Bloody Windows Vista

I treated myself to a new laptop a few weeks ago as the previous one was over three years old - and in computing terms that's almost as old as I am. I sold the old one to my daughter Michaela but I'm now beginning to wish I hadn't. This new shiny laptop has several new features - most of them damn annoying. Take bloody Windows Vista for instance...

My old laptop had all my old documents - dozens of football articles, the draft of my last book Hearts - The Diary of an Incredible Season (still available from all good bookshops etc. etc.) bits of correspondence and other stuff all neatly filed in an easy, accessible format. I quite liked Windows XP, it was easy to use - and I knew where everything was. But those smart people at Microsoft clearly think Windows Vista is far advanced. It may well be but for my ageing brain, it isn't! And it's bloody slow! (Windows Vista, not my brain. Well, okay, I take your point...) Perhaps I'm doing something incredibly stupid (and I don't need any snide remarks here) but Windows XP just seemed so much quicker. Perhaps the fact my new laptop has a dyslexic keyboard doesn't help - I type the letters in the correct order but on the screen they come out all gobbledygook.

On Monday I e-mailed my article for the programme for Hearts first league game of the season on Saturday week. Only, the good people at Tynecastle can't open the bloody thing! Can you re-send it as a Word document they asked. Sure - only I was certain I had sent it as a Word document in the first place. So I've re-sent it tonight as a Word 97-2003 document and also as a text file in case all else fails. I now have three versions of the same document in my folder and it's the first game of the season.

My laptop also has McAfee as a virus checker. My old machine had AVG which worked perfectly. McAfee works too well - it thinks many of the e-mails sent to me are 'spam' when they're not. McAfee now tell me my month's free trial is over and I should sign up for at least a year at the cost of forty odd pounds. Except I don't want to - I'd rather have AVG. Someone told me I should uninstall McAfee from my machine and install AVG - this should fix the problem. But I'm loathe to do this as I fear AVG may not work with Bloody Windows Vista and I'll be at the mercy of the thousands of viruses which may destroy my machine.

That is, if I don't do it first by sticking my right foot through it. A inadvisable way of 're-booting' my machine....