The New Computer Has Arrived

. . . and this is my first entry on it. But I'm not exactly happy with it so far.

1. I HATE WINDOWS XP.
2. How the hell does this 2.6GHz or whatever thing manage to be slower than my old 233MHz one? That's probably Windows XP's fault.
3. It keeps crashing. Constantly.
4. When I press Control-Alt-Delete and try to end whatever program has last frozen up, it refuses to close the thing. The Control-Alt-Delete function itself freezes up.
5. The spam I'm getting here is scary. A box popped up which read just exactly like a spam email, except it was in a Windows box, not even in a browser window but in a Windows message box and there weren't even any browser windows open and the only websites I've visited so far are the preprogrammed internet homepage, which is netscape.com, and LiveJournal. How did the spam get there? I can't believe they mailed me a computer with creepy spyware pre-installed all over it.
6. When I tried to close this particular spam window, it froze my computer. Not only did it freeze my computer, in fact, but even when I pressed the "off" putton to turn the computer off completely, the computer absolutely would not turn off. I had to actually pull the plug out to get the thing to turn off.
7. It wasn't the only very weird scary new form of spam pop-up window I've gotten already on this thing.
8. I've reset the Windows color scheme (in Desktop Properties/Appearance) three times now and it keeps inexplicably erasing my settings and returning my computer to te dull grey-and-navy-blue default color scheme. It does not provide anyplace to save my customizations where Windows 98 did. This is minor compared to the rest of the problems, because I suspect there's a way to work around it hidden somewhere or other, but I'm still annoyed.
9. It keeps getting some error that causes it to reboot itself. Have I mentioned that I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HATE WINDOWS XP?
10. I should say something positive in this entry, shouldn't I? Uh . . . the new computer's case is very pretty, a deep midnight blue and silver instead of the usual beige. It's very nice to look at.

If only it would actually function for any purpose other than scary spam delivery.

Computer Progress!

Aha! My new computer either arrived pre-infected with the W32.Blaster worm, or else somehow managed to get infected with it within 10 minutes of the first time I turned it on yesterday. That was what was causing it to crash and reboot every twenty minutes.

It is behaving far better now, and I am installing every Microsoft patch and increasing all the security settings to try to protect it from all these malicious invasions. I may yet manage to develop a not entirely hostile relationship with this thing.