firefox, Skype, Machinarium(really enjoyed the game :)). And a lot of software come preinstalled(shitty games, trial version of Microsoft Office 2007, antivirus, backup managers, etc).

Yesterday I decided to uninstall everything I'm not using. So, what I've discovered:

• Different software still uses different installers;
• Some uninstallers didn't remove links from Start Menu(system-wide as well);
• During deinstallation of MyWinLocker window has appeared saying three programs were still running that should be closed for deinstallation to continue and one of them was an Explorer. I gave it a try, and it has killed Explorer, and left me with empty screen after deinstallation has finished. I could try to logout through Ctrl+Alt+Del.. but.. what if I were an ordinary computer noob? I would panic;
• In some uninstallers progressbar has been restarting a lot of times without any change of action description message... it was just saying something like "uninstallation will finish in 0 seconds". It's confusing.

To sum everything - I'm not satisfied.. Exactly the same problems were there back in 2003, and 2000, and earlier. Microsoft did nothing to solve them. And these problems come just from uninstalling software. I didn't try any other scenario.. And I don't want to even try..

I know Windows 7 was released yesterday, and it gets only positive responses. I'm going to order and try it (Acer has a program to get free upgrade to Windows 7(but it still costs $20 for shipping(:D Canonical ships free discs of free OS, and Microsoft(maybe it's Acer's decision) want customer to pay for shipping.. :D Not to say that it would be better to just download the image of CD without wasting CDs(or DVDs)))). So, when I upgrade to Windows 7 I'll install some Linux for everyday use (don't want to mess with GRUB overwritten by Windows upgrade)

Cleaning laptop keyboard

I have been using my Acer TravelMate 2490 for more than two years now. Keyboard got pretty clogged with dust, crumbs and other weird stuff. So I decided that today is a good day for cleaning it up.
Getting keyboard out is rather simple if you know how to do it. For mine model I had to carefully withdraw plastic cover above the keyboard(it is attached only with latches) to get access to screws that keep keyboard fixed. After unscrewing them keyboard can be detached from the base.



After keyboard is detached all keys should be removed, very carefully, the process is pretty straightforward. It took about an hour to clean all the keys and a board with bare hands(I wish I had forceps) and old toothbrush.